The Vicious Cycle of Capitalist Reproduction
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2013-11-25 · 1:52:03 · 14,974 words
ideologyhegel-dialecticspsychoanalysiscapitalismcommunism-socialismgeopolitics-warrace-antisemitismdemocracyrevolution-violenceliberalism-political-correctnesscinema-art-culturesubjectivityphilosophy-general
Žižek delivers a wide-ranging lecture on the problem of drawing correct lines of political division, arguing that most contemporary leftist conflicts, over Zionism/anti-semitism, Syria, Turkey's Gezi Park protests, are 'false struggles' that obscure the real division. He develops a defence of the need for a 'true Master' (not authoritarian but enabling, revealing freedom rather than prescribing conduct), drawing on Lacan's four discourses, Kierkegaard's apostle/genius distinction, and Steve Jobs as an unexpected illustration. The talk also addresses ideology, class struggle, paranoia, and the Hegelian Master–Servant dialectic in its closing Q&A.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 22
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Implicit in Žižek's critique of Damien Hirst: art that is 'penetrated by an absolute logic' of capital while performing anti-capitalist gestures exemplifies commodity abstraction operating through ideological denegation.
as “surplus enjoyment / jouissance”
Implicit in the anecdote of the voluptuous woman: the detail that 'disturbs' perfection is in fact constitutive of desire; remove the surplus and perfection dissolves into nothing.
as “interpretive paranoia”
The explosive search for hidden enemy agents that compensates for the inability to accept contingent failure; illustrated by WWI British anxieties about Belgian windmills and laundry.
as “good versus bad paranoia”
Žižek's distinction between paranoia that correctly detects real systemic manipulation (his fisherman anecdote) and pathological paranoia that invents agents to explain away contingency.
A spectacle of genuine artisanal or traditional practice manufactured for touristic consumption, where what appears as non-ideological reality is itself a commodity performance.
A political opposition that appears to demarcate genuine antagonism but in fact masks or displaces the real social division, leaving both sides complicit in a shared logic.
Used to describe the Fujimori government's strategy of promoting tabloid crime/celebrity media to atomise the public sphere and produce passive, fearful subjects incapable of solidarity.
The opposite left tendency: privileging one particular stratum (cognitariat, precariat, illegal immigrants, slum-dwellers) as the exclusive revolutionary agent at the expense of a broader class analysis.
as “proletarian”
Redefined by Žižek to include all those exploited today: traditional workers, unemployed, precariat, cognitariat, illegal immigrants, slum-dwellers, not only the industrial working class.
Ambiguous demand of the Gezi Park protesters: genuinely emancipatory insofar as it refuses patronising control of lifestyles, but also potentially a demand merely to be exploited in a more respectful manner while preserving appearances.
The way traditional ideology (family piety, religious observance) is not opposed to capitalist dynamism but serves as its strongest motivational support, explaining why Asian capitalism often outpaces liberal Western capitalism.
as “true Master”
A figure whose function is not to prescribe what others must do but to deliver the message 'you can do the impossible,' enabling subjects to confront their own freedom rather than imposing a programme.
The true Master's structural role: once the enabling message has been delivered and subjects' freedom is activated, the Master should disappear or be 'killed off' rather than consolidating power.
as “apostle vs. genius (Kierkegaard)”
Žižek prefers the apostle model for the true Master: the apostle carries a message whose import exceeds his own understanding, like a postman ignorant of the letter's contents, rather than the genius who knows by his own creative power.
as “big Other”
Invoked to contrast forms of social bond: capitalism operates without a traditional Master and is dominated by University discourse, whose hidden truth is still the Master signifier.
A reflexive signifier that names an originary gap; Žižek notes it can shift from covering an inconsistency (ideology) to marking it (as in Lacan's analyst's discourse), and that 'class struggle' functions as one in traditional Marxism.
as “discourse of the University”
The Lacanian discourse that has replaced the Master's discourse under capitalism, whose hidden truth is still the Master signifier; it presents domination in the form of neutral expertise.
as “discourse of the Analyst”
For Žižek, the Analyst's discourse places the Master signifier at the position of production (the fourth place), revealing it as what it is rather than concealing it.
Lacan's move from 'there is no sexual relationship' to 'there is a non-relationship', the antagonism must itself be embodied in an excessive element that stands for it, such as the anti-semitic Jew for class struggle.
Used here as the embodiment of non-relationship, an excessive element (e.g. the anti-semitic figure of 'the Jew') that stands for the structural antagonism (class struggle) which would otherwise have no representational form.
The theoretical model (Deleuzian, Negrian) that posits an originary productive flux from which hierarchy arises as secondary alienation; Žižek follows Lacan in arguing that representation or excess is itself constitutive, not derivative.
Negri's category, critiqued by Žižek for ambiguously conflating today's most dynamic digital capitalists with the exploited, making it unable to ground a clear political division.
Stories he reaches for 2
Žižek cites Karadžić's own memoir to show that the siege could have been broken by a single Western battalion at the airport; Western powers chose not to act while performing outrage at Sarajevo's suffering, exposing humanitarian fascination with suffering as cover for complicity.
“the Western sympathy with suffering Sarajevo was pure absolute hypocrisy”
Žižek endorses Sloterdijk's thesis that global capitalism is an enclosure (cupola/globe) by pointing to films that knew this long before theory: Boorman's Zardoz (elite inside, primitives outside), Elysium, and the TV series Under the Dome all figure the fundamental dystopian metaphor of sealed capitalist space.
“Who knew this for a long time... the good old one John Boorman directed it with Sean Connery... Zardoz. Where you know the elite lives within and then primitives outside.”
Works invoked 15
Less Than Nothing book
Žižek's own 'big fat book'; referenced for its pages on Lacan's move from 'there is no relationship' to 'there is a non-relationship' and the signifier of the barred inconsistent Other.
Elysium film
Used to illustrate Sloterdijk's thesis that global capitalism is a cupola excluding three-quarters; Žižek says Sloterdijk provides 'philosophical foundation for Elysium.'
The Hunger Games film
Not yet seen by Žižek at time of lecture but mentioned approvingly; an audience member notes its motto 'know your enemy' summarises the lecture's theme of distinguishing false from real divisions.
Anti-Oedipus book
Deleuze and Guattari's text; represents the 'productive paradigm' Žižek (via Lacan) argues against: positing productive desire as primary and hierarchy as secondary/alienated.
Žižek's own short book; attacked simultaneously as 'openly anti-semitic' by Jerusalem Post and as 'the most perfidious Zionist propaganda' by the Egyptian Al-Ahram, which Žižek takes as confirmation he is on the right path.
Zardoz film
John Boorman's film with Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling; identified as possibly the first dystopia of sealed capitalist enclosure (elite inside, primitives outside), the genre Sloterdijk's globe-as-cupola makes explicit.
Forgiveness film
Udi Aloni's 'absurdly openly pro-Palestinian' film for which Žižek attended the Jerusalem Film Festival at his own expense, provoking accusations of Zionist collaboration.
Kierkegaard's text; favourite Kierkegaard work for Žižek; the genius/apostle distinction developed here informs his model of the true Master as apostle/postman.
Hitchcock film; its famous scene of a windmill turning in the wrong direction is cited as a cultural parallel to WWI paranoia about Belgian mills.
Paul Fussell's book; praised as a good lesson in ideological mechanisms, shows how WWI trauma forced nations to revive ancient myths and triggered interpretive paranoia, and supplies the No Man's Land deserter legend.
Julien Gracq's 1951 novel; 'one of the great novels of the 20th century'; origin of Badiou's 'better a disaster than a non-event' formula; used by Žižek to question whether any dynamism, even catastrophic, is preferable to apparent peace.
S.O.S. book
Reginald Grant's WWI book cataloguing supposed Belgian signalling to Germans via windmills, church clocks and laundry; used as a case study in interpretive paranoia.
Stephen King TV series cited as another instance of the capitalist-enclosure metaphor (a small town sealed off), which Žižek calls 'the fundamental metaphor.'
Short book by Robert Pippin on the Western genre; praised as 'more Marxist than many proclaimed Marxists' for showing that the passage to bourgeois rule-of-law in Westerns always involves an illegal foundational violence that persists.
Sloterdijk book; thesis endorsed: global capitalism presents itself as universal openness but is the most radical enclosure, a cupola that excludes three-quarters of humanity.
People invoked 33
Avital Ronell negative
Described as a 'half-friend from New York' who now 'hates him'; her argument that every pupil must betray their Master is exposed as inconsistent since she never betrayed her own Master, Derrida.
Saroj Giri positive
Indian friend who provided the data on highly religious Indian digital capitalists and corrected the Western developmental narrative that treats Asian capitalism as behind liberal capitalism.
Mentioned in the context of Badiou's remark that it would have been 'more interesting' if Milošević had won over Slovenia; Žižek rejects this as an obscene indifference to suffering.
Udi Aloni positive
Personal friend; Žižek attended the Jerusalem Film Festival as Aloni's personal guest to support his pro-Palestinian film Forgiveness, at his own expense.
Adam Kirsch negative
One of two critics who accused Žižek of 'laying the foundations for a new Holocaust'; Žižek dismisses this as an absurd misreading.
Alessandro Russo positive
Italian half-Maoist whose distinction between 'meta-classism' and 'hyper-classism' at a Seoul conference on communism Žižek endorses as an accurate diagnosis of the radical left's oscillation.
Cited from his memoir to show that Western powers could easily have broken the Sarajevo siege but chose not to, Žižek uses Karadžić's own admission to expose Western humanitarian hypocrisy.
Robert Pippin positive
Described as a 'center, even maybe center-right American liberal Hegelian' whose openly stated goal of reasserting bourgeois values paradoxically reveals more inconsistency (and thus does more critical work) than most leftist writing; his book on Westerns praised as 'more Marxist than many proclaimed Marxists.'
Bülent Somay positive
Turkish doctoral candidate whose thesis on the Gezi Park protests Žižek cites extensively, especially on Erdoğan's patronising paternalism and the paradox of veiled Muslim women asserting modern choice.
Mentioned as Avital Ronell's Master; a Derridean defends him by claiming Derrida was 'always already betraying himself,' which Žižek implies is a rationalisation.
Paul Fussell positive
His book The Great War and Modern Memory is praised as a 'good lesson in ideological mechanisms,' providing the material on WWI paranoia (Belgian windmills) and the No Man's Land deserter legend.
Jacques Lacan positive
Central theoretical reference throughout; Žižek draws on the four discourses, the non-relationship, objet a, and the Master signifier to articulate his argument about the true Master and political division.
Gilles Deleuze negative
The Anti-Oedipus model of originary productive flux (desire) from which hierarchy arises secondarily is identified as the 'productive paradigm' Lacan is trying to break from; Žižek follows Lacan's critique.
Steve Jobs positive
Žižek says he 'hates' Jobs ('he is worse than Bill Gates') but quotes him to illustrate the true Master's fidelity to his own desire rather than guessing consumers' wishes.
Judith Butler positive
Noted as 'not a feminist, doesn't want to be'; cited approvingly for the claim that in liberal permissive societies domination is never presented as such, and the first step of liberation is to make the master act openly as a master.
Hanan Ashrawi positive
Former PLO spokesperson; Žižek treats her disappearance from public life as a symptom of the hidden complicity between hardline Zionists and hardline Palestinian religious leaders who both found her Western-educated image unhelpful.
Damien Hirst negative
'Absolutely thousand percent' the emblem of today's capitalism; his apparently provocative art was carefully planned to address nouveaux riches digital capitalists who want figurative work with sex and violence.
Julien Gracq positive
Author of Le Rivage des Syrtes, called 'one of the great novels of the 20th century'; used to test Badiou's 'better a disaster' formula.
Antonio Negri negative
Critiqued for oscillating between 'Multitude versus Empire' and a class-based analysis of productive workers, without resolving the relation; noted that Negri admits the most dynamic digital capitalists may already count as 'Multitude.'
Friend and interlocutor; Žižek endorses Badiou's event-philosophy in general but pushes back against the formula 'better a disaster than a non-event,' which he finds sometimes seduced by pure dynamism regardless of content (e.g. Badiou's ambiguous comments on Le Pen and on Yugoslav disintegration).
Friedrich Engels negative
Criticised for repeated explicit statements in 1848 that Southern Slavic 'miserable nations' deserved only to perish in the 'Holocaust of the new world revolution', taken as the unresolved problem of mixing national liberation with revolutionary universalism.
Alexandre Kojève negative
His proto-Marxist reading of Hegel's Master–Slave dialectic (worker ultimately wins through labour) is dismissed as a simplification; Žižek argues the actual dialectic ends in Stoicism, not worker victory.
Cited briefly as an example: 'God' functions as Lacan's Master signifier in Spinoza, naming what escapes knowing.
Prime Minister of Turkey; his lifestyle paternalism (telling women how many children to have, pulling cigarettes from people's mouths) is identified as the direct cause of the Gezi Park protests.
Michel Foucault negative
Foucauldian nominalism and the 'multitude/power' framework are contrasted unfavourably with Lacanian universalism; Žižek argues against the Foucauldian tendency to dissolve class into diffuse power relations.
Peter Sloterdijk positive
Described as a 'crazy conservative liberal' whose thesis in The World's Interior of Capital, that global capitalism is a cupola that excludes three-quarters, is endorsed as 'quite a nice one' despite Žižek's reservations about misreadings of Sloterdijk as neo-fascist.
John N. Gray negative
The other critic who attacked Žižek as 'directly laying the foundations for a new Holocaust'; treated as an example of how one can 'really say anything today.'
Ernst Bloch positive
Žižek admits he doesn't know Bloch well but endorses his obsession with finding utopian dimensions in low/popular culture and his ontological concept of the 'not-yet.'
Žižek claims to be 'much more than Badiou critical of Mao Zedong' but extracts an 'authentic moment' from the Cultural Revolution launch: the message 'It is right to rebel' as exemplary of the true Master.
Søren Kierkegaard positive
Philosophical Fragments cited for the genius/apostle distinction; Žižek prefers the apostle model for the true Master, one who carries a message exceeding his own grasp.
Žižek notes Badiou called Le Pen 'the only interesting politician in France' for introducing passion into politics; Žižek is sharply critical of this Badiouian logic of privileging dynamism over content.
Karl Marx positive
Praised for extending Hegelian method to capital; Žižek defends class struggle as the fundamental political category despite acknowledging limitations in classical Marxist frameworks.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Fundamental reference; Žižek argues for being 'more Hegelian than Hegel' on the question of capital, and credits Marx with extending Hegelian dialectics to capitalism in a way Hegel himself failed to do.
What it argues
false versus true lines of political divisionthe true Master as enabler of freedom rather than oppressoruniversalised suspicion and ideological paralysisclass struggle beyond the traditional working classthe ambiguity of national and identity-based resistance strugglesparanoia and its legitimate versus pathological formsemancipatory myths as non-ideology
Dialectical moves 11
“The detail that disturbs perfection is precisely what creates it; take it away and you get not perfection but nothing.”
The apparent surplus (excess weight, the disturbing element) is constitutive of the desirable object, removing it does not reveal an underlying perfection but destroys the whole.
“Although the No Man's Land deserters appear as the image of war at its most crazy, they are simultaneously the self-negation of war—the only Leninists there.”
What looks like the extreme symptom of a phenomenon (wild outcasts of war) is actually its internal negation, embodying the universal fraternity that the war denies.
“The more we live as free individuals with no Master, the more effectively we are non-free.”
The apparent absence of authority (consumerist autonomy) is the most effective form of unfreedom; the Master is needed precisely to deliver genuine freedom.
“The true Master doesn't tell you what you want—he tells you what he wants—and that is precisely how he gives you back to yourself.”
Genuine mastery is not knowing the other's desire better than they do (Stalinist pseudo-mastery) but fidelity to one's own desire, which paradoxically enables the other's freedom.
“A true Master is not an agent of discipline and prohibition; his message is not 'you cannot' but 'you can'—you can do what appears impossible.”
The Master's authority is enabling rather than prohibitive, opening a space for action that the subject could not access alone.
“Far from being oppressed by a Master, the subject who has no Master is most enslaved.”
The liberal fantasy of masterless freedom conceals a deeper subjection to consumerist ideology; the Master-function reveals rather than forecloses freedom.
“'Dignity' can also mean: exploit me, be my master, but please allow me to save appearances—don't humiliate me publicly.”
The emancipatory demand for dignity has an ideologically regressive double: a request for polite domination rather than its abolition.
“The veiled woman uses the very instrument of invisibility to become visible as such.”
What appears as a traditional gesture of self-concealment is redeployed as an assertion of modern individual choice and visibility, the form reverses its content.
“Lacan moves imperceptibly from 'there is no relationship' to 'there is a non-relationship'—the antagonism itself must be embodied in an element that stands for it.”
The absence of a relation is not simply a void; it must be positively incarnated in a symptom-figure (e.g. the anti-semitic Jew), which means class struggle too always has an excessive element that constitutes it.
“Global capitalism, which boasts of being open, is in fact the most radical enclosure imaginable—a cupola that excludes three-quarters while those inside think they see everything.”
The universalist rhetoric of globalisation masks a structural enclosure that excludes the majority; the globe is actually a dome.
“Asian countries develop fast not in spite of traditional values but because of them—tradition is not a remainder of the past but the very motivational engine of capitalism.”
Traditional religious and familial ideology is not backward residue but functional support for capitalist dynamics, inverting the Western developmental narrative.
Claims 19
asserts
Most current left polemics—about Zionism, Syria, identity—are false struggles that display ideological credentials rather than identifying the real political division.contemporary left politics
rejects
Anti-capitalist reflexivity and universalised suspicion (e.g. 'you are also part of the capitalist machinery') are politically paralysing rather than emancipatory.ideology critique as self-reflexivity
asserts
Damien Hirst is the perfect emblem of contemporary capitalism, his provocation-for-the-rich aesthetic being the product of careful market calculation.contemporary art and capitalism
rejects
Anti-semitism is not the predominant form of racism today, and Zionism is not the paradigmatic case of neo-colonialism—both sides of this debate mistake the particular for the universal.Zionism/anti-semitism as master-racism
reframes
What Israel practises is ordinary, cheap neo-colonialism—not some arch-evil or unique crime—and framing it as the absolute symbol of oppression actually mystifies rather than clarifies it.Israel-Palestine conflict
asserts
The Palestinian struggle must maintain unconditional appeal to anti-Zionist progressive Israelis; the moment it becomes an ethnic struggle of Palestinians against Jews as such, emancipatory politics is lost.Palestinian emancipatory politics
asserts
The Syrian conflict is a pseudo-struggle in the sense that it is substantially a proxy war between Shia and Sunni interests financed by Saudi Arabia and Turkey, not a genuine emancipatory struggle where the left must take sides.Syrian civil war
asserts
Western media fascination with suffering typically produces immobilised spectators rather than political actors, and Western failure to act (as in the siege of Sarajevo) often masks deliberate hypocrisy.humanitarian spectacle and Western hypocrisy
reframes
The demand for 'dignity' (Gezi Park) is genuinely progressive only insofar as it refuses patronising control of life; it is regressive if it amounts to a demand to be exploited while appearances are maintained.Turkey's Gezi Park protests
asserts
Traditional religious or ethnic ideology is not an obstacle to Asian capitalist development but its motivational engine—Asian capitalism is more efficient than Western liberal capitalism, not less.capitalism and tradition in Asia
asserts
We need a Master not to be told what to do but to receive the enabling message 'you can do the impossible,' since without an external kick subjects remain enslaved in the appearance of consumerist freedom.the necessity of the Master figure
asserts
People do not know what they want; the Master's authority lies not in reading customers' desires but in fidelity to his own desire, then offering the result for others to accept or reject.desire, autonomy and the Master
asserts
The appropriate response to the Master's function is to 'kill the Master' once things are set in motion—the Master is a vanishing mediator, not a permanent source of authority.the Master as vanishing mediator
reframes
We should reject both Badiou's formula 'better a disaster than a non-event' and the peaceful consumerist alternative; the real question is whether ostensibly peaceful bourgeois life conceals class struggle.Badiou's 'mieux vaut un désastre qu'un désêtre'
asserts
Class struggle is the fundamental political division; the left must redefine the proletariat to include all exploited groups but must not dissolve class into 'multitude' or purely identitarian categories.class struggle and political division
rejects
The Kojèvean reading of Hegel's Master–Slave dialectic (that the worker ultimately wins through labour) is too simple; the dialectic's actual result is Stoicism, mastery over nothing.Hegel's Master-Slave dialectic
asserts
Marx's great achievement was extending Hegel's approach to capital, since Hegel himself had no real grasp of capitalism—his notion of political economy remained at the level of Adam Smith.Marx's extension of Hegel
asserts
The 'like farm' phenomenon (paid workers pressing 'like' all day) shows that populist audience feedback mechanisms are manufactured and should not be trusted as democratic signals of what people want.social media and manufactured consent
asserts
The legend of No Man's Land deserter communities is non-ideology: a mythical but emancipatory truth that the war being fought is a false war whose real division is between the madness of imperialist warfare and universal fraternity.emancipatory myth versus ideology
Quotes 17
“You experience something as a detail which disturbs perfection. But take that disturbing surplus away, and you don't get perfection, you get just nothing.”Slavoj Žižek · the constitutive role of the excess / objet petit a
“They were the only Leninists there. The beauty of this legend is that it clearly describes a kind of alternate community, a great 'no' to the madness going on above on the battlefield.”Slavoj Žižek · emancipatory myth as non-ideology / No Man's Land deserters
“Precisely by ignoring the official lines of division between us and them, they stand for the real division, the one that matters.”Slavoj Žižek · false versus real lines of division
“Yellow press as directly directly intended to function as an instrument of political demobilization.”Slavoj Žižek · prensa chicha / ideology as demobilisation
“What I find difficult and wrong: the Palestinian struggle should absolutely unconditionally appeal to the solidarity with whatever we call them anti-Zionist progressive Israelis.”Slavoj Žižek · unconditional universalism in Palestine solidarity
“I think it's much harsher if we reject Israel politics in this way, to deprive them of this status of some arch-criminals, the symbol of today's oppression. No, it's just pretty cheap vulgar ordinary neo-colonialism.”Slavoj Žižek · Israel as ordinary neo-colonialism, not unique evil
“Asian countries are developing so fast not in spite of the hold that tradition has over them but because of it.”Slavoj Žižek · traditional ideology as capitalist engine
“The more we live as free individuals with no Master, the more effectively we are non-free.”Slavoj Žižek · the paradox of masterless freedom
“A Master is a kind of vanishing mediator who gives you back to yourself, who precisely delivers you to the abyss of your freedom.”Slavoj Žižek · the true Master as vanishing mediator
“A true Master is not an agent of discipline and prohibition. His message is not 'You cannot.' It is 'You can.'”Slavoj Žižek · the enabling Master versus prohibitive authority
“People don't know what they want until you show it to them. [He doesn't say] 'We figure out what the customers want.' He says, 'We figure out what we want.'”Slavoj Žižek · fidelity to one's own desire / Steve Jobs as model of the Master
“The Master's power stems from his fidelity to his desire.”Slavoj Žižek · Master's authority grounded in desire not knowledge
“The good idea is that once things get moving, you kill the master.”Slavoj Žižek · Master as vanishing mediator to be surpassed
“The true choice is between pseudo-event and non-being... is this peaceful life really so peaceful? Where is class struggle there?”Slavoj Žižek · critique of Badiou's disaster/désêtre formula
“Dignity can also mean: okay, go on, exploit me, be my master, but please allow me to save appearances, don't humiliate me publicly.”Slavoj Žižek · ambiguity of dignity demand / polite domination
“Lacan moves imperceptibly from 'there is no relationship' to 'there is a non-relationship'—the non-relationship itself has to be embodied in an element which stands for it.”Slavoj Žižek · Lacan on non-relationship and its embodiment
“The true art of civilization for me is to be polite in a vulgar way.”Slavoj Žižek · civilisation and vulgarity as ritual
Transcript 63 turns
Slavoj Žižek
Every time that I give a new talk, I begin with, "This time, I will really stick to my topic and..." It never happens, so. No, but what I mean is I will not, of course, stick to the topic of political economy et cetera, but I will talk about the problem of drawing the right line of division today. Why? Let me begin with a biological topic. Why do baboons have big protruding hairless red butts, asses, I mean, no? The main reason is that the buttocks of a female in heat will swell so the male knows that she is ready to mate. And I think that hearing, participating in all these polemics within whatever remains of the left today, more and more leftist intellectuals do remind me of these baboons, and they are displaying their buttocks, whose buttocks is larger and so on and so on. Why? Because I think that especially today, it's important to learn to distinguish false lines of division, false opposition from those the lines which really divide us. Why? Again, an example that I think I already used once. Think about today's big international art biennales. I noticed two things about them. First, they are the big capitalist enterprise. But did you notice how ideologically almost all of them, especially the curators who wrote the introductory note, justify them in some kind of pseudo-anti-capitalist Marxist terms, no? The usual way you say is that we live in the time of global machinery and capitalist machinery, and we are all part of it, how to acquire critical distance and so on and so on. So the irony is that they even admit that they are part, but they think that if you add some kind of general reflection against commodification or whatever, that it helps you. No, it doesn't help you. I mean, here we should return to the Marx Brothers saying, you know, "Why are you saying that you are part of capitalist machinery when you really are part of capitalist machinery?" They are, totally. And I, again, here I'm quite merciless. I think that if there is an artist who is fully the emblem, symbol of today's capitalism, it's Damien Hirst. Absolutely thousand percent. I mean, first, I read in an article on him, the way he, how carefully it was planned, his type of work. His problem was how to address these new, nouveaux riches digital capitalists and so on, who want something which looks provocative, modern, but still figurative enough to cause a provocation with a little bit of sex, violence, and so on and so on. It was it was so carefully, so carefully planned. So what I'm saying is that with this kind of permanent anti-capitalist opposition, which is, of course, at the same time penetrated by an absolute logic of suspicion, but which is not productive, which immobilizes you. Like, my god, whenever I give a talk, there is one idiot who says, "But but you are kind of a star, you are Elvis of whatever, cultural theory. But don't you think that you are also caught in this machinery now, that even if you criticize capital, you are part of it," and so on and so on. You know, all this universalized suspicion, I think, just immobilizes us. I think if you have something critical to say, don't worry about will it be appropriate and so on, just do it. If it will work, it will work, if not, it will not. But I must say that with all these ideological denegations, I find refreshing to to find someone like Robert Pippin, the center, even maybe center-right American liberal Hegelian, who is one of who in one of his last books openly put as his goal the reassertion of bourgeois way of life, of bourgeois values. Now, I find this extremely refreshing, that there is the guy who openly calls for the impossible. And as it's usual, the result is much more subversive than most of the leftist stuff. When he inquires into how to assert bourgeois values of decency, equality, freedom today, he finds so many inherent inconsistencies. For example, you should read, I mentioned it already here, one of his last books, Pippin's, a short book, I forgot the title, on Westerns. My god, it's more Marxist than many proclaimed Marxists. He simply shows that the central topic of Westerns is this passage from pre-rule of law to the bourgeois rule of law society. And his point is how the message of Westerns is that this passage itself is always illegal, includes a violation of law which is a necessary one and remains all the time in bourgeois society and so on and so on. So I think that when we are dealing with this type of thinking, by this I mean the standard leftist thinking, I think it's don't be fascinated by it. Look for what? Look for something which sticks out. In what sense? Now comes the dirty detail, then we go into real work. Recently, I met at a meeting in United States a voluptuous lady from Portugal, like a slightly overweight but very attractive, you will see why. And she told me a wonderful anecdote. She told me that her last lover, when he saw her for the first time fully naked, he told her that with just one or two kilos less weight, her body would have been perfect. And I told her, "Now you have a chance to learn Lacanian theory." Because the truth is that what would have happened if she were effectively to lose one or two kilos? I claim she would precisely no longer be attractive. She would be too thin or whatever. You see the paradox? You experience something as a detail which disturbs perfection. Like, it's a little bit too much, without that you would have been perfect. But take that disturbing surplus away, and you don't get perfection, you get just nothing. So you see the paradox. You add something which appeared to disturb perfection, but this very addition creates creates it. And that's the problem with politics, how... Now, real talk. I read recently a book by, I'm afraid how to pronounce the name, Paul F-U-S-S-E-L-L. Paul Fussell, sorry, sorry, yeah. *The Great War and Modern Memory*. Of course, I enjoyed the book, and why is it so interesting? First, it shows it's really a good lesson in ideological mechanisms. It shows how precisely because the Great War, World War I, was such a shock, unthinkable happened and so on, unthinkable for our European awareness, of course. How in order to cope with it, each nation had to resuscitate old ancient ideological myths. For example, do you know that to cope with the experience of trench warfare and so on, the basic metaphor became wasteland from the Grail, Knights of the Round Table legend. As if trenches are a new form of wasteland, our soldiers there are new knights searching for the grail and so on and so on. Now, what but what interests me is something else. How the Great War triggered an explosion of interpretive paranoia. Why? For example, on the British side, the problem was how to account for the embarrassing fact that so many failures occurred on the British side. For example, they noticed that when they their offensives in Belgium, which was covered by British army, their offensives failed, and also the German guns bombing their positions usually hit their targets very precisely. So how could this have happened? Here comes my guy, Reginald Grant. He published already during the war a book called *S.O.S.*. It's ideological paranoia at its best. Grant's problem is a simple one. He simply cannot believe that Germans can be as astute as they are in locating the targets for their artillery across the enemy line. So the only solution was for him that they must have informers. Now, British are patriotic, it cannot be the British, it must have been the Belgian farmers behind the lines. So he enumerates, and it reads as a wonderful paranoia, a whole series of ways how Belgian farmers with pro-German sentiments were informing, signaling German artillery where there are the British targets. One is, and I love this one, it's the windmills which all of a sudden start to turn in the wrong direction. You know why? Did you see Hitchcock's *Foreign Correspondent*? It's the most famous scene, you know, where the guy, the good guy goes into the countryside and just an idyllic countryside with windmills and then, I think, he or his companion says, "But look, that mill is turning in the [unintelligible]." So this was a paranoia there. So this was the first idea. Then the second was that the hour hands on local church towers are set in out of sync with the actual time. So that if you have a church tower and you have the clock up there, no? So if it's but the church tower says quarter past this is a signal to Germans where. And the third one, the most interesting one, when Belgian housewives hang their laundry to dry on the ropes in front of their houses, the disposition of the colors of the laundry, like two white shirts then a blue one, signal to Germans, no? Of course, this was paranoia. But on the other hand, I claim that it's too simple to simply dismiss paranoia today. And the problem is precisely how to distinguish, to put it in very naive terms, good from bad, right from wrong paranoia. Because I remember a simple experience that I once had. I was visiting some friends on a beach in a Mediterranean country. And then these friends, kind of naive leftists, wanted to show me how everything is not industrialized today, how there still is authentic artisanal handwork and so on. So they showed me on a beach a lone fisherman repairing a network. The idea was to demonstrate again traditional labor grounded in ancient experience and wisdom, you know, a lone fisherman doing the net. But my reaction was, what if what I saw in front of me was a staged authenticity, a spectacle made to impress tourists, like, you know, preparing fresh food in department stores and so on. What if, if I were to get too close to the network, I mean fishing net, I would have noticed somewhere a small sign, "Made in China," and then I would have noticed that this authentic fisherman was just mimicking productive gestures, you know? And now comes the shock of my life. I did this and I was right. It was. And my friend was so embarrassed, he didn't notice it. You know, I think this was in South Portugal. You know, tourist agency said it adds to a flavor, you know, they cannot compare in luxury with French beaches or what. So they decided, local tourist board, "Let's add a touch of authenticity, you know, let's hire an unemployed guy to pretend there to to create the right atmosphere." But of course, my paranoia was then, what if he is because we were in South of Portugal, what if the way he is weaving it he is signaling to African immigrants, you know, like to the way that that would be my idea of my universe, no? Okay, but now I come to the real reason of telling this story. This is for me non-ideology, although it's totally mythical. I'm again referring to that book, *The Great War and Modern Memory*. The most brilliant hallucinatory legend of the Great War was a persistent rumor which circulated on both sides, British, French, and German. The rumor was that somewhere in the No Man's Land between the trenches of the front lines, you know, they were divided by usually some half a mile or at least three-four hundred yards, no man's land. In this desolate wasteland of scorched earth full of rotting corpses, holes full of water made by artillery explosions, abandoned trenches, caves, and tunnels, that in this area, gangs of half-crazy deserters live. The idea was, "We are not alone. It's not just us and enemy." That there is a whole mythical life going on there. Gangs composed of members of all participating armies and nations: Germans, French, British, Australians, Poles, Croats, Belgians, Italians. They lived their hidden lives in some abandoned tunnels in between, life of friendship and peace, avoiding detection, helping each other. Living in rags with long beards, they never allowed to be seen. From time to time, one just heard their crazy shouts and songs. They came out of their subterranean netherworld only during the night after a battle in order to scavenge the corpses and collect water and food. I think this is a beautiful emancipatory myth. They were the only Leninists there. The beauty of this legend is that it clearly describes a kind of alternate alternate community, a great "no" to the madness going on above on the battlefield. A group in which members of the warring nations live in peace with each other, the only enemy being war itself. While they may appear as an image of war at its most crazy, outcasts living a wild life, they are simultaneously the self-negation of war, literally an island of peace between the front lines. The emergence of universal fraternity that ignores these lines. Precisely by ignoring the official lines of division between us and them, they stand for the real division, the one that matters. They stand for the negation of the entire space of imperialist warfare. And so when people ask me, "But isn't everything ideology? How can you distinguish ideology from non-ideology?" I will tell them, "No, it's easy. You see, although this is clearly a myth—who knows what went on in reality—but I claim this crazy hallucination is an element of non-ideology." Because no matter if it's it doesn't matter if it's invented or not, the message is clear. The war we are fighting is a false war. It's not our war. The truth is in fraternity of all of us and so on and so on. And again, we need something like this today to discern true division in the confusion of secondary struggles. Let me give you another extreme case of such false struggle. Recently, I read a text on the ideological struggle in Peru at the time of the Shining Path, Sendero Luminoso rebellion. On the one hand, there was Shining Path, Sendero Luminoso. Their identity was educational. Even their most brutal violence had the purpose of educating people about the revolution, about the state, about the impending collapse of the state and so on and so on. Of course, this education was utterly authoritarian, exerted by those who believed they possessed the truth, they usurped the right to have absolute power over their students. But even more depressive was was government's counter-strategy. A strategy of pure political demobilization and demoralization. I think in a perverted way they were very wise. You know how the government, Fujimori government, countered the Sendero Luminoso offensive? The press, controlled or manipulated by the state power, actively promoted what analysts called Mean World Syndrome. The government solicited, with easy credits and so on, an explosion of what they called *prensa chicha*, I think. Tabloid newspapers specializing in celebrity gossip, crime stories and so on, plus TV talk shows that focused on real cases of drug addiction, family violence, adultery and so on. The goal of this strategy was to socially immobilize people through fear, to atomize the public sphere. So the message rendered was that the world is a dangerous place in which all one can do is look out for oneself since there is no hope for solidarity, just envy of the rich and famous and pleasure at their troubles. I think rarely in modern history was the ideological space of a country so neatly divided into, on the one hand totalitarian educationalism—and there are many wonderful jokes at this level, I was told this in Peru—like the idea was that they were preaching so much when Sendero Luminoso captured a traitor or whatever. They were preaching so much so that after three-four hours you said, "Shoot me, shoot me, just so that I don't have to listen more to your..." And but then how how those in power, isn't this terrifying? How they replied to it. Not through some liberal, freedom-loving elaborations, but with this utter decadence. This you know with yellow yellow press was literally the political answer to it. Yellow press as directly directly intended to function as as an instrument of political demobilization. Now this is again a situation where I think, why do I mention this opposition? Because there is simply no place for authentic emancipatory politics here. It's a pretty desperate situation. There is an- now comes a more problematic point, I just want to provoke you a little bit. Because there is another false struggle going on today, I claim, and this will be very problematic maybe for you if I say this. It concerns the status of anti-semitism and Zionism today. For some pro-Muslim leftists, Zionism is the exemplary case of today's neo-colonial racism, which is why the Palestinian struggle against Israel is the paradigm for all other anti-racist and anti-imperialist struggles. In a strictly inverted way, for some Zionists, anti-semitism, which for them lurks in every critique of Zionism, is the exemplary case of today's racism. These are of course two radically opposed positions, but what they share is that in both cases, Zionism or anti-semitism is a particular form of racism which colors all others. So that the true test of anti-racism today is to fight anti-semitism or to fight Zionism. The idea is, for example, a Zionist would tell you, "Ah, if you don't see anti-semitism as the crucial danger today, you are not truly anti-racist." Or an anti-Zionist would tell you, "If you don't strictly oppose Israeli politics on the West Bank, then you are not truly anti-imperialist." Now, of course I at a certain level agree with both sides. First, I think not in Arab countries but in Western Europe anti-semitism is well and alive. Look at Hungary and so on and some other countries. And of course the Palestinian struggle against Israel state has to be totally supported. I mean, I hope all I can tell you is that I'm paying the price for it, in the sense that I was as maybe some of you know, I was twice in the last two years attacked, not only as anti-semitic but once by Adam Kirsch then by John Gray as openly directly laying the foundations for a new Holocaust. It beats me how this works, I mean, but you can really say anything today. What I'm saying is that but nonetheless I think that I think that I of course anti-semitism is dangerous and so on and so on. But I simply don't think that anti-semitism is today the predominant form of racism. So I disagree with this aspect. But I also disagree with the opposite approach that the Palestinian struggle is as it were the symbol, the absolute symbol of anti-imperialist struggle, that this is the testing moment. Why not? Because again, my position is that the true view of the Palestinian conflict is that precisely Israel—and this is for me a much harsher criticism than the usual one—that precisely what Israel is doing is not some primordial crime, it's just another case of cheap ordinary neo-colonialism. I think it's much harsher if we reject Israel politics in this way, to deprive them of this status of some arch-criminals, the symbol of today's oppression. No, it's just it's just pretty cheap vulgar—precisely this has to be emphasized—vulgar ordinary neo-colonialism. So again, of course we should support Palestine. Shall we make a vote who is provoked by that statement and who is not? I'm not provoked by that. Perfect, but then you are an exception because again mostly I get attacked, and I think this is a sign, a good sign that I'm on the right way. I get usually attacked from both sides, you know. Like the as I already maybe mentioned here, one and the same book, *Welcome to the Desert of the Real*, was attacked in Jerusalem Post—okay this is not a great thing, they are crazy, right—but was attacked as as as brutally openly anti-semitic. Okay, but the same book, an Egyptian friend told me, was attacked in Al-Ahram as the most perfidious Zionist propaganda. You know, it's not that I'm an opportunist and they say one thing. No, the same book, the same short book. I mean, as Sartre already said, this is a sign that maybe I'm on the right path, you know, when you are attacked from both sides. Okay, but let me go on so that I don't get so that so that no. Okay, let me put it in another way. You know why one has to be okay I will go and please interrupt me if you want. Maybe I'm wrong here, I'm open, but what I find difficult and wrong concerning the Middle East topic. Some form of pro-Palestinian propaganda goes for me a little bit too far. No, I'm always for going to the end, I do not have a problem with going far, but too far precisely in the wrong direction when I think that one we should stick to one axiom. The Palestinian struggle should absolutely unconditionally appeal to the solidarity with whatever we call them anti-Zionist progressive Israelis. The moment we drop this, the moment we formulate it as a simple clear ethnic struggle of Palestinians against Jews, then we should kill ourselves, how should I put it, then emancipatory struggles. This universal dimension must absolutely remain there. Which means, let me repeat you a story, maybe already used it here. Where do I see this limitation? When I visited Jerusalem Film Festival four years ago, I obeyed all the rules of boycott and so on. I paid, together with my friend Udi Aloni, he contributed something, I paid my own ticket, my own hotel, and he emphasized that I am there as his personal guest, not as part of the Jerusalem Film Festival. And there were still open letters accusing me of of collaborating with Zionism and so on and so on. But then some lady attacked me there, claiming, "Are you aware that you being here in Jerusalem is the same as visiting Berlin in 1930s?" And okay, I gave her an answer which I think was a nice one. "Let's okay, let's draw this parallel to the end and let's imagine this situation." What would have been the situation? I was there in Jerusalem supporting a film which was absurdly openly pro-Palestinian, Udi Aloni's *Forgiveness*. "Okay, imagine the same situation in Germany. Fuck you, if I were to be invited in '37 to Berlin to propagate a pro- pro-Jewish film defending Jews, yes, I would have gone there. And I hope most of you also, you know." It is it is so important to to remember to always bear in mind this this solidarity. It's so tragic how both sides are caught in this type of racism. And maybe also I already told you the story but I like to repeat it, it's wonderful. You know who is for me the symbol of this hidden complicity of the two sides? Do you remember her, if you are old enough, Hanan Ashrawi, who was the public face of PLO some years ago? You probably noticed that now she practically disappeared. Yeah, you know why? When I was in Israel, I spoke with both sides. And they both told me a very sad story. It was a de facto coalition between hardline Zionists and hardline religious Palestinians. The religious Palestinians didn't like her, they claimed she's too much Western-looking woman, educated in United States, this is already, she speaks as a Western woman, she cannot really represent us. The Zionists' point was that the same but with just inverted signs. That she is very bad for us because if Western media on CNN see her, they see a fluent in English, educated intellectual woman, and this gives a totally wrong idea of what primitive
Every time that I give a new talk, I begin with, "This time, I will really stick to my topic and..." It never happens, so. No, but what I mean is I will not, of course, stick to the topic of political economy et cetera, but I will talk about the problem of drawing the right line of division today. Why? Let me begin with a biological topic. Why do baboons have big protruding hairless red butts, asses, I mean, no? The main reason is that the buttocks of a female in heat will swell so the male knows that she is ready to mate. And I think that hearing, participating in all these polemics within whatever remains of the left today, more and more leftist intellectuals do remind me of these baboons, and they are displaying their buttocks, whose buttocks is larger and so on and so on. Why? Because I think that especially today, it's important to learn to distinguish false lines of division, false opposition from those the lines which really divide us. Why? Again, an example that I think I already used once. Think about today's big international art biennales. I noticed two things about them. First, they are the big capitalist enterprise. But did you notice how ideologically almost all of them, especially the curators who wrote the introductory note, justify them in some kind of pseudo-anti-capitalist Marxist terms, no? The usual way you say is that we live in the time of global machinery and capitalist machinery, and we are all part of it, how to acquire critical distance and so on and so on. So the irony is that they even admit that they are part, but they think that if you add some kind of general reflection against commodification or whatever, that it helps you. No, it doesn't help you. I mean, here we should return to the Marx Brothers saying, you know, "Why are you saying that you are part of capitalist machinery when you really are part of capitalist machinery?" They are, totally. And I, again, here I'm quite merciless. I think that if there is an artist who is fully the emblem, symbol of today's capitalism, it's Damien Hirst. Absolutely thousand percent. I mean, first, I read in an article on him, the way he, how carefully it was planned, his type of work. His problem was how to address these new, nouveaux riches digital capitalists and so on, who want something which looks provocative, modern, but still figurative enough to cause a provocation with a little bit of sex, violence, and so on and so on. It was it was so carefully, so carefully planned. So what I'm saying is that with this kind of permanent anti-capitalist opposition, which is, of course, at the same time penetrated by an absolute logic of suspicion, but which is not productive, which immobilizes you. Like, my god, whenever I give a talk, there is one idiot who says, "But but you are kind of a star, you are Elvis of whatever, cultural theory. But don't you think that you are also caught in this machinery now, that even if you criticize capital, you are part of it," and so on and so on. You know, all this universalized suspicion, I think, just immobilizes us. I think if you have something critical to say, don't worry about will it be appropriate and so on, just do it. If it will work, it will work, if not, it will not. But I must say that with all these ideological denegations, I find refreshing to to find someone like Robert Pippin, the center, even maybe center-right American liberal Hegelian, who is one of who in one of his last books openly put as his goal the reassertion of bourgeois way of life, of bourgeois values. Now, I find this extremely refreshing, that there is the guy who openly calls for the impossible. And as it's usual, the result is much more subversive than most of the leftist stuff. When he inquires into how to assert bourgeois values of decency, equality, freedom today, he finds so many inherent inconsistencies. For example, you should read, I mentioned it already here, one of his last books, Pippin's, a short book, I forgot the title, on Westerns. My god, it's more Marxist than many proclaimed Marxists. He simply shows that the central topic of Westerns is this passage from pre-rule of law to the bourgeois rule of law society. And his point is how the message of Westerns is that this passage itself is always illegal, includes a violation of law which is a necessary one and remains all the time in bourgeois society and so on and so on. So I think that when we are dealing with this type of thinking, by this I mean the standard leftist thinking, I think it's don't be fascinated by it. Look for what? Look for something which sticks out. In what sense? Now comes the dirty detail, then we go into real work. Recently, I met at a meeting in United States a voluptuous lady from Portugal, like a slightly overweight but very attractive, you will see why. And she told me a wonderful anecdote. She told me that her last lover, when he saw her for the first time fully naked, he told her that with just one or two kilos less weight, her body would have been perfect. And I told her, "Now you have a chance to learn Lacanian theory." Because the truth is that what would have happened if she were effectively to lose one or two kilos? I claim she would precisely no longer be attractive. She would be too thin or whatever. You see the paradox? You experience something as a detail which disturbs perfection. Like, it's a little bit too much, without that you would have been perfect. But take that disturbing surplus away, and you don't get perfection, you get just nothing. So you see the paradox. You add something which appeared to disturb perfection, but this very addition creates creates it. And that's the problem with politics, how... Now, real talk. I read recently a book by, I'm afraid how to pronounce the name, Paul F-U-S-S-E-L-L. Paul Fussell, sorry, sorry, yeah. *The Great War and Modern Memory*. Of course, I enjoyed the book, and why is it so interesting? First, it shows it's really a good lesson in ideological mechanisms. It shows how precisely because the Great War, World War I, was such a shock, unthinkable happened and so on, unthinkable for our European awareness, of course. How in order to cope with it, each nation had to resuscitate old ancient ideological myths. For example, do you know that to cope with the experience of trench warfare and so on, the basic metaphor became wasteland from the Grail, Knights of the Round Table legend. As if trenches are a new form of wasteland, our soldiers there are new knights searching for the grail and so on and so on. Now, what but what interests me is something else. How the Great War triggered an explosion of interpretive paranoia. Why? For example, on the British side, the problem was how to account for the embarrassing fact that so many failures occurred on the British side. For example, they noticed that when they their offensives in Belgium, which was covered by British army, their offensives failed, and also the German guns bombing their positions usually hit their targets very precisely. So how could this have happened? Here comes my guy, Reginald Grant. He published already during the war a book called *S.O.S.*. It's ideological paranoia at its best. Grant's problem is a simple one. He simply cannot believe that Germans can be as astute as they are in locating the targets for their artillery across the enemy line. So the only solution was for him that they must have informers. Now, British are patriotic, it cannot be the British, it must have been the Belgian farmers behind the lines. So he enumerates, and it reads as a wonderful paranoia, a whole series of ways how Belgian farmers with pro-German sentiments were informing, signaling German artillery where there are the British targets. One is, and I love this one, it's the windmills which all of a sudden start to turn in the wrong direction. You know why? Did you see Hitchcock's *Foreign Correspondent*? It's the most famous scene, you know, where the guy, the good guy goes into the countryside and just an idyllic countryside with windmills and then, I think, he or his companion says, "But look, that mill is turning in the [unintelligible]." So this was a paranoia there. So this was the first idea. Then the second was that the hour hands on local church towers are set in out of sync with the actual time. So that if you have a church tower and you have the clock up there, no? So if it's but the church tower says quarter past this is a signal to Germans where. And the third one, the most interesting one, when Belgian housewives hang their laundry to dry on the ropes in front of their houses, the disposition of the colors of the laundry, like two white shirts then a blue one, signal to Germans, no? Of course, this was paranoia. But on the other hand, I claim that it's too simple to simply dismiss paranoia today. And the problem is precisely how to distinguish, to put it in very naive terms, good from bad, right from wrong paranoia. Because I remember a simple experience that I once had. I was visiting some friends on a beach in a Mediterranean country. And then these friends, kind of naive leftists, wanted to show me how everything is not industrialized today, how there still is authentic artisanal handwork and so on. So they showed me on a beach a lone fisherman repairing a network. The idea was to demonstrate again traditional labor grounded in ancient experience and wisdom, you know, a lone fisherman doing the net. But my reaction was, what if what I saw in front of me was a staged authenticity, a spectacle made to impress tourists, like, you know, preparing fresh food in department stores and so on. What if, if I were to get too close to the network, I mean fishing net, I would have noticed somewhere a small sign, "Made in China," and then I would have noticed that this authentic fisherman was just mimicking productive gestures, you know? And now comes the shock of my life. I did this and I was right. It was. And my friend was so embarrassed, he didn't notice it. You know, I think this was in South Portugal. You know, tourist agency said it adds to a flavor, you know, they cannot compare in luxury with French beaches or what. So they decided, local tourist board, "Let's add a touch of authenticity, you know, let's hire an unemployed guy to pretend there to to create the right atmosphere." But of course, my paranoia was then, what if he is because we were in South of Portugal, what if the way he is weaving it he is signaling to African immigrants, you know, like to the way that that would be my idea of my universe, no? Okay, but now I come to the real reason of telling this story. This is for me non-ideology, although it's totally mythical. I'm again referring to that book, *The Great War and Modern Memory*. The most brilliant hallucinatory legend of the Great War was a persistent rumor which circulated on both sides, British, French, and German. The rumor was that somewhere in the No Man's Land between the trenches of the front lines, you know, they were divided by usually some half a mile or at least three-four hundred yards, no man's land. In this desolate wasteland of scorched earth full of rotting corpses, holes full of water made by artillery explosions, abandoned trenches, caves, and tunnels, that in this area, gangs of half-crazy deserters live. The idea was, "We are not alone. It's not just us and enemy." That there is a whole mythical life going on there. Gangs composed of members of all participating armies and nations: Germans, French, British, Australians, Poles, Croats, Belgians, Italians. They lived their hidden lives in some abandoned tunnels in between, life of friendship and peace, avoiding detection, helping each other. Living in rags with long beards, they never allowed to be seen. From time to time, one just heard their crazy shouts and songs. They came out of their subterranean netherworld only during the night after a battle in order to scavenge the corpses and collect water and food. I think this is a beautiful emancipatory myth. They were the only Leninists there. The beauty of this legend is that it clearly describes a kind of alternate alternate community, a great "no" to the madness going on above on the battlefield. A group in which members of the warring nations live in peace with each other, the only enemy being war itself. While they may appear as an image of war at its most crazy, outcasts living a wild life, they are simultaneously the self-negation of war, literally an island of peace between the front lines. The emergence of universal fraternity that ignores these lines. Precisely by ignoring the official lines of division between us and them, they stand for the real division, the one that matters. They stand for the negation of the entire space of imperialist warfare. And so when people ask me, "But isn't everything ideology? How can you distinguish ideology from non-ideology?" I will tell them, "No, it's easy. You see, although this is clearly a myth—who knows what went on in reality—but I claim this crazy hallucination is an element of non-ideology." Because no matter if it's it doesn't matter if it's invented or not, the message is clear. The war we are fighting is a false war. It's not our war. The truth is in fraternity of all of us and so on and so on. And again, we need something like this today to discern true division in the confusion of secondary struggles. Let me give you another extreme case of such false struggle. Recently, I read a text on the ideological struggle in Peru at the time of the Shining Path, Sendero Luminoso rebellion. On the one hand, there was Shining Path, Sendero Luminoso. Their identity was educational. Even their most brutal violence had the purpose of educating people about the revolution, about the state, about the impending collapse of the state and so on and so on. Of course, this education was utterly authoritarian, exerted by those who believed they possessed the truth, they usurped the right to have absolute power over their students. But even more depressive was was government's counter-strategy. A strategy of pure political demobilization and demoralization. I think in a perverted way they were very wise. You know how the government, Fujimori government, countered the Sendero Luminoso offensive? The press, controlled or manipulated by the state power, actively promoted what analysts called Mean World Syndrome. The government solicited, with easy credits and so on, an explosion of what they called *prensa chicha*, I think. Tabloid newspapers specializing in celebrity gossip, crime stories and so on, plus TV talk shows that focused on real cases of drug addiction, family violence, adultery and so on. The goal of this strategy was to socially immobilize people through fear, to atomize the public sphere. So the message rendered was that the world is a dangerous place in which all one can do is look out for oneself since there is no hope for solidarity, just envy of the rich and famous and pleasure at their troubles. I think rarely in modern history was the ideological space of a country so neatly divided into, on the one hand totalitarian educationalism—and there are many wonderful jokes at this level, I was told this in Peru—like the idea was that they were preaching so much when Sendero Luminoso captured a traitor or whatever. They were preaching so much so that after three-four hours you said, "Shoot me, shoot me, just so that I don't have to listen more to your..." And but then how how those in power, isn't this terrifying? How they replied to it. Not through some liberal, freedom-loving elaborations, but with this utter decadence. This you know with yellow yellow press was literally the political answer to it. Yellow press as directly directly intended to function as as an instrument of political demobilization. Now this is again a situation where I think, why do I mention this opposition? Because there is simply no place for authentic emancipatory politics here. It's a pretty desperate situation. There is an- now comes a more problematic point, I just want to provoke you a little bit. Because there is another false struggle going on today, I claim, and this will be very problematic maybe for you if I say this. It concerns the status of anti-semitism and Zionism today. For some pro-Muslim leftists, Zionism is the exemplary case of today's neo-colonial racism, which is why the Palestinian struggle against Israel is the paradigm for all other anti-racist and anti-imperialist struggles. In a strictly inverted way, for some Zionists, anti-semitism, which for them lurks in every critique of Zionism, is the exemplary case of today's racism. These are of course two radically opposed positions, but what they share is that in both cases, Zionism or anti-semitism is a particular form of racism which colors all others. So that the true test of anti-racism today is to fight anti-semitism or to fight Zionism. The idea is, for example, a Zionist would tell you, "Ah, if you don't see anti-semitism as the crucial danger today, you are not truly anti-racist." Or an anti-Zionist would tell you, "If you don't strictly oppose Israeli politics on the West Bank, then you are not truly anti-imperialist." Now, of course I at a certain level agree with both sides. First, I think not in Arab countries but in Western Europe anti-semitism is well and alive. Look at Hungary and so on and some other countries. And of course the Palestinian struggle against Israel state has to be totally supported. I mean, I hope all I can tell you is that I'm paying the price for it, in the sense that I was as maybe some of you know, I was twice in the last two years attacked, not only as anti-semitic but once by Adam Kirsch then by John Gray as openly directly laying the foundations for a new Holocaust. It beats me how this works, I mean, but you can really say anything today. What I'm saying is that but nonetheless I think that I think that I of course anti-semitism is dangerous and so on and so on. But I simply don't think that anti-semitism is today the predominant form of racism. So I disagree with this aspect. But I also disagree with the opposite approach that the Palestinian struggle is as it were the symbol, the absolute symbol of anti-imperialist struggle, that this is the testing moment. Why not? Because again, my position is that the true view of the Palestinian conflict is that precisely Israel—and this is for me a much harsher criticism than the usual one—that precisely what Israel is doing is not some primordial crime, it's just another case of cheap ordinary neo-colonialism. I think it's much harsher if we reject Israel politics in this way, to deprive them of this status of some arch-criminals, the symbol of today's oppression. No, it's just it's just pretty cheap vulgar—precisely this has to be emphasized—vulgar ordinary neo-colonialism. So again, of course we should support Palestine. Shall we make a vote who is provoked by that statement and who is not? I'm not provoked by that. Perfect, but then you are an exception because again mostly I get attacked, and I think this is a sign, a good sign that I'm on the right way. I get usually attacked from both sides, you know. Like the as I already maybe mentioned here, one and the same book, *Welcome to the Desert of the Real*, was attacked in Jerusalem Post—okay this is not a great thing, they are crazy, right—but was attacked as as as brutally openly anti-semitic. Okay, but the same book, an Egyptian friend told me, was attacked in Al-Ahram as the most perfidious Zionist propaganda. You know, it's not that I'm an opportunist and they say one thing. No, the same book, the same short book. I mean, as Sartre already said, this is a sign that maybe I'm on the right path, you know, when you are attacked from both sides. Okay, but let me go on so that I don't get so that so that no. Okay, let me put it in another way. You know why one has to be okay I will go and please interrupt me if you want. Maybe I'm wrong here, I'm open, but what I find difficult and wrong concerning the Middle East topic. Some form of pro-Palestinian propaganda goes for me a little bit too far. No, I'm always for going to the end, I do not have a problem with going far, but too far precisely in the wrong direction when I think that one we should stick to one axiom. The Palestinian struggle should absolutely unconditionally appeal to the solidarity with whatever we call them anti-Zionist progressive Israelis. The moment we drop this, the moment we formulate it as a simple clear ethnic struggle of Palestinians against Jews, then we should kill ourselves, how should I put it, then emancipatory struggles. This universal dimension must absolutely remain there. Which means, let me repeat you a story, maybe already used it here. Where do I see this limitation? When I visited Jerusalem Film Festival four years ago, I obeyed all the rules of boycott and so on. I paid, together with my friend Udi Aloni, he contributed something, I paid my own ticket, my own hotel, and he emphasized that I am there as his personal guest, not as part of the Jerusalem Film Festival. And there were still open letters accusing me of of collaborating with Zionism and so on and so on. But then some lady attacked me there, claiming, "Are you aware that you being here in Jerusalem is the same as visiting Berlin in 1930s?" And okay, I gave her an answer which I think was a nice one. "Let's okay, let's draw this parallel to the end and let's imagine this situation." What would have been the situation? I was there in Jerusalem supporting a film which was absurdly openly pro-Palestinian, Udi Aloni's *Forgiveness*. "Okay, imagine the same situation in Germany. Fuck you, if I were to be invited in '37 to Berlin to propagate a pro- pro-Jewish film defending Jews, yes, I would have gone there. And I hope most of you also, you know." It is it is so important to to remember to always bear in mind this this solidarity. It's so tragic how both sides are caught in this type of racism. And maybe also I already told you the story but I like to repeat it, it's wonderful. You know who is for me the symbol of this hidden complicity of the two sides? Do you remember her, if you are old enough, Hanan Ashrawi, who was the public face of PLO some years ago? You probably noticed that now she practically disappeared. Yeah, you know why? When I was in Israel, I spoke with both sides. And they both told me a very sad story. It was a de facto coalition between hardline Zionists and hardline religious Palestinians. The religious Palestinians didn't like her, they claimed she's too much Western-looking woman, educated in United States, this is already, she speaks as a Western woman, she cannot really represent us. The Zionists' point was that the same but with just inverted signs. That she is very bad for us because if Western media on CNN see her, they see a fluent in English, educated intellectual woman, and this gives a totally wrong idea of what primitive
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are and so on. So it worked. They concluded a pact, she disappeared. It's crazy. The PLO lost its best propaganda asset, whatever. But okay, let's go on, many things to say. Let's go on. Another why what is I claim at the root of all these false of all these false divisions? Recently in a at a conference about communism in Seoul, Alessandro Russo, the Italian half-Maoist, has shown how he made a nice intervention when he pointed out how the radical left already in the 60s all the time oscillates between two extremes. Meta what he calls meta-classism and hyper-classism. Meta-classism means that you try to draw a line of distinction outside class division. For example, multitude, people, unity of all progressive forces, or or marginal groups, whatever. You try to define the basic conflict outside the class coordinates. Of course I am opposed to it. I claim, my god, listen, whatever you say against Hollywood today, at least it's aware of the class struggle. And I say this positively. Can you imagine a recent blockbuster—it's difficult to find one which is not openly about an extreme form of class struggle. Did you see *Elysium*? Can you imagine? Did you see? I didn't yet now, *Hunger Games* part two. It's class naive as it is, so I just laugh about sociologists who say we are beyond class struggle, well don't tell me, tell Hollywood, no? They obviously think we are in class struggle. Then hyper-classism is focusing on one part of the working class as the privileged revolutionary agent. Cognitariat, that is to say new intellectual immaterial workers, precariat, precarious without permanent employment, illegal immigrants, slum-dwellers, rogue state, all that are excluded. And I claim we find today also the same ambiguity in Toni Negri's work. On the one hand it's Multitude versus Empire, that like judging from the title. On the other hand, he still speaks about workers, productive workers against capital. But when you ask him, "Okay, what's the precise relation between Multitude and workers?" it gets complicated. Because sometimes Negri admits that today the most progressive digital capitalists are much more Multitude than workers, than the old working class. That that the deterritorializing the deterritorialization of today's most dynamic capital already generates the dimension of Multitude. So the problem here is precisely I claim the following one. That where is the real division? This is a serious choice to be made in very simple terms. Is it is it a division of is it a division class division? Is it an as some Maoist would have put it national divisions in the sense that we have imperialist classes and proletarian classes? Or is it or is it this Michel Foucault, Foucauldian view, multitude or whatever versus power? I claim, my solution is nonetheless that we should stick to the class division just to redefine what is to be a proletarian today. My position is here a classical one, that we should no longer focus just on the traditional working class but include all those who are exploited today. Workers, unemployed, unemployable, precariat, cognitariat, illegal immigrants, slum-dwellers, rogue state, all that are excluded. Here I will show you what we can learn from the enemy. The enemy being in this case Peter Sloterdijk. Yes, he may be a crazy conservative liberal. But in one of his last books, I forgot the title, something about global capitalism. *World Interior*. Yeah, yes, sorry, *The World's Interior* (*Im Innenraum des Kapitals*). I think the basic thesis thesis is quite a nice one. The thesis is that global capitalism is at the same time globe in the sense of cupola. That what is global is something which de facto exclude three quarters. And that this is from the very and he puts it even as a very nice metaphor how once you are inside the globe you think you see everything but you don't even perceive what is outside. And so that he he basically he provides if I may be ironic philosophical foundation for for *Elysium*, the film. No, more or less, no. He claims that he claims that it's a very nice thesis because he claims that global capitalism which boasts of being open towards and so on, no, that it's the most radical enclosure you can imagine. The dream of capitalism is to is to is to even architecturally this is become an it's to no longer a home but a cupola, a a sphere, a controlled space. And I think here we again can go into cinema, who knew this for a long time. Do you know the film, I think it may be I'm wrong, you can correct me, but as far as I know the first dystopia in this sense was the good old one John Boorman directed it with Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling, *Zardoz*. Where you know the elite lives within and then primitives outside. And then you have many movies along these lines and so on and so on. Which is why I even think there is a progressive dimension in did you see, I didn't, I don't have time but it must be interesting, how is it called, the last TV series based on Stephen King where also a small American town is cut off. *The Dome*. *The Dome*, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think this is the fundamental metaphor. And again this is why I never agreed with this primitive criticism of of of Sloterdijk as some kind of a neo-fascist who who wants I don't know to to impose eugenic control and so on and so on. No, no, he he he gets the point here. So now you will tell me, let's go move a step forward, now you will tell me but nonetheless even if we forget about all political divisions, there is one line of division that we can clearly enforce. It's a simple question of suffering. When people suffer in a terrifying way, there we have to be on their side. And I was attacked here when I wrote that short comment that Syria is a pseudo-struggle. What I like so much is that again I was attacked from both sides. Some Israeli Zionist Lacanians, somebody called Marc or Marco-Mauth, who is like every half a year he attacks me, at least every half a year, he made this mocking irony, you know, like, "Oh, Žižek says Syria is a pseudo-struggle, so there are pseudo-death there, they are shot with pseudo-guns," and so on and so on. At the same time, and I respect them, maybe I'm wrong, at the same time Syrian leftist group attacked me. But I must here clarify my position. I don't doubt that at the beginning of the revolt against Assad that there was a genuine I don't know how much emancipatory it was but let's say liberating potential. I'm just saying that now obviously from what I read there is a strong presence of religious fundamentalism, which in itself doesn't bother me, it can be progressive. The problem is that it's financed by by Turkey and especially by Saudi Arabia. Now, when somebody tries to convince me that in Syria there is a liberation struggle against Assad, I say, "Okay, but I somehow don't find it difficult to believe that Saudi Arabia is ready to finance a big liberation struggle, you know." What is happening is simply that I'm well aware that there are different orientations in the struggle against Assad. And by pseudo-struggle I simply mean it's like World War I. Of course, it's horrible suffering and so on and so on. But it's not a struggle where we are compelled to take sides. The way it is, maybe I'm wrong. If somebody shows me that the, let's call it secular emancipatory whatever we call it, side is getting strong enough, has a chance, of course we should fully support them. I'm just saying that the way it looks, this struggle is part of the struggle for influence between Shia and Sunni Muslims, and there I definitely don't want to take sides. If anything, if you ask me, I'm generally more Shia, slightly gently, more towards Shia inclined, no? So but so about suffering. You know why reference to suffering doesn't work? I was so often shocked by the excessive indifference towards suffering, namely what people don't know is how even when media widely report about suffering. Okay, sometimes this is a justification for military intervention. But often it's not. It's something I claim much more perverse going on. That it is as if the very outrage at suffering turns us into into immobilized fascinated spectators of suffering. It's as if, you know, we like to be fed you open up the news, "Ooh, again starving people, women raped," and so on and so on, and you are somehow fascinated, and the more you learn about the horror the less you are inclined to do something. I will give you an example of my own political past, my own of my own ex-country. You know, the standard unfortunate motto of the Western liberal left, even radical left, was, "Serbs were the victim in post-Yugoslav war in the 90s. They were blamed for it, they lost," and so on and so on. No, I claim except with the exception of Kosovo, they didn't lose, they won. Look, I remember in '91, Karadžić, the leader of Bosnian Serbs, said, "All I want is half of Bosnia in which there shouldn't be more than percent non-Serbs." Look at the map today in Dayton agreement, Serbs got exactly that, percent when there are less than... So where is... But another thing is crucial. You remember when media were reporting, "Ooh, snipers shooting on Sarajevo, starvation," and so on and so on. Now, I read a memoir of Karadžić. Here he is telling the truth. He says sincerely, and it's a wonderful moment of truth of Karadžić. He says, "But why but we Bosnian Serbs were all the time aware that it would have been extremely easy for Western powers to to break to to break the blockade, the siege of Sarajevo." You know because on one part there was only the airport between city of Sarajevo and the territory held by Bosnian Muslims. And that part was given by Serbs to the French. And the weird thing is that the French continued the Serb blockade. They didn't allow not even free passage of food and so on through it. Karadžić said, "If international forces were to land one battalion, even less, on Sarajevo airport and claim, 'Okay, it's open for food transport or not arms,' we wouldn't be able to do anything." And that Karadžić gives another example: Western Serb Bosnia, Banja Luka and Eastern Serb Bosnia were had just one point of connection in North close to Croat border, just one like one-two kilometers passage. And Karadžić said, "With one battalion, the Western powers could have occupied that part and we would be finished, Serbs. Why didn't they do it?" So I'm not here blaming the Serbs. On the contrary, what I'm saying is that the Western sympathy with suffering Sarajevo was pure absolute hypocrisy. It would have been so easy without even humiliating Serbs excessively whatsoever. It would have been so easy with one battalion and so on, a little bit of pressure, to open a humanitarian corridor for food and so on and so on. They didn't do it. So this is my problem, that when people celebrate when you have this fascination by suffering, I claim that it's a very ambiguous thing that is going on. That usually the fascination with suffering is much is much stronger. Next point about false divisions. Okay, when you do have a revolt, what kind of revolt? I want to go now into into and uh yes, maybe another point, and in what sense, in what direction a revolt? Uh for example, again this is all to illustrate how difficult for me at least it is to draw the accurate line of division. When Turks were protesting on Taksim Square and Gezi Park, their motto was dignity. And I have a problem with that motto. Why dignity? I think this term dignity—they were protesting for demanding dignity—is a proper motto insofar as it makes it clear that protests were not just about particular material demands but about the protesters' freedom and emancipation. The call for dignity, again, on the one hand it referred to corruption and cheating. But more interestingly, it was directed, what protesters were attacking was the patronizing ideology of Erdoğan, the Turkish Prime Minister. The direct target of Turkish protests was neither neoliberal capitalism nor Islamism, but the personality of Erdoğan, Prime Minister. The demand was for him to step down. Why? Which of his features was experienced as so annoying that it made him the target of protesters, both secular educated middle-class protesters as well as anti-capitalist Muslim youth. Here I would like to quote from a thesis which will be defended a doctoral thesis this week here, Bülent Somay, my Turkish friend, his explanation. Quote: "Everybody wanted Prime Minister Erdoğan to resign, because many activists explained both during and after the resistance, he was constantly meddling with their lifestyles. Telling women to have at least three children, telling them not to have cesarean sections, not to have abortions, telling people not to drink, not to smoke, not to hold hands in public, to be obedient and religious and so on and so on." And incidentally, I can see how annoying this is. I was told that when Erdoğan was at a TV debate with others, and if someone smoked there—Turkey is still a normal country, you can smoke there or—you know what happened. He stepped to that guy, pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and tapped him on his his shoulder and says, "Don't do this please, it's for your own good that you shouldn't." I mean, this makes you explode, of course. I go on. He, Erdoğan, was constantly telling them what was best for them. This was a and his motto I like. You know what was which was the electoral motto of this moderate Islamist party, translated: "Shop and pray." No longer *ora et labora*, no longer "work and pray," but "shop and pray." Erdoğan's utopia for Istanbul was a huge shopping mall and a huge mosque. He wanted to build and again the idea... Okay, let's go on. But now where do I have a problem here? It's excellent to choose here the the slogan "dignity." But I think that there is also a much more evil way to understand this slogan "dignity." As if you cheat us in too direct brutal way, treat us respectfully, we want to be cheated but in a more respectful way. You know what I mean? Like, we want to be manipulated, controlled, but the proper appearances should be maintained. And I claim I claim that in a way in a way this is a big problem for me, a big trap of contemporary politics. That you protest but you protest in order to maintain the appearances. And here I'm with radical feminists, like here I agree with, okay, she's not a feminist, doesn't want to be, Judith Butler, who told me that precisely in our liberal permissive societies domination is never presented as such. And the first step of liberation is to admit, to openly acknowledge domination as such. To enforce the master to act as one. You know, like example that I already maybe mentioned here. Today's boss doesn't like to be even called boss. He is a coordinator, manager, whatever, and he treats you as a friend. And I think the first step of liberation is to force your boss, like, "Don't bullshit me, you are the master so behave like one. Don't give me the the bullshit of 'I'm just coordinating things' and so on. No, give me orders, act as a master." So so so again here you know dignity, "Treat me with dignity" can also effectively in social relations mean, "Okay, go on, exploit me, be my master, but please allow me to save appearances, don't humiliate me publicly." But I but what I would aim at is precisely the opposite. It's precisely to maintain it's precisely we have to be the beginning of liberation is that you are ashamed. Like even at a very everyday level. Let's say a woman, her husband loves her blah blah but sincerely but she is exploited. Isn't the first step to become ashamed of her position? To become ashamed of being subordinated in a loving what appears to be a loving marriage and so on and so on. So another point I want to make apropos apropos Turkey, which may be interesting, is first the ambiguous role Somay develops this very nicely, the ambiguous role of the demand of women to be veiled. You know that in Turkey under the Kemalist regime it was, I think even up to a point, at least in public places, prohibited for the women to be veiled, no? So what happened is, and it was a extremely paradoxical conjunction. On the one hand, we had the paradox of this is what was great about the Taksim Square protests. On the one hand, we have the impossible coalition of on the one hand secular middle-class educated people who had enough of Muslim fundamentalism, but at the same time deceived Muslim anti-capitalist youth. The two were brought together, and this is what disturbed everyone. And I think this precisely this coalition is the only chance for Turkey. You know what these Muslim young anti-capitalists got it correct? What also my friend Saroj Giri from India told me when I met him now in Seoul. He says that how wrong we are in the West where we think that we have normal capitalism as it were, that is to say capitalism combined with multi-party democracy, social permissivity, consumerist freedom and so on. And as if, you know, the Far East people are too stupid, not mature enough to get this, so they still need some Asian values, organic traditions, religious background to be able to to be able to endure capitalist modernization. As if here they are a step back. But Saroj Giri told me some wonderful things. He told me that in India research shows that the most successful digital capitalists are usually in their private lives—it's a wonderful data, I claim—much more religiously in Hindu sense or whatever, fundamentalists than others. So here you have this paradox, and this is for me the truth of contemporary global capitalism. No, Asian countries are not developing are developing so fast not in spite of the hold that tradition has over them but because of it. Because the way, for example, a typical Indian digital venture capitalist, he will tell you he works hours a day, but then if you ask him why are you doing, he will tell you, "Out of respect of my family, to afford also education for my brother," and so on and so on. So precisely the traditional ideology is totally transfunctionalized into the strongest motivation for being fully immersed in capitalist dynamics. So again, I claim that this is crucial. Again, that there is no tension here. It's not that we in the West have a full real capitalism, liberal capitalism, while they are a little bit backwards. No, their capitalism is much more efficient. And this is I think really a potentially dangerous dark phenomenon. Namely that that something which may appear as a remainder of traditional past is the very support motivation of of of of capitalism. So in other words, I think that I think that back to Turkey, and it's the same with Turkey. Somay, Bülent Somay, in his thesis shows very nicely how this demand for women, Muslim women who demand to be allowed to put their veil on is not really a return to traditionalism. It may appear that, but it's a perverse way to assert the typically modern right of choice, of free choice. You know, you see the beauty of it, that something that may appear as a return to traditionalism is really typically postmodern assertion of choice: "I have the right to choose my way of life," and so on and so on. He even Somay uses a wonderful paradoxical expression. He says that the paradox is that a veiled woman, she is veiled to remain invisible. But that under the Kemalist regime you were allowed to be veiled but if you remained invisible as veiled, you know, back in the family and so on. Now, what these women want, and that's the paradox of their position, is they want to be visible as veiled. You know, they use the veil, the very instrument of invisibility of your face, to become to become visible as such. And I think again that this is our future. Don't think that there is anything that this is just a remainder of the past and so on and so on. Now I will go to the, sorry I'm jumping a little bit today, to the to the to the most problematic part for which I was reproached often. What's this with the idea that we need a new Master? I am here a kind of, if you want, anthropological pessimist. What I claim is that especially in our late capitalist society, the way we are as it were conditioned is to be passive consumerist individuals. Of course we are hyperactive, working all the time and so on, but not socially engaged. So to be kick out of this way of life, you need a Master. But what is a Master? A Master is not Erdoğan. A Master is not the one who tells you what to do, what not to do. As I already emphasized here, even I think, the basic what is the basic gesture of the Master? Although I'm much more than my friend Badiou critical of Mao Zedong, I think that there was an authentic moment when at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Mao Mao's message to the young students was, "It is right to rebel." This is the lesson of a true Master. A true Master is not an agent of discipline and prohibition. His message is not, "You cannot." It is, "You can." What? You can do the impossible, what appears impossible within the coordinates of the existing constellation. And today, this means something very precise. You can think beyond capitalism and liberal democracy as the ultimate framework of our lives. A Master is a kind of vanishing mediator who gives you back to yourself, who precisely delivers you to the abyss of your freedom. When you listen to a true leader, you discover what you want, or rather what you always already wanted without knowing it. A Master is needed because we cannot gain access to our freedom directly. The underlying paradox is that the more we live as free individuals with no Master, the more effectively we are non-free. And I think again, this is the lesson of a true Master. You are confused, you don't know, the lesson again the message of a true Master is, "You have the right to do it, do it." And the whole point is that now you will tell me, "But why can't I decide this alone?" No, I don't believe in this power of autonomy. Somebody has to, as it were, somebody has to kick you from the outside. Here I will even do something extremely absurd and quote, although I hate him—I think he is worse than than he is worse than than he is worse than Bill Gates—Steve Jobs. You know his famous motto, a lot of times I quote him, "People don't know what they want until you show it to them." This is his famous motto. But I think he meant it in a correct way, because his point was not "people ordinary consumers don't know what they want, we, big industry planner, we will tell them what they want." No, this would have been the primitive pseudo-master, you know, like the Stalinist Master. He knows, a Stalinist Master knows better than the people what people really want, so he tell them or enforce... No, Steve Jobs when he was asked how much inquiry into what customers want Apple uses, Steve Jobs snapped back, "None, it's not the customer's job to know what they want. We figure out what we want." But you saw the beauty. He doesn't say, "We figure out what the customers want." He says, "We figure out what we want." And incidentally, I think it was he was right, because another thing that my Indian friend Saroj Giri told me, I like this. You know what are "like farms"? Like, like, not "it looks like," but "like, like I like it." Like farms. In India, he told me, thousands of impoverished intellectual workers are employed in what they call like farms. They are miserably paid to sit the whole day in front of a computer and endlessly press the button "like" on pages which ask the visitors or consumer, you know, when you go to usually they ask you, "Did you like it or not?" There are there are thousands of people who are doing this all the day. Why? To raise the average, you know, so that then you look at this site and say, "Oh my god, if if half a million people like it, there must be something in it." No, no, they are paid to do just this. And I think this is how much I trust this kind of investigations and so on. But again, note the surprising tone of Jobs' argumentation. After denying that customers know what they want, Jobs doesn't go on with the expected direct reversal: "It's our task, the task of creative capitalists, to figure out what customers want and then show it to them." No, he continues, "We figure out what we want." And that's how a true Master works. You don't try to guess what people want, you simply obey your own desire, and then it is to the people to decide if you will follow it or not. In other words, the Master's power stems from his fidelity to his desire. And I, again, I think that I hope you saw the distinction. This is why I think a true Master is not an oppressive guy. He doesn't tell you what you want. He tells you what he wants. What he really wants. His only privilege is to clearly know what he wants. And then it's up to you to follow him or not. And again, I don't see anything oppressive or wrong in this. Let's face it. Didn't all revolutionary leaders, when they were authentic leaders, work exactly in this way? You clearly disclose what you want, you know what you want. I claim most of us, ordinary people, we don't know what we want. That's the basic lesson of psychoanalysis. You want something but you don't really... You know what's the... This is the great lesson of psychoanalysis, you know, I often use these examples of how... I will tell you another dirty story. It happened to a friend of mine, but he would have killed me if I were to tell you. What is our common attitude? I had a friend in United States who was cheating his wife. And then at a certain point he decided that he will join mistress his mistress, his true love, and abandon his wife. So he sat into a car and drive towards another town, suburb of a big city, American, where his mistress lived. On the way there, there was a storm and then his windshield broke down. And he called like crazy different mechanics, no one came, it was a storm. So he couldn't have reached his wife, so he called a taxi there, still close to his home, and came back to his returned home, no? And what I like so much is how obviously he really didn't want to leave his wife and he was just waiting for something like storm to introduce some trouble. And when I told him this, he told me, "No, no, no, I really wanted to..." But then he admitted to me that he felt a sense of relief, you know, when the storm started. And I told him in psychoanalytic terms, "You are guilty." I told him, "Of course you didn't plan the storm, no, but you are guilty because libidinally you enjoy like you profited from it, no?" You are guilty. So I think I think I think this is how we are. For example, most of the men—and I'm sorry for the male chauvinist accent, probably I'm not good enough to judge if it goes also the other way round—most of the men who have a wife and a mistress, usually you dream that you want a mistress. But when there is a real chance of getting... no, the usual story is even but then you lose your wife and you drop also your mistress, you know what I mean. Like it's this type of confusion where you organize all your life about "really, I really want that," but it's a total panic when finally you get a chance of of getting that. This is I think the situation of most of us. Or, I claim, I'm coming back to politics here. We want freedom, democracy. No, we don't, I claim. We want precisely we really want appearances of freedom, as I developed in my books. What we want is to live in a society where it appears as if we really decide through election but we want to be told what we really want, no? We want to be given a choice where it's clear how to choose and so on and so on. Don't ever underestimate again the power of the power of appearance. So again, when I say we need a Master, because I was accused of stupidities that I propagate new Stalin and so on and so on. No. All I'm saying is that somebody something has to kick us out, not in the sense of telling us what to do, but of you know because when you know what's the problem? The problem is this one. When you accuse me of being kind of propagating some kind of totalitarian idea when I say we need a Master, this would be my answer to you. You imply that without a Master, you are free. No, you are not. That's what I deny to you. Precisely when you feel yourself an ordinary consumerist individual, you are not free here. And the function of the Master is just to give you a kick, as it were. And to, as it were, give you back to yourself, to confront you with your freedom. The Master's function is to tell you, "You are free, you can do it." That's all that and then what you do after with the Master, it's your problem. I think the good idea is that once things get moving, you you kill the master, that would be what I would propose, no? Because you know the problem with the Master is that you know some usually it's difficult, very difficult to be a Master, you know what I mean. Because, okay, you deliver this message, and then we people are sinful, you know, then you start to think, "But maybe I really know better," and so on, no? So but again, you know it's the same as in psychoanalysis, my god. Master is just a figure of transference. He doesn't know, he just delivers you he just delivers you to your freedom. If you allow me to go nonetheless because I have so many other things to say. If you allow me to add another point where I see the difficulty of division. Finally I I advise you to read this novel. It's I think one of the great novels of 20th century. Julien Gracq, G-R-A-C-Q, Julien Gracq, a French author. The the novel from early 50s, I think, the original title is *Le Rivage des Syrtes*. Syrtes is some some country in the south of an imaginary country. The English title is *The Opposing Shore*. It's a very strange novel and why it's important because I don't know if you know, this novel is the origin of Alain Badiou's famous statement, "*Mieux vaut un désastre qu'un désêtre*." Better a disaster, the catastrophic outcome of an event, than a non-eventful survival. It takes place in an imaginary country which is basically Italy, Orsenna is called the country. It's an alternate reality, they have cars but no electricity. Okay, it's basically a city state like enlarged Venice. The point is that on the south of this country there is a shore and on the other side of the shore it's a barbarian primitive country called Farghestan. And these two countries are in a state of war, but they never fight. For years, there is just a tension. And then Aldo, the hero of this novel, goes down and bombs with his ship—he's a border commander there—bombs a Farghestan city, something like that, knowingly provoking a war. And he knows that Orsenna, his country, will probably be devastated. But his idea is that Orsenna is living for hundreds of years in this simple satisfaction, nothing is happening, and it's better to something must happen. It's better war, disappearance than nothing happening. Now the horror is the problem is how to read this. Of course, liberals and left liberals read this as an implicit propaganda for fascism. Like, you know, people should not be too immersed in their consumerist everyday pleasures, better even if it's catastrophe, but something must happen. Alain Badiou told me that, you know, his again, the empirical origin of his formula, "*Mieux vaut un désastre qu'un désêtre*," better a disaster than a non-eventful survival, originated after he read this book. But I find it and Badiou also knows this that it's, you know, that's the whole problem. When we are in relatively satisfied, we live relatively satisfied life in a easy, nothing is happening, in in passive consumerist nothing is happening, peaceful life, is it really that anything that disturbs this is better or not? That is to say, here I think that Badiou is sometimes too seduced by this motive of just that things happen even if it's a catastrophe, better than nothing. For example, I remember I had a personal private, we just talked, polemic with him about Yugoslavia in early 90s, no? And he told me, "You know, it would have been better for Milošević to win over you Slovenes." I asked him why, he said, "It would have been more interesting. Something at least would have happened," no? Then okay, my answer to him was, "Well, fuck you, then let's go to the end and say it was much better for Hitler to win than," you know. It would certainly like imagine European history if for some reason in the early 30s I don't know the Nazi movement would have disintegrated, it would have certainly been much less interesting, no? But fuck you for such interest where where people million die to make things more interesting, you know. So but my point here would have been that that what I would have, yes, okay, I will put it in this term. The true choice, I think, is not as Badiou said better disaster than a *désêtre*, non-being—non-being means for him simple animal life, nothing happening—the the true choice is between pseudo-event and non-being. Like, what is better? Fascism or ordinary bourgeois society? This is the true choice. And Badiou sometimes sounds as if just to kick things into movement he would prefer even that. For example, he wrote some things which are true but nonetheless for me a little bit ambiguous about Jean-Marie Le Pen. He said he's the only interesting politician in France today. The only one—and which is true—he was the only one who introduced passion, dynamic... okay fuck you, but what kind of passion and dynamic, no? So again, I think that nonetheless we should avoid this dilemma of the novel. You know that the thing to ask is not what is better, this peaceful consumerist life or some event, even if it's a pseudo-event which disturbs it. The problem is, I would here put it in classical Marxist terms, the problem is: is this peaceful life really so peaceful? I would like to learn more about this country, Orsenna. Where is class struggle there? Are all people satisfied? You know what I mean. Maybe maybe the whole maybe the whole perspective is wrong. So what I'm saying is that and this is our problem today. Today, unfortunately, let's put it this way, one of the temptations is the temptation of: "We are living in, at least until recently, we are living in times which are too peaceful and so on, we need some dynamics." Yes, but there is a there is a dynamic and a dynamic. Maybe I should stop slowly because what I yeah immediately what I one point more that I wanted to do is the most problematic one. I wanted to focus on the problem of national struggles today. Because another false division today often is the exact status of national resistance, struggles for national liberation, and maybe I will do this two days from now, just to announce it to you. What I really wanted to show is how not only problematic but totally opposite were here, not so much Marx as Engels. You know that Engels said in '48, referring to my nation and all Southern Slavs, that these miserable nations deserve only to perish in—he uses even German word—in the Holocaust of the new world revolution. He is absolutely explicit. His idea is, the only thing that matters is the revolution of Western Europe, and then Lenin... I mean this this topic of, which I think is not yet resolved, how to mix national liberation... what's your problem here? I'm getting to be too much here. Sorry, okay. Sorry, I was confused today, Wednesday more systematic. Excellent. No, no, this was one of your most systematic talks in a long time. So you stuck to your text, that's excellent. Thank you very much. So we will take perhaps two or three questions at the time, so, you know, give Slavoj time to consider they thoughts and then come back. So Maria, you go first, okay. Mine are just two short comments. First, about the film that neither of us has seen, but we both want to see, *The Hunger Games*. Because I mean one of the reasons, I think we should see it as soon as possible is the motto actually summarizes your lecture today because the main thing it says is "know your enemy." So it's about distinguishing between false divisions and fake fake radicalism. The enemy is there Donald Sutherland, I think, no? Yes, exactly. He is, no, he is, the yeah, yeah, yeah. But the main point I want to make is about the Master. I mean you rehabilitate the figure of the Master and basically what you just the way you describe the Master today is you collapsed him into the Analyst. So do we only have like three discourses now nowadays? We don't have, you know, we have... I mean basically, I mean even when you said oh, it's the same in psychoanalysis, the Master is the one that you have a transference to, no, in psychoanalysis the person you have a transference to is the Analyst, not the Master. So I'm just wondering why I mean the way you describe the Master today, it's almost like he's an ethical subject like you have a transference towards and doesn't tell you what to do but had, you know, has his own idea about what should be done for himself like Steve Jobs. No, I should, I know, I was just to answer briefly to this one. No, I know I should have elaborated this more but I nonetheless think there are there are differences here because the Analyst nonetheless puts you to work in the sense of analytic work and so on and so on. But what I meant, I mean like take an authentic revolutionary leader, it would be nonetheless too much to say that he is somehow analyzing the people or whatever. No, I think it's not so much a continuous process, transference lasts, it's just this experience of this enabling experience of "my god, but I can do it." This is for me the crucial. My problematic thesis is that for this you need a Master. I am here opposed to the standard idea of autonomous subjectivity that that the experience of freedom is, "No, I don't need, I can do it alone." No, at that point exactly you need a Master, I claim. You need to be because again the whole point is that alone you are not free. You are not free alone. You are when you are without a Master, you are precisely most enslaved. I think you need an Analyst, not a Master. Who, me as a person? No, no, no. I may be I need it because I don't want it, you know. Like I I am more and more I'm personally opposed because first as a person, I find it so disgusting, maybe this is a way of what Freud calls *Widerstand*, resistance to analysis, you know, but like if you look deep into me, you will probably discover some shit, you know. Some stupid dirty desires and so on. Why? Why? This is disgusting, I think. And in my Stalinist universe there would certainly be no analysts because people would work hard for socialism, they wouldn't have time to do this bullshit, you know like... sorry. First of all, thank you very much, I got a great deal out of that. So thank you for that. You spent a lot of time on Syria and the surrounding context of... Are you Scottish? Yes, I am. No, no, I am with you, you know why a solidarity. No, just immediately I will... You're a dark Serb. No, no, no. Sorry, because you know when Yugoslavia was falling apart, this is the racism of British leftists. Now they sympathize, at least some of them, with you Scottish. Are they don't? No, no, I just noticed that the same friends of mine who, when Yugoslavia was falling apart, were telling me, "But you are crazy, you should remain together, the world is coming together." Ah, we don't have the right, you have the right, no? Sorry, let's go on. You spent a great deal sometimes looking at Syria. Do you have a view on Owen Jones and Jeremy Scahill refusing to be on the platform with this nun at the Stop the War conference on Saturday? No, no. Sorry, I don't know about it. What happened there? No, no, but just wait a minute briefly, I will... What happened there? What happened there? No, it's just a case... You know, I don't want to take time away from everybody else, but I'm sure you can mention it later on in the week, but... No, believe me, when we get into national struggles and so on we will discuss that. The gentleman over there. Could you detail further the difference between this new kind of Master and if this Master is equivalent to Analyst discourse on Lacan, and which is the difference between this figure of the Master and the super-ego injunction? This one, next talk, I will go into it. Okay. Sometimes you said on one hand that we live in in a better world, it's much less poverty than other times and things like that, but on the other hand to support communism and this kind of change. Maybe it's this paradox it's in the core of what you were developing at the end of this... could you explain about this? Let's just take the lady also. Now thinking about the way you describe the Master, I'm trying to understand better an expression that I grew up with in Romania which says that the student's responsibility is to surpass the teacher, therefore the Master. So thank you for that because... But how did you know what interests me? Maybe you should answer. Don't be mad, it's extreme but... You know when you have a nice thought like that... Yeah, yeah, yeah, I will let her finish. You have a Master, Žižek? No, no, what I wanted to ask, I wanted you to go even further on. You know when you know what interests me? When you when somebody told you this, that lesson of the the task of the pupil is to surpass the teacher. Who told you who told you this? A teacher? Socrates, Socrates. No, because what I interest is, you know, I typically imagine a teacher who tells you this, but then just try really to do it, you know what I mean. Because I always have these problems, for example, fuck off. For example, when I were Avital Ronell, my half-friend from New York, even now hates me because she gave a talk at Saas-Fee saying that every pupil has to rebel against a Master, that you have to betray your Master, no? And she dwelt on Nietzsche betraying moving over Wagner. And then Alain Badiou in a stroke of genius asked her a simple question. So because her Master undoubtedly, she loved him blah blah, is Derrida. "What about you betraying Derrida?" And she was it was such an embarrassment, she became pale and she said, "Well, maybe my formula is not quite universal, you cannot apply it in such a mechanical way." Then another guy, Derridian, I forgot his name, who was there, said, "No, with Derrida is a unique Master, you don't have to betray him because in a self-critical spirit, he was all the time already betraying himself," you know and so on. You know like for me a true analytic Master would have been the one, and that would be the testing moment of the Master, who would really be able to say, "Yes, now you did really move over me." But they are very, very rare. You know, they cheat mostly. So that's what interests me, like like to see this in action. Did you ever meet a Master who congratulated you to overcome him? I had a private teacher who who also gave this advice a lot. Yeah, but like I didn't manage to see the result. Yeah, but that's what I mean. Sorry, there was another... I just wanted to ask you how your view on the Master corresponds with Hegel's view because yeah,
are and so on. So it worked. They concluded a pact, she disappeared. It's crazy. The PLO lost its best propaganda asset, whatever. But okay, let's go on, many things to say. Let's go on. Another why what is I claim at the root of all these false of all these false divisions? Recently in a at a conference about communism in Seoul, Alessandro Russo, the Italian half-Maoist, has shown how he made a nice intervention when he pointed out how the radical left already in the 60s all the time oscillates between two extremes. Meta what he calls meta-classism and hyper-classism. Meta-classism means that you try to draw a line of distinction outside class division. For example, multitude, people, unity of all progressive forces, or or marginal groups, whatever. You try to define the basic conflict outside the class coordinates. Of course I am opposed to it. I claim, my god, listen, whatever you say against Hollywood today, at least it's aware of the class struggle. And I say this positively. Can you imagine a recent blockbuster—it's difficult to find one which is not openly about an extreme form of class struggle. Did you see *Elysium*? Can you imagine? Did you see? I didn't yet now, *Hunger Games* part two. It's class naive as it is, so I just laugh about sociologists who say we are beyond class struggle, well don't tell me, tell Hollywood, no? They obviously think we are in class struggle. Then hyper-classism is focusing on one part of the working class as the privileged revolutionary agent. Cognitariat, that is to say new intellectual immaterial workers, precariat, precarious without permanent employment, illegal immigrants, slum-dwellers, rogue state, all that are excluded. And I claim we find today also the same ambiguity in Toni Negri's work. On the one hand it's Multitude versus Empire, that like judging from the title. On the other hand, he still speaks about workers, productive workers against capital. But when you ask him, "Okay, what's the precise relation between Multitude and workers?" it gets complicated. Because sometimes Negri admits that today the most progressive digital capitalists are much more Multitude than workers, than the old working class. That that the deterritorializing the deterritorialization of today's most dynamic capital already generates the dimension of Multitude. So the problem here is precisely I claim the following one. That where is the real division? This is a serious choice to be made in very simple terms. Is it is it a division of is it a division class division? Is it an as some Maoist would have put it national divisions in the sense that we have imperialist classes and proletarian classes? Or is it or is it this Michel Foucault, Foucauldian view, multitude or whatever versus power? I claim, my solution is nonetheless that we should stick to the class division just to redefine what is to be a proletarian today. My position is here a classical one, that we should no longer focus just on the traditional working class but include all those who are exploited today. Workers, unemployed, unemployable, precariat, cognitariat, illegal immigrants, slum-dwellers, rogue state, all that are excluded. Here I will show you what we can learn from the enemy. The enemy being in this case Peter Sloterdijk. Yes, he may be a crazy conservative liberal. But in one of his last books, I forgot the title, something about global capitalism. *World Interior*. Yeah, yes, sorry, *The World's Interior* (*Im Innenraum des Kapitals*). I think the basic thesis thesis is quite a nice one. The thesis is that global capitalism is at the same time globe in the sense of cupola. That what is global is something which de facto exclude three quarters. And that this is from the very and he puts it even as a very nice metaphor how once you are inside the globe you think you see everything but you don't even perceive what is outside. And so that he he basically he provides if I may be ironic philosophical foundation for for *Elysium*, the film. No, more or less, no. He claims that he claims that it's a very nice thesis because he claims that global capitalism which boasts of being open towards and so on, no, that it's the most radical enclosure you can imagine. The dream of capitalism is to is to is to even architecturally this is become an it's to no longer a home but a cupola, a a sphere, a controlled space. And I think here we again can go into cinema, who knew this for a long time. Do you know the film, I think it may be I'm wrong, you can correct me, but as far as I know the first dystopia in this sense was the good old one John Boorman directed it with Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling, *Zardoz*. Where you know the elite lives within and then primitives outside. And then you have many movies along these lines and so on and so on. Which is why I even think there is a progressive dimension in did you see, I didn't, I don't have time but it must be interesting, how is it called, the last TV series based on Stephen King where also a small American town is cut off. *The Dome*. *The Dome*, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think this is the fundamental metaphor. And again this is why I never agreed with this primitive criticism of of of Sloterdijk as some kind of a neo-fascist who who wants I don't know to to impose eugenic control and so on and so on. No, no, he he he gets the point here. So now you will tell me, let's go move a step forward, now you will tell me but nonetheless even if we forget about all political divisions, there is one line of division that we can clearly enforce. It's a simple question of suffering. When people suffer in a terrifying way, there we have to be on their side. And I was attacked here when I wrote that short comment that Syria is a pseudo-struggle. What I like so much is that again I was attacked from both sides. Some Israeli Zionist Lacanians, somebody called Marc or Marco-Mauth, who is like every half a year he attacks me, at least every half a year, he made this mocking irony, you know, like, "Oh, Žižek says Syria is a pseudo-struggle, so there are pseudo-death there, they are shot with pseudo-guns," and so on and so on. At the same time, and I respect them, maybe I'm wrong, at the same time Syrian leftist group attacked me. But I must here clarify my position. I don't doubt that at the beginning of the revolt against Assad that there was a genuine I don't know how much emancipatory it was but let's say liberating potential. I'm just saying that now obviously from what I read there is a strong presence of religious fundamentalism, which in itself doesn't bother me, it can be progressive. The problem is that it's financed by by Turkey and especially by Saudi Arabia. Now, when somebody tries to convince me that in Syria there is a liberation struggle against Assad, I say, "Okay, but I somehow don't find it difficult to believe that Saudi Arabia is ready to finance a big liberation struggle, you know." What is happening is simply that I'm well aware that there are different orientations in the struggle against Assad. And by pseudo-struggle I simply mean it's like World War I. Of course, it's horrible suffering and so on and so on. But it's not a struggle where we are compelled to take sides. The way it is, maybe I'm wrong. If somebody shows me that the, let's call it secular emancipatory whatever we call it, side is getting strong enough, has a chance, of course we should fully support them. I'm just saying that the way it looks, this struggle is part of the struggle for influence between Shia and Sunni Muslims, and there I definitely don't want to take sides. If anything, if you ask me, I'm generally more Shia, slightly gently, more towards Shia inclined, no? So but so about suffering. You know why reference to suffering doesn't work? I was so often shocked by the excessive indifference towards suffering, namely what people don't know is how even when media widely report about suffering. Okay, sometimes this is a justification for military intervention. But often it's not. It's something I claim much more perverse going on. That it is as if the very outrage at suffering turns us into into immobilized fascinated spectators of suffering. It's as if, you know, we like to be fed you open up the news, "Ooh, again starving people, women raped," and so on and so on, and you are somehow fascinated, and the more you learn about the horror the less you are inclined to do something. I will give you an example of my own political past, my own of my own ex-country. You know, the standard unfortunate motto of the Western liberal left, even radical left, was, "Serbs were the victim in post-Yugoslav war in the 90s. They were blamed for it, they lost," and so on and so on. No, I claim except with the exception of Kosovo, they didn't lose, they won. Look, I remember in '91, Karadžić, the leader of Bosnian Serbs, said, "All I want is half of Bosnia in which there shouldn't be more than percent non-Serbs." Look at the map today in Dayton agreement, Serbs got exactly that, percent when there are less than... So where is... But another thing is crucial. You remember when media were reporting, "Ooh, snipers shooting on Sarajevo, starvation," and so on and so on. Now, I read a memoir of Karadžić. Here he is telling the truth. He says sincerely, and it's a wonderful moment of truth of Karadžić. He says, "But why but we Bosnian Serbs were all the time aware that it would have been extremely easy for Western powers to to break to to break the blockade, the siege of Sarajevo." You know because on one part there was only the airport between city of Sarajevo and the territory held by Bosnian Muslims. And that part was given by Serbs to the French. And the weird thing is that the French continued the Serb blockade. They didn't allow not even free passage of food and so on through it. Karadžić said, "If international forces were to land one battalion, even less, on Sarajevo airport and claim, 'Okay, it's open for food transport or not arms,' we wouldn't be able to do anything." And that Karadžić gives another example: Western Serb Bosnia, Banja Luka and Eastern Serb Bosnia were had just one point of connection in North close to Croat border, just one like one-two kilometers passage. And Karadžić said, "With one battalion, the Western powers could have occupied that part and we would be finished, Serbs. Why didn't they do it?" So I'm not here blaming the Serbs. On the contrary, what I'm saying is that the Western sympathy with suffering Sarajevo was pure absolute hypocrisy. It would have been so easy without even humiliating Serbs excessively whatsoever. It would have been so easy with one battalion and so on, a little bit of pressure, to open a humanitarian corridor for food and so on and so on. They didn't do it. So this is my problem, that when people celebrate when you have this fascination by suffering, I claim that it's a very ambiguous thing that is going on. That usually the fascination with suffering is much is much stronger. Next point about false divisions. Okay, when you do have a revolt, what kind of revolt? I want to go now into into and uh yes, maybe another point, and in what sense, in what direction a revolt? Uh for example, again this is all to illustrate how difficult for me at least it is to draw the accurate line of division. When Turks were protesting on Taksim Square and Gezi Park, their motto was dignity. And I have a problem with that motto. Why dignity? I think this term dignity—they were protesting for demanding dignity—is a proper motto insofar as it makes it clear that protests were not just about particular material demands but about the protesters' freedom and emancipation. The call for dignity, again, on the one hand it referred to corruption and cheating. But more interestingly, it was directed, what protesters were attacking was the patronizing ideology of Erdoğan, the Turkish Prime Minister. The direct target of Turkish protests was neither neoliberal capitalism nor Islamism, but the personality of Erdoğan, Prime Minister. The demand was for him to step down. Why? Which of his features was experienced as so annoying that it made him the target of protesters, both secular educated middle-class protesters as well as anti-capitalist Muslim youth. Here I would like to quote from a thesis which will be defended a doctoral thesis this week here, Bülent Somay, my Turkish friend, his explanation. Quote: "Everybody wanted Prime Minister Erdoğan to resign, because many activists explained both during and after the resistance, he was constantly meddling with their lifestyles. Telling women to have at least three children, telling them not to have cesarean sections, not to have abortions, telling people not to drink, not to smoke, not to hold hands in public, to be obedient and religious and so on and so on." And incidentally, I can see how annoying this is. I was told that when Erdoğan was at a TV debate with others, and if someone smoked there—Turkey is still a normal country, you can smoke there or—you know what happened. He stepped to that guy, pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and tapped him on his his shoulder and says, "Don't do this please, it's for your own good that you shouldn't." I mean, this makes you explode, of course. I go on. He, Erdoğan, was constantly telling them what was best for them. This was a and his motto I like. You know what was which was the electoral motto of this moderate Islamist party, translated: "Shop and pray." No longer *ora et labora*, no longer "work and pray," but "shop and pray." Erdoğan's utopia for Istanbul was a huge shopping mall and a huge mosque. He wanted to build and again the idea... Okay, let's go on. But now where do I have a problem here? It's excellent to choose here the the slogan "dignity." But I think that there is also a much more evil way to understand this slogan "dignity." As if you cheat us in too direct brutal way, treat us respectfully, we want to be cheated but in a more respectful way. You know what I mean? Like, we want to be manipulated, controlled, but the proper appearances should be maintained. And I claim I claim that in a way in a way this is a big problem for me, a big trap of contemporary politics. That you protest but you protest in order to maintain the appearances. And here I'm with radical feminists, like here I agree with, okay, she's not a feminist, doesn't want to be, Judith Butler, who told me that precisely in our liberal permissive societies domination is never presented as such. And the first step of liberation is to admit, to openly acknowledge domination as such. To enforce the master to act as one. You know, like example that I already maybe mentioned here. Today's boss doesn't like to be even called boss. He is a coordinator, manager, whatever, and he treats you as a friend. And I think the first step of liberation is to force your boss, like, "Don't bullshit me, you are the master so behave like one. Don't give me the the bullshit of 'I'm just coordinating things' and so on. No, give me orders, act as a master." So so so again here you know dignity, "Treat me with dignity" can also effectively in social relations mean, "Okay, go on, exploit me, be my master, but please allow me to save appearances, don't humiliate me publicly." But I but what I would aim at is precisely the opposite. It's precisely to maintain it's precisely we have to be the beginning of liberation is that you are ashamed. Like even at a very everyday level. Let's say a woman, her husband loves her blah blah but sincerely but she is exploited. Isn't the first step to become ashamed of her position? To become ashamed of being subordinated in a loving what appears to be a loving marriage and so on and so on. So another point I want to make apropos apropos Turkey, which may be interesting, is first the ambiguous role Somay develops this very nicely, the ambiguous role of the demand of women to be veiled. You know that in Turkey under the Kemalist regime it was, I think even up to a point, at least in public places, prohibited for the women to be veiled, no? So what happened is, and it was a extremely paradoxical conjunction. On the one hand, we had the paradox of this is what was great about the Taksim Square protests. On the one hand, we have the impossible coalition of on the one hand secular middle-class educated people who had enough of Muslim fundamentalism, but at the same time deceived Muslim anti-capitalist youth. The two were brought together, and this is what disturbed everyone. And I think this precisely this coalition is the only chance for Turkey. You know what these Muslim young anti-capitalists got it correct? What also my friend Saroj Giri from India told me when I met him now in Seoul. He says that how wrong we are in the West where we think that we have normal capitalism as it were, that is to say capitalism combined with multi-party democracy, social permissivity, consumerist freedom and so on. And as if, you know, the Far East people are too stupid, not mature enough to get this, so they still need some Asian values, organic traditions, religious background to be able to to be able to endure capitalist modernization. As if here they are a step back. But Saroj Giri told me some wonderful things. He told me that in India research shows that the most successful digital capitalists are usually in their private lives—it's a wonderful data, I claim—much more religiously in Hindu sense or whatever, fundamentalists than others. So here you have this paradox, and this is for me the truth of contemporary global capitalism. No, Asian countries are not developing are developing so fast not in spite of the hold that tradition has over them but because of it. Because the way, for example, a typical Indian digital venture capitalist, he will tell you he works hours a day, but then if you ask him why are you doing, he will tell you, "Out of respect of my family, to afford also education for my brother," and so on and so on. So precisely the traditional ideology is totally transfunctionalized into the strongest motivation for being fully immersed in capitalist dynamics. So again, I claim that this is crucial. Again, that there is no tension here. It's not that we in the West have a full real capitalism, liberal capitalism, while they are a little bit backwards. No, their capitalism is much more efficient. And this is I think really a potentially dangerous dark phenomenon. Namely that that something which may appear as a remainder of traditional past is the very support motivation of of of of capitalism. So in other words, I think that I think that back to Turkey, and it's the same with Turkey. Somay, Bülent Somay, in his thesis shows very nicely how this demand for women, Muslim women who demand to be allowed to put their veil on is not really a return to traditionalism. It may appear that, but it's a perverse way to assert the typically modern right of choice, of free choice. You know, you see the beauty of it, that something that may appear as a return to traditionalism is really typically postmodern assertion of choice: "I have the right to choose my way of life," and so on and so on. He even Somay uses a wonderful paradoxical expression. He says that the paradox is that a veiled woman, she is veiled to remain invisible. But that under the Kemalist regime you were allowed to be veiled but if you remained invisible as veiled, you know, back in the family and so on. Now, what these women want, and that's the paradox of their position, is they want to be visible as veiled. You know, they use the veil, the very instrument of invisibility of your face, to become to become visible as such. And I think again that this is our future. Don't think that there is anything that this is just a remainder of the past and so on and so on. Now I will go to the, sorry I'm jumping a little bit today, to the to the to the most problematic part for which I was reproached often. What's this with the idea that we need a new Master? I am here a kind of, if you want, anthropological pessimist. What I claim is that especially in our late capitalist society, the way we are as it were conditioned is to be passive consumerist individuals. Of course we are hyperactive, working all the time and so on, but not socially engaged. So to be kick out of this way of life, you need a Master. But what is a Master? A Master is not Erdoğan. A Master is not the one who tells you what to do, what not to do. As I already emphasized here, even I think, the basic what is the basic gesture of the Master? Although I'm much more than my friend Badiou critical of Mao Zedong, I think that there was an authentic moment when at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Mao Mao's message to the young students was, "It is right to rebel." This is the lesson of a true Master. A true Master is not an agent of discipline and prohibition. His message is not, "You cannot." It is, "You can." What? You can do the impossible, what appears impossible within the coordinates of the existing constellation. And today, this means something very precise. You can think beyond capitalism and liberal democracy as the ultimate framework of our lives. A Master is a kind of vanishing mediator who gives you back to yourself, who precisely delivers you to the abyss of your freedom. When you listen to a true leader, you discover what you want, or rather what you always already wanted without knowing it. A Master is needed because we cannot gain access to our freedom directly. The underlying paradox is that the more we live as free individuals with no Master, the more effectively we are non-free. And I think again, this is the lesson of a true Master. You are confused, you don't know, the lesson again the message of a true Master is, "You have the right to do it, do it." And the whole point is that now you will tell me, "But why can't I decide this alone?" No, I don't believe in this power of autonomy. Somebody has to, as it were, somebody has to kick you from the outside. Here I will even do something extremely absurd and quote, although I hate him—I think he is worse than than he is worse than than he is worse than Bill Gates—Steve Jobs. You know his famous motto, a lot of times I quote him, "People don't know what they want until you show it to them." This is his famous motto. But I think he meant it in a correct way, because his point was not "people ordinary consumers don't know what they want, we, big industry planner, we will tell them what they want." No, this would have been the primitive pseudo-master, you know, like the Stalinist Master. He knows, a Stalinist Master knows better than the people what people really want, so he tell them or enforce... No, Steve Jobs when he was asked how much inquiry into what customers want Apple uses, Steve Jobs snapped back, "None, it's not the customer's job to know what they want. We figure out what we want." But you saw the beauty. He doesn't say, "We figure out what the customers want." He says, "We figure out what we want." And incidentally, I think it was he was right, because another thing that my Indian friend Saroj Giri told me, I like this. You know what are "like farms"? Like, like, not "it looks like," but "like, like I like it." Like farms. In India, he told me, thousands of impoverished intellectual workers are employed in what they call like farms. They are miserably paid to sit the whole day in front of a computer and endlessly press the button "like" on pages which ask the visitors or consumer, you know, when you go to usually they ask you, "Did you like it or not?" There are there are thousands of people who are doing this all the day. Why? To raise the average, you know, so that then you look at this site and say, "Oh my god, if if half a million people like it, there must be something in it." No, no, they are paid to do just this. And I think this is how much I trust this kind of investigations and so on. But again, note the surprising tone of Jobs' argumentation. After denying that customers know what they want, Jobs doesn't go on with the expected direct reversal: "It's our task, the task of creative capitalists, to figure out what customers want and then show it to them." No, he continues, "We figure out what we want." And that's how a true Master works. You don't try to guess what people want, you simply obey your own desire, and then it is to the people to decide if you will follow it or not. In other words, the Master's power stems from his fidelity to his desire. And I, again, I think that I hope you saw the distinction. This is why I think a true Master is not an oppressive guy. He doesn't tell you what you want. He tells you what he wants. What he really wants. His only privilege is to clearly know what he wants. And then it's up to you to follow him or not. And again, I don't see anything oppressive or wrong in this. Let's face it. Didn't all revolutionary leaders, when they were authentic leaders, work exactly in this way? You clearly disclose what you want, you know what you want. I claim most of us, ordinary people, we don't know what we want. That's the basic lesson of psychoanalysis. You want something but you don't really... You know what's the... This is the great lesson of psychoanalysis, you know, I often use these examples of how... I will tell you another dirty story. It happened to a friend of mine, but he would have killed me if I were to tell you. What is our common attitude? I had a friend in United States who was cheating his wife. And then at a certain point he decided that he will join mistress his mistress, his true love, and abandon his wife. So he sat into a car and drive towards another town, suburb of a big city, American, where his mistress lived. On the way there, there was a storm and then his windshield broke down. And he called like crazy different mechanics, no one came, it was a storm. So he couldn't have reached his wife, so he called a taxi there, still close to his home, and came back to his returned home, no? And what I like so much is how obviously he really didn't want to leave his wife and he was just waiting for something like storm to introduce some trouble. And when I told him this, he told me, "No, no, no, I really wanted to..." But then he admitted to me that he felt a sense of relief, you know, when the storm started. And I told him in psychoanalytic terms, "You are guilty." I told him, "Of course you didn't plan the storm, no, but you are guilty because libidinally you enjoy like you profited from it, no?" You are guilty. So I think I think I think this is how we are. For example, most of the men—and I'm sorry for the male chauvinist accent, probably I'm not good enough to judge if it goes also the other way round—most of the men who have a wife and a mistress, usually you dream that you want a mistress. But when there is a real chance of getting... no, the usual story is even but then you lose your wife and you drop also your mistress, you know what I mean. Like it's this type of confusion where you organize all your life about "really, I really want that," but it's a total panic when finally you get a chance of of getting that. This is I think the situation of most of us. Or, I claim, I'm coming back to politics here. We want freedom, democracy. No, we don't, I claim. We want precisely we really want appearances of freedom, as I developed in my books. What we want is to live in a society where it appears as if we really decide through election but we want to be told what we really want, no? We want to be given a choice where it's clear how to choose and so on and so on. Don't ever underestimate again the power of the power of appearance. So again, when I say we need a Master, because I was accused of stupidities that I propagate new Stalin and so on and so on. No. All I'm saying is that somebody something has to kick us out, not in the sense of telling us what to do, but of you know because when you know what's the problem? The problem is this one. When you accuse me of being kind of propagating some kind of totalitarian idea when I say we need a Master, this would be my answer to you. You imply that without a Master, you are free. No, you are not. That's what I deny to you. Precisely when you feel yourself an ordinary consumerist individual, you are not free here. And the function of the Master is just to give you a kick, as it were. And to, as it were, give you back to yourself, to confront you with your freedom. The Master's function is to tell you, "You are free, you can do it." That's all that and then what you do after with the Master, it's your problem. I think the good idea is that once things get moving, you you kill the master, that would be what I would propose, no? Because you know the problem with the Master is that you know some usually it's difficult, very difficult to be a Master, you know what I mean. Because, okay, you deliver this message, and then we people are sinful, you know, then you start to think, "But maybe I really know better," and so on, no? So but again, you know it's the same as in psychoanalysis, my god. Master is just a figure of transference. He doesn't know, he just delivers you he just delivers you to your freedom. If you allow me to go nonetheless because I have so many other things to say. If you allow me to add another point where I see the difficulty of division. Finally I I advise you to read this novel. It's I think one of the great novels of 20th century. Julien Gracq, G-R-A-C-Q, Julien Gracq, a French author. The the novel from early 50s, I think, the original title is *Le Rivage des Syrtes*. Syrtes is some some country in the south of an imaginary country. The English title is *The Opposing Shore*. It's a very strange novel and why it's important because I don't know if you know, this novel is the origin of Alain Badiou's famous statement, "*Mieux vaut un désastre qu'un désêtre*." Better a disaster, the catastrophic outcome of an event, than a non-eventful survival. It takes place in an imaginary country which is basically Italy, Orsenna is called the country. It's an alternate reality, they have cars but no electricity. Okay, it's basically a city state like enlarged Venice. The point is that on the south of this country there is a shore and on the other side of the shore it's a barbarian primitive country called Farghestan. And these two countries are in a state of war, but they never fight. For years, there is just a tension. And then Aldo, the hero of this novel, goes down and bombs with his ship—he's a border commander there—bombs a Farghestan city, something like that, knowingly provoking a war. And he knows that Orsenna, his country, will probably be devastated. But his idea is that Orsenna is living for hundreds of years in this simple satisfaction, nothing is happening, and it's better to something must happen. It's better war, disappearance than nothing happening. Now the horror is the problem is how to read this. Of course, liberals and left liberals read this as an implicit propaganda for fascism. Like, you know, people should not be too immersed in their consumerist everyday pleasures, better even if it's catastrophe, but something must happen. Alain Badiou told me that, you know, his again, the empirical origin of his formula, "*Mieux vaut un désastre qu'un désêtre*," better a disaster than a non-eventful survival, originated after he read this book. But I find it and Badiou also knows this that it's, you know, that's the whole problem. When we are in relatively satisfied, we live relatively satisfied life in a easy, nothing is happening, in in passive consumerist nothing is happening, peaceful life, is it really that anything that disturbs this is better or not? That is to say, here I think that Badiou is sometimes too seduced by this motive of just that things happen even if it's a catastrophe, better than nothing. For example, I remember I had a personal private, we just talked, polemic with him about Yugoslavia in early 90s, no? And he told me, "You know, it would have been better for Milošević to win over you Slovenes." I asked him why, he said, "It would have been more interesting. Something at least would have happened," no? Then okay, my answer to him was, "Well, fuck you, then let's go to the end and say it was much better for Hitler to win than," you know. It would certainly like imagine European history if for some reason in the early 30s I don't know the Nazi movement would have disintegrated, it would have certainly been much less interesting, no? But fuck you for such interest where where people million die to make things more interesting, you know. So but my point here would have been that that what I would have, yes, okay, I will put it in this term. The true choice, I think, is not as Badiou said better disaster than a *désêtre*, non-being—non-being means for him simple animal life, nothing happening—the the true choice is between pseudo-event and non-being. Like, what is better? Fascism or ordinary bourgeois society? This is the true choice. And Badiou sometimes sounds as if just to kick things into movement he would prefer even that. For example, he wrote some things which are true but nonetheless for me a little bit ambiguous about Jean-Marie Le Pen. He said he's the only interesting politician in France today. The only one—and which is true—he was the only one who introduced passion, dynamic... okay fuck you, but what kind of passion and dynamic, no? So again, I think that nonetheless we should avoid this dilemma of the novel. You know that the thing to ask is not what is better, this peaceful consumerist life or some event, even if it's a pseudo-event which disturbs it. The problem is, I would here put it in classical Marxist terms, the problem is: is this peaceful life really so peaceful? I would like to learn more about this country, Orsenna. Where is class struggle there? Are all people satisfied? You know what I mean. Maybe maybe the whole maybe the whole perspective is wrong. So what I'm saying is that and this is our problem today. Today, unfortunately, let's put it this way, one of the temptations is the temptation of: "We are living in, at least until recently, we are living in times which are too peaceful and so on, we need some dynamics." Yes, but there is a there is a dynamic and a dynamic. Maybe I should stop slowly because what I yeah immediately what I one point more that I wanted to do is the most problematic one. I wanted to focus on the problem of national struggles today. Because another false division today often is the exact status of national resistance, struggles for national liberation, and maybe I will do this two days from now, just to announce it to you. What I really wanted to show is how not only problematic but totally opposite were here, not so much Marx as Engels. You know that Engels said in '48, referring to my nation and all Southern Slavs, that these miserable nations deserve only to perish in—he uses even German word—in the Holocaust of the new world revolution. He is absolutely explicit. His idea is, the only thing that matters is the revolution of Western Europe, and then Lenin... I mean this this topic of, which I think is not yet resolved, how to mix national liberation... what's your problem here? I'm getting to be too much here. Sorry, okay. Sorry, I was confused today, Wednesday more systematic. Excellent. No, no, this was one of your most systematic talks in a long time. So you stuck to your text, that's excellent. Thank you very much. So we will take perhaps two or three questions at the time, so, you know, give Slavoj time to consider they thoughts and then come back. So Maria, you go first, okay. Mine are just two short comments. First, about the film that neither of us has seen, but we both want to see, *The Hunger Games*. Because I mean one of the reasons, I think we should see it as soon as possible is the motto actually summarizes your lecture today because the main thing it says is "know your enemy." So it's about distinguishing between false divisions and fake fake radicalism. The enemy is there Donald Sutherland, I think, no? Yes, exactly. He is, no, he is, the yeah, yeah, yeah. But the main point I want to make is about the Master. I mean you rehabilitate the figure of the Master and basically what you just the way you describe the Master today is you collapsed him into the Analyst. So do we only have like three discourses now nowadays? We don't have, you know, we have... I mean basically, I mean even when you said oh, it's the same in psychoanalysis, the Master is the one that you have a transference to, no, in psychoanalysis the person you have a transference to is the Analyst, not the Master. So I'm just wondering why I mean the way you describe the Master today, it's almost like he's an ethical subject like you have a transference towards and doesn't tell you what to do but had, you know, has his own idea about what should be done for himself like Steve Jobs. No, I should, I know, I was just to answer briefly to this one. No, I know I should have elaborated this more but I nonetheless think there are there are differences here because the Analyst nonetheless puts you to work in the sense of analytic work and so on and so on. But what I meant, I mean like take an authentic revolutionary leader, it would be nonetheless too much to say that he is somehow analyzing the people or whatever. No, I think it's not so much a continuous process, transference lasts, it's just this experience of this enabling experience of "my god, but I can do it." This is for me the crucial. My problematic thesis is that for this you need a Master. I am here opposed to the standard idea of autonomous subjectivity that that the experience of freedom is, "No, I don't need, I can do it alone." No, at that point exactly you need a Master, I claim. You need to be because again the whole point is that alone you are not free. You are not free alone. You are when you are without a Master, you are precisely most enslaved. I think you need an Analyst, not a Master. Who, me as a person? No, no, no. I may be I need it because I don't want it, you know. Like I I am more and more I'm personally opposed because first as a person, I find it so disgusting, maybe this is a way of what Freud calls *Widerstand*, resistance to analysis, you know, but like if you look deep into me, you will probably discover some shit, you know. Some stupid dirty desires and so on. Why? Why? This is disgusting, I think. And in my Stalinist universe there would certainly be no analysts because people would work hard for socialism, they wouldn't have time to do this bullshit, you know like... sorry. First of all, thank you very much, I got a great deal out of that. So thank you for that. You spent a lot of time on Syria and the surrounding context of... Are you Scottish? Yes, I am. No, no, I am with you, you know why a solidarity. No, just immediately I will... You're a dark Serb. No, no, no. Sorry, because you know when Yugoslavia was falling apart, this is the racism of British leftists. Now they sympathize, at least some of them, with you Scottish. Are they don't? No, no, I just noticed that the same friends of mine who, when Yugoslavia was falling apart, were telling me, "But you are crazy, you should remain together, the world is coming together." Ah, we don't have the right, you have the right, no? Sorry, let's go on. You spent a great deal sometimes looking at Syria. Do you have a view on Owen Jones and Jeremy Scahill refusing to be on the platform with this nun at the Stop the War conference on Saturday? No, no. Sorry, I don't know about it. What happened there? No, no, but just wait a minute briefly, I will... What happened there? What happened there? No, it's just a case... You know, I don't want to take time away from everybody else, but I'm sure you can mention it later on in the week, but... No, believe me, when we get into national struggles and so on we will discuss that. The gentleman over there. Could you detail further the difference between this new kind of Master and if this Master is equivalent to Analyst discourse on Lacan, and which is the difference between this figure of the Master and the super-ego injunction? This one, next talk, I will go into it. Okay. Sometimes you said on one hand that we live in in a better world, it's much less poverty than other times and things like that, but on the other hand to support communism and this kind of change. Maybe it's this paradox it's in the core of what you were developing at the end of this... could you explain about this? Let's just take the lady also. Now thinking about the way you describe the Master, I'm trying to understand better an expression that I grew up with in Romania which says that the student's responsibility is to surpass the teacher, therefore the Master. So thank you for that because... But how did you know what interests me? Maybe you should answer. Don't be mad, it's extreme but... You know when you have a nice thought like that... Yeah, yeah, yeah, I will let her finish. You have a Master, Žižek? No, no, what I wanted to ask, I wanted you to go even further on. You know when you know what interests me? When you when somebody told you this, that lesson of the the task of the pupil is to surpass the teacher. Who told you who told you this? A teacher? Socrates, Socrates. No, because what I interest is, you know, I typically imagine a teacher who tells you this, but then just try really to do it, you know what I mean. Because I always have these problems, for example, fuck off. For example, when I were Avital Ronell, my half-friend from New York, even now hates me because she gave a talk at Saas-Fee saying that every pupil has to rebel against a Master, that you have to betray your Master, no? And she dwelt on Nietzsche betraying moving over Wagner. And then Alain Badiou in a stroke of genius asked her a simple question. So because her Master undoubtedly, she loved him blah blah, is Derrida. "What about you betraying Derrida?" And she was it was such an embarrassment, she became pale and she said, "Well, maybe my formula is not quite universal, you cannot apply it in such a mechanical way." Then another guy, Derridian, I forgot his name, who was there, said, "No, with Derrida is a unique Master, you don't have to betray him because in a self-critical spirit, he was all the time already betraying himself," you know and so on. You know like for me a true analytic Master would have been the one, and that would be the testing moment of the Master, who would really be able to say, "Yes, now you did really move over me." But they are very, very rare. You know, they cheat mostly. So that's what interests me, like like to see this in action. Did you ever meet a Master who congratulated you to overcome him? I had a private teacher who who also gave this advice a lot. Yeah, but like I didn't manage to see the result. Yeah, but that's what I mean. Sorry, there was another... I just wanted to ask you how your view on the Master corresponds with Hegel's view because yeah,
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he's the one who
he's the one who
Slavoj Žižek
kind of entered this whole discourse into into the
kind of entered this whole discourse into into the
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field. Oh my god, this is maybe here I agree with you, too complex a question. You know why? Because I claim that Hegel's dialectic of of of Master and servant is a much more complex one, especially to avoid I'm more and more convinced is the simplified Kojève version to project into Hegel a kind of proto-Marxism, you know, that worker wins. No, worker does not
field. Oh my god, this is maybe here I agree with you, too complex a question. You know why? Because I claim that Hegel's dialectic of of of Master and servant is a much more complex one, especially to avoid I'm more and more convinced is the simplified Kojève version to project into Hegel a kind of proto-Marxism, you know, that worker wins. No, worker does not
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win. Nobody wins there. It's way too simple to read it that in the short term Master wins but then in the long term through mediation or whatever worker wins and so on and so on. No, if you look at it, because the result of this
win. Nobody wins there. It's way too simple to read it that in the short term Master wins but then in the long term through mediation or whatever worker wins and so on and so on. No, if you look at it, because the result of this
Slavoj Žižek
whole dialectic is then a passage to thought and it's a stoicism. And a
whole dialectic is then a passage to thought and it's a stoicism. And a
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stoic
stoic
Slavoj Žižek
is precisely a
is precisely a
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Master who is a Master of nothing, you know. You just have your freedom but the world is out there doing whatever it wants. And you
Master who is a Master of nothing, you know. You just have your freedom but the world is out there doing whatever it wants. And you
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don't care. You don't care about the world. And you don't care, yes, this is the the result. So it's again very it's all I can say is that both the big readings of Hegel are usually are usually wrong. But but Hegel was definitely aware of something. That again you need that you need an external kick, as it were. Because again for the worker, if we accept this standard Kojèvean reading that a worker through his work liberates himself, yes, but you need a Master. But you know where this would be a good text or even book to read. Things get more complicated what some people tried to do if you
don't care. You don't care about the world. And you don't care, yes, this is the the result. So it's again very it's all I can say is that both the big readings of Hegel are usually are usually wrong. But but Hegel was definitely aware of something. That again you need that you need an external kick, as it were. Because again for the worker, if we accept this standard Kojèvean reading that a worker through his work liberates himself, yes, but you need a Master. But you know where this would be a good text or even book to read. Things get more complicated what some people tried to do if you
Slavoj Žižek
try to connect this Master and servant, not slave, dialectic with the position of woman in Hegel. Because on the one hand Hegel may appear anti-feminist, you know, like women should be limited to private life blah blah. On the other hand, what he says about Antigone, it's much more ambiguous when he speaks about eternal irony of woman as the eternal irony of men and so on and so on. It would be interesting to again to systematically transpose the dialectic of of domination and servitude to to sexual difference, no? So again that's why I think that the way to move through Hegel beyond Hegel is not to move in a Deleuzian way to another domain but just to think Hegel to be more Hegelian at crucial points than Hegel himself. That's why, allow me just to finish with this, we are not yet at one. No, immediately. That's why for example with all my criticism of Marx, I agree that Marx's great achievement was to extend Hegelian approach also on the topic of capital. Because there Hegel wasn't Hegel. Hegel didn't Hegel didn't really have a sense of what capital is, capitalism. His notion is still Adam Smith notion of cooperatives, simple division of labor and so on. Hegel didn't didn't see the Hegelian dimension of capital. And if you just do that, everything explodes and so on and so on. You know? Sorry. We have one question there and one there. And one there. Yes, you are the people who asked. So I'd like to connect two points. Firstly your reference to Engels and his outburst against my
try to connect this Master and servant, not slave, dialectic with the position of woman in Hegel. Because on the one hand Hegel may appear anti-feminist, you know, like women should be limited to private life blah blah. On the other hand, what he says about Antigone, it's much more ambiguous when he speaks about eternal irony of woman as the eternal irony of men and so on and so on. It would be interesting to again to systematically transpose the dialectic of of domination and servitude to to sexual difference, no? So again that's why I think that the way to move through Hegel beyond Hegel is not to move in a Deleuzian way to another domain but just to think Hegel to be more Hegelian at crucial points than Hegel himself. That's why, allow me just to finish with this, we are not yet at one. No, immediately. That's why for example with all my criticism of Marx, I agree that Marx's great achievement was to extend Hegelian approach also on the topic of capital. Because there Hegel wasn't Hegel. Hegel didn't Hegel didn't really have a sense of what capital is, capitalism. His notion is still Adam Smith notion of cooperatives, simple division of labor and so on. Hegel didn't didn't see the Hegelian dimension of capital. And if you just do that, everything explodes and so on and so on. You know? Sorry. We have one question there and one there. And one there. Yes, you are the people who asked. So I'd like to connect two points. Firstly your reference to Engels and his outburst against my
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nation.
nation.
Slavoj Žižek
Which is systematic, not just once. He did it at least three times, years in between. So I don't want to deny... Yeah, yeah. Engels. Secondly, the use of the word the expression "fuck off," which is I would think part of Engels' problem with English language and in England. Because he was of course at that time when it came to class-based analysis, his
Which is systematic, not just once. He did it at least three times, years in between. So I don't want to deny... Yeah, yeah. Engels. Secondly, the use of the word the expression "fuck off," which is I would think part of Engels' problem with English language and in England. Because he was of course at that time when it came to class-based analysis, his
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analysis of England of Britain was of course informed by also not not only by his daily operations in Manchester but also by his
analysis of England of Britain was of course informed by also not not only by his daily operations in Manchester but also by his
Slavoj Žižek
relations with the family
relations with the family
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of Marx. And I
of Marx. And I
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especially point out the family of Marx because
especially point out the family of Marx because
Slavoj Žižek
with the family of Marx, here
with the family of Marx, here
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were Hegelians of utterly embraced Hegelian world, not in Nietzschean, yeah, which is very important. They were not salami tacticians, lots of values, but there was just a clear
were Hegelians of utterly embraced Hegelian world, not in Nietzschean, yeah, which is very important. They were not salami tacticians, lots of values, but there was just a clear
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delineation the way you put it tonight. So now
delineation the way you put it tonight. So now
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Marx, his wife of course and her ancestors were important within the European
Marx, his wife of course and her ancestors were important within the European
Slavoj Žižek
context of creating the not only
context of creating the not only
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the Westphalian yeah yeah yeah but a whole notion of protocol which informed the various foreign offices of Europe, especially including also the talk to Vatican at that time. Yeah. Now "fuck off," Hegel, Engels, the family of Marx. Yeah. They accusing you of being Stalinist. Yeah. So at that point, I have to bring in the British film institute because there you have exactly that transformation of knowledge of having a shallow understanding of Marx and Marxism and being more intensely Lacanian and more or less
the Westphalian yeah yeah yeah but a whole notion of protocol which informed the various foreign offices of Europe, especially including also the talk to Vatican at that time. Yeah. Now "fuck off," Hegel, Engels, the family of Marx. Yeah. They accusing you of being Stalinist. Yeah. So at that point, I have to bring in the British film institute because there you have exactly that transformation of knowledge of having a shallow understanding of Marx and Marxism and being more intensely Lacanian and more or less
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then following the basically US strategy of anti-Marxism via the the French school of of of engineering philosophy. Now therefore when you personally I hear refuse to look at your own films where you are included. Yeah. I would crucially say please personally re-enter polite society, don't say "fuck off" ever. Sorry for... Okay.
then following the basically US strategy of anti-Marxism via the the French school of of of engineering philosophy. Now therefore when you personally I hear refuse to look at your own films where you are included. Yeah. I would crucially say please personally re-enter polite society, don't say "fuck off" ever. Sorry for... Okay.
Slavoj Žižek
No but wait a second. You were reflecting about the skill of the British film institute.
No but wait a second. You were reflecting about the skill of the British film institute.
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Because they are exactly the ones who make you
Because they are exactly the ones who make you
Slavoj Žižek
actually get up a staircase in an old US graveyard of planes and then let you go out of the door of the plane. And and before then in the film they cut Stalin coming out of a plane of Gorky and coming out and you following them. That is the reason that you are all such in a confused... No but first about
actually get up a staircase in an old US graveyard of planes and then let you go out of the door of the plane. And and before then in the film they cut Stalin coming out of a plane of Gorky and coming out and you following them. That is the reason that you are all such in a confused... No but first about
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first without the the skill of those
first without the the skill of those
Slavoj Žižek
Nietzschean salami tacticians with the help of the French school of of philosophy to avoid dialectics, Hegelians would say, but I would say to avoid universality. Because they they think they they own... Okay, this would be too complex to answer because first first this universality. I first I don't think there is a homogeneous French school, I see great opposition. I mean for example Lacan together with some others is always pro-universal against Foucauldian nominalism and so on. So this this... but what interests me is really what you mentioned about "fuck off." Now I like to use it because I'm in England, and I think that the English are masters of are masters of being very vulgar and aggressive but in a coldly formal polite way. And I think it's easy to be vulgar in a vulgar way. Every idiot can do this, you just talk dirty. Okay. It's easy to be polite in a polite way. It's a little bit more
Nietzschean salami tacticians with the help of the French school of of philosophy to avoid dialectics, Hegelians would say, but I would say to avoid universality. Because they they think they they own... Okay, this would be too complex to answer because first first this universality. I first I don't think there is a homogeneous French school, I see great opposition. I mean for example Lacan together with some others is always pro-universal against Foucauldian nominalism and so on. So this this... but what interests me is really what you mentioned about "fuck off." Now I like to use it because I'm in England, and I think that the English are masters of are masters of being very vulgar and aggressive but in a coldly formal polite way. And I think it's easy to be vulgar in a vulgar way. Every idiot can do this, you just talk dirty. Okay. It's easy to be polite in a polite way. It's a little bit more
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difficult to be to be vulgar
difficult to be to be vulgar
Slavoj Žižek
in a polite
in a polite
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way. But you English can do it. But
way. But you English can do it. But
Slavoj Žižek
the true art of civilization for me is to be polite in a vulgar way. And
the true art of civilization for me is to be polite in a vulgar way. And
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that's what I try to practice. Then you use dirty words and so on, but
that's what I try to practice. Then you use dirty words and so on, but
Slavoj Žižek
if you do it in a correct way with friends, in a way it's not not only it's not considered really brutal vulgar, it's in a way the highest assertion of friendship. Ah, another thing I will tell you now, this one is crucial. What I really hate, and here I agree with you, is people who are publicly polite but privately then explode. I think our duty is to be the opposite. And I'm like this with my friends. It's my old joke that I'm telling but it's true. For me being vulgar is a matter of great tact, how to do it publicly. It's not something spontaneous. Like I notice, maybe you know the story with my friends, when I meet a friend we start it's a ritual, we start insulting each other. Like my standard line is the Serb one, you know, "I will dig your mother up out of her grave and fuck her into her sagging pale breast," and so on. We then after minutes of after minutes of this we look at each other and we say, "Listen, enough of this, we did our duty, now we can talk like normal people kindly," and so on. This is civilization for me. You treat being vulgar not as "ooh, now I'm furious, I explode," no, you treat being vulgar as a sad duty you have to do it, a ritual. And then and I spoke with, that's why I always like them, the hardline hardline how do you call them sadomaso lesbians? They are when I speak with them privately the kind because you know all this shit they put into their ritual, whipping with nails, whatever each other, and then finally they can be beautiful kind persons that they are, you know. Sorry, sorry. I I I must confess that I have submitted to anti-Greek attacks from Žižek now for years. So you know sort of I know how to respond. He's just... No, I changed the line. He is half-Mongol, he is not even Greek. But that's another story. He's a slave, that's why he wants to turn the master-and-slave dialectic. I know, this is scientific etymology, no? Slavs comes from slave, you know. Yeah, of course. Do you keep it a short direct to the point? I don't know if I can but just just very briefly speaking to the the warfare myth that you were talking about of the trenches. I thought those in
if you do it in a correct way with friends, in a way it's not not only it's not considered really brutal vulgar, it's in a way the highest assertion of friendship. Ah, another thing I will tell you now, this one is crucial. What I really hate, and here I agree with you, is people who are publicly polite but privately then explode. I think our duty is to be the opposite. And I'm like this with my friends. It's my old joke that I'm telling but it's true. For me being vulgar is a matter of great tact, how to do it publicly. It's not something spontaneous. Like I notice, maybe you know the story with my friends, when I meet a friend we start it's a ritual, we start insulting each other. Like my standard line is the Serb one, you know, "I will dig your mother up out of her grave and fuck her into her sagging pale breast," and so on. We then after minutes of after minutes of this we look at each other and we say, "Listen, enough of this, we did our duty, now we can talk like normal people kindly," and so on. This is civilization for me. You treat being vulgar not as "ooh, now I'm furious, I explode," no, you treat being vulgar as a sad duty you have to do it, a ritual. And then and I spoke with, that's why I always like them, the hardline hardline how do you call them sadomaso lesbians? They are when I speak with them privately the kind because you know all this shit they put into their ritual, whipping with nails, whatever each other, and then finally they can be beautiful kind persons that they are, you know. Sorry, sorry. I I I must confess that I have submitted to anti-Greek attacks from Žižek now for years. So you know sort of I know how to respond. He's just... No, I changed the line. He is half-Mongol, he is not even Greek. But that's another story. He's a slave, that's why he wants to turn the master-and-slave dialectic. I know, this is scientific etymology, no? Slavs comes from slave, you know. Yeah, of course. Do you keep it a short direct to the point? I don't know if I can but just just very briefly speaking to the the warfare myth that you were talking about of the trenches. I thought those in
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between.
between.
Slavoj Žižek
Yes, yes, yes. Ah
Yes, yes, yes. Ah
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you know more about it, what went on? No I was I was kind of wondering because I know that you just
you know more about it, what went on? No I was I was kind of wondering because I know that you just
Slavoj Žižek
edited a series with with a fellow out of Sheffield on Ernst
edited a series with with a fellow out of Sheffield on Ernst
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Bloch and his idea of utopia. And I wonder if the notion of utopia ties into this battlefield myth in some way. Maybe this is too big of a topic but it just seemed to me that there was some notion... Okay. Very briefly. A second question and then we... I only want to know if this master your master it's in some way related with for example the anti-masters in Greece. These masters that Foucault describe very well in the hermeneutics of the subject, like the master of the *epimeleia heautou*. So I want to know if there are any relation with this kind of masters, if not where is the I don't know what is the difference of the characteristic? Here I would maybe first second disappoint you. My idea is more the Kierkegaardian distinction between genius and apostle. And my favorite Kierkegaard is that *Philosophical Fragments* where he develops how the ancient have geniuses, creative guy who knows, and Christians have apostles who are just like he he describes in terrifying terms Jesus Christ. I like this Kierkegaard. He says Jesus Christ is like a postman. He was carrying a message but he was too stupid to know what this message... you know like a postman brings you a letter, but usually postman doesn't know what's the message, no? And he says Christian teachers are like apostles. They just carry a message, they are nothing in themselves. I'm here more I was more thinking about this Christian guys. Back to Bloch. You know what's my problem? I don't know enough about Ernst Bloch, and I basically just gave my name to that volume. Although what I do like in Bloch is this idea is his obsession to find to locate everywhere the utopian dimension. You know, even in for example in popular literature in the lowest literature, it's even not
Bloch and his idea of utopia. And I wonder if the notion of utopia ties into this battlefield myth in some way. Maybe this is too big of a topic but it just seemed to me that there was some notion... Okay. Very briefly. A second question and then we... I only want to know if this master your master it's in some way related with for example the anti-masters in Greece. These masters that Foucault describe very well in the hermeneutics of the subject, like the master of the *epimeleia heautou*. So I want to know if there are any relation with this kind of masters, if not where is the I don't know what is the difference of the characteristic? Here I would maybe first second disappoint you. My idea is more the Kierkegaardian distinction between genius and apostle. And my favorite Kierkegaard is that *Philosophical Fragments* where he develops how the ancient have geniuses, creative guy who knows, and Christians have apostles who are just like he he describes in terrifying terms Jesus Christ. I like this Kierkegaard. He says Jesus Christ is like a postman. He was carrying a message but he was too stupid to know what this message... you know like a postman brings you a letter, but usually postman doesn't know what's the message, no? And he says Christian teachers are like apostles. They just carry a message, they are nothing in themselves. I'm here more I was more thinking about this Christian guys. Back to Bloch. You know what's my problem? I don't know enough about Ernst Bloch, and I basically just gave my name to that volume. Although what I do like in Bloch is this idea is his obsession to find to locate everywhere the utopian dimension. You know, even in for example in popular literature in the lowest literature, it's even not
Slavoj Žižek
known here.
known here.
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When I was young everyone was reading it, Karl May. A unique writer, a German from late 19th century who wrote invented Western novels about his hero is Old Shatterhand, friend with an Indian Apache chief Winnetou. And it's absolutely mythical in Middle Europe but nowhere outside Middle Europe. So again I do I do appreciate this in Bloch and also his idea of
When I was young everyone was reading it, Karl May. A unique writer, a German from late 19th century who wrote invented Western novels about his hero is Old Shatterhand, friend with an Indian Apache chief Winnetou. And it's absolutely mythical in Middle Europe but nowhere outside Middle Europe. So again I do I do appreciate this in Bloch and also his idea of
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not-yet, of reality as not fully not fully not fully ontologically constituted. I do buy
not-yet, of reality as not fully not fully not fully ontologically constituted. I do buy
Slavoj Žižek
all that, but unfortunately I don't know enough about Bloch. Okay. Last two questions. One here and one at the back. You you go first because you've been asking for some time. In the last lecture of yours that I attended here, I think it was somehow a response to your critics, you were speaking about the form of the social bond or the symbolic link and you said something that confused me about how we had the form of the social bond that wasn't somehow
all that, but unfortunately I don't know enough about Bloch. Okay. Last two questions. One here and one at the back. You you go first because you've been asking for some time. In the last lecture of yours that I attended here, I think it was somehow a response to your critics, you were speaking about the form of the social bond or the symbolic link and you said something that confused me about how we had the form of the social bond that wasn't somehow
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predicated
predicated
Slavoj Žižek
on the authority of the big other or the master. Now today you seem to be saying that this master is vital to the necessary somehow and I wondered if I'm just confused or whether these two things are somehow compatible. No oh my god, this is again a difficult... What I would say is that obviously I'm introducing subdivisions. I'm trying to sub-categorize the notion of a Master. And I'm sorry I don't have time to do it today because I claim that what is a Master signifier for Lacan? Of course, it's always a reflexive signifier. Like, you fill in a gap. You just give a name to that which originally doesn't have a name. Like, for example in classical example for Spinoza, God is a master signifier. Why? Because we simply name that which escapes our knowing and so on, all that stuff. But and then I gave many examples, I will not repeat them. But my point is that for Lacan always emphasized that the Master signifier can be with a subtle shift, it can be transformed into what Lacan calls signifier of the barred inconsistent Other, that is to say signifier of the inconsistency of the Other. Which is again almost the opposite. You know how the same signifier can can be something which as it were fascinates us, covers up the inconsistency, or can be the very signifier of this inconsistency. In this sense, for example, in traditional Marxism, I claim it still can work, class struggle is a Master signifier. Class struggle... so again I would have said that now it all depends on what do we mean.
on the authority of the big other or the master. Now today you seem to be saying that this master is vital to the necessary somehow and I wondered if I'm just confused or whether these two things are somehow compatible. No oh my god, this is again a difficult... What I would say is that obviously I'm introducing subdivisions. I'm trying to sub-categorize the notion of a Master. And I'm sorry I don't have time to do it today because I claim that what is a Master signifier for Lacan? Of course, it's always a reflexive signifier. Like, you fill in a gap. You just give a name to that which originally doesn't have a name. Like, for example in classical example for Spinoza, God is a master signifier. Why? Because we simply name that which escapes our knowing and so on, all that stuff. But and then I gave many examples, I will not repeat them. But my point is that for Lacan always emphasized that the Master signifier can be with a subtle shift, it can be transformed into what Lacan calls signifier of the barred inconsistent Other, that is to say signifier of the inconsistency of the Other. Which is again almost the opposite. You know how the same signifier can can be something which as it were fascinates us, covers up the inconsistency, or can be the very signifier of this inconsistency. In this sense, for example, in traditional Marxism, I claim it still can work, class struggle is a Master signifier. Class struggle... so again I would have said that now it all depends on what do we mean.
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Already
Already
Slavoj Žižek
capitalism is in a way social order with no Master in the traditional
capitalism is in a way social order with no Master in the traditional
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sense.
sense.
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But you know, the whole point
But you know, the whole point
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of Lacan—and here he is very modern—is how the type of discourse which replaces,
of Lacan—and here he is very modern—is how the type of discourse which replaces,
Slavoj Žižek
supplements the Master's
supplements the Master's
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discourse,
discourse,
Slavoj Žižek
University
University
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discourse, has at its truth the Master signifier. So that it's still dominated by Master signifier. And the way I read Lacan's discourse of the Analyst is precisely that there we also have Master signifier but it's at the fourth place
discourse, has at its truth the Master signifier. So that it's still dominated by Master signifier. And the way I read Lacan's discourse of the Analyst is precisely that there we also have Master signifier but it's at the fourth place
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of production.
of production.
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Which means that the Master signifier is brought out as what it is and so on. So again, my point precise to what you are saying is that we have to be here much more precise. And the key of the problem—I cannot develop it now but because
Which means that the Master signifier is brought out as what it is and so on. So again, my point precise to what you are saying is that we have to be here much more precise. And the key of the problem—I cannot develop it now but because
Slavoj Žižek
I may sound confused for a simple reason, because I am confused because this is crucial problem—is something which I try to isolate in some pages towards the end of my big fat book *Less Than Nothing*. Is you know that what Lacan got it is that it's not enough for example to have a non-relationship. For example when Lacan says *il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel*, there is no relationship. What Lacan got it and it's a very speculative Hegelian point, it's that it's not enough to say there is no relationship. If we say there is no sexual relationship, this can still be some kind of a boring eternal wisdom, you know. "The two sexes cannot ever be reconciled, there is eternal struggle between masculine, feminine..." what this is bullshit. But what Lacan says is something very precise. He moves imperceptibly from "there is no relationship" to "there is a no-relationship." That is to say, the non-relationship itself has to be embodied in an element which stands for it. For example, in anti-semitism, Jew is a non-relationship, not
I may sound confused for a simple reason, because I am confused because this is crucial problem—is something which I try to isolate in some pages towards the end of my big fat book *Less Than Nothing*. Is you know that what Lacan got it is that it's not enough for example to have a non-relationship. For example when Lacan says *il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel*, there is no relationship. What Lacan got it and it's a very speculative Hegelian point, it's that it's not enough to say there is no relationship. If we say there is no sexual relationship, this can still be some kind of a boring eternal wisdom, you know. "The two sexes cannot ever be reconciled, there is eternal struggle between masculine, feminine..." what this is bullshit. But what Lacan says is something very precise. He moves imperceptibly from "there is no relationship" to "there is a no-relationship." That is to say, the non-relationship itself has to be embodied in an element which stands for it. For example, in anti-semitism, Jew is a non-relationship, not
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real
real
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Jew, anti-semitic figure of the Jew, is a non-relationship embodied. Because you know the Jew stands in for non-relationship in the sense that in anti-semitic vision it is the cause of the class struggle
Jew, anti-semitic figure of the Jew, is a non-relationship embodied. Because you know the Jew stands in for non-relationship in the sense that in anti-semitic vision it is the cause of the class struggle
Slavoj Žižek
and so on and so on. And so again what Lacan calls object a is always to be read in this way. For example, this is why—and now we come to the interesting crucial problem—class struggle is never a pure class struggle, not even ideally, just one class against the other. There is always some complication, some element which doesn't fit it. And this is what makes it class struggle. You take this excessive element out, and you no longer have class struggle. So again, what I would have said here is that the difficulty is how to think this exceptional signifier without reading it in the traditional way as the Master signifier. What I don't... but the problem there is another very deep aspect to it here, philosophical. I think that Lacan is trying to break out of this let's call it productive paradigm. By this I mean, for example, what Deleuze does in his *Anti-Oedipus*. That you define a field of some original productivity, flux of desire, multitude, and then you account for hierarchy or whatever as a secondary formation. You know all these classical oppositions. For example, production representation. Production, the original site, productive site, and then the alienated hierarchic representation. And then the problem becomes how to reassert productivity and so on and so on. I think Lacan wants to break out of this. His idea is that in a way what representation, some excess of representation is the condition of production and so on. He wants to complicate the image here. So again, it's too complex for me to give you a full answer now. Thank you very much, Slavoj.
and so on and so on. And so again what Lacan calls object a is always to be read in this way. For example, this is why—and now we come to the interesting crucial problem—class struggle is never a pure class struggle, not even ideally, just one class against the other. There is always some complication, some element which doesn't fit it. And this is what makes it class struggle. You take this excessive element out, and you no longer have class struggle. So again, what I would have said here is that the difficulty is how to think this exceptional signifier without reading it in the traditional way as the Master signifier. What I don't... but the problem there is another very deep aspect to it here, philosophical. I think that Lacan is trying to break out of this let's call it productive paradigm. By this I mean, for example, what Deleuze does in his *Anti-Oedipus*. That you define a field of some original productivity, flux of desire, multitude, and then you account for hierarchy or whatever as a secondary formation. You know all these classical oppositions. For example, production representation. Production, the original site, productive site, and then the alienated hierarchic representation. And then the problem becomes how to reassert productivity and so on and so on. I think Lacan wants to break out of this. His idea is that in a way what representation, some excess of representation is the condition of production and so on. He wants to complicate the image here. So again, it's too complex for me to give you a full answer now. Thank you very much, Slavoj.