The Silent Voice of a new Beginning
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2011-11-20 · 1:39:46 · 14,258 words
ideologydemocracycapitalismrevolution-violenceliberalism-political-correctnesshegel-dialecticspsychoanalysisgeopolitics-warhistoryphilosophy-general
Žižek delivers a lecture at a conference on human rights, arguing that humanitarian discourse systematically depoliticizes genuine political choices, masking particular ideological commitments behind a rhetoric of universal neutrality. He develops a Marxist critique of formal freedom and real abstraction, insisting that bourgeois universality, though false, is the only possible site from which real emancipation can be launched. In the second half he engages in a lively debate about the Occupy and global protest movements: whether protesters need a concrete program, whether parliamentary democracy can cope with global capitalism's crises, and how to prevent the post-protest vacuum from producing either technocracy or authoritarianism.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 14
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
The operation by which a genuinely political-military or economic conflict is recast in purely humanitarian terms, thereby rendering certain political choices (e.g. support for one side) invisible and unaccountable.
as “Homo Sacer / bare life”
Agamben's figure of the human being stripped of all political determination and reduced to sheer biological existence, the limit-case that exposes the vacuity of 'universal' human rights when they attach to those excluded from political community.
as “surplus enjoyment (jouissance)”
Invoked implicitly through Lacanian framing: humanitarian intervention is described as a Lacanian operation where one apparently speaks of others' rights but really asserts one's own right to intervene.
Rancière's dialectical reformulation of human rights: not the fetishization of a particular set of values as universal, but the formal right of any political subject to articulate and pursue its own universality.
The classical Marxist point that apparently universal categories (human rights, formal freedom) secretly privilege a particular content (white Western male property-owner); Žižek invokes it as only one half of the necessary dialectical story.
as “real abstraction (Realabstraktion)”
Marx's notion that abstraction is not merely a conceptual error but is actually embodied in social reality itself, in capitalism, abstract exchange value structures lived experience so that people encounter their own cultural identity as contingent.
Žižek reads multiculturalism as a perfect case of Marxian real abstraction: the subject experiences every cultural identity as contingent and chosen, i.e. is already abstractly universal in reality rather than merely in thought.
Bourgeois legal freedom which is simultaneously false (it legitimizes actual exploitation) and the only possible opening through which real freedom can be pursued; abolishing it does not yield real freedom but destroys the space of freedom altogether.
Rather than treating the gap between universal form and particular content as an accidental imperfection, Žižek insists the symptom (e.g. racism within human-rights discourse) is structurally necessary and, if taken seriously, retroactively transforms the entire field.
as “hysteria (Lacanian)”
Used approvingly: the hysterical refusal to state demands in the master's terms is not obstruction but a refusal to be re-incorporated into the existing power discourse, Žižek endorses this stance for protest movements.
as “technocratic post-democracy”
The emerging form of governance in which formal democratic procedures are suspended precisely at the moment real decisions must be made, replaced by 'neutral expert' banker-governments, Žižek's term for the pattern visible in Greece and Italy ca. 2011.
The democratic insight that the seat of power is structurally vacant, no natural pretender, which modernity transformed from a feared catastrophe into the very resource of political stability.
Following Jameson, Žižek argues that technological revolution is producing a permanently excluded stratum that is not merely a classical 'reserve army' but people who are structurally, irremediably outside the labor market.
The Hegelian-totality point that so-called 'rogue' or excluded states (Congo, Afghanistan) are in fact fully integrated into the world market in the very mode of their apparent exclusion (as sources of raw materials, narcotics, etc.).
Stories he reaches for 2
From Lubitsch's film Ninotchka: a customer asks for coffee with cream; told there is no cream, only milk, he is offered coffee without milk. The same absent substance produces two different negations, showing that what is missing is constitutive of meaning.
“can I have coffee with cream please? They tell him, sorry, we ran out of cream, we only have milk, so can we get you coffee without milk?”
Žižek adapts Lévi-Strauss's point that the incest taboo is not a puzzle seeking a solution but an answer for which we have not yet found the question, and applies it to protest movements: they are opaque answers; intellectuals must find the right questions.
“the prohibition of incest is not an enigma which requires an answer but it's an answer we just don't know to which question it is an answer”
Works invoked 9
Ninotchka film
The coffee-without-cream/milk joke from Lubitsch's film is Žižek's central illustration of constitutive negation and depoliticization; he describes it as a 'nice Hegelian point'.
The German Ideology book
Cited as an example of Marx's early vulgar materialism where abstraction is treated as purely ideological misperception of concrete human activity, a position the mature Marx overcomes.
Brazil film
Terry Gilliam's film is called 'one of the greatest films of all times' and is his model for the new soft authoritarianism, a crazy bureaucratic society that is not fascist in the traditional sense but eliminates political agency.
Empire book
Hardt and Negri's book, Žižek previously called it 'the Marxist manifesto for the 21st century' (now implicitly regretted); he dislikes the 'multitude' term.
The Ghost Writer film
Polanski's film is used to illustrate how 'reality has the structure of fiction'; its thesis about Blair's wife as CIA agent is described as not-true but illuminating.
The Soul book
Andrej Platonov's story collection, with an afterword by John Berger, is quoted as a prescient account of protest movements as bearers of answers to questions not yet posed.
Stalin's text is cited sardonically, Žižek tells his interlocutor to 'read Stalin's On Dialectical and Historical Materialism' as a joke about mechanical pseudo-dialectics.
John Pilger's article is dismissed as containing 'so many factual lies, inaccuracies' in ten lines, and its characterization of Kosovo is called outright racism.
Heidegger's short text is quoted at length and described as 'disgusting mystification at its purest', a pseudo-populist appeal to peasant wisdom that conceals intellectual self-justification.
People invoked 39
Mary Wollstonecraft positive
Cited as the paradigmatic figure who radicalized formal human rights from within by insisting women too are human.
Claude Lévi-Strauss positive
His point that the incest prohibition is an answer in search of its question is adapted by Žižek as a model for the role of intellectuals vis-à-vis protest movements.
Vladimir Lenin positive
Admired for his post-revolutionary emphasis on organization, hard work, and discipline rather than revolutionary romanticism; invoked as a model for thinking about what to do after mobilization.
Theodor W. Adorno positive
Cited for his extensive development of the subordination of use value to exchange value, in the context of real abstraction.
Deng Xiaoping positive
Admired for the pragmatic intelligence of beginning privatization with small consumer industries rather than banks and natural resources, a model of principled pragmatism.
Jacques Lacan positive
Framework for the analysis of human rights as a Lacanian operation where one apparently speaks of others' rights but means one's own right to intervene; also the source of the hysteria/perversion distinction deployed positively.
Wendy Brown positive
Quoted approvingly on humanitarianism presenting itself as 'anti-politics' against power, and on the political project implicit in humanitarian interventions.
François Mitterrand negative
Cited via Brauman as the key figure who manipulated humanitarian discourse in Yugoslavia to conceal his real pro-Serbian political alignment.
Toussaint Louverture positive
Leader of the Haitian revolution, described as the 'mega-event that we should all celebrate' for radicalizing universal human rights to include enslaved Black people.
Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens negative
Mocked for the 'reinvent yourself' postmodern advice to structurally unemployed workers, 'postmodern bullshit'.
Anne Applebaum negative
Her Washington Post commentary on Occupy is subjected to detailed critical analysis; Žižek shows she contradicts herself by correctly diagnosing globalization's damage to democracy and then illogically telling protesters to use the existing system.
Terry Gilliam positive
Brazil is described as 'still one of the greatest films of all times' and as the model for the new soft authoritarianism, bureaucratic, not fascist in the classical sense.
Álvaro García Linera positive
Vice president of Bolivia and theorist; Žižek reports his cautionary point about corruption within social movements and the complexity of combining formal democracy with movement politics.
Étienne Balibar positive
Endorsed for invoking Arendt's insight on refugees in the context of the citizen/human-being opposition.
Antonio Negri negative
Žižek says he doesn't like the 'Negri Hardt term' multitude, and mocks the description of Empire as 'the Marxist manifesto for the 21st century.'
Alain Badiou positive
Žižek stages a mock scene with Badiou drowning with him in a Titanic-parody; also endorses Badiou's provocation that 'the name of the enemy is democracy', finding it clarifying rather than crazy.
Michael Ignatieff negative
Used as the paradigmatic case of humanitarian anti-politics that cannot sustain its own apolitical claim, he inadvertently reveals his liberal-democratic ideological commitments when pressed.
Giorgio Agamben positive
His concept of Homo Sacer / bare life is invoked to name the figure who embodies the aporia of human rights without political community; but later Žižek criticizes the broader Agambenian focus on biopolitics at the expense of economic analysis.
Andrei Platonov positive
Žižek mentions purchasing Platonov's story collection The Soul in New York; the text provides a frame for thinking about protest movements.
Yugoslav Prime Minister mentioned as touring republics with American money to argue for keeping Yugoslavia together, used to refute Pilger's claim that the US was against Yugoslavia.
Rony Brauman positive
French Red Cross coordinator in Sarajevo whose analysis of humanitarian intervention masking political choices Žižek endorses as a model of engaged but critically aware humanitarianism.
Fredric Jameson positive
Endorsed for his analysis of structural unemployment as a qualitatively new phenomenon beyond the classical reserve army, though Žižek notes Jameson 'knows next to nothing about economy'.
John Berger positive
His afterword to Andrej Platonov's The Soul is quoted approvingly as a description of protest movements as bearers of answers to questions not yet formulated.
Michel Foucault negative
Grouped with Agamben as exemplifying a focus on micropower and modes of domination that mystifies the field by losing sight of proper economic exploitation.
Jacques Rancière positive
Cited twice: for his 'return to sender' analysis of humanitarian rights and for his reformulation of human rights as 'the right to universality as such', both described as wonderful formulations.
John Pilger negative
Australian progressive journalist whose text on Yugoslavia Žižek finds full of factual inaccuracies and whose characterization of Kosovo as run by criminals Žižek calls outright racism.
Martin Heidegger negative
Called a 'great philosopher' but his 'Warum in der Provinz bleiben' text is held up as 'disgusting mystification at its purest', a pseudo-populist appeal to peasant wisdom that in fact just flatters the intellectual's own pre-formed decision.
Roman Polanski positive
Ghost Writer's possible joke at Applebaum's expense is described as a 'small sympathetic feature'; Žižek uses it to illustrate 'reality has the structure of fiction'.
Ernst Lubitsch positive
The Ninotchka coffee joke is attributed to Lubitsch and described as illustrating 'a very nice Hegelian point' about constitutive negation.
Hannah Arendt positive
Her insight on 20th-century refugees, that universal human rights broke down precisely when confronted with people who had nothing left but bare humanity, is cited as foundational.
Walter Benjamin positive
Cited in the debate on revolutionary risk: 'the worst and the best are very close to one another but unless you aim for the best you don't get a way out.'
Žižek has a 'soft spot' for Obama but was distressed by his puppet-like support of Israel against Palestinian statehood recognition; praises the healthcare reform debate as a genuinely disruptive political demand.
Mentioned as having belatedly recognized that the euro crisis's true victim is democracy, Žižek notes this with mild condescension ('even he got it finally').
Antonio Gramsci positive
His concept of 'the new order of things' is invoked in the debate about what institutional forms must replace the current order.
Žižek views Venezuelan experiments with sympathy but notes mixed results and that oil revenue allows Chávez to avoid confronting deeper structural problems.
Joseph Stalin negative
Cited for his pseudo-dialectical formula that the state withers away through strengthening its repressive organs, held up as the canonical example of the trap the left must not fall into.
Karl Marx positive
Central reference throughout: real abstraction, commodity fetishism, formal vs. real freedom, reserve army of labor, symptomatic reading, all invoked as the necessary framework, though Žižek also criticizes the early Marx of The German Ideology for a vulgar notion of abstraction.
Michael Hardt negative
Co-author of Empire/Multitude; Žižek notes he wrote that Empire was the manifesto for the 21st century, which he now implicitly regrets given the inapplicability of the 'multitude' concept.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
The coffee-without-cream joke is described as 'a very nice Hegelian point'; Hegelian totality, the empty place of power, and the notion that exclusion is a form of inclusion are all explicitly Hegelian moves.
What it argues
humanitarianism as depoliticizationfalse universality and real abstractionformal freedom as the only site of actual emancipationOccupy/global protests and the demand for a positive programdemocracy's incapacity to cope with global capitalthe danger of moralizing economic crisisdirect democracy vs. representational politics
Dialectical moves 9
“Coffee without cream is not the same as coffee without milk — even if the immediate content is identical, the negation is part of the definition.”
Illustrates how what is absent (the specific negative politics displaced by humanitarian discourse) is constitutive: asking 'without what?' is the genuinely political question.
“It is not only that universality secretly privileges a particular; it is also that what appears merely particular is already effectively universal.”
The double movement of real abstraction: false universality and real universality-in-particularity must both be maintained.
“Formal freedom is a false form, yet it is at the same time the only site of appearance of actual freedom.”
Bourgeois formal freedom cannot be simply discarded as ideological mask without losing the very opening through which real freedom becomes possible.
“If you abolish formal freedom you may well lose real freedom itself.”
The Stalinist lesson: the negation of the false form does not deliver the real content; it eliminates both.
“Human rights become the rights of those who have no rights — they are sent to the rightless and then sent back as the right to intervene.”
Rancière's 'return to sender': the universal rights that cannot be exercised by the stateless are reclaimed by intervening powers as authorization.
“Democracy turned the moment when the throne is empty — formerly feared as catastrophe — into the very resource of political stability.”
The empty place of power, which pre-modern thought regarded as crisis, becomes constitutive of modern democratic legitimacy.
“Those who are out are also in, in the very mode of being excluded — exclusion is the form of their integration.”
The Hegelian totality point: 'rogue' states are not outside global capitalism; their very exclusion is how they are incorporated.
“The present crisis is not a crisis of capitalism but a crisis of morality — said by its opponents to avoid questioning capitalism.”
By moralizing the crisis, conservatives (Cameron, the Pope) deflect systemic critique; the move names the moral so as to render the economic unquestionable.
“The way the state withers away is through the strengthening of its organs especially organs of repression (Stalin) — Žižek cites this as the pseudo-dialectical trap to avoid.”
Stalinist 'dialectics' as a cautionary inversion: the rhetorical form of dialectical reversal in the service of authoritarianism.
Claims 16
asserts
Recasting a political-military conflict in humanitarian terms always masks a particular, usually unacceptable, political choice.humanitarian intervention / depoliticization
asserts
In practice, 'universal human rights' function as the Western powers' right to intervene politically, economically, and militarily in Third World countries.human rights discourse
reframes
Exposing false universality is only half the Marxist story; the other half is that what appears to be a merely particular experience is always already more universal than it seems (real abstraction).Marxist ideology critique
asserts
Bourgeois formal freedom is false, but it remains the only possible site of appearance of actual freedom — abolishing it destroys the space of freedom altogether.formal vs. real freedom
asserts
Stalinism proves that if you abolish formal freedom in the name of real freedom you lose real freedom itself.Stalinism / formal freedom
asserts
All emancipatory movements — including Marxism — are conceivable only as radicalizations of the discourse of (bourgeois) human rights.emancipatory politics
rejects
Anne Applebaum's argument refutes itself: having correctly diagnosed that globalization undermines democratic legitimacy, she illogically concludes that protesters should use the existing British political system rather than rethink democracy.Anne Applebaum's defense of institutional democracy
asserts
The current crisis has rendered democracy itself the problem: existing multi-party parliamentary democracy cannot cope with the global dynamics of capitalism.democracy and global capitalism
asserts
The new form of authoritarianism will not be old-style fascism with a leader but a bureaucratic technocracy (à la Terry Gilliam's Brazil) that leaves private freedoms intact while eliminating political agency.new authoritarianism
rejects
Moralizing the economic crisis — attributing it to individual greed rather than systemic dynamics — is ideologically the most dangerous move.moralization of economic crisis
reframes
Direct democracy alone is insufficient; what matters more is imagining different forms of representation that can function after the moment of mobilization passes.direct democracy vs. institutional transformation
reframes
The role of intellectuals is not to provide blueprints for the future but to formulate the right questions to which popular protests are already opaque answers.the role of intellectuals in protest
asserts
The germs of a new social order must already be present in the way we organize now — Stalinist-style 'first stage / second stage' logic is a trap.revolutionary strategy vs. prefigurative politics
rejects
Neoliberalism is a myth: actually existing capitalism has always been heavily state-regulated and involved massive state intervention.neoliberal ideology
reframes
Countries labeled 'excluded' or 'rogue' (Congo, Afghanistan) are in fact fully integrated into global capitalism in the very mode of their exclusion.global capitalism and excluded states
rejects
The Foucault–Agamben focus on micropower and modes of domination mystifies the field by losing sight of proper economic dynamics and exploitation.Foucauldian/Agambenian theory
Quotes 16
“How depoliticizing the situation, reformulating it in purely humanitarian terms, as a rule, always masks a certain usually unacceptable political choice.”Slavoj Žižek · humanitarian depoliticization
“What you really mean is our right to intervene there.”Slavoj Žižek · human rights as Western right of intervention
“It's not only that universality is often an empty universality which secretly privileges a certain particularity. Also the contrary holds: when I think I'm just within a particular experience, I am effectively much more universal than I think I am.”Slavoj Žižek · real abstraction / double movement of universality
“The paradox here is that if you abolish formal freedom you may well lose real freedom itself.”Slavoj Žižek · formal freedom as necessary site of emancipation
“The form precisely is never a mere form. It involves the dynamics of its own which lets its traces in the materiality of social life.”Slavoj Žižek · form is not mere appearance
“When human rights become of no use since they are the rights of those who precisely have no rights?”Slavoj Žižek · aporia of human rights without political community
“Democracy requires institutions, elections, political parties, rules, laws, a judiciary and many unglamorous time consuming activities.”unknown · Applebaum's definition of democracy (cited critically)
“Globalization has clearly begun to undermine the legitimacy of Western democracies.”unknown · globalization vs. democratic legitimacy (Applebaum cited approvingly)
“The name of the enemy today is not capitalism imperialism blah blah — the name of the enemy is democracy.”Slavoj Žižek · Badiou's provocation on democracy as the enemy
“We have to suspend democracy and to put full trust in... those who screwed things up exactly.”Slavoj Žižek · technocracy as suspension of democracy
“The great triumph of democracy is that it turned this moment when the throne is empty into the very resource of the stability of the system.”Slavoj Žižek · empty place of power as democratic resource
“The germs of paradise must be already here in how we are organizing now.”Slavoj Žižek · prefigurative politics / against Stalinist stage theory
“The people with their protests are not asking questions they are an answer but an opaque answer.”Slavoj Žižek · protests as opaque answer / role of intellectuals
“Neoliberalism is for me a myth. It was always de facto extremely regulated.”Slavoj Žižek · neoliberalism as ideology not reality
“Those who are out are also in in the very mode of being excluded. This is the form of their integration.”Slavoj Žižek · inclusion through exclusion / Hegelian totality
“For me as a Lacanian perversion is bad, hysteria is good.”Slavoj Žižek · Lacanian hysteria as political virtue
Transcript 47 turns
Slavoj Žižek
Thank you very much. Just to, not to correct you but to supplement you and to avoid all ambiguities. Yes, the final scene, I hope it will work. The idea is this one: you remember how Leonardo DiCaprio is drowning and my old theory of how she, Kate Winslet, pushes him away. So we stage at that moment when she pushes him away, we will cut to me. It was done very professionally. They put artificial ice and they even put, you know, they had some kind of a very heavy thirty pounds belt that you put on so that without anyone pulling you, you go, you sink slowly. So it's done that I am slowly disappearing and then I do some stupid Alain Badiou revolutionary talk like, all the ice in the world cannot kill a revolutionary idea, I will come back. So I disappear, but then comes the Carrie, Carrie, the movie moment, then my hand comes up like this and I was told it works. That's all I can say. So, let me do some serious, overlong, boring stuff. First, I warn you, I will use some old stuff, some mixed stuff. What is this stupid proverb that you have? Something old, something new, something borrowed, something red, not not blue, of course, not. So let me begin. Since nonetheless this was a conference basically about human rights, no, I want just to go through my line and then apply to the mess we are in today. So, the most obvious case of and for human rights are the rights of those who are simply starving or exposed to murderous violence. Rony Brauman, a French guy, very progressive, good one, who on behalf of the Red Cross coordinated two decades ago the help to Sarajevo, demonstrated how the very presentation of the crisis of Sarajevo as humanitarian, the very recasting of the political-military conflict in humanitarian terms was sustained by an eminently political choice. He, Rony Brauman, claims that especially ominous and manipulative was here the role of François Mitterrand. A quote from Rony Brauman: The celebration of humanitarian intervention in Yugoslavia took the place of a political discourse, disqualifying in advance all conflicting debate. It was apparently not possible for Mitterrand to publicly express his analysis of the war in Yugoslavia. With the strictly humanitarian response, he discovered an unexpected source of communication, or more precisely of cosmetics. Mitterrand was in favor of the maintenance of Yugoslavia within its borders. He was persuaded that only a strong Serbian power was in the position to guarantee the stability in this region. This position became unacceptable for the majority of the French people, so all the bustling activity and the humanitarian discourse permitted Mitterrand to reaffirm the unfailing commitment of France to the rights of man in the end and to mimic an opposition to Serbian nationalism, all in giving it a free rein. I think this is one of the many examples of a good analysis, basically supporting what Costas was developing in his books. To be very open here, you may not agree with this specific anti-Serb, not against Serb people but government point, but I think that the basic conceptual structure of this argument is nonetheless correct. How depoliticizing the situation, reformulating it in purely humanitarian terms, as a rule, always masks a certain usually unacceptable political choice. You know, it's a little bit like, sorry if I repeat my old jokes but that's life, but I don't think I've used it a lot in London here, that joke that I repeat now all the time because I really like it, you know, from Ernst Lubitsch, Ninotchka. You know, a guy enters a cafeteria and says can I have coffee with cream please? They tell him, sorry, we don't, we ran out of cream, we only have milk, so can we get you coffee without milk? It's a very nice Hegelian point how what is not in, the negativity is part of the definition. It may be in immediate reality the same, coffee without cream, coffee without milk, but it's not the same. Exactly as here, you know, humanitarian intervention, let's say is a humanitarian intervention. This is Michael Ignatieff's mistake. Yeah, but we should ask, is it without milk or without cream? That is to say what negative politics is negated by it. It's absolutely crucial to do this. I think even more generally, the post-Yugoslav war was an exemplary case insofar as it also displayed the worst racism of some allegedly leftist radicals. A very brutal racism combined with breathtaking ignorance of facts. First, I don't just blame to be very clear only the Serbs. I'm the first to admit that in Croatia, even now in Slovenia, there was also a very strong racism. For example, I don't know, if there is one really the darkest political power at this point in ex-Yugoslavia, it's probably as far as I can judge the Croat Catholic Church. You know that they are absolutely openly pro-Ustaše, pro-Pavelić regime during World War II. They don't even want to make a symbolic kind of empty distance towards it. But as the model of this reasoning, I want to take a guy whom I usually considered a good guy, the Australian progressive journalist, how do you pronounce the name John Pilger, Pilger? John Pilger. Look, that's a quote from him, from his text Don't forget what happened in Yugoslavia, from The New Statesman, August Look: Yugoslavia was a uniquely independent and multi-ethnic if imperfect federation that stood as a political and economic bridge in the Cold War. This was not acceptable to the expanding European Community, especially newly united Germany, which had begun a drive east to dominate its natural market in the Yugoslav provinces of Croatia and Slovenia. By the time the Europeans met at Maastricht in a secret deal had been struck. Germany recognized Croatia and Yugoslavia was doomed. In Washington, the US ensured that the struggling Yugoslav economy was denied World Bank loans and the defunct NATO was reinvented as an enforcer. Well, I don't think that in bare ten lines I have ever seen so many factual lies, inaccuracies and so on and so on. The NATO was reinvented as an enforcer. Yes, almost twenty years later. If anything, the NATO totally, then the in Washington the US ensured. No, they ensured nothing. They did exactly the opposite. The Washington till as long as it ruled supported the federal government. I remember Ante Marković the Prime Minister touring all Yugoslav republics and waving with American money and claiming if you give Yugoslavia another chance we have all the credits. But the strangest thing, these Yugoslav provinces. Sorry, they were not provinces, they were sovereign republics with the right to secede guaranteed by the constitution. Not sovereign, not sovereign. Yes, federated. No. Sorry, it said in the constitution that each republic of Yugoslavia, okay, in this sense sovereign, has the full unlimited right at any point to leave the federation. And as we know now, there was a very interesting struggle in the Nomenklatura already in the seventies where if you had very good glasses it was possible to see the writing on the wall that things will turn bad. Namely, there was a conflict within Nomenklatura what to do if the system will get into serious trouble. One line was a more nationalist one, Serb dominated, which said Yugoslavia is an ethnic community of southern Slavs, so to cut a long story short, it should survive even if self-management socialism disintegrates. And there was another line which says no, no national mystique. The only thing that unites us is specific project of self-management socialism. If this falls, we shall see. But what really shocked me, okay, I accept this, this is the usual leftist blah-blah, I accept this from Pilger. What really shocked me is what follows then. Listen carefully how he characterizes Kosovo. A literal quote: Kosovo is a land which has no formal economy and is run in effect by criminal gangs that traffic in drugs, contraband and women. I mean, if there ever was racism, it is this. You dismiss a whole nation as a gang of criminals. Even, I checked it up, the Serbs who are most anti-Albanian would never say that, would never go as far as that. And what I find so strange is that nobody even noticed it. It's kind of acceptable. I mean, imagine that anyone were to characterize another struggling ethnic group in these terms, like if somebody were to say, I don't know, give me examples, the Basques, the Tamils in Ceylon, and so on and so on. Then, okay, I will not lose time with this, but let me return to my main line of thought. We should move further then to the general level and render problematic, we all know, we learn this from Costas of course and others, the very depoliticized humanitarian politics of human rights as the ideology of military interventionism.
Thank you very much. Just to, not to correct you but to supplement you and to avoid all ambiguities. Yes, the final scene, I hope it will work. The idea is this one: you remember how Leonardo DiCaprio is drowning and my old theory of how she, Kate Winslet, pushes him away. So we stage at that moment when she pushes him away, we will cut to me. It was done very professionally. They put artificial ice and they even put, you know, they had some kind of a very heavy thirty pounds belt that you put on so that without anyone pulling you, you go, you sink slowly. So it's done that I am slowly disappearing and then I do some stupid Alain Badiou revolutionary talk like, all the ice in the world cannot kill a revolutionary idea, I will come back. So I disappear, but then comes the Carrie, Carrie, the movie moment, then my hand comes up like this and I was told it works. That's all I can say. So, let me do some serious, overlong, boring stuff. First, I warn you, I will use some old stuff, some mixed stuff. What is this stupid proverb that you have? Something old, something new, something borrowed, something red, not not blue, of course, not. So let me begin. Since nonetheless this was a conference basically about human rights, no, I want just to go through my line and then apply to the mess we are in today. So, the most obvious case of and for human rights are the rights of those who are simply starving or exposed to murderous violence. Rony Brauman, a French guy, very progressive, good one, who on behalf of the Red Cross coordinated two decades ago the help to Sarajevo, demonstrated how the very presentation of the crisis of Sarajevo as humanitarian, the very recasting of the political-military conflict in humanitarian terms was sustained by an eminently political choice. He, Rony Brauman, claims that especially ominous and manipulative was here the role of François Mitterrand. A quote from Rony Brauman: The celebration of humanitarian intervention in Yugoslavia took the place of a political discourse, disqualifying in advance all conflicting debate. It was apparently not possible for Mitterrand to publicly express his analysis of the war in Yugoslavia. With the strictly humanitarian response, he discovered an unexpected source of communication, or more precisely of cosmetics. Mitterrand was in favor of the maintenance of Yugoslavia within its borders. He was persuaded that only a strong Serbian power was in the position to guarantee the stability in this region. This position became unacceptable for the majority of the French people, so all the bustling activity and the humanitarian discourse permitted Mitterrand to reaffirm the unfailing commitment of France to the rights of man in the end and to mimic an opposition to Serbian nationalism, all in giving it a free rein. I think this is one of the many examples of a good analysis, basically supporting what Costas was developing in his books. To be very open here, you may not agree with this specific anti-Serb, not against Serb people but government point, but I think that the basic conceptual structure of this argument is nonetheless correct. How depoliticizing the situation, reformulating it in purely humanitarian terms, as a rule, always masks a certain usually unacceptable political choice. You know, it's a little bit like, sorry if I repeat my old jokes but that's life, but I don't think I've used it a lot in London here, that joke that I repeat now all the time because I really like it, you know, from Ernst Lubitsch, Ninotchka. You know, a guy enters a cafeteria and says can I have coffee with cream please? They tell him, sorry, we don't, we ran out of cream, we only have milk, so can we get you coffee without milk? It's a very nice Hegelian point how what is not in, the negativity is part of the definition. It may be in immediate reality the same, coffee without cream, coffee without milk, but it's not the same. Exactly as here, you know, humanitarian intervention, let's say is a humanitarian intervention. This is Michael Ignatieff's mistake. Yeah, but we should ask, is it without milk or without cream? That is to say what negative politics is negated by it. It's absolutely crucial to do this. I think even more generally, the post-Yugoslav war was an exemplary case insofar as it also displayed the worst racism of some allegedly leftist radicals. A very brutal racism combined with breathtaking ignorance of facts. First, I don't just blame to be very clear only the Serbs. I'm the first to admit that in Croatia, even now in Slovenia, there was also a very strong racism. For example, I don't know, if there is one really the darkest political power at this point in ex-Yugoslavia, it's probably as far as I can judge the Croat Catholic Church. You know that they are absolutely openly pro-Ustaše, pro-Pavelić regime during World War II. They don't even want to make a symbolic kind of empty distance towards it. But as the model of this reasoning, I want to take a guy whom I usually considered a good guy, the Australian progressive journalist, how do you pronounce the name John Pilger, Pilger? John Pilger. Look, that's a quote from him, from his text Don't forget what happened in Yugoslavia, from The New Statesman, August Look: Yugoslavia was a uniquely independent and multi-ethnic if imperfect federation that stood as a political and economic bridge in the Cold War. This was not acceptable to the expanding European Community, especially newly united Germany, which had begun a drive east to dominate its natural market in the Yugoslav provinces of Croatia and Slovenia. By the time the Europeans met at Maastricht in a secret deal had been struck. Germany recognized Croatia and Yugoslavia was doomed. In Washington, the US ensured that the struggling Yugoslav economy was denied World Bank loans and the defunct NATO was reinvented as an enforcer. Well, I don't think that in bare ten lines I have ever seen so many factual lies, inaccuracies and so on and so on. The NATO was reinvented as an enforcer. Yes, almost twenty years later. If anything, the NATO totally, then the in Washington the US ensured. No, they ensured nothing. They did exactly the opposite. The Washington till as long as it ruled supported the federal government. I remember Ante Marković the Prime Minister touring all Yugoslav republics and waving with American money and claiming if you give Yugoslavia another chance we have all the credits. But the strangest thing, these Yugoslav provinces. Sorry, they were not provinces, they were sovereign republics with the right to secede guaranteed by the constitution. Not sovereign, not sovereign. Yes, federated. No. Sorry, it said in the constitution that each republic of Yugoslavia, okay, in this sense sovereign, has the full unlimited right at any point to leave the federation. And as we know now, there was a very interesting struggle in the Nomenklatura already in the seventies where if you had very good glasses it was possible to see the writing on the wall that things will turn bad. Namely, there was a conflict within Nomenklatura what to do if the system will get into serious trouble. One line was a more nationalist one, Serb dominated, which said Yugoslavia is an ethnic community of southern Slavs, so to cut a long story short, it should survive even if self-management socialism disintegrates. And there was another line which says no, no national mystique. The only thing that unites us is specific project of self-management socialism. If this falls, we shall see. But what really shocked me, okay, I accept this, this is the usual leftist blah-blah, I accept this from Pilger. What really shocked me is what follows then. Listen carefully how he characterizes Kosovo. A literal quote: Kosovo is a land which has no formal economy and is run in effect by criminal gangs that traffic in drugs, contraband and women. I mean, if there ever was racism, it is this. You dismiss a whole nation as a gang of criminals. Even, I checked it up, the Serbs who are most anti-Albanian would never say that, would never go as far as that. And what I find so strange is that nobody even noticed it. It's kind of acceptable. I mean, imagine that anyone were to characterize another struggling ethnic group in these terms, like if somebody were to say, I don't know, give me examples, the Basques, the Tamils in Ceylon, and so on and so on. Then, okay, I will not lose time with this, but let me return to my main line of thought. We should move further then to the general level and render problematic, we all know, we learn this from Costas of course and others, the very depoliticized humanitarian politics of human rights as the ideology of military interventionism.
unknown
As Wendy Brown developed
As Wendy Brown developed
Slavoj Žižek
apropos Michael Ignatieff, humanitarianism presents itself as something of an anti-politics, a pure defense of the innocent and the powerless against power. A pure defense of the individual against immense potentially cruel despotic machineries of culture, state, war, ethnic conflict, tribalism, patriarchy and so on. However, the question is, I quote again Wendy Brown: What kind of politicization those who intervene on behalf of human rights set in motion against the powers they oppose? Do they stand for a different formulation of justice or do they stand in opposition to collective justice projects? End of quote. Ah, this is you. It's good that it's not me. I was afraid that this would happen to me. But as once Badiou told me and I will tell him please go on, just tell me if I speak too loudly to disturb your communication. Okay. So it is clear that the NATO overthrowing of Gaddafi, legitimized in the terms of ending the suffering of the Libyan people, was not only motivated by political economic interests, oil, but also relied on a very precise idea of the political and economic conditions which should open up the perspective of freedom for the Libyan people. So the purely humanitarian anti-political politics of only preventing suffering effectively amounts to the implicit prohibition of elaborating a positive collective project of sociopolitical transformation. Because even Ignatieff, who tries to play this role very, in a very pure way, he cannot even rhetorically sustain it to the end. He was once nicely questioned by a journalist, but what about what you say about market there, or something like that, role of market and then it's incredible what he said. He said something like no, no, this is not politics, this is simple human experience which tells us that that liberal democracy and market are the best to prevent human suffering. No, like this has nothing to do with politics. Okay, we know this, this is elementary. But let me, let me make one step further at this elementary level. One should also problematize the very opposition between universal prepolitical human rights which allegedly belong to every human being as such and specific political rights of a citizen, member of a particular political community. In this sense I think Balibar, Etienne Balibar was justified when he referred to Hannah Arendt's insight apropos the twentieth century phenomenon of refugees. A quote, nonetheless a nice quote, from Hannah Arendt: The conception of human rights based upon the assumed existence of a human being as such broke down at the very moment when those who professed to believe in it were for the first time confronted with people who had indeed lost all other qualities and specific relationships except that they were still human. End of quote. This line of course leads straight to Giorgio Agamben's notion of Homo Sacer as a human being reduced to bare life. What then happens to human rights when they are reduced to the rights of Homo Sacer, of those excluded from political community? That is to say, when human rights become of no use since they are the rights of those who precisely have no rights? Here I think Jacques Rancière proposed a wonderful formulation referring to human rights. Again a quote: When they are of no use, human rights, you do the same as charitable persons do with their old clothes. You give them to the poor. Those rights that appear to be useless in their place are sent abroad along with medicine and clothes to people deprived of medicine, clothes and rights. It is in this way as the result of this process that the rights of man become the rights of those who have no rights. The rights of bare human beings subjected to inhuman repression. They become humanitarian rights, the rights of those who cannot enact them, the victims of the absolute denial of right. For all this they are not void. Political names and places are never simply void. The void is filled by something or somebody else. If those who suffer inhuman repression are unable to enact human rights that are their last recourse, then somebody else has to inherit their right in order to enact it in their place. This is what is called the right to humanitarian intervention. A right that some nations assume to the supposed benefit of victimized populations and very often against the advice of humanitarian organizations themselves. The right to humanitarian interference might be described as a sort of return to sender. The disused rights that had been sent to the rightless are sent back to the senders. And so that you will not misunderstand me, I get the humanitarian point. Like I am not advocating this abstract pseudo-revolutionary attitude of no don't help the starving in Africa who cares if they die, they should just politically mobilize. This is why I like the figure of Rony Brauman who is engaged in helping the poor, distributing food, medicine, but is nonetheless fully aware of political manipulations behind it. So, what today in the predominant Western discourse the human rights of the Third World suffering victims effectively mean is the right of the Western powers themselves to intervene politically, economically, culturally, militarily. Human rights, this is how I think effectively they function in a very nice Lacanian way. You apparently speak about the rights of the others. What you really mean is our right to, to intervene there. Now nonetheless, this is the standard story. I fully subscribe it. But nonetheless, I think we should move further a little bit. The Marxist symptomatic reading can effectively convincingly demonstrate the particular content which gives the specific ideological spin to the notion of human rights. Like you know, universal human rights are effectively what? The rights of, and then this changes in political situation. It can be the rights only of the white educated people, it can be the rights of colonial powers to intervene. For example, when there was the Mahdi uprising at the end of the 19th century in Sudan, if the language of human rights were to be already present at that point, I am pretty sure that Gordon, you know the General and all the big British colonial warriors would have said we are just intervening for humanitarian reasons, for human rights and so on and so on. But this identification of the particular content that hegemonizes the universal form is nonetheless I think only half of the story. The other half, here I would like to complicate the image a little bit. The other half is nonetheless that if we really want to be Marxists, it's not enough just to play this game of unearthing the specific political spin or bias of an apparent universality. Again, to repeat my old motto, it's not only that universality is often even as a rule an empty universality which secretly privileges a certain particularity. It's a in this sense a false universality. You know, this can be of course triumphantly demonstrated with concrete analysis. For example, I don't know, every guy who is not from Europe will tell you that this is the most obvious example, only that the way Europeans formulate universal human rights, they secretly privilege individual rights over collective rights. But this privileging of individual over his or her community is already something specific to Western European culture. So in this sense it's not, it's not neutral. Of course we should follow this and incidentally I confirm this when I was in China. I'll give you a nice concrete example. Maybe you know it, I'm sorry if I repeat myself of this. You know for us in the West, the most famous photo from the Tiananmen crackdown in Beijing, you know that lone guy confronting a tank. I spoke with my Chinese friends, not the party officials but half dissidents, and no, the only thing I heard, my primitive theories about how power can only function through obscenity were so totally confirmed in China, where the only way to really communicate with a couple of official philosophers that I met was by exchanging dirty jokes, like, you know, because it wasn't possible to talk seriously with them, they don't take seriously their own theory, so we started to tell dirty jokes, which they have plenty. Okay, what I wanted to say is that a dissident, some dissidents that I met, told me that that image plays absolutely does not play such a central role in their own critical imaginary. Because, you know, this perception of a big state machinery, an individual confronting it, this is not their way to conceptualize the situation. The, so again, that image is mythic in the West but not, not there. Even, even this artist, although I maybe, I'm not sure, respect it, how do, the guy who has millions, yeah, yeah. No, this is very evil, people will accuse me of being paid by Chinese government to, but, but again, maybe this is also the reason, not just the communist oppression, that he is much more famous in the West than there. Because you know this kind of a lone guy being the conscience of the nation and so on and so on, this doesn't work in China. And I'm not playing here a racist card, I'm not saying because they are too primitive, collective and so on. No, they have strong movements of resistance. But the really important movements, for example, ecological movements, trade union movements and so on, they don't function again in this way, the heroic lone individual against the state. Okay, we know all this. What interests me more are two things. First how, and this is a basic lesson, sorry for repeating myself that I repeat all the time, this is for authentic Marxism only one side of the story, this how beware of false universality. Learn to detect the particular ideological, racist, whatever spin of an apparent universality. The other side, and without this what is best in Marxism has no sense, is also exactly the opposite point. Not only are things which are apparently universal in reality much more concrete with a particular spin, but there is so it's not only that universality is an illusion reality is much more particular like I talk about universal human rights in reality I privilege white Western men whatever, but also the contrary holds. When I think I'm just within a particular experience, I am effectively much more universal than I think I am. This is the whole point of Marx about what he calls with this beautiful Hegelian term Realabstraktion, the real abstraction. Abstraction not just as a mistake of our reasoning but abstraction embodied in social reality itself. The basic insight of Marx which which sustains all his talk about commodity fetishism and so on and so on is that in the market economy, in capitalism, abstraction becomes a feature of real social life itself. Because it is on the market where as Adorno developed extensively use values subordinated to exchange value and so on and so on that I experience my own culture as something contingent. This is how we are abstract beings in reality. Multiculturalism would be for authentic Marxism a perfect case of real abstraction. Insofar as multiculturalism means no cultural identity is fully natural. It's minimally a matter of contingency, of choice, which means that whatever I am in my particular identity, it's not the very core of my being. You know, like, to be multicultural, abstract in this sense means some somewhat vulgar metaphor I know means like, you know, instead of one food you say today Italian, tomorrow Mexican, then Chinese, then if you are special pervert and like bad food British and so on whatever. I mean, you see my point that it's in your reality itself that you experience yourself as at a distance from every particular identity. This is the crucial point about again the world of commodities for Marx. So you see the crucial point. Here I think Marx broke with his own early vulgar Marxism where for example in The German Ideology Marx endlessly repeated this point about how abstraction is just an ideological abstraction, it's a misperception of what real concrete people are doing in their life process. No, abstraction is the way we work, experience ourselves in reality itself. Reality itself is structured by abstractions. But this story, now I come to my crucial point, also have a positive dimension. Again it is not enough to make the old Marxist point about the gap between the ideological appearance of the universal legal form and the particular interests that effectively sustain it. The form precisely is never a mere form. It involves the dynamics of its own which lets its traces in the materiality of social life. Like the so-called bourgeois formal freedom. Of course it's a false freedom, but we should never forget that although from the beginning it was false, we nonetheless should not dismiss it as just an appearance which legitimizes actual exploitation, unfreedom. Yes, it is, but at the same time we should not forget that this universality of formal freedom, bourgeois freedom, precisely as such opened up the space, and I claim aggressively the only possible space, for its own undermining or radicalization. You know the story. Yes, it's ridiculously easy to show how at the very beginning human rights were the rights of, you know, all the qualifications. White men of certain wealth, not women, not children, not aborigines or other primitives, not criminals and so on. But you know the story how from the very beginning then questioning started. Mary Wollstonecraft: Ah, we women are also human, so if human rights why not us? And the mega-event that we should all celebrate, Haiti to Toussaint Louverture: If human rights why not us blacks? And so on and so on. Basically including Marxism all emancipatory movements are only conceivable as a radicalization of human rights. So again, my first point here is that this dialectic between appearance, in the sense of false ideological appearance, and reality is much more ambiguous. There is an how to call it, an autonomous emancipatory dimension in appearance itself. And if you try to bypass the false appearance and go just for the reality, you may lose real freedom itself. This would be for me a very simple analysis of Stalinism. Yes, Stalinism definitely abolished formal freedom, but you didn't get real freedom, you know what I mean? Like, the paradox here is that if you abolish formal freedom you may well lose real freedom, you may well lose real freedom itself. So again, let me now now this was something old, something borrowed. Now I go to new things. So when, now this is a more important theoretical point. When we are dealing with the topic of human rights, I claim that critique of ideology tends to commit two opposed mistakes. The first one is the obvious one. The symptomatic point, excess, antagonism, is reduced to an accident, an empirical imperfection, not as something that emerges necessarily. The notion of universal human rights we say de facto privileges a determinate set of particular cultural values, European individualism and so on and so on. With this we should of course fully agree. Here I don't have time to develop it, I did it in one of my books I forgot which one, to this Rancière proposes a very nice solution, that the only way to potentially save this, the discourse of human rights, outside the bourgeois constraints is to define it, you know, in a very nice dialectical reflexive move, not as universal rights in the sense that we immediately fetishize certain set of values as universal, but as a right to universality as such. That each particular political subject has the right to look for to formulate its own universality. But another thing I want to draw your attention to. The opposite mistake, when all the field is as it were collapsed into its symptom. For example, the bourgeois freedom and equality are conceived as only and directly as capitalist ideological masks of domination and exploitation. Or universal human rights are only and directly reduced to the means of justifying imperialist-colonialist interventions and so on and so on. I again as I already said I think that the Marxist notion of formal freedom is much more refined. Yes, bourgeois freedom is only formal, but as such it is, listen now carefully, it's a false form, appearance, but at the same time the only site of appearance of actual freedom. So you see, that's the nice point. Of course freedom emerges first as false freedom. But the only way to trace, to open up the space to real freedom, is through this opening. If you do it directly and you say oh, this is just a mask, let's do it directly, then you again by losing false freedom you lose freedom as such. So instead of, you see my point, instead of this direct reductionism, screw formal freedoms they are just a mask of oppression, what you lose is the inherent antagonism which is very important. What is and now you will say, but nonetheless does this naively mean that we should nonetheless stick to human rights? No, no, I here agree with your analysis. I am more radical here. That is to say... Sorry? You are not, but anyway. What did I say? That I am more radical? No, no, no, I'm just okay I'm bourgeois whatever no problem. But no what I want to say is that that the thing to do is of course to take human rights and then through focusing on their symptom as necessary. To of course this does not mean simply, oh, we abolish the system and we get real human rights. Of course this symptom if we take it seriously, retroactively radically transforms the entire field of human rights. Up to the very idea should we even use the term of field of human rights. I concede all this. The only point here maybe you can counterattack, this will be the clash of titans. Greeks, Greeks against barbarians, you know like kind of a Slavic hordes you know and so on. The Greeks always win. Sorry? The Greeks always win. Yeah and then you become Turkish slaves. Okay, yeah, yeah. But then we win our independence with the revolution, unlike you Slavs. Yeah with the help of... you are Slavs which means slaves. So there you are. Oh my god, now you got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This was my meanest argument against Serbs that you know, this is the Croat nationalist stupidity that Serbs come from Serbs, serves, serving and so on, you know like. No, we in the Balkan are together the best for Marxist historical etymology if I may put it in this way. No, seriously, let me, let me go on. My point would, would you agree with this? It's a very precise formulation. Would be only this one that the only site based on which we can effectively open up new freedoms is the site of this antagonism between form and content. You cannot bypass it. I don't believe in this bullshit, we return to some primitive tribal or whatever actual freedom and so on and so on. We have to operate in this space and I agree with you radically critically. I'm absolutely not trying to rehabilitate human rights. I'm just saying that we have a space of ideological mystification of human rights and then symptoms. And then the point is to bring to the edge this antagonism. But in this sense that of course both poles are radically undermined. Now, second part, which will be I hope more amusing and actual for you. What does this mean for our situation today, the renewed worldwide protest? I think it's crucial to bear in mind precisely and I will be here a little bit self-critical referring to our latest, the previous installment of our eternal polemics here. Yeah, between the dialectics between the universal and the particular. First when people tell me misreading my statements in New York and so on in Zuccotti Park that, oh, am I saying we should just be keep silent and just wait for the big revolution, avoid... no, one thing that should the emancipatory politics do today is nonetheless to to what is needed today is the art of formulating the right particular demand and insist on it. A demand which while on the one hand it's totally realist, nobody can say it's impossible, at the same time nonetheless disturbs the very core of hegemonic ideology. This is why, with all my criticism, I share it with you, of President Obama, and I had a soft spot on him so I don't know, let me share with you a personal detail. When I watched his statement in support of the state of Israel against recognizing Palestine, I almost cried. I mean, didn't he even rhetorically, it was his he spoke like a puppet, I mean, without any so why do I have still a soft spot? Because I think that the health care reform that he tried to do, I know it was totally diluted in its reality. But the debate was a crucial one. Why? Because it was very traumatic for the US establishment. Because on the one hand nobody can say this is some communist totalitarian project. It can be done, it works in Canada, in many European countries, so it's not in bad sense a crazy utopia. But at the same time it disturbed the very core of American ideology. All this bullshit about you know the state wants to take from us free choice and so on and so on. So on the one hand I think what is to be done today is absolutely to bombard those in power with to invent similar cases. Cases where they, those in power, cannot accuse us of like I don't know whatever some crazy impossible demands. Demands which are absolutely feasible, possible, but nonetheless are de facto excluded from the ruling ideological universe. At the same time we should nonetheless make it clear that this is not all. And now if you again allow me to repeat in a different way what I published recently in some of the newspapers. This is why and for this I was again proclaimed the bad guy by my best friends in the United States in The New Republic, the journal no whose lesson was formidable one. They published an an editorial in one of their last issues where they claim these protests are good, Wall Street, because they are purely ethical moral protests against corruption. But then come bad guys, me, who try to kidnap them for some obscure anti-capitalist leftist cause. And they claim but this is crazy because we all know that without capitalism there is no freedom no and so on something like that. Okay. There is and with this I would like to deal now a little bit. There is a problem here. The problem is that and here I so that you will not accuse me of just where is your concrete program. No, let me be very clear here. When you begin the first break with hegemonic discourse, there for structural reasons a no precedes a yes. You have first to say no to open up the space and then you work within this space. So in the United States they like this line of argumentation when I evoke hysteria, no? You know it's similar like when you have the frustrated but in a good sense to avoid a misunderstanding. I'm not making fun of women here. For me as a Lacanian perversion is bad, hysteria is good. Yeah, so but you know when a husband tries to dominate hysterical wife, a hysterical wife, one of the usual ways to say is to say but decide please what do you want and so on. Now this seems very open like oh I just want you to say what do you want. No it's really the most oppressive thing to do. It really means put it in the terms which will re-incorporate you into my existing power discourse or shut up. Which is why I think that on the other hand and they didn't like it the liberals in the United States I mean they those who maybe read me. Although I must tell you to boast a little bit I had some nice narcissistic experiences. After this Zuccotti Park speech and then I did some show which went very well on that Charlie Rose, I was on Bloomberg TV, ah that one, yeah. It was no this guy is basically not too bad Charlie Rose and it was a miracle I was walking not for political reasons I went to J&R on City Park Square which is the only remaining good DVD store in New York J&R and then a guy a black guy but obviously upper class Wall Street you know with this business suit looked around if no one is observing us, it was wonderful, and approached me and gave me his hand and said, listen, nobody is seeing us so I can tell you although I work on Wall Street I totally agree with you and like my god f**k it whatever you say
apropos Michael Ignatieff, humanitarianism presents itself as something of an anti-politics, a pure defense of the innocent and the powerless against power. A pure defense of the individual against immense potentially cruel despotic machineries of culture, state, war, ethnic conflict, tribalism, patriarchy and so on. However, the question is, I quote again Wendy Brown: What kind of politicization those who intervene on behalf of human rights set in motion against the powers they oppose? Do they stand for a different formulation of justice or do they stand in opposition to collective justice projects? End of quote. Ah, this is you. It's good that it's not me. I was afraid that this would happen to me. But as once Badiou told me and I will tell him please go on, just tell me if I speak too loudly to disturb your communication. Okay. So it is clear that the NATO overthrowing of Gaddafi, legitimized in the terms of ending the suffering of the Libyan people, was not only motivated by political economic interests, oil, but also relied on a very precise idea of the political and economic conditions which should open up the perspective of freedom for the Libyan people. So the purely humanitarian anti-political politics of only preventing suffering effectively amounts to the implicit prohibition of elaborating a positive collective project of sociopolitical transformation. Because even Ignatieff, who tries to play this role very, in a very pure way, he cannot even rhetorically sustain it to the end. He was once nicely questioned by a journalist, but what about what you say about market there, or something like that, role of market and then it's incredible what he said. He said something like no, no, this is not politics, this is simple human experience which tells us that that liberal democracy and market are the best to prevent human suffering. No, like this has nothing to do with politics. Okay, we know this, this is elementary. But let me, let me make one step further at this elementary level. One should also problematize the very opposition between universal prepolitical human rights which allegedly belong to every human being as such and specific political rights of a citizen, member of a particular political community. In this sense I think Balibar, Etienne Balibar was justified when he referred to Hannah Arendt's insight apropos the twentieth century phenomenon of refugees. A quote, nonetheless a nice quote, from Hannah Arendt: The conception of human rights based upon the assumed existence of a human being as such broke down at the very moment when those who professed to believe in it were for the first time confronted with people who had indeed lost all other qualities and specific relationships except that they were still human. End of quote. This line of course leads straight to Giorgio Agamben's notion of Homo Sacer as a human being reduced to bare life. What then happens to human rights when they are reduced to the rights of Homo Sacer, of those excluded from political community? That is to say, when human rights become of no use since they are the rights of those who precisely have no rights? Here I think Jacques Rancière proposed a wonderful formulation referring to human rights. Again a quote: When they are of no use, human rights, you do the same as charitable persons do with their old clothes. You give them to the poor. Those rights that appear to be useless in their place are sent abroad along with medicine and clothes to people deprived of medicine, clothes and rights. It is in this way as the result of this process that the rights of man become the rights of those who have no rights. The rights of bare human beings subjected to inhuman repression. They become humanitarian rights, the rights of those who cannot enact them, the victims of the absolute denial of right. For all this they are not void. Political names and places are never simply void. The void is filled by something or somebody else. If those who suffer inhuman repression are unable to enact human rights that are their last recourse, then somebody else has to inherit their right in order to enact it in their place. This is what is called the right to humanitarian intervention. A right that some nations assume to the supposed benefit of victimized populations and very often against the advice of humanitarian organizations themselves. The right to humanitarian interference might be described as a sort of return to sender. The disused rights that had been sent to the rightless are sent back to the senders. And so that you will not misunderstand me, I get the humanitarian point. Like I am not advocating this abstract pseudo-revolutionary attitude of no don't help the starving in Africa who cares if they die, they should just politically mobilize. This is why I like the figure of Rony Brauman who is engaged in helping the poor, distributing food, medicine, but is nonetheless fully aware of political manipulations behind it. So, what today in the predominant Western discourse the human rights of the Third World suffering victims effectively mean is the right of the Western powers themselves to intervene politically, economically, culturally, militarily. Human rights, this is how I think effectively they function in a very nice Lacanian way. You apparently speak about the rights of the others. What you really mean is our right to, to intervene there. Now nonetheless, this is the standard story. I fully subscribe it. But nonetheless, I think we should move further a little bit. The Marxist symptomatic reading can effectively convincingly demonstrate the particular content which gives the specific ideological spin to the notion of human rights. Like you know, universal human rights are effectively what? The rights of, and then this changes in political situation. It can be the rights only of the white educated people, it can be the rights of colonial powers to intervene. For example, when there was the Mahdi uprising at the end of the 19th century in Sudan, if the language of human rights were to be already present at that point, I am pretty sure that Gordon, you know the General and all the big British colonial warriors would have said we are just intervening for humanitarian reasons, for human rights and so on and so on. But this identification of the particular content that hegemonizes the universal form is nonetheless I think only half of the story. The other half, here I would like to complicate the image a little bit. The other half is nonetheless that if we really want to be Marxists, it's not enough just to play this game of unearthing the specific political spin or bias of an apparent universality. Again, to repeat my old motto, it's not only that universality is often even as a rule an empty universality which secretly privileges a certain particularity. It's a in this sense a false universality. You know, this can be of course triumphantly demonstrated with concrete analysis. For example, I don't know, every guy who is not from Europe will tell you that this is the most obvious example, only that the way Europeans formulate universal human rights, they secretly privilege individual rights over collective rights. But this privileging of individual over his or her community is already something specific to Western European culture. So in this sense it's not, it's not neutral. Of course we should follow this and incidentally I confirm this when I was in China. I'll give you a nice concrete example. Maybe you know it, I'm sorry if I repeat myself of this. You know for us in the West, the most famous photo from the Tiananmen crackdown in Beijing, you know that lone guy confronting a tank. I spoke with my Chinese friends, not the party officials but half dissidents, and no, the only thing I heard, my primitive theories about how power can only function through obscenity were so totally confirmed in China, where the only way to really communicate with a couple of official philosophers that I met was by exchanging dirty jokes, like, you know, because it wasn't possible to talk seriously with them, they don't take seriously their own theory, so we started to tell dirty jokes, which they have plenty. Okay, what I wanted to say is that a dissident, some dissidents that I met, told me that that image plays absolutely does not play such a central role in their own critical imaginary. Because, you know, this perception of a big state machinery, an individual confronting it, this is not their way to conceptualize the situation. The, so again, that image is mythic in the West but not, not there. Even, even this artist, although I maybe, I'm not sure, respect it, how do, the guy who has millions, yeah, yeah. No, this is very evil, people will accuse me of being paid by Chinese government to, but, but again, maybe this is also the reason, not just the communist oppression, that he is much more famous in the West than there. Because you know this kind of a lone guy being the conscience of the nation and so on and so on, this doesn't work in China. And I'm not playing here a racist card, I'm not saying because they are too primitive, collective and so on. No, they have strong movements of resistance. But the really important movements, for example, ecological movements, trade union movements and so on, they don't function again in this way, the heroic lone individual against the state. Okay, we know all this. What interests me more are two things. First how, and this is a basic lesson, sorry for repeating myself that I repeat all the time, this is for authentic Marxism only one side of the story, this how beware of false universality. Learn to detect the particular ideological, racist, whatever spin of an apparent universality. The other side, and without this what is best in Marxism has no sense, is also exactly the opposite point. Not only are things which are apparently universal in reality much more concrete with a particular spin, but there is so it's not only that universality is an illusion reality is much more particular like I talk about universal human rights in reality I privilege white Western men whatever, but also the contrary holds. When I think I'm just within a particular experience, I am effectively much more universal than I think I am. This is the whole point of Marx about what he calls with this beautiful Hegelian term Realabstraktion, the real abstraction. Abstraction not just as a mistake of our reasoning but abstraction embodied in social reality itself. The basic insight of Marx which which sustains all his talk about commodity fetishism and so on and so on is that in the market economy, in capitalism, abstraction becomes a feature of real social life itself. Because it is on the market where as Adorno developed extensively use values subordinated to exchange value and so on and so on that I experience my own culture as something contingent. This is how we are abstract beings in reality. Multiculturalism would be for authentic Marxism a perfect case of real abstraction. Insofar as multiculturalism means no cultural identity is fully natural. It's minimally a matter of contingency, of choice, which means that whatever I am in my particular identity, it's not the very core of my being. You know, like, to be multicultural, abstract in this sense means some somewhat vulgar metaphor I know means like, you know, instead of one food you say today Italian, tomorrow Mexican, then Chinese, then if you are special pervert and like bad food British and so on whatever. I mean, you see my point that it's in your reality itself that you experience yourself as at a distance from every particular identity. This is the crucial point about again the world of commodities for Marx. So you see the crucial point. Here I think Marx broke with his own early vulgar Marxism where for example in The German Ideology Marx endlessly repeated this point about how abstraction is just an ideological abstraction, it's a misperception of what real concrete people are doing in their life process. No, abstraction is the way we work, experience ourselves in reality itself. Reality itself is structured by abstractions. But this story, now I come to my crucial point, also have a positive dimension. Again it is not enough to make the old Marxist point about the gap between the ideological appearance of the universal legal form and the particular interests that effectively sustain it. The form precisely is never a mere form. It involves the dynamics of its own which lets its traces in the materiality of social life. Like the so-called bourgeois formal freedom. Of course it's a false freedom, but we should never forget that although from the beginning it was false, we nonetheless should not dismiss it as just an appearance which legitimizes actual exploitation, unfreedom. Yes, it is, but at the same time we should not forget that this universality of formal freedom, bourgeois freedom, precisely as such opened up the space, and I claim aggressively the only possible space, for its own undermining or radicalization. You know the story. Yes, it's ridiculously easy to show how at the very beginning human rights were the rights of, you know, all the qualifications. White men of certain wealth, not women, not children, not aborigines or other primitives, not criminals and so on. But you know the story how from the very beginning then questioning started. Mary Wollstonecraft: Ah, we women are also human, so if human rights why not us? And the mega-event that we should all celebrate, Haiti to Toussaint Louverture: If human rights why not us blacks? And so on and so on. Basically including Marxism all emancipatory movements are only conceivable as a radicalization of human rights. So again, my first point here is that this dialectic between appearance, in the sense of false ideological appearance, and reality is much more ambiguous. There is an how to call it, an autonomous emancipatory dimension in appearance itself. And if you try to bypass the false appearance and go just for the reality, you may lose real freedom itself. This would be for me a very simple analysis of Stalinism. Yes, Stalinism definitely abolished formal freedom, but you didn't get real freedom, you know what I mean? Like, the paradox here is that if you abolish formal freedom you may well lose real freedom, you may well lose real freedom itself. So again, let me now now this was something old, something borrowed. Now I go to new things. So when, now this is a more important theoretical point. When we are dealing with the topic of human rights, I claim that critique of ideology tends to commit two opposed mistakes. The first one is the obvious one. The symptomatic point, excess, antagonism, is reduced to an accident, an empirical imperfection, not as something that emerges necessarily. The notion of universal human rights we say de facto privileges a determinate set of particular cultural values, European individualism and so on and so on. With this we should of course fully agree. Here I don't have time to develop it, I did it in one of my books I forgot which one, to this Rancière proposes a very nice solution, that the only way to potentially save this, the discourse of human rights, outside the bourgeois constraints is to define it, you know, in a very nice dialectical reflexive move, not as universal rights in the sense that we immediately fetishize certain set of values as universal, but as a right to universality as such. That each particular political subject has the right to look for to formulate its own universality. But another thing I want to draw your attention to. The opposite mistake, when all the field is as it were collapsed into its symptom. For example, the bourgeois freedom and equality are conceived as only and directly as capitalist ideological masks of domination and exploitation. Or universal human rights are only and directly reduced to the means of justifying imperialist-colonialist interventions and so on and so on. I again as I already said I think that the Marxist notion of formal freedom is much more refined. Yes, bourgeois freedom is only formal, but as such it is, listen now carefully, it's a false form, appearance, but at the same time the only site of appearance of actual freedom. So you see, that's the nice point. Of course freedom emerges first as false freedom. But the only way to trace, to open up the space to real freedom, is through this opening. If you do it directly and you say oh, this is just a mask, let's do it directly, then you again by losing false freedom you lose freedom as such. So instead of, you see my point, instead of this direct reductionism, screw formal freedoms they are just a mask of oppression, what you lose is the inherent antagonism which is very important. What is and now you will say, but nonetheless does this naively mean that we should nonetheless stick to human rights? No, no, I here agree with your analysis. I am more radical here. That is to say... Sorry? You are not, but anyway. What did I say? That I am more radical? No, no, no, I'm just okay I'm bourgeois whatever no problem. But no what I want to say is that that the thing to do is of course to take human rights and then through focusing on their symptom as necessary. To of course this does not mean simply, oh, we abolish the system and we get real human rights. Of course this symptom if we take it seriously, retroactively radically transforms the entire field of human rights. Up to the very idea should we even use the term of field of human rights. I concede all this. The only point here maybe you can counterattack, this will be the clash of titans. Greeks, Greeks against barbarians, you know like kind of a Slavic hordes you know and so on. The Greeks always win. Sorry? The Greeks always win. Yeah and then you become Turkish slaves. Okay, yeah, yeah. But then we win our independence with the revolution, unlike you Slavs. Yeah with the help of... you are Slavs which means slaves. So there you are. Oh my god, now you got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This was my meanest argument against Serbs that you know, this is the Croat nationalist stupidity that Serbs come from Serbs, serves, serving and so on, you know like. No, we in the Balkan are together the best for Marxist historical etymology if I may put it in this way. No, seriously, let me, let me go on. My point would, would you agree with this? It's a very precise formulation. Would be only this one that the only site based on which we can effectively open up new freedoms is the site of this antagonism between form and content. You cannot bypass it. I don't believe in this bullshit, we return to some primitive tribal or whatever actual freedom and so on and so on. We have to operate in this space and I agree with you radically critically. I'm absolutely not trying to rehabilitate human rights. I'm just saying that we have a space of ideological mystification of human rights and then symptoms. And then the point is to bring to the edge this antagonism. But in this sense that of course both poles are radically undermined. Now, second part, which will be I hope more amusing and actual for you. What does this mean for our situation today, the renewed worldwide protest? I think it's crucial to bear in mind precisely and I will be here a little bit self-critical referring to our latest, the previous installment of our eternal polemics here. Yeah, between the dialectics between the universal and the particular. First when people tell me misreading my statements in New York and so on in Zuccotti Park that, oh, am I saying we should just be keep silent and just wait for the big revolution, avoid... no, one thing that should the emancipatory politics do today is nonetheless to to what is needed today is the art of formulating the right particular demand and insist on it. A demand which while on the one hand it's totally realist, nobody can say it's impossible, at the same time nonetheless disturbs the very core of hegemonic ideology. This is why, with all my criticism, I share it with you, of President Obama, and I had a soft spot on him so I don't know, let me share with you a personal detail. When I watched his statement in support of the state of Israel against recognizing Palestine, I almost cried. I mean, didn't he even rhetorically, it was his he spoke like a puppet, I mean, without any so why do I have still a soft spot? Because I think that the health care reform that he tried to do, I know it was totally diluted in its reality. But the debate was a crucial one. Why? Because it was very traumatic for the US establishment. Because on the one hand nobody can say this is some communist totalitarian project. It can be done, it works in Canada, in many European countries, so it's not in bad sense a crazy utopia. But at the same time it disturbed the very core of American ideology. All this bullshit about you know the state wants to take from us free choice and so on and so on. So on the one hand I think what is to be done today is absolutely to bombard those in power with to invent similar cases. Cases where they, those in power, cannot accuse us of like I don't know whatever some crazy impossible demands. Demands which are absolutely feasible, possible, but nonetheless are de facto excluded from the ruling ideological universe. At the same time we should nonetheless make it clear that this is not all. And now if you again allow me to repeat in a different way what I published recently in some of the newspapers. This is why and for this I was again proclaimed the bad guy by my best friends in the United States in The New Republic, the journal no whose lesson was formidable one. They published an an editorial in one of their last issues where they claim these protests are good, Wall Street, because they are purely ethical moral protests against corruption. But then come bad guys, me, who try to kidnap them for some obscure anti-capitalist leftist cause. And they claim but this is crazy because we all know that without capitalism there is no freedom no and so on something like that. Okay. There is and with this I would like to deal now a little bit. There is a problem here. The problem is that and here I so that you will not accuse me of just where is your concrete program. No, let me be very clear here. When you begin the first break with hegemonic discourse, there for structural reasons a no precedes a yes. You have first to say no to open up the space and then you work within this space. So in the United States they like this line of argumentation when I evoke hysteria, no? You know it's similar like when you have the frustrated but in a good sense to avoid a misunderstanding. I'm not making fun of women here. For me as a Lacanian perversion is bad, hysteria is good. Yeah, so but you know when a husband tries to dominate hysterical wife, a hysterical wife, one of the usual ways to say is to say but decide please what do you want and so on. Now this seems very open like oh I just want you to say what do you want. No it's really the most oppressive thing to do. It really means put it in the terms which will re-incorporate you into my existing power discourse or shut up. Which is why I think that on the other hand and they didn't like it the liberals in the United States I mean they those who maybe read me. Although I must tell you to boast a little bit I had some nice narcissistic experiences. After this Zuccotti Park speech and then I did some show which went very well on that Charlie Rose, I was on Bloomberg TV, ah that one, yeah. It was no this guy is basically not too bad Charlie Rose and it was a miracle I was walking not for political reasons I went to J&R on City Park Square which is the only remaining good DVD store in New York J&R and then a guy a black guy but obviously upper class Wall Street you know with this business suit looked around if no one is observing us, it was wonderful, and approached me and gave me his hand and said, listen, nobody is seeing us so I can tell you although I work on Wall Street I totally agree with you and like my god f**k it whatever you say
unknown
it
it
Slavoj Žižek
was nice you know it was nice you know. No because because you know what worked well with them. That rhetorics that I used you know like they say we are socialists but no there is already socialism in the United States for the rich no where the state covers you. Okay let me go on nonetheless. So what I claim is that precisely at this point we should resist the temptation of the dialogue. To have too much dialogue at this point dialogue can only mean that we adopt the field which is already here which is their field. We need a distance. We need a time to think. And now although this one was published at Guardian but I will in their blog only I will reformulate it a little bit because I really think it's important. The central point for me is and it's the most disgusting point. But there is a moment of truth. It was made did some of you read it the comment reaction to Wall Street by Anne Applebaum in Washington, you read it? It's disgusting admit it. In Washington Post. First maybe there still is a hope for Roman Polanski the movie maker. You know what? You remember did you see his Ghost, the film Ghost Writer? You know the thesis Blair or his wife CIA agents blah blah. This is incidentally a nice example of reality has the structure of the fiction. Because you know the thesis of the film Blair was a CIA agent planted and somebody gave the best comment a leftist who said I'm sure this is not true but if it were true it would have explained everything you know like it's a nice paradox. Okay but what I wanted to say is that you know what I heard from my friends in Poland that everyone in Poland got the joke we didn't. You know that M Applebaum is now the wife of the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs. Some pretty more right wing liberal guy. Okay, now comes the crucial point. The lady who plays her in the film no sorry the lady who plays who plays Tony Blair's wife Cherie in the film is Olivia Williams and incidentally a purely sexist remark I cannot restrain from tasteless remarks. I never got it she's for me to me more attractive than that bitch from from Sex and the City Kim Cattrall so I simply didn't get it. Okay but that's another intimate really Marxist topic. More seriously I was told that everybody in Poland got the joke that Olivia Williams looks very much like Anne Applebaum and that this was Polanski's nasty joke like in the same way M Applebaum the Western agent corrupting Poles she is because you know at the end of the film we learn that it wasn't Blair it was she who was CIA planted for from the beginning and so on and so on. This is I admit it a small sympathetic feature of Polanski nonetheless to make... Okay let me go on. Let me quote to you because it's really typical and let's do a little bit more detailed analysis of the basic line of Applebaum's comment. Her starting point is that Wall Street protests are now comes I'm sorry for this a long quote are similar in their lack of focus, in their inchoate nature, and above all in their refusal to engage with existing democratic institutions. In New York, marchers chanted: this is what democracy look like. But actually, that's her comment, this isn't what democracy look like looks like. This is what freedom of speech looks like. Democracy looks a lot more boring. Democracy requires institutions, elections, political parties, rules, laws, a judiciary and many unglamorous time consuming activities. Yet in one sense the international Occupy movement's failure to produce sound legislative proposals is understandable. Both the sources of the global economic crisis and the solutions to it lie by definition outside the competence of local and national politicians. The emergence of an international protest movement without a coherent program is therefore not an accident. It reflects a deeper crisis, one without an obvious solution. Democracy is based on the rule of law. Democracy works only within distinct borders and among people who feel themselves to be part of the same nation. A global community cannot be a national democracy. And a national democracy cannot command the allegiance of a billion dollar global fund with its headquarters in a tax haven and its employees scattered around the world. Unlike the Egyptians in Tahrir Square to whom the London and New York protesters openly and ridiculously compared themselves, we have democratic institutions in the Western world. They are designed to reflect at least crudely the desire for political change within a given nation. But they cannot cope with the desire for global political change nor can they control things that happen outside their borders. Although I still believe in globalization's economic and spiritual benefits along with open borders freedom of movement and free trade globalization has clearly begun to undermine the legitimacy of Western democracies. Global activists if they are not careful will accelerate this decline. Protesters in London shout we need to have a process. Well they already have a process. It's called the British political system. And if they don't figure out how to use it they'll simply weaken it further. I mean there are moments of truth in here. Let me analyze it. The first thing to notice Applebaum's reduction of the Tahrir Square protests to the calls for Western style democracy. Of course once we do this it becomes ridiculous to compel per Wall Street protests with the Egypt event. How can protesters here demand what we already have that is to say democratic institutions that those in Egypt want? But this precisely I think is what we should do. That's the key to it. Precisely A again it's a very limited ideological reading to claim simply that Egyptian crowds want what we already have. No, it's obvious that they want something more, something different. Justice and so on precisely what we want. But again, the central for me shocking part of Applebaum's argumentation, a truly weird gap, jump in her line of reasoning occurs at the end of this long quoted passage. Remember, after conceding that the that the catastrophic economic consequences of global capitalist finances are due to their international character, that they are out of control of democratic mechanisms, she draws a quite necessary and correct I think conclusion. I quote her again: Globalization has clearly begun to undermine the legitimacy of Western democracies. So far so good I'm tempted to say. This is precisely I claim what the protesters were drawing attention to. I think what is in spite of all the confusion and you can imagine me as a in my private economy a puritanic fascist how I didn't like to mingle with the crowd in on Zuccotti Park Wall Street. Oh those dirty old hippies my god I almost called where is the police? But nonetheless I sincerely support them because I think that with all the confusion of course what do the people expect if you ask them of course you get confused answers but there are two chaotic two blurred but nonetheless correct insights. This is what is great about this wave of protests. First, it's not just against particular injustice here and there you know the stories our media are full of this company's polluting environment that company is employing slave child workers. No, it's the insight that what is problematic is the system as such and what intelligent observers got an even deeper insight which is that not democracy as such people's rule but our existing form of democracy, democratic system, cannot cope with this crisis. So it's a critique of democracy not in general because it's done precisely on behalf of the people. But basically they are saying precisely what Anne Applebaum is saying. Globalization has begun to undermine the legitimacy of our democracies. Now I would have thought that the only logical conclusion from this would have been we should start thinking about how to transform expand democracy beyond its state multi-party political form which obviously leaves out destructive consequences of economic life. Instead of this Applebaum performs a weird turnaround and shifts the blame on the victim of on protesters themselves. You see the gap? First she says protesters have a point of course they cannot formulate concrete demands because simply there is something wrong in today's global economy and our political democratic institutions the way we have them cannot deal with it. Now the obvious conclusion would have been can be maybe reinvent democracy so that it will be able to deal with it no in a very weird way she said no the only thing to do is it we have a process it's called British political system and so on and so on. So in other words it's a crazy conclusion against her own premises. What she is saying is basically let's go on playing the game, let's accept that we cannot do anything at that level. And of course the result of this is as it was well noticed, the result of this is what it's what is happening now in different forms in Italy as you told me before it's the pure form technocratic government purely neutral in Greece you learned me it's more complex because only the top is technocratic then you have some kind of all national coalition which I think if you want any further proofs of you know people thought that me and also some other minor figures like Habermas recently okay bad joke but even he got it finally and wrote about how the true victim of this ongoing crisis is democracy. What happened recently in Greece is a pure case how you remember these two oscillations of Europe? By Europe I mean Brussels Europe. First referendum total panic in Europe, markets down. Then technocratic okay banker at the top of a government ooh big relief finally finally. Are we aware what's the message of this? It's you know people think some people think I was joking when I was saying democracy is more and more suspended. But we got here almost a clinical case of it. The idea is that precisely now when we are in trouble, and let me be precise, what does it mean that we are in trouble, it means we are in a time when political decisions are not just an empty form, when you really have to decide. The message is now precisely we have to suspend democracy and to put full trust in whom? In bankers, in those to cut a long story short who screwed things up exactly no. So again this is what I really find great about these protests. You know for a long year years decades even we were living in this how do you say one issue movement protests against sexism here feminism there which I totally support them but nonetheless did you did you not fully didn't you hear about empty rhetorics. Okay, yeah, yeah. I hear it, I hear it. No, sorry, seriously but what I'm saying is that what is so great is that now finally the system itself became a problem and very importantly with it, not in any sense of any totalitarian temptation but we became aware of here we have the true version of what Alain Badiou said maybe in a little bit even for me too provocative form but I like him for that, you know when Badiou said the name of the enemy today is not capitalism imperialism blah blah the name of the enemy is democracy. No he wasn't crazy. He was saying my god what Anne Applebaum is saying, that we are facing problems today and that the democracy we have today institutional obviously cannot cope with these problems. This is our task today. Now let me go further a little bit. Nonetheless here I return to the argument I made that you didn't agree the last time. I accept all this we shouldn't terrorize now protesters give us precise plan or whatever. But nonetheless let me put it in this way. Since nonetheless we are approaching a situation where things will have to be decided, I think it is nonetheless important that that we start to shift focus from the purely let me call it negative gesture, we reject this that, to at least try to play with imagine alternate modes of organizing production and so on and so on. I mean this is for me so crucially important why. It's easy to mock these technocrats. But you know, it's important not just to say okay they mask a certain politics and so on and so on, but like I wanted to ask you this, let's imagine that our best or worst fears it depends on what you think will happen in Greece. There will be some kind of a half collapse of the state and I use this term consciously at its in its vague state in some way people would have to take over. What to do then? How to organize? Let me be very clear, isn't it absolutely clear that all the rich with their riches will try to escape the country? So f**k it, you can imagine how my heart is jumping here because f**k it you will need very strong police repression and so on. It's the only way to say, you know what I mean? Positive, this is what I like in Lenin for example. Yeah yeah all the revolutionary bullshit, but once they were in power his mottos were organization, hard work, discipline. I think it's so important that we rein- that we at least start to think about it. If not, because precisely I'm saying this not to say aha comrade Stalin will be back but precisely how to prevent Stalin to come back, how to without this we will be eternally condemned just to this negative moralistic protest. We want justice, f**k you what kind of justice, how? Let's at least start dreaming about it. The time is here. Because that's for me the tragedy. If you only protest, what other thing you can get but a technocratic government? I mean we protest and what then? It's I wouldn't even blame just those in power. We have to start thinking at all levels and be very critical here. For example with you Oscar I agree this may surprise you because you think I'm only bullshitting about Hegel and Henry James or what. But for example I'm closely following as far as I can and I if I got you correctly Oscar I still look at it with sympathy but I shared if I got it correctly your skepticism, like I know that tremendous experiments are going on in Venezuela for example. But ah to be to be graceful merciful the results are mixed and so on and I would even say that up to a point the fact that Chavez gets enough money from oil is in a way even a curse because I would say money allows him to postpone confronting you know there is a real problem, f**k it if you have money you pay for it, I mean you buy so what I'm again saying is that you know once when you friendly attacked me this... I will in a minute yes wait no no. Can't anyone you know okay let me no no no no just to say you something else and then you can say it. You know what is my point here I was thinking about you I don't know why I recently saw I recently saw a movie on KGB when a KGB officer said any usual secret service can organize a murder, only a truly great secret service like ours can organize a natural death you know murder being so I don't know why I thought of you here but okay. Please attack now. Attack, attack. I will return I will reverse the position dialectically in a Hegelian way. The problem is precisely the opposite of what you've been telling us in previous previous occasions and now. The problem is not what's going to happen after a new kind of regime of some kind of socialist persuasion takes over, the problem is how to get there because the kind of model you have in your mind is very much a Leninist we are going to take the winter let me finish yes to take the winter palace and of course if this is a putsch or a coup d'état or some kind of violent revolution of course there is a major issue that if you have a violent revolution what happens after the violent revolution in other words after a huge radical transformation from a state whether democratic or tsarist or whatever into another state is a major problem of organization. But to the extent that we are not in a situation like that, the major problem is not what will happen after some left wing alliance takes power because it will take power democratically through elections. In other words, there will be a long process in which programs will be created when the possibility of a victory becomes realistic people start working on constitutional reform on institutional reform on what to do with the KGB as you put it, what to do with the military. In other words, it will be a long democratic process and precisely the difficult point is to take power, not what to do afterwards, because it will be the process of taking power that will determine both in terms of the popular organization and energy and motivation and campaigning, but also in terms of the ideas, the concepts that will have to be presented to the people in order to create a hegemonic block to take power that what happens afterwards will emerge. In other words, what you are asking of people in Zuccotti Park or from Athens or from Tahrir Square where to act like Lenin, to have a vision of how the socialist state will be after the revolution, but in Lenin's case or in your total misunderstanding of the situation in relation to this particular point is based on a conception of a putsch or a winter palace or of taking the Bastille. So in that sense, it is precisely in a Hegelian way you have it totally upside down. It is how to get to power which is a problem, not what we are going to do afterwards. Okay, I totally reject what you said and let me explain why. Because I claim this is pure rhetorics you simply postponed the problem. Oh, did you hear him, all he said is we will do it democratically. Sorry, what does this mean? That we will win some group of people will win an election and they will have a majority in parliament. That what it means. A pretty simple... Okay, then nice to meet you with your utopia, go on. This is totally, totally, I repeat it three times totally unworkable. At the because precisely my god so in other words nothing, we will have the same system just the good guys will win democratically or what. I can guarantee you this will never happen. First you will never get the majority and so on, do you really think... But that's why I say this is the difficult part that we don't get the majority. Yeah but this is I know I know this is the standard no I first where did you get this idea of putsch or whatsoever. What I'm saying is that and that was the point of my critique of Applebaum my god that it's an illusion that you can simply use the existing democratic multi-party system to do the change. It doesn't. But this is precisely what Tahrir Square, Puerta del Sol, Syntagma Square in Athens are doing to what you call the democratic system. They are introducing the aspect of direct democracy, people taking power in particular areas you know taking initiatives, creating new forms and so on. So of course I agree with you, I mean I took that for granted that it is not just taking the elections you know a vote and winning an election at the end of it. It is a whole mobilization which uses all kinds of different forms and it is precisely the first time in our history of the last years in terms of a democratic politics that these movements have introduced this new aspect, non-representational democracy, but direct democracy, people preparing themselves to as it were become parts, become central to the whole way in which political power is organized. Okay here we have then even a stronger distinction because first I will be as clear and brutal as possible. I don't buy this bullshit about direct democracy. First this is nothing new in every revolution you have it. You have it in councils in and so on. And for me now we come to a truly crucial distinction. For me yes it's wonderful as long as it lasts. But then at a certain point as you put it and nothing ironic about it things return to normal. It's difficult to change that point. It's easy to have your direct democracy where as you showed up as you demonstrated the last time we all allowed to speak everyone speaks for two minutes and so on. But you know when there you have to run things you cannot gather people who will each speak for two minutes and so on. The problem is precisely how to organize when this enthusiasm whatever you call it it's over. The problem is what changes when you have demobilization, no longer mobilization. This is for me the crucial problem. And what I'm afraid is that when you say well it's a long process we will find it, it's just rhetorics like of course it's a long process but all I'm saying is okay this is also a position but your position is basically if I got it correctly we cannot say anything we will see what happens. I mean this is for me a little bit too risky especially since where I am a pessimist I may quote your own example is that in Greece now you know who knows if even there will be time to wait for generations through this education, maybe you will have to act faster. What I'm saying that for me the big problem is not this direct democracy and so on. The big problem is can we imagine another way of what Gramsci called the new order of things functioning normally in a different way. But what you know you're saying again and we've said that repeatedly in the past, yes, the new order. This is total eschatology, this is you know. No because I'm not saying this is the end of history. No no, what you are telling us is we have to know how paradise is, before we know what paradise is we are not going to make any attempt to get there. And what I'm saying it's much more important to try to get to paradise and once we get there we'll work it out. Because your your your recipe and your advice all over the world to these movements of people who are standing up and mobilizing and so on and so on is that before you have a full blueprint of how society is going to be after the change, you should not do anything. You know, do a bit of protest, do a bit of hippiedom here and the hippiedom there and since you don't have your full constitutional order and party in place, forget it. No I'm not saying that, I never said this. What I said is on the contrary that if you just want to go to a paradise without knowing where you are going you can well end in hell. Indeed and that's the chance you take, this is the chance you take. Sorry this is a chance you take? As Benjamin said the worst and the best are very close to one another but unless you aim for the best you don't get get a way. No but wait a minute okay let me be concrete. I am not saying first I never spoke about what will be who knows what will be if you ask me and I like it. I think if capitalism will be followed by another society it will be a much more severe disciplinary society and I love it but that's another story. What I'm saying is this, I agree with you this dialectic of yours that... this is what would be my answer to you. If there is a lesson from sad experience of Stalinism, it is that you cannot play this game of first stage second stage you know like this wonderful pseudo-dialectic of Stalin when he said at his high point as we know all literally that the way the state withers away is
was nice you know it was nice you know. No because because you know what worked well with them. That rhetorics that I used you know like they say we are socialists but no there is already socialism in the United States for the rich no where the state covers you. Okay let me go on nonetheless. So what I claim is that precisely at this point we should resist the temptation of the dialogue. To have too much dialogue at this point dialogue can only mean that we adopt the field which is already here which is their field. We need a distance. We need a time to think. And now although this one was published at Guardian but I will in their blog only I will reformulate it a little bit because I really think it's important. The central point for me is and it's the most disgusting point. But there is a moment of truth. It was made did some of you read it the comment reaction to Wall Street by Anne Applebaum in Washington, you read it? It's disgusting admit it. In Washington Post. First maybe there still is a hope for Roman Polanski the movie maker. You know what? You remember did you see his Ghost, the film Ghost Writer? You know the thesis Blair or his wife CIA agents blah blah. This is incidentally a nice example of reality has the structure of the fiction. Because you know the thesis of the film Blair was a CIA agent planted and somebody gave the best comment a leftist who said I'm sure this is not true but if it were true it would have explained everything you know like it's a nice paradox. Okay but what I wanted to say is that you know what I heard from my friends in Poland that everyone in Poland got the joke we didn't. You know that M Applebaum is now the wife of the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs. Some pretty more right wing liberal guy. Okay, now comes the crucial point. The lady who plays her in the film no sorry the lady who plays who plays Tony Blair's wife Cherie in the film is Olivia Williams and incidentally a purely sexist remark I cannot restrain from tasteless remarks. I never got it she's for me to me more attractive than that bitch from from Sex and the City Kim Cattrall so I simply didn't get it. Okay but that's another intimate really Marxist topic. More seriously I was told that everybody in Poland got the joke that Olivia Williams looks very much like Anne Applebaum and that this was Polanski's nasty joke like in the same way M Applebaum the Western agent corrupting Poles she is because you know at the end of the film we learn that it wasn't Blair it was she who was CIA planted for from the beginning and so on and so on. This is I admit it a small sympathetic feature of Polanski nonetheless to make... Okay let me go on. Let me quote to you because it's really typical and let's do a little bit more detailed analysis of the basic line of Applebaum's comment. Her starting point is that Wall Street protests are now comes I'm sorry for this a long quote are similar in their lack of focus, in their inchoate nature, and above all in their refusal to engage with existing democratic institutions. In New York, marchers chanted: this is what democracy look like. But actually, that's her comment, this isn't what democracy look like looks like. This is what freedom of speech looks like. Democracy looks a lot more boring. Democracy requires institutions, elections, political parties, rules, laws, a judiciary and many unglamorous time consuming activities. Yet in one sense the international Occupy movement's failure to produce sound legislative proposals is understandable. Both the sources of the global economic crisis and the solutions to it lie by definition outside the competence of local and national politicians. The emergence of an international protest movement without a coherent program is therefore not an accident. It reflects a deeper crisis, one without an obvious solution. Democracy is based on the rule of law. Democracy works only within distinct borders and among people who feel themselves to be part of the same nation. A global community cannot be a national democracy. And a national democracy cannot command the allegiance of a billion dollar global fund with its headquarters in a tax haven and its employees scattered around the world. Unlike the Egyptians in Tahrir Square to whom the London and New York protesters openly and ridiculously compared themselves, we have democratic institutions in the Western world. They are designed to reflect at least crudely the desire for political change within a given nation. But they cannot cope with the desire for global political change nor can they control things that happen outside their borders. Although I still believe in globalization's economic and spiritual benefits along with open borders freedom of movement and free trade globalization has clearly begun to undermine the legitimacy of Western democracies. Global activists if they are not careful will accelerate this decline. Protesters in London shout we need to have a process. Well they already have a process. It's called the British political system. And if they don't figure out how to use it they'll simply weaken it further. I mean there are moments of truth in here. Let me analyze it. The first thing to notice Applebaum's reduction of the Tahrir Square protests to the calls for Western style democracy. Of course once we do this it becomes ridiculous to compel per Wall Street protests with the Egypt event. How can protesters here demand what we already have that is to say democratic institutions that those in Egypt want? But this precisely I think is what we should do. That's the key to it. Precisely A again it's a very limited ideological reading to claim simply that Egyptian crowds want what we already have. No, it's obvious that they want something more, something different. Justice and so on precisely what we want. But again, the central for me shocking part of Applebaum's argumentation, a truly weird gap, jump in her line of reasoning occurs at the end of this long quoted passage. Remember, after conceding that the that the catastrophic economic consequences of global capitalist finances are due to their international character, that they are out of control of democratic mechanisms, she draws a quite necessary and correct I think conclusion. I quote her again: Globalization has clearly begun to undermine the legitimacy of Western democracies. So far so good I'm tempted to say. This is precisely I claim what the protesters were drawing attention to. I think what is in spite of all the confusion and you can imagine me as a in my private economy a puritanic fascist how I didn't like to mingle with the crowd in on Zuccotti Park Wall Street. Oh those dirty old hippies my god I almost called where is the police? But nonetheless I sincerely support them because I think that with all the confusion of course what do the people expect if you ask them of course you get confused answers but there are two chaotic two blurred but nonetheless correct insights. This is what is great about this wave of protests. First, it's not just against particular injustice here and there you know the stories our media are full of this company's polluting environment that company is employing slave child workers. No, it's the insight that what is problematic is the system as such and what intelligent observers got an even deeper insight which is that not democracy as such people's rule but our existing form of democracy, democratic system, cannot cope with this crisis. So it's a critique of democracy not in general because it's done precisely on behalf of the people. But basically they are saying precisely what Anne Applebaum is saying. Globalization has begun to undermine the legitimacy of our democracies. Now I would have thought that the only logical conclusion from this would have been we should start thinking about how to transform expand democracy beyond its state multi-party political form which obviously leaves out destructive consequences of economic life. Instead of this Applebaum performs a weird turnaround and shifts the blame on the victim of on protesters themselves. You see the gap? First she says protesters have a point of course they cannot formulate concrete demands because simply there is something wrong in today's global economy and our political democratic institutions the way we have them cannot deal with it. Now the obvious conclusion would have been can be maybe reinvent democracy so that it will be able to deal with it no in a very weird way she said no the only thing to do is it we have a process it's called British political system and so on and so on. So in other words it's a crazy conclusion against her own premises. What she is saying is basically let's go on playing the game, let's accept that we cannot do anything at that level. And of course the result of this is as it was well noticed, the result of this is what it's what is happening now in different forms in Italy as you told me before it's the pure form technocratic government purely neutral in Greece you learned me it's more complex because only the top is technocratic then you have some kind of all national coalition which I think if you want any further proofs of you know people thought that me and also some other minor figures like Habermas recently okay bad joke but even he got it finally and wrote about how the true victim of this ongoing crisis is democracy. What happened recently in Greece is a pure case how you remember these two oscillations of Europe? By Europe I mean Brussels Europe. First referendum total panic in Europe, markets down. Then technocratic okay banker at the top of a government ooh big relief finally finally. Are we aware what's the message of this? It's you know people think some people think I was joking when I was saying democracy is more and more suspended. But we got here almost a clinical case of it. The idea is that precisely now when we are in trouble, and let me be precise, what does it mean that we are in trouble, it means we are in a time when political decisions are not just an empty form, when you really have to decide. The message is now precisely we have to suspend democracy and to put full trust in whom? In bankers, in those to cut a long story short who screwed things up exactly no. So again this is what I really find great about these protests. You know for a long year years decades even we were living in this how do you say one issue movement protests against sexism here feminism there which I totally support them but nonetheless did you did you not fully didn't you hear about empty rhetorics. Okay, yeah, yeah. I hear it, I hear it. No, sorry, seriously but what I'm saying is that what is so great is that now finally the system itself became a problem and very importantly with it, not in any sense of any totalitarian temptation but we became aware of here we have the true version of what Alain Badiou said maybe in a little bit even for me too provocative form but I like him for that, you know when Badiou said the name of the enemy today is not capitalism imperialism blah blah the name of the enemy is democracy. No he wasn't crazy. He was saying my god what Anne Applebaum is saying, that we are facing problems today and that the democracy we have today institutional obviously cannot cope with these problems. This is our task today. Now let me go further a little bit. Nonetheless here I return to the argument I made that you didn't agree the last time. I accept all this we shouldn't terrorize now protesters give us precise plan or whatever. But nonetheless let me put it in this way. Since nonetheless we are approaching a situation where things will have to be decided, I think it is nonetheless important that that we start to shift focus from the purely let me call it negative gesture, we reject this that, to at least try to play with imagine alternate modes of organizing production and so on and so on. I mean this is for me so crucially important why. It's easy to mock these technocrats. But you know, it's important not just to say okay they mask a certain politics and so on and so on, but like I wanted to ask you this, let's imagine that our best or worst fears it depends on what you think will happen in Greece. There will be some kind of a half collapse of the state and I use this term consciously at its in its vague state in some way people would have to take over. What to do then? How to organize? Let me be very clear, isn't it absolutely clear that all the rich with their riches will try to escape the country? So f**k it, you can imagine how my heart is jumping here because f**k it you will need very strong police repression and so on. It's the only way to say, you know what I mean? Positive, this is what I like in Lenin for example. Yeah yeah all the revolutionary bullshit, but once they were in power his mottos were organization, hard work, discipline. I think it's so important that we rein- that we at least start to think about it. If not, because precisely I'm saying this not to say aha comrade Stalin will be back but precisely how to prevent Stalin to come back, how to without this we will be eternally condemned just to this negative moralistic protest. We want justice, f**k you what kind of justice, how? Let's at least start dreaming about it. The time is here. Because that's for me the tragedy. If you only protest, what other thing you can get but a technocratic government? I mean we protest and what then? It's I wouldn't even blame just those in power. We have to start thinking at all levels and be very critical here. For example with you Oscar I agree this may surprise you because you think I'm only bullshitting about Hegel and Henry James or what. But for example I'm closely following as far as I can and I if I got you correctly Oscar I still look at it with sympathy but I shared if I got it correctly your skepticism, like I know that tremendous experiments are going on in Venezuela for example. But ah to be to be graceful merciful the results are mixed and so on and I would even say that up to a point the fact that Chavez gets enough money from oil is in a way even a curse because I would say money allows him to postpone confronting you know there is a real problem, f**k it if you have money you pay for it, I mean you buy so what I'm again saying is that you know once when you friendly attacked me this... I will in a minute yes wait no no. Can't anyone you know okay let me no no no no just to say you something else and then you can say it. You know what is my point here I was thinking about you I don't know why I recently saw I recently saw a movie on KGB when a KGB officer said any usual secret service can organize a murder, only a truly great secret service like ours can organize a natural death you know murder being so I don't know why I thought of you here but okay. Please attack now. Attack, attack. I will return I will reverse the position dialectically in a Hegelian way. The problem is precisely the opposite of what you've been telling us in previous previous occasions and now. The problem is not what's going to happen after a new kind of regime of some kind of socialist persuasion takes over, the problem is how to get there because the kind of model you have in your mind is very much a Leninist we are going to take the winter let me finish yes to take the winter palace and of course if this is a putsch or a coup d'état or some kind of violent revolution of course there is a major issue that if you have a violent revolution what happens after the violent revolution in other words after a huge radical transformation from a state whether democratic or tsarist or whatever into another state is a major problem of organization. But to the extent that we are not in a situation like that, the major problem is not what will happen after some left wing alliance takes power because it will take power democratically through elections. In other words, there will be a long process in which programs will be created when the possibility of a victory becomes realistic people start working on constitutional reform on institutional reform on what to do with the KGB as you put it, what to do with the military. In other words, it will be a long democratic process and precisely the difficult point is to take power, not what to do afterwards, because it will be the process of taking power that will determine both in terms of the popular organization and energy and motivation and campaigning, but also in terms of the ideas, the concepts that will have to be presented to the people in order to create a hegemonic block to take power that what happens afterwards will emerge. In other words, what you are asking of people in Zuccotti Park or from Athens or from Tahrir Square where to act like Lenin, to have a vision of how the socialist state will be after the revolution, but in Lenin's case or in your total misunderstanding of the situation in relation to this particular point is based on a conception of a putsch or a winter palace or of taking the Bastille. So in that sense, it is precisely in a Hegelian way you have it totally upside down. It is how to get to power which is a problem, not what we are going to do afterwards. Okay, I totally reject what you said and let me explain why. Because I claim this is pure rhetorics you simply postponed the problem. Oh, did you hear him, all he said is we will do it democratically. Sorry, what does this mean? That we will win some group of people will win an election and they will have a majority in parliament. That what it means. A pretty simple... Okay, then nice to meet you with your utopia, go on. This is totally, totally, I repeat it three times totally unworkable. At the because precisely my god so in other words nothing, we will have the same system just the good guys will win democratically or what. I can guarantee you this will never happen. First you will never get the majority and so on, do you really think... But that's why I say this is the difficult part that we don't get the majority. Yeah but this is I know I know this is the standard no I first where did you get this idea of putsch or whatsoever. What I'm saying is that and that was the point of my critique of Applebaum my god that it's an illusion that you can simply use the existing democratic multi-party system to do the change. It doesn't. But this is precisely what Tahrir Square, Puerta del Sol, Syntagma Square in Athens are doing to what you call the democratic system. They are introducing the aspect of direct democracy, people taking power in particular areas you know taking initiatives, creating new forms and so on. So of course I agree with you, I mean I took that for granted that it is not just taking the elections you know a vote and winning an election at the end of it. It is a whole mobilization which uses all kinds of different forms and it is precisely the first time in our history of the last years in terms of a democratic politics that these movements have introduced this new aspect, non-representational democracy, but direct democracy, people preparing themselves to as it were become parts, become central to the whole way in which political power is organized. Okay here we have then even a stronger distinction because first I will be as clear and brutal as possible. I don't buy this bullshit about direct democracy. First this is nothing new in every revolution you have it. You have it in councils in and so on. And for me now we come to a truly crucial distinction. For me yes it's wonderful as long as it lasts. But then at a certain point as you put it and nothing ironic about it things return to normal. It's difficult to change that point. It's easy to have your direct democracy where as you showed up as you demonstrated the last time we all allowed to speak everyone speaks for two minutes and so on. But you know when there you have to run things you cannot gather people who will each speak for two minutes and so on. The problem is precisely how to organize when this enthusiasm whatever you call it it's over. The problem is what changes when you have demobilization, no longer mobilization. This is for me the crucial problem. And what I'm afraid is that when you say well it's a long process we will find it, it's just rhetorics like of course it's a long process but all I'm saying is okay this is also a position but your position is basically if I got it correctly we cannot say anything we will see what happens. I mean this is for me a little bit too risky especially since where I am a pessimist I may quote your own example is that in Greece now you know who knows if even there will be time to wait for generations through this education, maybe you will have to act faster. What I'm saying that for me the big problem is not this direct democracy and so on. The big problem is can we imagine another way of what Gramsci called the new order of things functioning normally in a different way. But what you know you're saying again and we've said that repeatedly in the past, yes, the new order. This is total eschatology, this is you know. No because I'm not saying this is the end of history. No no, what you are telling us is we have to know how paradise is, before we know what paradise is we are not going to make any attempt to get there. And what I'm saying it's much more important to try to get to paradise and once we get there we'll work it out. Because your your your recipe and your advice all over the world to these movements of people who are standing up and mobilizing and so on and so on is that before you have a full blueprint of how society is going to be after the change, you should not do anything. You know, do a bit of protest, do a bit of hippiedom here and the hippiedom there and since you don't have your full constitutional order and party in place, forget it. No I'm not saying that, I never said this. What I said is on the contrary that if you just want to go to a paradise without knowing where you are going you can well end in hell. Indeed and that's the chance you take, this is the chance you take. Sorry this is a chance you take? As Benjamin said the worst and the best are very close to one another but unless you aim for the best you don't get get a way. No but wait a minute okay let me be concrete. I am not saying first I never spoke about what will be who knows what will be if you ask me and I like it. I think if capitalism will be followed by another society it will be a much more severe disciplinary society and I love it but that's another story. What I'm saying is this, I agree with you this dialectic of yours that... this is what would be my answer to you. If there is a lesson from sad experience of Stalinism, it is that you cannot play this game of first stage second stage you know like this wonderful pseudo-dialectic of Stalin when he said at his high point as we know all literally that the way the state withers away is
unknown
through
through
Slavoj Žižek
strengthening of its organs especially organs of repression. No okay we all love this bullshit. But my point is this one, I don't think you can simply say how to go to paradise, paradise is there. If there is a lesson from to be drawn from the sad 20th century experience is that the germs of paradise must be already here in how we are organizing now and here and B direct democracy is not enough. You know what I mean? Nobody said that, I mean I except
strengthening of its organs especially organs of repression. No okay we all love this bullshit. But my point is this one, I don't think you can simply say how to go to paradise, paradise is there. If there is a lesson from to be drawn from the sad 20th century experience is that the germs of paradise must be already here in how we are organizing now and here and B direct democracy is not enough. You know what I mean? Nobody said that, I mean I except
unknown
for some anarchists nobody would say that direct democracy... Yeah but what did you say that's my problem. What did you say, you said standard party rule, votes and direct democracy.
for some anarchists nobody would say that direct democracy... Yeah but what did you say that's my problem. What did you say, you said standard party rule, votes and direct democracy.
Slavoj Žižek
Did I hear it wrongly? I needn't hear anything else. I did say that, yes.
Did I hear it wrongly? I needn't hear anything else. I did say that, yes.
unknown
Yeah so this for me I don't have easy solutions. All I'm saying... So what else is there? Oh thanks very much. This means like kill. Okay this what you are saying now, my god this really makes me sad. This means let's kill ourselves for me. This means we cannot even imagine anything else. What are then we doing here? We have parliamentary democracy and we have this ecstatic mobilization which lasts as long as it lasts. If there is nothing else then there is no way for us. Then we are back to the system where things run normally and every years you have one ecstatic year and then we meet every years and celebrate wasn't it nice when we were there. No but I am not saying, you know what I mean? But you are a very imaginary guy so use your imagination and give us some alternative you know sort of utopia that you know then I'll be very happy to follow. But are you aware what you are saying? You are saying that we live in a certain world of parliamentary democracy capitalism. What you are saying is that apart from this direct ecstasies of let's call it horizontal democracy, we cannot even imagine a change. No I didn't say that, I mean and if you want to become a little more philosophical what we're discussing here is the metaphysics of representation. So we have a system which is based totally on the idea of representation at all levels including the parliamentary constitutional level and what we are you know what I was in a sense proposing is that this system of representation which is a metaphysical way through which we turn the concrete into some kind of generality not universality has to be substituted, it cannot be totally... By what? By a non-representational principle. A non-representational principle means a number of things including councils, including people people in the streets in the squares and so on. What is councils? Okay. Yeah, yes. So these are strictly exceptional phenomena I claim. The representational and the non-representational principles together yeah more or less cover the whole of
Yeah so this for me I don't have easy solutions. All I'm saying... So what else is there? Oh thanks very much. This means like kill. Okay this what you are saying now, my god this really makes me sad. This means let's kill ourselves for me. This means we cannot even imagine anything else. What are then we doing here? We have parliamentary democracy and we have this ecstatic mobilization which lasts as long as it lasts. If there is nothing else then there is no way for us. Then we are back to the system where things run normally and every years you have one ecstatic year and then we meet every years and celebrate wasn't it nice when we were there. No but I am not saying, you know what I mean? But you are a very imaginary guy so use your imagination and give us some alternative you know sort of utopia that you know then I'll be very happy to follow. But are you aware what you are saying? You are saying that we live in a certain world of parliamentary democracy capitalism. What you are saying is that apart from this direct ecstasies of let's call it horizontal democracy, we cannot even imagine a change. No I didn't say that, I mean and if you want to become a little more philosophical what we're discussing here is the metaphysics of representation. So we have a system which is based totally on the idea of representation at all levels including the parliamentary constitutional level and what we are you know what I was in a sense proposing is that this system of representation which is a metaphysical way through which we turn the concrete into some kind of generality not universality has to be substituted, it cannot be totally... By what? By a non-representational principle. A non-representational principle means a number of things including councils, including people people in the streets in the squares and so on. What is councils? Okay. Yeah, yes. So these are strictly exceptional phenomena I claim. The representational and the non-representational principles together yeah more or less cover the whole of
Slavoj Žižek
the metaphysical positions the philosophical positions that are given to us. No, no, absolutely not. I think what is absolutely crucial is to because your
the metaphysical positions the philosophical positions that are given to us. No, no, absolutely not. I think what is absolutely crucial is to because your
unknown
mistake I think is that you too easily identified representation as
mistake I think is that you too easily identified representation as
Slavoj Žižek
such with representational our focus should not be for me on this bullshit of non-representational but on different forms of representational. This is for me there is the true creative work. In normal times you cannot have permanent activity. You need representation. But you need a different type of representation, maybe even less democratic, I don't know. No all I'm saying my god I really find it... I don't think we disagree you know. Yeah because no you know what worries me, can't you see what worries me is that we will have a beautiful protest and then this protest
such with representational our focus should not be for me on this bullshit of non-representational but on different forms of representational. This is for me there is the true creative work. In normal times you cannot have permanent activity. You need representation. But you need a different type of representation, maybe even less democratic, I don't know. No all I'm saying my god I really find it... I don't think we disagree you know. Yeah because no you know what worries me, can't you see what worries me is that we will have a beautiful protest and then this protest
unknown
will disappear and then all that will remain is that we will feel very well what a nice time we had during the protest. Show me what will remain, show me what will remain as new institutional forms and so on and I agree with you something probably will emerge. I'm not a I'm not as pessimist as I may sound here. Just let's look at history how people thought many things they are not possible. Let's not forget here we should even sincerely praise democracy itself. My god till modernity people thought the moment you don't have a natural pretender to power, the moment you open up the field and admit the empty place of power it's catastrophe. The great triumph of
will disappear and then all that will remain is that we will feel very well what a nice time we had during the protest. Show me what will remain, show me what will remain as new institutional forms and so on and I agree with you something probably will emerge. I'm not a I'm not as pessimist as I may sound here. Just let's look at history how people thought many things they are not possible. Let's not forget here we should even sincerely praise democracy itself. My god till modernity people thought the moment you don't have a natural pretender to power, the moment you open up the field and admit the empty place of power it's catastrophe. The great triumph of
Slavoj Žižek
democracy is that it turned this moment when the throne is empty into the very resource of the stability of the system. So things can be done. But I don't think I'm to- I don't want to terrorize people into this oh give me a detailed blueprint. No, I just think that we should be very careful. I hope this will be the formula of peace. But for the peace to really work we need some time someone like a Jew so that we sacrifice the third one should be Trotskyites or some bad guy. Yeah no sorry seriously don't you agree this that while we are going to the paradise we should I think it's not enough this ecstatic direct and not to mention another thing. Here I report on my conversations with Linera. Now I'm doing and Linera is the vice president of Bolivia a sociologist and major not a total idiot theoretically which is very rare for politician. The only reason he says that is because he claims that Linera has read his books and therefore he likes... No but this is just an a common commonsensical evident test for intelligence. If he reads my this is just common sense. Nothing to talk. I'm talking now like Ignatieff market and democracy you know that's totally apolitical test. Sorry seriously you know what he told me something very interesting. Was it you Oscar or some other Greek friends told me like okay Linera tries this precisely to not to abolish democracy formal bourgeois but to kind of a supplement it with movements and so on. But he told me this, he is well aware that don't idealize the movement. He draw my attention for example now to immense corruption in movements
democracy is that it turned this moment when the throne is empty into the very resource of the stability of the system. So things can be done. But I don't think I'm to- I don't want to terrorize people into this oh give me a detailed blueprint. No, I just think that we should be very careful. I hope this will be the formula of peace. But for the peace to really work we need some time someone like a Jew so that we sacrifice the third one should be Trotskyites or some bad guy. Yeah no sorry seriously don't you agree this that while we are going to the paradise we should I think it's not enough this ecstatic direct and not to mention another thing. Here I report on my conversations with Linera. Now I'm doing and Linera is the vice president of Bolivia a sociologist and major not a total idiot theoretically which is very rare for politician. The only reason he says that is because he claims that Linera has read his books and therefore he likes... No but this is just an a common commonsensical evident test for intelligence. If he reads my this is just common sense. Nothing to talk. I'm talking now like Ignatieff market and democracy you know that's totally apolitical test. Sorry seriously you know what he told me something very interesting. Was it you Oscar or some other Greek friends told me like okay Linera tries this precisely to not to abolish democracy formal bourgeois but to kind of a supplement it with movements and so on. But he told me this, he is well aware that don't idealize the movement. He draw my attention for example now to immense corruption in movements
unknown
means this. You have people back there in the mountains who have their representative in Bolivia who mostly fights you know movements also work like representative of this group of miners wants more money against another one and so on. So I'm all only the only thing I'm saying is let's not forget about this. I hope we all agree. Capitalism is not just some exploitative machine. It's an immensely complex economic legal system and so on and so on. And keeps reviving itself. And keeps reviving
means this. You have people back there in the mountains who have their representative in Bolivia who mostly fights you know movements also work like representative of this group of miners wants more money against another one and so on. So I'm all only the only thing I'm saying is let's not forget about this. I hope we all agree. Capitalism is not just some exploitative machine. It's an immensely complex economic legal system and so on and so on. And keeps reviving itself. And keeps reviving
unknown
itself has an incredible vampire living dead like... This is the problem with people who think that a crisis a capitalist crisis leads to destruction. Here we totally agree. Crisis is precisely the way in which through which capitalism always renewed itself. Yeah so so again I'm here
itself has an incredible vampire living dead like... This is the problem with people who think that a crisis a capitalist crisis leads to destruction. Here we totally agree. Crisis is precisely the way in which through which capitalism always renewed itself. Yeah so so again I'm here
Slavoj Žižek
totally non-dogmatic. I definitely I think here is what I propose as a formula for peace. Temporary peace. At the end you go to Gulag but temporary peace yeah. No sorry I think that I think that if there will be what you said a Leninist
totally non-dogmatic. I definitely I think here is what I propose as a formula for peace. Temporary peace. At the end you go to Gulag but temporary peace yeah. No sorry I think that I think that if there will be what you said a Leninist
unknown
putsch it will be the right wing probably. That is true. If there will be one it will come from their side. It already happened in in Greece and Italy. Yeah yeah precisely it's this is what people
putsch it will be the right wing probably. That is true. If there will be one it will come from their side. It already happened in in Greece and Italy. Yeah yeah precisely it's this is what people
Slavoj Žižek
don't get. I was very serious when I warned that the new type of authoritarianism will not be this old style fascism you know a new leader. No in Greece in Italy you can still buy pornography make love with cats whatever all that no it's as what I'm telling you all the time it is something like it is something like Terry Gilliam's Brazil which is I think still one of the greatest films of all times. You know you have this totally crazy society which is not fascist in this immediate sense but f**k it it is an authoritarian society and so on and so on. And again I'm here I am not saying about any direct abolishment of money or whatever. I agree total with you. The great art of authentic progressive politics is I hope we agree with this a mixture of a principled attitude with extreme pragmatism as to Absolutely. Absolutely. which is why at this level although I don't agree with them. For example I admire the wisdom of Deng Xiaoping who did exactly the opposite of
don't get. I was very serious when I warned that the new type of authoritarianism will not be this old style fascism you know a new leader. No in Greece in Italy you can still buy pornography make love with cats whatever all that no it's as what I'm telling you all the time it is something like it is something like Terry Gilliam's Brazil which is I think still one of the greatest films of all times. You know you have this totally crazy society which is not fascist in this immediate sense but f**k it it is an authoritarian society and so on and so on. And again I'm here I am not saying about any direct abolishment of money or whatever. I agree total with you. The great art of authentic progressive politics is I hope we agree with this a mixture of a principled attitude with extreme pragmatism as to Absolutely. Absolutely. which is why at this level although I don't agree with them. For example I admire the wisdom of Deng Xiaoping who did exactly the opposite of
unknown
the stupid Russians
the stupid Russians
Slavoj Žižek
but Russians are not stupid I sincerely buy here don't you also a little bit of this paranoia theory that
but Russians are not stupid I sincerely buy here don't you also a little bit of this paranoia theory that
unknown
I think Russians were screwed up
I think Russians were screwed up
Slavoj Žižek
by American advisors who in I mean early Yeltsin years who gave them exactly the wrong advice: start privatization with big banks natural assets. No exactly the opposite. Deng Xiaoping did the intelligent thing: he started privatization with small consumerist industry where people immediately felt effects and although this may be an obscenity for some Marxists but but he he up to a point succeeded in getting from capitalism what okay Marxists will kill
by American advisors who in I mean early Yeltsin years who gave them exactly the wrong advice: start privatization with big banks natural assets. No exactly the opposite. Deng Xiaoping did the intelligent thing: he started privatization with small consumerist industry where people immediately felt effects and although this may be an obscenity for some Marxists but but he he up to a point succeeded in getting from capitalism what okay Marxists will kill
unknown
me I use it with bad conscience get the productive side of capitalism you know like people feel it
me I use it with bad conscience get the productive side of capitalism you know like people feel it
Slavoj Žižek
yeah yeah you get new product while in Russia it was exactly the opposite. What was quickly privatized were banks, forests, mines, oil of course and so on while the entire not in the bad sense of the term consumerist industry was there in its total bankruptcy and
yeah yeah you get new product while in Russia it was exactly the opposite. What was quickly privatized were banks, forests, mines, oil of course and so on while the entire not in the bad sense of the term consumerist industry was there in its total bankruptcy and
unknown
so on and so on it was the worst imaginable scenario. So do you agree this: a principled attitude but connected with the most ruthless pragmatism. For example if I were Greece I want to ask you a concrete question very
so on and so on it was the worst imaginable scenario. So do you agree this: a principled attitude but connected with the most ruthless pragmatism. For example if I were Greece I want to ask you a concrete question very
unknown
benevolent. Very benevolent. Do you see what's coming now? No no no it's not surprise surprise sometimes I am what I appear to be very rarely. Seriously, do you see this possibility that Greece gets out of blah blah blah and Chinese enter or not seriously? No no no I'm not a priori against the Chinese. What was it you or some other Greek friends told me that for example the way China took over the Piraeus port well was not exactly the model of social democracy
benevolent. Very benevolent. Do you see what's coming now? No no no it's not surprise surprise sometimes I am what I appear to be very rarely. Seriously, do you see this possibility that Greece gets out of blah blah blah and Chinese enter or not seriously? No no no I'm not a priori against the Chinese. What was it you or some other Greek friends told me that for example the way China took over the Piraeus port well was not exactly the model of social democracy
Slavoj Žižek
pro-workers no that was a pretty
pro-workers no that was a pretty
unknown
brutal operation. Yeah.
brutal operation. Yeah.
Slavoj Žižek
Yeah. Do you see this is one of but this is I mean in a sense something you've said repeatedly and we have discussed the future it seems to me of Western democracies that they're moving towards the Chinese model which is on the one hand the most extreme type of liberal neoliberal capitalism with restrictions and constraints and limitations upon democracy so we are in a state of emergency which is there in order to support the most liberal capitalist system at the moment. Yeah which again I hope we both agree here we see how we should redefine terms here like first what I always repeat neoliberalism is for me a myth. It was always de facto extremely regulated I mean who who is neoliberal today are you seriously claiming that United States are neoliberal? My god let's be serious. No actually they're social democratic today they are moving in social democratic way. Yeah but even even Bush was much more closer to some kind of corporate state intervention. It's incredible to what extent in the United States as I told you my old story sorry if I repeat myself some of the right wingers that I know in the United States refer to what we misperceive as the model of American wild capitalism, LA Los Angeles area as as the Socialist Republic of Los Angeles. Because if you look closely at their industries defense and so on it's so it's so connected to state intervention state interests and so on and so on. And even in China it's more complex. I read in an economic analysis that now the city which is most associated with wild capitalism in China, Shanghai, you know they sacked there the party boss for some high party maneuvers but the official accusation was he went too far in capitalism bourgeois whatever no and then he defended himself in quite convincing term. He said wait a minute the average of private versus state capital in China is state private. He said in Shanghai in the very years of the boom it
Yeah. Do you see this is one of but this is I mean in a sense something you've said repeatedly and we have discussed the future it seems to me of Western democracies that they're moving towards the Chinese model which is on the one hand the most extreme type of liberal neoliberal capitalism with restrictions and constraints and limitations upon democracy so we are in a state of emergency which is there in order to support the most liberal capitalist system at the moment. Yeah which again I hope we both agree here we see how we should redefine terms here like first what I always repeat neoliberalism is for me a myth. It was always de facto extremely regulated I mean who who is neoliberal today are you seriously claiming that United States are neoliberal? My god let's be serious. No actually they're social democratic today they are moving in social democratic way. Yeah but even even Bush was much more closer to some kind of corporate state intervention. It's incredible to what extent in the United States as I told you my old story sorry if I repeat myself some of the right wingers that I know in the United States refer to what we misperceive as the model of American wild capitalism, LA Los Angeles area as as the Socialist Republic of Los Angeles. Because if you look closely at their industries defense and so on it's so it's so connected to state intervention state interests and so on and so on. And even in China it's more complex. I read in an economic analysis that now the city which is most associated with wild capitalism in China, Shanghai, you know they sacked there the party boss for some high party maneuvers but the official accusation was he went too far in capitalism bourgeois whatever no and then he defended himself in quite convincing term. He said wait a minute the average of private versus state capital in China is state private. He said in Shanghai in the very years of the boom it
unknown
was to Shanghai
was to Shanghai
Slavoj Žižek
as the most dynamic capitalist
as the most dynamic capitalist
unknown
part of China had state capital private. So you know it's not I
part of China had state capital private. So you know it's not I
Slavoj Žižek
mean here I agree with you something new and we desperately need a theory of it, something new is emerging which maybe in a Hegelian way overcomes this old dichotomy state regulated and liberal. Another thing, I'm sorry that I didn't have time to go into economic analysis more in detail because okay I will give you just some clues. First I agree with Fredric Jameson although he knows next to nothing about economy but probably his sources were good no. Where he claims that today one of the keys to understand the system is to first to radically redefine unemployment. Unemployment is no longer just that classical Marxist reserve army but it's getting much more radical. We have that his idea is that with the ongoing technological revolutions the system is producing larger and larger strata of people which are how to stay put it structurally unemployed like you were a textile worker for years then all of a sudden it goes bankrupt and then what can happen okay people like Anthony Giddens may come to you and tell you reinvent yourself this postmodern bullshit but de facto you are out. It's even worse as we know this is why students protest, we get even a kind of a pre-unemployment in the sense that you get probably millions of students getting high education being more and more aware that there is not even a chance for them to get the job. Then I think we should put into the same line the whole countries being excluded as this rogue state whatever this mixture of I mean those in power like did you notice how being the object of humanitarian help and being the object of war on terror are basically like the Janus head two sides of the of the same like this is what I like one of the best caricatures from Afghanistan war the first one when United States overthrew Taliban you know there was already this term Axis of Evil no and you have two Afghanistani farmers looking at some American planes and asking what are these are they bombers bombing the Axis of Evil or the good ones helping the victims you like this moment of indecision so okay what I Actually this one it was quite literal because immediately after the Americans entered Afghanistan entered Kabul they used planes to drop food packages to various villages. So it was literal yeah. No no it's literal yeah yeah it's literal it's physical it happened physically. So you had the bombs first and then the food packages which were corned beef. But I am here almost practical you know I'm very practical here that's why I like this Leninist approach. I would suggest Americans to simply adopt a certain code so that ordinary people know. Like if you have red color it means bombs, green color it means food so that people know are these good you know. It's the same as you know where I was really against I was totally undecided I think both sides are guilty in that Dominique Strauss-Kahn case but on one point I was strictly for the girl. You remember when they claimed that she was lying in her application. But my god everyone is lying that's the only way to do it. I even read somewhere that there are already that she simply used there are four or five standard narratives that every practically refugee from Africa uses. One of them is that your village was occupied and some gang of raped all of you whatever no. So my
mean here I agree with you something new and we desperately need a theory of it, something new is emerging which maybe in a Hegelian way overcomes this old dichotomy state regulated and liberal. Another thing, I'm sorry that I didn't have time to go into economic analysis more in detail because okay I will give you just some clues. First I agree with Fredric Jameson although he knows next to nothing about economy but probably his sources were good no. Where he claims that today one of the keys to understand the system is to first to radically redefine unemployment. Unemployment is no longer just that classical Marxist reserve army but it's getting much more radical. We have that his idea is that with the ongoing technological revolutions the system is producing larger and larger strata of people which are how to stay put it structurally unemployed like you were a textile worker for years then all of a sudden it goes bankrupt and then what can happen okay people like Anthony Giddens may come to you and tell you reinvent yourself this postmodern bullshit but de facto you are out. It's even worse as we know this is why students protest, we get even a kind of a pre-unemployment in the sense that you get probably millions of students getting high education being more and more aware that there is not even a chance for them to get the job. Then I think we should put into the same line the whole countries being excluded as this rogue state whatever this mixture of I mean those in power like did you notice how being the object of humanitarian help and being the object of war on terror are basically like the Janus head two sides of the of the same like this is what I like one of the best caricatures from Afghanistan war the first one when United States overthrew Taliban you know there was already this term Axis of Evil no and you have two Afghanistani farmers looking at some American planes and asking what are these are they bombers bombing the Axis of Evil or the good ones helping the victims you like this moment of indecision so okay what I Actually this one it was quite literal because immediately after the Americans entered Afghanistan entered Kabul they used planes to drop food packages to various villages. So it was literal yeah. No no it's literal yeah yeah it's literal it's physical it happened physically. So you had the bombs first and then the food packages which were corned beef. But I am here almost practical you know I'm very practical here that's why I like this Leninist approach. I would suggest Americans to simply adopt a certain code so that ordinary people know. Like if you have red color it means bombs, green color it means food so that people know are these good you know. It's the same as you know where I was really against I was totally undecided I think both sides are guilty in that Dominique Strauss-Kahn case but on one point I was strictly for the girl. You remember when they claimed that she was lying in her application. But my god everyone is lying that's the only way to do it. I even read somewhere that there are already that she simply used there are four or five standard narratives that every practically refugee from Africa uses. One of them is that your village was occupied and some gang of raped all of you whatever no. So my
unknown
suggestion
suggestion
Slavoj Žižek
to the Americans would be that simply when they print the form they simply say you became a refugee because and then printed the four standard version like A my village was gang raped B C D and then E any other exception but if another version clarify it like because you're making it much more difficult for the bureaucrats no and so on. No seriously just to give to
to the Americans would be that simply when they print the form they simply say you became a refugee because and then printed the four standard version like A my village was gang raped B C D and then E any other exception but if another version clarify it like because you're making it much more difficult for the bureaucrats no and so on. No seriously just to give to
unknown
go through this economy first thing. The second thing I think I hope we all agree here one of the lessons of what is going on now is also that maybe the time has come I hope we agree to stop with this how to call it Foucault Agamben focus on micropower domination modes of domination and to admit that exploitation has to join the camp. That this exclusive focus on forms of domination
go through this economy first thing. The second thing I think I hope we all agree here one of the lessons of what is going on now is also that maybe the time has come I hope we agree to stop with this how to call it Foucault Agamben focus on micropower domination modes of domination and to admit that exploitation has to join the camp. That this exclusive focus on forms of domination
Slavoj Žižek
without taking into account the proper economic dynamics is mystifies the field. It's again the problem of domination blah blah but the the proper economic dynamics is lost. Second thing, here I'm critical about Jameson who when he talks about rogue countries
without taking into account the proper economic dynamics is mystifies the field. It's again the problem of domination blah blah but the the proper economic dynamics is lost. Second thing, here I'm critical about Jameson who when he talks about rogue countries
unknown
just excludes them like
just excludes them like
Slavoj Žižek
they are excluded. No they are never simply excluded like I claim if there is a country today which is fully included into the world market it's Congo which is a rogue country. I mean we know it's a basic source for certain marks or even take the case of Afghanistan. Taliban were a tragic interlude because you know whatever you say against them the production of opium went down for and the main economic result of American intervention was that now they are back in game they produce so again this is for me again as I repeat I know myself always the point of the Hegelian notion of totality. How how how those who are out are also in in in the very mode of being excluded. This is the form of their integration. And now if you just allow me here maybe we agree no no contrary to this idea that we intellectuals or who or people should provide a detailed blueprint I'm fully aware that neither the people no I'm totally opposed to this Maoist Heideggerian you will immediately see why Heideggerian mystification of learn from the ordinary people. I think whenever a certain regime refers to the wisdom of ordinary people it's usually the high bureaucracy justifying legitimizing itself with that. I was did I already no I didn't read here that passage very short from Heidegger. You know the most this is for me Heidegger I love Heidegger great philosopher but here at his lowest. You know that in he was called to Berlin to retain a professorship there and then he rejected but he wrote a short text Warum in der Provinz bleiben, why do we stay in the provinces? And this is the disgusting mystification at its purest. I quote it: Recently I got a second invitation to teach at the University of Berlin (Heidegger in On that occasion I left Freiburg and withdrew to the cabin (his Todtnauberg mountain head). I listened to what the mountains and the forest and the farmlands were saying. And I went to see an old friend of mine, a year old farmer. He had read about the call to Berlin in the newspapers. What would he say? Slowly he fixed the sure gaze of his clear eyes on mine and keeping his mouth tightly shut he thoughtfully put his faithful hand on my shoulder, ever so slightly he shook his head. That meant absolutely no. So the ordinary... Now my point is here it's nice to imagine what the old farmer was really thinking. I think he was desperately trying to guess what city wisdom does Heidegger want from him and try to be polite you know and obviously he did he did give the right answer. So again we will not learn from
they are excluded. No they are never simply excluded like I claim if there is a country today which is fully included into the world market it's Congo which is a rogue country. I mean we know it's a basic source for certain marks or even take the case of Afghanistan. Taliban were a tragic interlude because you know whatever you say against them the production of opium went down for and the main economic result of American intervention was that now they are back in game they produce so again this is for me again as I repeat I know myself always the point of the Hegelian notion of totality. How how how those who are out are also in in in the very mode of being excluded. This is the form of their integration. And now if you just allow me here maybe we agree no no contrary to this idea that we intellectuals or who or people should provide a detailed blueprint I'm fully aware that neither the people no I'm totally opposed to this Maoist Heideggerian you will immediately see why Heideggerian mystification of learn from the ordinary people. I think whenever a certain regime refers to the wisdom of ordinary people it's usually the high bureaucracy justifying legitimizing itself with that. I was did I already no I didn't read here that passage very short from Heidegger. You know the most this is for me Heidegger I love Heidegger great philosopher but here at his lowest. You know that in he was called to Berlin to retain a professorship there and then he rejected but he wrote a short text Warum in der Provinz bleiben, why do we stay in the provinces? And this is the disgusting mystification at its purest. I quote it: Recently I got a second invitation to teach at the University of Berlin (Heidegger in On that occasion I left Freiburg and withdrew to the cabin (his Todtnauberg mountain head). I listened to what the mountains and the forest and the farmlands were saying. And I went to see an old friend of mine, a year old farmer. He had read about the call to Berlin in the newspapers. What would he say? Slowly he fixed the sure gaze of his clear eyes on mine and keeping his mouth tightly shut he thoughtfully put his faithful hand on my shoulder, ever so slightly he shook his head. That meant absolutely no. So the ordinary... Now my point is here it's nice to imagine what the old farmer was really thinking. I think he was desperately trying to guess what city wisdom does Heidegger want from him and try to be polite you know and obviously he did he did give the right answer. So again we will not learn from
unknown
protesters if I may put it in German warum bleiben wir in Wall Street or whatever. And I cannot add here another cynicism but
protesters if I may put it in German warum bleiben wir in Wall Street or whatever. And I cannot add here another cynicism but
Slavoj Žižek
I don't mean it against. This is the reality of politics. I think that the recent occupation of Zuccotti Square is the best thing that could have happened to protesters. Because my friends were telling me it was losing momentum and so on. And now at least they can claim oh we were brutally suppressed and so on. They are so stupid Bloomberg and the the New York administration my god I would have left them there to slowly disintegrate no? It's okay whatever. I what you think give advice to Bloomberg in your off... I was I appeared on Bloomberg TV with that Charlie Rose. Okay let me go on. So you know on the other so what I propose as a formula is what. Recently I bought in New York a very good book Andrej Platonov The Soul, a collection of his stories which has a wonderful afterword by that progressive blah-blah writer John Berger. And although it was written three years ago it's as if he is addressing today's protests when he writes: The multitudes (means the protesting people, I don't like this Negri Hardt term) in the definite... So you wrote at the back of Empire that this is the manifesto, Marx manifesto for the 21st century. So how can you say now that you don't like Hardt and Negri. Listen you don't take into account the inherent dialectics of history you should read Stalin's On Dialectical and Historical Materialism. Okay. Look, the multitude have answers to questions which have not yet been posed and they have the capacity to outlive the walls (class distinction walls). The questions are not yet asked because to do so requires words and concepts which ring true and those currently being used to name events, democracy, liberty and so on have been rendered meaningless. With new concepts the questions will soon be posed for history involves precisely such a process of questioning. So that's my very simple purely rhetorical but I think there is a moment of truth in it proposal. We shouldn't think about our role as intellectuals of you know ordinary people want from us knowledge we will provide the blueprint. No, I think that I much more like this approach which reminds me of what Claude Lévi-Strauss wrote long ago about prohibition of incest. That this is not an enigma which requires an answer but it's an answer we just don't know to which question it is an answer. So I think this is a much nicer description of what is going on now. The people with their protests are not asking questions they are an answer but an opaque answer. What we intellectuals can do with our knowledge is not to provide questions but to start sorry to provide answers but to start to raise the right questions so that still the answer can only come from the people but the answer will be recognized as the answer if we provide the frame for the question to which this is a much more modest model where nonetheless we intellectuals are crucial. I don't buy that pseudo-populist bullshit we are nothing people know everything but nonetheless I think that if anything with the 20th century fiascos we intellectuals lost this arrogant right to say we have the answers we show you the way. Something like this would be maybe a good description of where we are today. And again don't misunderstand me, of even if I hate you Greeks you ruined European Community with your laziness and so on, you are you are the great ones you know in what sense that you are much further than others whose protest is way too moralistic. I sympathize with my friends in Spain. Again as I already said what I'm afraid of is only you know they even
I don't mean it against. This is the reality of politics. I think that the recent occupation of Zuccotti Square is the best thing that could have happened to protesters. Because my friends were telling me it was losing momentum and so on. And now at least they can claim oh we were brutally suppressed and so on. They are so stupid Bloomberg and the the New York administration my god I would have left them there to slowly disintegrate no? It's okay whatever. I what you think give advice to Bloomberg in your off... I was I appeared on Bloomberg TV with that Charlie Rose. Okay let me go on. So you know on the other so what I propose as a formula is what. Recently I bought in New York a very good book Andrej Platonov The Soul, a collection of his stories which has a wonderful afterword by that progressive blah-blah writer John Berger. And although it was written three years ago it's as if he is addressing today's protests when he writes: The multitudes (means the protesting people, I don't like this Negri Hardt term) in the definite... So you wrote at the back of Empire that this is the manifesto, Marx manifesto for the 21st century. So how can you say now that you don't like Hardt and Negri. Listen you don't take into account the inherent dialectics of history you should read Stalin's On Dialectical and Historical Materialism. Okay. Look, the multitude have answers to questions which have not yet been posed and they have the capacity to outlive the walls (class distinction walls). The questions are not yet asked because to do so requires words and concepts which ring true and those currently being used to name events, democracy, liberty and so on have been rendered meaningless. With new concepts the questions will soon be posed for history involves precisely such a process of questioning. So that's my very simple purely rhetorical but I think there is a moment of truth in it proposal. We shouldn't think about our role as intellectuals of you know ordinary people want from us knowledge we will provide the blueprint. No, I think that I much more like this approach which reminds me of what Claude Lévi-Strauss wrote long ago about prohibition of incest. That this is not an enigma which requires an answer but it's an answer we just don't know to which question it is an answer. So I think this is a much nicer description of what is going on now. The people with their protests are not asking questions they are an answer but an opaque answer. What we intellectuals can do with our knowledge is not to provide questions but to start sorry to provide answers but to start to raise the right questions so that still the answer can only come from the people but the answer will be recognized as the answer if we provide the frame for the question to which this is a much more modest model where nonetheless we intellectuals are crucial. I don't buy that pseudo-populist bullshit we are nothing people know everything but nonetheless I think that if anything with the 20th century fiascos we intellectuals lost this arrogant right to say we have the answers we show you the way. Something like this would be maybe a good description of where we are today. And again don't misunderstand me, of even if I hate you Greeks you ruined European Community with your laziness and so on, you are you are the great ones you know in what sense that you are much further than others whose protest is way too moralistic. I sympathize with my friends in Spain. Again as I already said what I'm afraid of is only you know they even
unknown
said we have a moral
said we have a moral
Slavoj Žižek
revolution. No sorry this is what Pope is saying, Pope a representative of Pope said recently horrible thing that the present crisis now is not a crisis of capitalism but a crisis of morality. And Cameron says that here.
revolution. No sorry this is what Pope is saying, Pope a representative of Pope said recently horrible thing that the present crisis now is not a crisis of capitalism but a crisis of morality. And Cameron says that here.
unknown
Who? David Cameron. Yeah but this is precisely
Who? David Cameron. Yeah but this is precisely
Slavoj Žižek
it's it's again like like coffee without cream. It's nice of them that they directly say what to negate no that they mention morality so as not to question capitalism and so on and so on. So although there are bad guys who should be morally condemned, shot that I don't care whatever you want I don't have any problems with that penalty. But what I'm saying is that nonetheless it's absolutely crucial not to moralize the crisis in this sense against greed or whatever and so on and so on. Now maybe it's time really to conclude. We can have the smoke the peace pipe and so on. Yeah but I will take shown your pipe so that I put some poison into it. Let us open it open it to people if you want to make any comments any questions.
it's it's again like like coffee without cream. It's nice of them that they directly say what to negate no that they mention morality so as not to question capitalism and so on and so on. So although there are bad guys who should be morally condemned, shot that I don't care whatever you want I don't have any problems with that penalty. But what I'm saying is that nonetheless it's absolutely crucial not to moralize the crisis in this sense against greed or whatever and so on and so on. Now maybe it's time really to conclude. We can have the smoke the peace pipe and so on. Yeah but I will take shown your pipe so that I put some poison into it. Let us open it open it to people if you want to make any comments any questions.