UNHOLY ALLIANCES TODAY
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2023-03-17 · 2:07:14 · 14,670 words
with Co-host
ideologygeopolitics-warcapitalismcommunism-socialismfascism-populismdemocracyrevolution-violenceecology-climateliberalism-political-correctnessrace-antisemitismsexuality-genderhistorypsychoanalysishegel-dialecticsphilosophy-generaleveryday-life
Žižek delivers a wide-ranging lecture to an Indian academic audience (St. Berchmans College, Kerala centenary series) addressing the global political situation: the bankruptcy of the Western left over Ukraine, the rise of unholy alliances between far-left and far-right, the need to treat ecological and social crises on a 'war footing', and the dangers of neo-feudal capitalism. He argues for a paradoxical temporality of catastrophe drawn from Jean-Pierre Dupuy, critiques identity politics and woke awakening as modes of continued sleep, and closes with the demand that emancipatory movements transform their own identity rather than simply locate an external enemy.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 21
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
The leftist hermeneutic habit of reading surface claims as the opposite of their truth (e.g. freedom as exploitation), which leaves the left perplexed when the enemy already openly presents its reactionary content.
Žižek inverts the standard valorisation: the call to 'awaken' (to woke politics, to pacifism) is often a way to continue sleeping by incorporating the disturbing element into a new dream rather than confronting the true trauma.
Peter Sloterdijk's phrase, endorsed by Žižek, for social-democratic values (free healthcare, education) that are inscribed into the state apparatus regardless of which party governs.
Žižek repurposes the Bolshevik term provocatively to name the emergency economic mobilisation, overriding market rules, that he thinks is needed to address today's ecological, health, and military crises.
Jean-Pierre Dupuy's concept, adopted by Žižek, for the virtual attractor, nuclear war, ecological collapse, social chaos, towards which present reality drifts if left to itself.
Dupuy's temporality, endorsed by Žižek, in which the future catastrophe is treated as already fixed so that we can retroactively reinterpret the past to insert counterfactual possibilities that could avert it.
as “neo-feudalism”
A term Žižek borrows from Varoufakis and Jodi Dean for the new corporate order in which the commons remain common spaces but are under private monopoly control by lords like Zuckerberg or Bezos.
as “privatisation of the commons”
Unlike Marx's original meaning (forests, land), Žižek uses this to describe how communication and exchange platforms remain publicly shared spaces yet are owned and controlled by a single private entity.
as “precarious worker”
Žižek identifies the precarious worker, who owns only their personal instrument (computer, bicycle) and experiences themselves as a free entrepreneur, as the paradigmatic new form of labour under neo-feudal capitalism.
as “ethical evil”
Žižek's term for a principled, self-sacrificing commitment to a cause that is itself wrong, as illustrated by Himmler's elevation of genocide into a form of moral discipline, distinguished from simple egotistic wrongdoing.
as “retroactive reinterpretation of the past”
Žižek's claim that emancipatory movements do not simply face a closed past; each victory reopens past struggles as anticipations, allowing us to change the future by changing our relation to the past.
as “left-wing principled opportunism”
Žižek's name for the left's tendency to dismiss every actually existing movement (Syriza, Morales) as insufficiently pure while clinging to abstract radical principles.
Žižek insists every identity politics must aim at universality: its particular struggle should reveal what is wrong with the universal predominant conception, not simply assert exclusivity.
as “patronising racism”
The most dangerous form of racism for Žižek: racism that presents itself as admiration or respect for the other's spirituality and authentic culture, which explodes into violence when the other actually seeks equality.
as “the event”
Badiou's concept of the rupture that transforms a situation; Žižek argues the true measure of an event is not the moment of enthusiasm but what concretely changes in everyday life the morning after.
Žižek's self-description: the sober focus on what ordinary everyday life looks like after the revolutionary event's enthusiasm has passed, the real measure of whether change occurred.
as “new clichés / new rituals”
Žižek, via Samuel Goldwyn's line, argues what we need is not crazy originality but organised new clichaic social formulas, rituals, that provide safe communal space; the opposite of fake individuality.
Laclau's concept of the contingent articulation of disparate antagonisms into a dominant chain, Žižek cites it to disagree, arguing one antagonism (class/domination) is not merely contingently but necessarily primary.
as “unholy alliance”
Žižek's term for ideologically incongruous political coalitions, e.g. far-left pacifists aligning with proto-fascist right, that violate the standard left/right distinction.
Against Laclau's pluralism of contingent antagonisms, Žižek insists there is a foundational antagonism of domination and exploitation that underlies and mediates all other antagonisms (race, gender, ecology).
A half-joking Marxist distinction Žižek proposes: some corruption (e.g. Lula bribing small coalition parties to pass reforms) is 'progressive' in that it advances emancipatory goals within a compromised system.
Stories he reaches for 13
Himmler carried a leather-bound Bhagavad Gita and used its counsel of acting without identification ('act at a distance') to justify the SS carrying out genocide while remaining 'decent', illustrating ethical evil.
“himmler always had in his pocket a special leather-bound version of bhagavad gita... you can do all the killing, just don't get identified with it”
When told his films used too many old clichés, Hollywood producer Samuel Goldwyn ordered his scenario department to find 'new clichés', Žižek endorses this as wisdom: true art organises new clichaic formulas, not crazy originality.
“we urgently need new cliches. the true art is to organize new clichés, new clichaic formulas”
Apartheid propaganda in English justified racial segregation on the grounds that integration would destroy the 'original culture' of small black tribes, the most explicit case of racism disguised as respect.
“they said that if we finish apartheid, then all the races will mix and what about those wonderful small black tribes? they will be caught in our decadent western world”
Žižek cites Kurosawa's film (set in 1960s corporate Japan with a Hamlet-like protagonist) as the best version of Hamlet, a Japanese re-reading makes what is at stake clearer than the original, exemplifying productive cross-cultural reinterpretation.
“for me the best version of hamlet. akira kurosawa, japanese from 1962, set in modern japan... it works so wonderful that you see clearer, in a much more clear way, what is at stake”
In the October 1943 Posen speech, Himmler spoke openly of genocide as 'a glorious page in our history' and praised SS men for having 'remained decent' despite it, exemplifying the elevation of brutal aggression into principled 'true courage'.
“to have gone through the extermination of the jews and at the same time to have remained decent, that has made us hard”
British colonial administrators reprinted the Hindu Manu Smriti because keeping Indians within the caste system was the best way to dominate them, illustrating that liberation from colonialism requires reinterpreting, not simply affirming, one's inherited tradition.
“the british colonizers reprinted it. because they saw it clearly that the best way to dominate indians is to keep them in their caste system”
The (possibly apocryphal) story of Zhou Enlai telling a journalist in 1953 that it is 'still too early to tell' about the French Revolution, illustrating that history remains open and revolutionary legacies are still contested.
“it is still too early to tell”
Closing the centenary lecture series, Žižek jokes that returning to address the same audience after a year is like a toilet that doesn't suck well, no matter how many times you flush, the shit comes back. Self-deprecating joke about his own annoying recurrence.
“when you have a water toilet which doesn't suck well. so no matter how times you flush it, the shit comes back, no?”
Contemporary art biennales (Venice, etc.) publish totally anti-capitalist programmes while functioning perfectly within the capitalist commercial art system, paradigmatic of cynical ideology.
“if you read their programs, they are totally anti-capitalist... but as such, they worked, function perfectly within the capitalist system”
Leftist friends expressed envy at Trump supporters storming the Capitol ('we should be doing this'), yet it was a right-wing attack on democracy, showing that the populist right has stolen the left's symbolic gesture of popular uprising.
“many of my leftist friends said, but look, this was wonderful. thousands of ordinary people breaking into capital... i noticed in their reaction a little bit of envy and fascination”
Bannon openly calls himself a Leninist who wants to bring everything crashing down, illustrating the migration of revolutionary populist language from left to right.
“i'm a leninist. Lenin wanted to destroy the state and that's my goal too. i want to bring everything crashing down”
Žižek invokes Benjamin's idea that emancipatory victory today retroactively redeems past defeats: Spartacus, medieval serfs' rebellions become precursors rather than mere failures.
“our struggle for emancipation today means that if we win, we will also redeem the past”
Žižek confesses that at American universities he asks a friend to fetch him with a fake urgent summons from the dean, allowing him to escape student questions while hypocritically claiming he'd love to stay.
“the friend comes and says you are urgently needed by the dean up there and then i can hypocritically say to students i would love to talk all the night with you”
Works invoked 6
Bhagavad Gita other
Not criticised in itself, but Žižek uses Himmler's misappropriation of it (act without identification) as illustration of how spiritual texts can be weaponised to enable 'ethical evil'.
The Laws of Manu book
Described as 'horrible'; used by British colonisers to maintain caste hierarchy, illustrates how tradition can be weaponised for domination.
The Bad Sleep Well film
Described as the best version of Hamlet; the Japanese corporate setting makes the original's stakes clearer than any Western adaptation.
Nomadland film
Žižek says he hates this film; it merely aestheticises nomadic proletarian poverty as authentic and solidarity-filled without any structural critique, paradigm of cynical identity politics.
The quoted passage on class abolition requiring self-transformation is taken from here; Žižek uses it as still-valid diagnosis of the left's ambiguity.
Financial Times journal
Cited approvingly (despite being 'the voice of big capital') for its editorial declaring neoliberalism has passed.
People invoked 41
Karl-Heinz Delvon positive
German friend cited for the observation that today we should speak not of masters and servants but only of servants who command other servants, applied to neo-feudal capitalism.
Simon Jenkins positive
Quoted on the NHS crisis: 'a war footing is the only way to deal with it', used to support Žižek's argument for emergency mobilisation.
Zhou Enlai positive
Cited for the apocryphal 'too early to tell' remark about the French Revolution, used to illustrate history's openness.
Mahatma Gandhi positive
Žižek is otherwise critical of Gandhi (notably on caste), but cites him for two things: the serf is worse than the slave; and 'be the change that you want', both used to support self-transformation.
Mentioned briefly; Žižek says he is not talking about Modi's politics but uses 'the Modi revolution' ironically to illustrate how the BJP rewrites history (every mosque hides a hidden temple).
Jean-Pierre Dupuy positive
French analyst of catastrophe; Žižek adopts his concepts of the 'dystopian fixed point' and 'time of a project' as the framework for thinking how to act against imminent catastrophe.
David Graeber negative
Co-cited with Chomsky as a neo-anarchist thinker Žižek disagrees with.
Marine Le Pen negative
Mentioned as example of Russian-backed extreme right in Western Europe.
Vladimir Lenin positive
Cited implicitly through Bannon's self-comparison and through the concept of 'war communism'; Žižek's own 'Marxism of the morning after' engages critically with the Bolshevik aftermath.
Mariana Mazzucato positive
Cited for the observation that the same system that claimed it couldn't raise taxes for climate spent trillions on COVID, used to debunk the ideology of the impossible.
Steve Bannon negative
Used as exhibit of the right's migration of revolutionary (Leninist) language and tactics; Žižek deplores this but uses it analytically.
His capitalist reforms are described dialectically as the ultimate result of the Cultural Revolution, the tabula rasa created by Maoism became the blank slate for capitalism.
Joseph E. Stiglitz positive
Quoted: 'it is a mistake to think that the war can be won with a peacetime economy', used to support the argument for emergency state mobilisation.
Jodi Dean positive
Co-cited with Varoufakis for the neo-feudalism concept.
Étienne Balibar positive
Cited approvingly for his argument against Malabou: the catastrophe for poor African Americans is not too much state but not enough state.
Long-time intellectual interlocutor; Žižek criticises his theory of the event and his dismissal of actually existing movements (Syriza, Morales) as left-wing principled opportunism; also notes Badiou endorsed Cultural Revolution and Khmer Rouge, though Žižek says Badiou later admitted the latter was a mistake.
Elon Musk negative
Described as 'a rightish establishment version of Julian Assange', his Twitter files release is compared to popular protests that have been transformed into right-wing attacks; a neo-feudal lord seeking to privatise a commons.
George Orwell positive
Quoted from 1937 on the ambiguity of the left's attitude to class: abolishing class means abolishing part of yourself. Žižek uses this to argue emancipation requires self-transformation.
Friedrich Engels positive
Quoted from his 1884 letter to Bebel warning that at the moment of revolution the entire reactionary mass acts as democrats, used to argue against fetishising parliamentary democracy.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva positive
Cited as the most social-democratic US president equivalent in Brazil; Žižek defends him including the alleged use of 'progressive corruption' to pass reforms.
Yanis Varoufakis positive
Cited along with Jodi Dean as source of the 'neo-feudalism' concept that Žižek finds useful even if he does not fully endorse the term.
Evo Morales positive
Cited as example of an actually existing emancipatory movement dismissed as 'nothing' by Badiou and principled left critics; Žižek defended Morales.
Heinrich Himmler negative
The Posen speech and the Bhagavad Gita anecdote are used as the most terrifying illustration of 'ethical evil', principled evil elevated into moral discipline.
Catherine Malabou positive
Described as 'a neo-anarchist but very critical one'; Žižek endorses her two key critiques of anarchism: that de facto anarchism is anarcho-capitalism, and that authoritarianism is the other side of the state's disappearance.
Salman Rushdie positive
Žižek says he is 'way too liberal' but cites his wonderful answer at a panel, his Indian roots are Jane Austen and Dickens, as an example of true multiculturalism and retroactive reinterpretation.
Peter Sloterdijk positive
Described as 'my friend who is even more conservative'; Žižek endorses his concept of 'objective social democracy' as the first task of emancipatory politics.
Ernesto Laclau negative
Described as 'my ex-friend before he died'; Žižek rejects his theory that the links between antagonisms are entirely contingent, insisting there is a foundational social antagonism of domination.
Martin Heidegger negative
Described as 'a big philosopher' but directly opposed: Žižek condemns his 1933-34 formulation of the need to find or invent an enemy as the logic of anti-semitism at its most elementary.
Byung-Chul Han positive
Referenced (name slightly garbled in transcript) as the South Korean philosopher in Germany who observed during the pandemic that the absence of communal mourning rituals produced individual breakdowns.
Walter Benjamin positive
Cited for his insight that emancipatory victory retroactively redeems past defeats and opens the historical record of resistance.
Joe Biden positive
Described as 'the most social democratic president [the US] ever had' in limited terms, ecology, healthcare, some help for the poor, used to argue against ceding initiative to the right.
Wang Huning negative
Described as the main ideologist of Xi Jinping's China who defines himself as neoconservative, American dynamism with traditional Confucian values. Žižek finds this formula secretly too close to fascism (conservative modernism).
Mentioned as the interlocutor who asked Zhou about May 68 in 1972.
Rosa Luxemburg positive
Cited for the maxim that if you wait for the right moment it will never come, used to defend opportunistic engagement with reformist movements.
Samuel Goldwyn positive
Hollywood producer celebrated for 'Goldwynisms'; his dictum 'we urgently need new clichés' is endorsed as wisdom about the need for new social rituals rather than crazy originality.
Sahra Wagenknecht negative
Her Dresden peace rally where AfD leader Höcke was applauded is Žižek's exhibit of the unholy left-right alliance over Ukraine.
Akira Kurosawa positive
His Japanese Hamlet adaptation is described by Žižek as the best version of Hamlet, a foreign re-reading that makes the original's stakes clearer.
Aldous Huxley positive
Described as someone Žižek 'doesn't like as a writer' but whose 1920s India travelogue captured the paradigm of patronising colonial racism perfectly.
Noam Chomsky negative
Mentioned as an example of neo-anarchist thinkers whose approach Žižek disagrees with, along with David Graeber.
Karl Marx positive
Cited on retroactive reinterpretation and on the original meaning of 'privatisation of the commons'; Žižek extends and updates both concepts.
Sigmund Freud positive
The dreaming father anecdote from Freud's patient is the central illustrative case of the talk, Žižek uses it to read the structure of 'awakening' in woke politics and pacifism.
What it argues
bankruptcy of the Western left and its support for Russiaunholy alliances between far-left and proto-fascist rightwar communism as emergency mobilisation for ecological and social crisisneo-feudal capitalism and the privatisation of the commonsthe paradox of awakening: woke politics as a way to continue sleepingretroactive reinterpretation of the past as emancipatory strategyidentity politics versus universality and class antagonism
Dialectical moves 12
“The father literally awakened so that he could go on dreaming — awakening into reality in order to avoid the true trauma.”
Žižek inverts the common sense of 'waking up': consciousness of disturbing reality can itself be a defence against confronting the deeper, more unbearable truth lodged in the dream.
“Their awakening is the wrong one — it is a way to continue to sleep.”
The woke/pacifist call to 'awaken' is structurally identical to the dreaming father: it incorporates the disturbing signal (racism, war) into a manageable dream rather than confronting the true underlying antagonism.
“The past is open to retroactive reinterpretations, while the future is closed — but this doesn't mean we cannot change the future; in order to change our future, we should first change our past.”
The standard temporal picture is inverted: the future (as virtual attractor toward catastrophe) is determined, but the past remains open to emancipatory reinterpretation that can redirect the trajectory.
“If there will be a new world war, it will be a necessary one — but insofar as it did not yet take place, it is not inevitable; it is the event of actualisation that retroactively creates its necessity.”
Catastrophe is neither fatalistically inevitable nor dismissible; its necessity is only established retroactively by its occurrence, which means it can still be averted by acting now.
“The anarchist critique of capitalism is already the operative logic of capitalism itself — de facto anarchism is the reign of anarcho-capitalism.”
What appears as a radical alternative (anarchism) turns out to be the self-description of the very system it opposes, so it cannot serve as a genuine outside.
“Rising authoritarianism is the other side of the disappearance of the state — authoritarianism does not contradict the disappearance of the state, it is its messenger.”
The apparent opposites, state withering away and authoritarian control, are revealed as structurally complementary: the void left by the welfare state is filled by authoritarian power.
“The catastrophe for the poor in American suburbs is not that there is too much state — it is that there is not enough of the state.”
Against the libertarian-anarchist narrative, the real deprivation is the absence of state provision; the formula 'too much state' serves precisely those who benefit from that absence.
“The populist right stole from the left the last resort of its resistance — the popular attack on the seat of power.”
What was structurally coded as a left gesture (storming power) has been appropriated by right-wing populism, leaving the left without its own repertoire of resistance.
“To expose the enemy to the light or even first to make the enemy — it doesn't matter if the enemy is real; if there is no enemy, it has to be invented.”
Heidegger's logic of the enemy reveals fascism's mechanism: the enemy is not discovered but produced to generate the false unity of the people and mask immanent social antagonism.
“The most dangerous form of racism is racism which appears as its opposite — racism which presents itself as respect.”
Patronising admiration for the other's 'spirituality' or 'authenticity' is the subtlest form of racism: it freezes the other in an assigned identity and explodes into violence when the other seeks equality.
“There is good and bad corruption — progressive and reactionary corruption.”
Žižek provocatively inverts the blanket condemnation of corruption by arguing that bribing minor coalition parties to pass social reforms is 'progressive corruption' justified by its emancipatory ends.
“Deneng Xiaoping's capitalist reforms were the ultimate result of the Cultural Revolution — the cultural revolution that cleared the table of tradition produced the tabula rasa that capitalism filled.”
An apparently anti-communist movement (Cultural Revolution) is shown to have generated the very conditions for capitalism's triumph, inverting the intended revolutionary trajectory.
Claims 22
asserts
A significant part of the Western left is openly supporting Russia, a neo-fascist imperial aggressor, which represents a fundamental bankruptcy of the left.Western left's stance on the Ukraine war
asserts
The Russian attack on Ukraine is a brutal colonial war, and solidarity must be with the colonised — neutrality forfeits the right to condemn colonialism elsewhere.Ukraine war as colonial war
asserts
The woke call to 'awaken' to racist and sexist horrors functions like Freud's dreaming father: it wakes us into a manageable reality precisely to allow us to go on sleeping and ignore deeper traumas.woke politics and political correctness
asserts
Pacifist calls for awakening to avoid global war are themselves a way to continue sleeping and ignore the threat of the neoconservative backlash to emancipatory values.left pacifism regarding Ukraine
asserts
Today's capitalism has changed so radically that neo-feudalism — monopoly private control of the commons — is a better description than neoliberalism.the nature of contemporary capitalism
asserts
The precarious worker who owns only their personal instrument and experiences themselves as a free entrepreneur is becoming the paradigmatic form of labour under neo-feudal capitalism.precarious labour and neo-feudalism
asserts
Without a 'war footing' — treating today's crises (ecology, health, military) as emergencies requiring suspension of market rules — we cannot cope with the threats beset upon us.emergency mobilisation and war communism
asserts
The predominant ideology today is cynical: it speaks near-truths about exploitation and the need for change in a way it knows will produce no action.cynical ideology in contemporary capitalism
asserts
To change our future we must first change our past — not magically but by retroactively reinterpreting it so that it opens toward different possibilities.temporality and emancipatory strategy
asserts
The right has stolen from the left its last resort — the popular uprising against the seat of power — as exemplified by the January 6th Capitol storming and Elon Musk's 'Twitter files'.right-wing populism and the appropriation of left tactics
asserts
Emancipatory movements must transform themselves, not just fight the external enemy; the main task is to change our own identity.the nature of authentic emancipation
asserts
Multi-party parliamentary democracy should not be fetishised; it is sometimes not effective enough to cope with the crises besetting us.parliamentary democracy
asserts
Heidegger's call to find or invent an enemy is the logic of anti-semitism at its most elementary: it projects immanent social antagonisms onto a fabricated external threat.Heidegger's concept of the enemy
asserts
Himmler's framing of genocide as an ethical stance — remaining 'decent' while doing horrible things for one's people — exemplifies 'ethical evil': principled evil is more dangerous than simple egotism.ethical evil and Nazi ideology
asserts
Identity politics must aim at universality and must also reflect on how its own self-perception is already a product of oppression; it must change itself, not merely reclaim a lost identity.identity politics
rejects
Laclau's thesis that the link between different antagonisms is entirely contingent is wrong; there is a foundational social antagonism of domination and exploitation that is necessarily primary.Laclau's theory of hegemony and contingent antagonisms
rejects
Anarchism is no solution because it is already the operative logic of neo-liberal capitalism (generalised uberisation) and its other side is new authoritarianism.neo-anarchism as political alternative
rejects
Badiou's focus on the moment of the event and his dismissal of actually existing movements (Syriza, Morales) as non-events is a form of left-wing principled opportunism.Badiou's theory of the event and political engagement
asserts
The true measure of an event is not the moment of revolutionary enthusiasm but what changes in ordinary everyday life the morning after.the criterion for judging a political event
asserts
The worst form of racism today is patronising racism that presents itself as admiration and respect for the other's authentic spiritual culture.racism and identity politics
asserts
Ukraine should not simply catch up to Western liberal democracy or accept economic colonisation by Western corporations, but use the war as an opportunity for radical social transformation.Ukraine's post-war future
asserts
Neoliberalism has reached its end; even the Financial Times admits it must descend from the global scene.neoliberalism
Quotes 16
“the father literally awakened so that he could go on dreaming... awakened into reality in order to avoid the true trauma”Slavoj Žižek · awakening as defence against deeper trauma
“we don't want to be ourselves. we no longer want to be what we are”Slavoj Žižek · where radical emancipation begins — self-transformation
“to abolish class distinctions means abolishing a part of yourself. i have got to alter myself so completely that at the end i should hardly be recognizable as the same”Slavoj Žižek · emancipation requires self-transformation (Orwell)
“to expose the enemy to the light or even first to make the enemy... if there is no enemy, it has to be invented so that people may be mobilized”Slavoj Žižek · the fascist logic of the invented enemy (Heidegger)
“to have gone through the extermination of the jews and at the same time to have remained decent, that has made us hard”Slavoj Žižek · ethical evil — genocide framed as moral discipline (Himmler)
“the most dangerous form of racism today is this patronizing racism... racism which presents itself as respect”Slavoj Žižek · patronising racism as inverted racism
“at the moment of revolution. the entire reactionary mass will act as though they are democrats”Slavoj Žižek · democracy as counter-revolutionary slogan (Engels)
“today global capitalism changed so radically that something new is emerging... neo-feudalism”Slavoj Žižek · neo-feudalism as successor to neoliberalism
“the past is open to retroactive reinterpretations, while the future is closed... in order to change our future, we should first change our past”Slavoj Žižek · paradox of emancipatory temporality
“if you wait for the right moment, the right moment will never come. you have to do now whatever is possible in whatever way”Slavoj Žižek · against principled opportunism — Rosa Luxemburg
“we need new cliches. the true art is to organize new clichés, new clichaic formulas”Slavoj Žižek · on social rituals — Goldwyn on new clichés
“the slave has lost only his liberty, but the serf is the one who became unworthy of his liberty”Slavoj Žižek · the serf worse than the slave — neo-feudal degradation (Gandhi)
“i'm a leninist. Lenin wanted to destroy the state and that's my goal too. i want to bring everything crashing down and destroy all of today's establishment”Slavoj Žižek · Bannon's self-declared Leninism — right's appropriation of left rhetoric
“there is only servants who command other servants. nobody wants to be the master”Slavoj Žižek · neo-feudal order: masters replaced by servants commanding servants
“today's predominant ideology, i claim, is cynical... you almost say the whole truth, but you say it in a way which you know will not lead to any act”Slavoj Žižek · cynical ideology — speaking truth without producing action
“be the change that you want. if you don't do it, there are no others who will do it for you”Slavoj Žižek · against searching for a distant emancipatory subject (Gandhi)
Transcript 90 turns
Slavoj Žižek
thank you very much. it's a great honor for me. to be addressing you here? india for me. is now emerging i don't talk about narendra modi or politics, but intellectually you are, i think, a country of the future. you already have the best computer programmers, you have mathematical geniuses and so on. so what i like in india is that there was this backward image in the agriculture and so on now you will now. hopefully. jump over this boring industrial modernity and jump directly into today's digital scientific universe. i wish you all the best and especially my favorite state in india is... kala i really like it there. i don't like new delhi. it's bad air and so on, polluted, but i can imagine. living in kerala. so not to lose time i will try to indicate how i view the world today. i will do it on purpose in a slightly provocative way. because... i want to open the space for you. counter-attack me. maybe. some of my views are too eurocentric. and there will be some theoretical parts where they are not just. popular talk please listen to them carefully. so let me begin again with great gratitude. to you. what makes me really depressed today is that a strong part of the west wechtern, left. is more or less openly supporting russia, a state which acts as an empire attacking a neighboring state. a state which justifies its act. by an open appeal to neo-fascist ideas. russia supports extreme right in western europe, from marine le pen in france to alternative. for germany in germany. and. this bankruptcy of the left. is's not limited to europe. the newly re-elected president of kazile, lula recently said that the ukrainian president zelensky and his russian counterpart putin bear equal responsibility for the war in. ukraine. i disagree. the standard argument of the so-called third world neutral countries is that in ukraine we are dealing with a local conflict with pales compared to colonial horrors or to more recent events like the united states occupation of iraq. i think this argument misses the point. with the russian attack on ukraine, we got a brutal colonial war in europe itself, and solidarity should be with the colonized. if some third world states play neutrality they forfeit the right to complain about the horrors of colonization anywhere. it's the same with the palestinian resistance to israeli colonization of the west bank. if you really want to fight anti-semitism, you also have to support palestinian resistance. to walk sorry. palestinian resistance to what? israel is doing on the west bank. so how did we find ourselves in this mess? we live in an era of unholy alliances, a combination of ideological elements which violate the standard opposition of left and right. let me just mention one of the saddest recent examples. at the end of february, now a month ago. the parliament of uganda in africa. debated further. strengthening of the anti-gay legislation. the most radical proponents demanded death penalty or at least life imprisonment for those caught in a homosexual act. anita amk. speaker of the parliament said in the debate. you are either with us or you are with the western world. so. feminist, gay, trans struggles are... denounced as an instrument of western ideological colonialism. used to undermine african identity. and this immediately brings us to another unholy alliance, russia with its orthodox. christian fundamentalism presents itself as an ally of third world nations fighting colonialism. a fact that doesn't prevent parts of the western left. to lean towards russia in its aggression on ukraine. when sarah wagenknecht. the most popular representative of. die linke, the german leftist party. organized a big meeting for peace in dresden again a month ago in february calling for the end of. helping ukraine with arms björn höcke, one of the leading members of the extreme right alternative for germany. present at the meeting shouted at her please come to us. calling her to change her party affiliation. and the public applauded him. how can this happen? this unholy alliance of extreme left and really extreme proto-fascist. right. one of the causes, the trust a small suggestion. is death. b. leftist intellectuals always prefer.. what i call a symptal reading of an ideology. things are not what they claim to be. the truth is the opposite. you know all these standard marxist theories. freedom in the market is not real freedom, it's the form of exploitation or domination. universal human rights. mask imperialist exploitation and so on. so what does then the left do when it confronts a reactionary agent, which is what it claims to be? where there is no need for deep. symptonal analysis. here the left gets perplexed. what? if at some deeper level we are even worse than our reactionary opponent. you know, that's always the temptation of the left. you have a tyranny, but then. a leftist will come and say, but in a such sense, our false western democracy is even a worse tyrant. i admit that it's a moment of... truth in this, but it doesn't work as a general approach. next thing, now i go a little bit more into theory. leftists pacifists. present their position as an urgent call for awakening. in order to avoid the threat of global war and distraction. but their awakening, i think, is the wrong one. it is a way to continue to sleep. remember that totalitarian fascist powers also always use this term awakening. the nazi call in germany in 1933 was also deutschland erwache, germany awakened. now i will make a detour through very interesting dream reported by freud to clarify what i mean. one of freud's patients. dreamt he was a father whose son. died in an accident. uh. and the father fell asleep while keeping the guard on his son's coffin. and he had a dream. in this dream, his dead son appears to him pronouncing the terrible appeal father, can you see the i burning? then the father awakens. and he discovers that the cloth on the son's coffin caught fire since one of the burning candles fell down. so why did the father awaken? was it because the smell of the smoke got too strong? so that it was no longer possible to prolong the sleep by way of including it into the improvised dream. you know there's the usual strategy. you sleep, a phone rings and to prolong your sleep you begin to dream about the phone ringing so that it becomes part of the dream you don't have to awaken. no! there is a much more... radical reading. it was not the intrusion of the signal from external reality, smoke. that awakened the unfortunate father. but the unbearably traumatic character of what he encountered in his dream. the father! literally. awakened so that he could go on dreaming. the scenario was the following, one. when his sleep was disturbed by the smoke, the father constructed a dream which incorporated this disturbing element, smoke, fire. but what he confronted in the dream. the son, dead son reproaching him, father came to see the time burning me. and. father felt himself terribly guilty because he was responsible for his son's death. this was too traumatic what he encountered in the dream. so he awakened? into reality in order to avoid the true trauma. and i think. it is the same. today in the west, wit. quite a lot of what goes on in the so-called woke movement, political correctness and so on. they want to awaken us into the racist and sexist horrors. precisely to enable us to go on sleeping. ignoring the true root. and depth of racial and sexual traumas. and it is again the same, i think, with the pacifists today who call for awakening. their true goal is to allow us to continue our safe sleep and ignore! the threat. that the world neoconservative backlash. pose this to our basic emancipatory values. so. of course, we are today in deep. kris. three, four. t. pandemic, which is for the time being over, war. global warming and so on and so on. how should we react? in germany, i moderately, not totally, support the stance of the green party. which not only advocates full support for ukraine, but also proposes to use the ongoing oil and gas crisis as a unique opportunity to make our industries greener. the greens that does go in the exactly opposite. direction with regard to the predominant western politics which struggles with the problem of how to help ukraine while limiting the impact of this help on our established way of life. our comfortable still way of life. the german greens party plan is to use the ukrainian war in a positive way. not just as an obstacle, but as an incentive for a general reorientation of our economic and social life. or. it. joseph. stiglitz, american leftist economist. put it clearly, a quote. it is a mistake to think that the war can be won with a peacetime economy. no country has ever prevailed in a serious war by leaving markets alone. markets simply move too slowly for the kind of major structural changes that are. required. linked to this is, i think, a positive trend that goes on now in ukraine. i quote a recent report from some big media. people's desire for justice at home has not diminished with the war. if anything, it has got stronger, and rightly so. since most citizens are risking their lives to fight the genocidal threat posed by russia, people have such a personal stake in ukraine's future. they are more sensitive than ever about what kind of country we are becoming and how things should be after. the war. so. i hope that the ongoing anti-corruption campaign will grow into a more radical questioning about how things should be after the war. shoot ukraine simply catch up. we. the western liberal democracy accepts. began being economically colonized by western corporations. should it join the neo-conservative backlash as poland did? or will ukraine ris. and try to resuscitate the old social. democratic dream. this should be, i think, a true act. not just to repel russian aggression. but... to use this aggression to set in motion a radical social transformation which is really needed. what do i mean by this? even the financial times, the voice of big capital, declared recently in an editorial that neoliberalism has to descend from the global scene since its time has passed. capitalist dynamic more and more looks like a hamster running in the circle of its cage. so what is needed? the first thing. is to learn to cross the red lines imposed by neoliberal ideology. today's capitalism can survive much more radical interventions than it may appear. mariana mukato pointed out that the same system, ours in the west, which constantly repeated the mantra that we cannot raise the taxes to fight global warming, was able to spend not billions, but trillions to combat the omicron epidemic. you see and or now to spend billions for the time to help ukraine. so the lesson of this is... don't believe. the predominant ideology which in a strange way inverts the terms of possible impossible. we live in a world where we are dreaming about becoming a software living eternally from one to another hardware or that we can replace our organs whatever get connected with computers all this traveling to space all this is possible but it's not possible so they were telling us to raise taxes for 1% to help the poor. no. it is possible. to radically intervene. in today's economy without ruining it. so we should begin by courageously strengthening what peter slterdeijk, my friend who is even more conservative, called. objective social democracy. by objective, he doesn't mean social democratic parties, but social democratic values. which are inscribed already into entire state apparatus and accept that as common base. for example, in scandinavian countries, i don't want to idealize them, but there. free education, healthcare and so on. this is part of their life. it doesn't matter who wins the elections. i think that this should be our first. pressure. but... this will not be enough. when confronted with new global crisis. peace. we will have to act. fast! decisively and globally. simon jenkins. commenté à propos de... nhs crisis national health system in the united kingdom. and he said something very important, quote. the nhs crisis is historic. a war footing is the only way to deal with it. so we are left with today's emergency. nothing diminishes the support and affection for frontline staff. like soldiers in wartime, they are workers to whom people instinctively turn when all seems lost. did you notice this expansion of? warm. beta. to other spheres of life. now this will sound crazy. you will attack me, but i agree with it. because i think that. to militarize our life. i don't talk here about arms. i'm talking here about treating the situation in which we are as... emergency state. where we don't have time to trust the market, we have to act. just imagine some new global warming, mega catastrophe and so on and so on. you cannot leave to the market to resolve it. we have to act. now! show... for example, in western europe. things are approaching a catastrophe with health our health system. we claimed how we have the best healthcare system, except everyone. now, in my country, slovenia, in germany, in england, even if you have an emergency, heart attack and so on. a couple of my friends died like that. you go to emergency, you have to wait outside for over 20 hours. so, to cope with this ongoing crisis from threats to our environment, two other crisis we will need elements of what as a provocation and tempted to call war communism. mobilization that will have to violate the usual market and political rules. the existing multi-party parliamentary system is not effective enough to cope. with the crisis that beset us. we shouldn't fetishize multi-party parliamentary democracy. friedrich engels wrote in a letter to a fellow german social democrat august bebel in 1884 something very interesting. engels warned that pure democracy often becomes a slogan for counter-revolutionary reaction. a quote. at the moment of revolution. the entire reactionary mass will act as though they are democrats. at all events. at all events on the crucial day and the day after they will act as though they were democrat end of quote. that's... exactly this lock did exactly this not happen. when an emancipatory movement in power gets too radical for the establishment. remember evo morales in bolivia. the coup against him was done of course on behalf of democracy. but what does this mean? how to act. today. the most brutal. and depressive effects. of recent history is for me what? the only recent case of a violent revolutionary crowd invading the seat of power, as it happened, as you know, on the 6th of january. 2021 in washington when the crowd of trump supporters broke into the capitol in an attempt to deny the result of democratic elections. they proclaimed elections, bernard not. legitimate they were stolen. organized by corporate elites and so on and so on. this was up to a point even true. no wonder that there was a mix of fascination and horror. present in the left liberal reaction to the protesters breaking into the cap. that. many of my leftist friends said, but look, this was wonderful. thousands of ordinary people breaking into capital, the sacred seat of power, it was a carnival, a joyful event. i noticed in their reaction a little bit of envy and fascination. like, my god, we should be doing this. and what are we getting now? if. riding on this false rightist populist way is elon mark! which is a rightish establishment version of julian assange. musk is now releasing so-called twitter files in a way similar to the popular protests in the past, transforming themselves into the trump attack on the congress. we move from julian assange to elon musk. here is how one of n's supporters comments on his work. quote statues torn down, humiliating renunciations of thought crimes, deal and fakeaked. marxism is being pushed on kids to bring back pol pot and why your work is buying in buying twitter may be the last way to avoid genocide and civil war. end of quote so does this mean that the populist right stole from the left the last resort? of their resistance to the existing system. the popular attack on the seat of power. is our only choice the one between parliamentary elections controlled by corrupted elites and uprisings controlled by populist right? no wonder steve... benom. the ideologist of the new populist right openly declares himself to be the rightist leninist for the 21st century. steve benon is part of a long journey. the migration of revolutionary populist language, tactics and strategies from the left. to the right. here is the quote from bennon. i'm a leninist. lenin wanted to destroy the state and that's my goal too. i want to bring everything crashing down and destroy all of today's establishment. end of quote. so how to counteract? this now comes please the difficult part a little bit of theory in our contemporary apocalyptic situation, the ultimate horizon of our future is what? the french analyst of catastroph, jean-pierre dupuy, dup-p-u. what he, dupuy, calls the dystopian fixed point. the zero point of nuclear war, ecological breakdown, global economic and social chaos, and so on. even if this catastrophic zero point is. indefinitely postponed. this zero point is the virtual attractor towards which our reality left to itself tent. so i don't believe that we who are dead worried should still rely on this old pseudo-mark i think meta for off the train of history we are on the right side of history and so on and so on. no left to itself today's world history is moving towards a catastrophe and the way to combat the future catastrophe is through which interrupt. our drifting towards this fixed uh. this fix. point. how should we do this? if we are to confront properly the threat of a catastrophe, we have to introduce a new notion of time. dupuy calls it the time of a project. a kind of a closed circuit between the past and the future. the future is, of course. causally produced by our acts in the past. but the way we act is determined by our anticipation of the future and our reaction to this anticipation. bake. we should first perceive the catastrophe as our fate, as unavoidable, and then... projecting ourselves into this catastrophe, we should adopt we should rather retroactively insert into its past, the past of the future. counterfactual possibilities. if we were to do this or that, the catastrophe we are now in would not have occurred. to put it in another way, that's my paradox. the past is open to retroactive reinterpretations, while the future is closed, since we live in a deterministicist universe. this doesn't mean that we cannot change the future. it just means that in order to change our future, we should first change our past. not i'm not. into magic, not in its reality, but reinterpret it in such a way that it opens up towards a different future. will there be a new world war? the answer can only be paradoxical one. if there will be a new world war, it will be a necessary one. again, a short quote from dupuy. if an outstanding event takes place, a catastrophe for example it could not not have taken place. nonetheless, insofar as it did not take place, it is not inevitable. it is thus the event of actualization. the fact that it takes place which retroactively creates its necessity. let me explain this. once the full military conflict will explode. between united states and iran, between china and taiwan, between russia and nato. it will appear as necessary, that is to say, we will automatically read the past that led to it as a series of causes. which led to this explosion. if it will not happen, we will read it in the way we today read the cold war. of the 50s it's a series of dangerous moments where the catastrophes were avoided because both sides were aware of the deadly consequences of global conflict. what does this mean? and i will refer even to india here. there is an apocryphal, i know, but interesting legend about. true and lie, at that point the chinese prime minister when in 1953 he was in geneva for the peace negotiations to end the korean war. a french journalist asked him, what does he think about french revolution? true and la replied, it is still too early to tell. in a way, he was right. with the disintegration of european people's democracies, communist states in the late 1990s, the struggle for the historical place of the french revolution exploded again. liberal revisionists try to impose the notion that the disintegration of communism in 1980 nine, at least in eastern europe, occurred at exactly the right moment. two centuries after. 1789 french revolution. so that they claim this was these were the revolutionary. 200 years, that time is over. but i think that you see, now! two open the way for a new future which will not just be the repetition of the past we are. still caught him, we have also to reinterpret. theaf. to see how now the legacy of french revolution is not something outdated. it still goes on. and also in india, you remember you had the colonial uh colonial british rule we i read books on it i was deeply impressed at how. they played a very dirty game, the british. dirty game in the sense that they were not opposed to indian. tradition you have that horrible book in your tradition the laws of manu or the precise prescription how blah blah the british colonizers reprinted it. because they saw it clearly that the best way to dominate indians is to keep them in their caste system. so, to get... liberated. from english. domination, you also have to reinterpret your past. you are not just this inert stupid state controlled by islam. all the liberatory movements from buddhism onwards and so on and so on. back to q& live. now it seems that what most probably really happened is not. 1953 in geneva, but in 1972 when henry kissinger visited china, he asked through what he thinks about the 1968 rebellion, 68, the great may, in france. and it is to this question that he replied, it's too early to tell. and it was right. 19 68 was a leftist anti-establishment rebellion, but its slogans against alienated univers education for sexual freedom and so on. where immediately appropriated by the establishment and enabled the smooth passage to neoliberal permissive capitalismo. so, not to lose time. what does all this amount to? uh. how should we act? some people thinkink. de. neo-anarchism. offers a solution from normam tromomsky to david greber and so on and so on. i disagree with that. why? catherine malabou, a neo-anarchist but very critical one, points out two problems. first, anarchism is becoming today a key feature of global capitalism. quote from malabou. our current epoch is characterized by a coexistence between a de facto anarchism and a dawning or awakening anarchism. the de facto anarchism is the reign of anarcho-capitalism, which is contempor with the end of the welfare state. creating in citizens a feeling of abandonment. just think of the state of hospitals and healthcare today. my contention is that current capitalism is undertaking its anarchist or libertarian term. a generalized uberization, uber, you know, taxis and so on, of life. second point of catherine malabu. bet. intelligent one, i think. the anarcho-capitalism is the other side of new authoritarianism. yeah. quote. authoritarianism does not contradict the disappearance of the state. it is its messenger, the mask of this so-called collaborative economic which, by bringing professionals and users into direct contact through technological platforms, pulverizes all fixity. now, what this means is that the rising authoritarianism is the other side of the disappearance of the state. more precisely, of the most precious function of the state, that of providing public services. we thereby touch the vast domain of public services, healthcare, education, which cannot be provided just through expanding cooperatives and other forms of local self-organization. in his polemics with catherine malabou, étienne balar makes this point clear. a quote from balar. if you look at the poor in american suburbs, mainly african americans, what they suffer from is the fact that america never really had a welfare state or a social state like france or germany. the catastrophe for them is not that there is too much state, it is that there is not enough of the state. end of quote. so yes, popular mobilization outside party politics and state aar is needed. but communities evoked by anarchists rely on a thick texture of institutional mechanisms. where do electricity and water come from? guarantees the rule of law. to whom do we turn? for healthcare. so what is happening today? in the last years, global, i think we should stop criticizing neoliberaleralism, not because there is anything good in it. but because... i agree here with my friends like yis varfakis or joeody dean. that today global capitalism changed so radically. that... something new is emerging. with some people. varufakakis and j dean. call. ne-feudalism. the pandemic gave a boost to this new corporate order, with new feudal lords like bill gates or mark zuckerberg more and more controlling our common spaces of communication and exchange. so i think that although i'm not ready to buy this term neo-feudalism, i think it nonetheless designates something very. dangerous. marx already spoke about privatization of the commons. but what he meant was commons, forests and so on are privatized. one master gets this one, another one that part but today commons remain commons and are as such under a private control. for example. f. be of amazon, he almost had a monopoly on book and other distribution. bill gates more or less controls software. elon musk wants to control google. the main channel which is a commons it's a space in which we all communicate, exchange, and that space is privatized. and one should complicate even further the picture here. it is not just that the privatized commons are the space. within which exchange and communication takes place. the ideal counterparts of neo-feudal privatized commons are precarious workers who can experience themselves as free entrepreneurs since as a rule they own their own means of production. personal computer. of a programmer a card. foreign. uber driver preious workers, although still a minority, are gradually, i think, becoming. the typical fundamental. forum of work in our societies. and precarious work has a double advantage for the predominant ideology. it allows you to experience yourself as an independent. small capitalists selling your work freely. not earth. wait, slave. plus, you compete with other precarious workers. and this fact makes organizing solidarity between precarious workers very difficult. so the ideal we are approaching today is a multitude of precarious workers interacting in a commons controlled by a neo-feudal lord. the mystification is thus complete. everybody in this ideology is a capitalist. let's say you are an ordinary worker who distributes the food with your bicycle. they will tell you, no, it's just free competition. you decided to invest your little bit of money into buying a good bicycle and you are free to work wherever you want and so on and so on. i think that in this sense, neoliberal capitalism is already dying and the forthcoming battle will not be the one between neoliberalism and it's beyond but between one or another. form of this beyond, either corporate neo-feudism which promises protective bubbles against the threat like zuckerberg, metaverse. bubbles in which we can continue to dream or the root awakening which will compel us to invent new forms of solidarity. just slowly i approach conclusion. no. what characterizes an authentic emancipatory thought is not a vision of conflict-free, harmonious future. but the notion of antagonism, which is totally incompatible with the right-wing topic of the need of an enemy. to assert our self-identity. here is. here i'm opposed to heidegger, martin, although he was a big philosopher. here is heidegger's precise formulation of the need for an enemy from his course from 1933-34. a from heidegger, but listen to it carefully. an enemy is each and every person who poses an existential threat to the design being here. life world of the people and its members. the enemy does not have to be external and the external enemy is not even always the most dangerous one. and it can seem as if there were no enemies, then it is a fundamental requirement to find the enemy. to expose the enemy to the light or even first to make the enemy. so that this standing against the enemy may happen and so that das. our life may not lose its edge. the challenge is to bring the enemy into the open, to harbor no illusions about the enemy, to keep oneself ready for attack. to cultivate and intensify a constant readiness and to prepare the attack looking far ahead with the goal of total annihilation of the enemy. the most ominous aspect here is, i think. this to expose the enemy to the light or even first to make the enemy. show that. this standing against the enemy may happen. in short, it doesn't even matter if the enemy is a real enemy. if there is no enemy, it has to be invented so that people may be mobilized and can prepare the enemy's total annihilation. what we find here is the logic of anti-semitism and other racisms at their most elementary. because what heidegger ignores is the possibility that an enemy is invented to create the false unity of the people and thus cover up the immanent society antagonisms of a society. why did hitler need groups? so that he could focus in an external threat, we eliminate the jews, our society will be harmonious again and so on and so on. but now i come to my final warning. the true danger of this heidegger's stance is that he. presentresents the invention and elimination of the enemy. it a... proper ethical stance. but fidelity to a principled decision, what we identify as an ethical stance. i don't care about my own interests. i'm ready to fight. to my death for my cause. is not enough for an act. to qualify as truly ethical. sticking to a problematic principle doesn't help a lot in such cases since the principle itself is wrong. now i will mention my the most terrifying case that i know, maybe you have others. heinrich himmler, the leader of s. now please. germany gave a speech in posen, today's posna, on october 1943, where he spoke quite openly about the the earliest page in our history and one that has never been written and never can be written. he speaks here of the rhetoric which is today, i find it so dangerous getting more and more popular. the rhetoric of elevating brutal aggressivity into true courage. the idea is, yeah, everyone can sacrifice his life or do good things for his country, but a true patriot is the one who is ready to do horrible things discreetly for his country. this is true love of the country. a quote from himmler. you should hear it. it's a nightmare. to have gone through the extermination of the jews and at the same time to have remained decent, that has made us hard. and now not a critical step, but just to make you aware of the manipulation. this was himmler's problem. nazi ss units had to do horrible things, strangle, kill children, women and so on. how to remain decent? you know what was his solution? it disgusting manipulation of your legacy. bhagavad gita. himmler always had in his pocket a special leather-bound version of bhagavad gita. this is how himmler. read this wisdom of bhagavad gita to act at a distance. you can do all the killing, just don't get identified with it. again, i go on with. quote from himmler, our principle must be absolut! one principle must be absolute for our soldiers. we must be honest, decent, loyal and friendly to members of our blood and to no one else. whether the other races live in comfort or perish of hunger interest me only insofar as we need them as slaves for our culture. whether or not 10,000 russian women collapsed from exhaustion while digging. a tank ditch interests me only insofar as the tank ditch is completed for germany. end of quote you see what i find horrifying here and today is raising again. this! stands that i cannot but characterize as ethical evil. evil not a simple egotism. i rape a woman, i steal some money here, there, i exploit but. a kind of a. principled stance of evil, like for the nazis, jews must be killed even if we all die in it. yeah. i think that. this type of. principled evil. ethical evil, evil which is ethical in the simple sense that it's a cause for which you are ready to. sacrifice everything. already at a formal level can be opposed to authentic struggle for emancipation. how? eh. this struggle against enemy always aims at preserving our identity allegedly threatened by the other, like for the nazis, german identity is threatened by jews, by communists and so on. but the main task of an emancipatory movement is to change ourselves, our own identity. here i'm approaching the end, don't be afraid. i would like to repeat to you a quote from george orwell. who clearly described in 1937 the ambiguity of the predominant leftist attitude. quote. we all rail against class distinctions, but very few people seriously want to abolish them. here you come upon the important fact that every revolutionary opinion derives part of its strength from a sacred conviction that nothing can be changed so long as it is merely a question of ameliorating the worker's lot every decent person is agreed. but unfortunately, you get no further by only wishing class distinctions away. more exactly it is necessary to wish them away but your wish has no efficacy. unless you grasp what it involves. the fact that has to be faced is that to abolish class distinctions means abolishing a part of yourself. i have got to alter myself so completely that at the end i should hardly be recognizable as the same. wellson. this, i think, is still missing today. we have all these stupid, disgusting fake conferences like in glasgow, you remember two years ago, green world and so on. but these are just calls. there is no, none of this awareness that. to redeem our world, it's not enough for us in the so-called developed west. two give a little bit more help to the third world but remain our way of life. now, our basic way of life will have to change. radically. this is also. i will tell you to conclude of a wonderful experience i had in india some 10 years ago, i think. i was there in in new delhi. i. i uh... i. m, i don't know what name i forgot it you have, the lowest sub caste on the untouchables. those who clean, dry toilet. and i ask them. what is the basic premise of your? program what do you want? and they instantly gave me a perfect answer we don't want to be ourselves. we no longer want to be what we are. here. radical emancipatory movement begins. this is why be very careful now at least in the developed west. a new tendency is arising often. praise inc. the poor people. but just applying identity politics like you have movies which portray like the movie which i hate. cl zos from two years ago, it got the oscar. no wonders the best film nomadland. it's not even critical. it just... the is is how even these nomadic proletarians without a permanent home who live in trailers. are decent people full of spontaneous goodness, solidarity, small rituals, enjoying their modest happiness and so on and so on. no, i think that... i think that... we that's maybe the big thing. we have to abandon this comfortable stance of making big demands and so on. because today's... at least in the west, you should teach me how it is with you. today's predominant ideology, i claim, is cynical. cynical in the sense that you almost say the whole truth, but you say it in a way which you know will not lead to any act. it... for example, i already gave you the example of that glasgow conference. they said many right things. we need to change our lives, blah, blah, greening. nothing happened. effectively. you so you know which is my private target, the most disgusting thing this modern art biennales in europe. ven castle. if you read their programs, they are totally anti-capitalist. yes, we are all enslaved to capital. even the sphere of art, visual art, is part of the capital. we are eurocentric, blah, blah, blah. but as such, they worked, function. perfectly within the capitalist system of commercial of commercialized. ah. so, uh... what we need is much deeper analysis of where we are today. just to really conclude, i agree here with my german friend, karl-heinz delvon. who claim that today in... today, at least in the west, capitalism it is reasonable to speak no longer about masters and servants, but only about servants who command other servants. nobody wants to be the master. just some people claim we are servants of the people of the state, working for goodness and so on. and here what comes to my mind is... gandhi, of whom i'm otherwise critical, but he said something right. he said the fate of the serf servant is worse than that of the slave, for the slave has lost only his liberty, but the serf is the one who became unworthy, unworthy of his. liberty. so what i want to say is that although we even today's talk about catastrophes it's very fashionable. all the movies, tv series, postocalyptic they are secret. apologies. did you notice how often global catastrophe is presented as discreetly as a chance of a new emancipated society with more authentic relations and so on and so on. so even this our obsession with post-apocalyptic societies is already caught in the ruling what we have to accept we all of us. and here i will be critical of some. leftists in the west who like revolution but ha revolution which happens at a proper distance, you know. when i was young, vietnam cuba name them like we love palestinians for some i thought of them. what i'm saying is that the western left will have to break this search for an authentic emancipatory subject. somewhere. else far away. no again gandhi said and i'm very critical of him how he related to k and so on but he said that it. be the change that you want. 2 b. if you don't do it, there are no others who will do it for you. and we are far from this point. thank you very much for your patience.
thank you very much. it's a great honor for me. to be addressing you here? india for me. is now emerging i don't talk about narendra modi or politics, but intellectually you are, i think, a country of the future. you already have the best computer programmers, you have mathematical geniuses and so on. so what i like in india is that there was this backward image in the agriculture and so on now you will now. hopefully. jump over this boring industrial modernity and jump directly into today's digital scientific universe. i wish you all the best and especially my favorite state in india is... kala i really like it there. i don't like new delhi. it's bad air and so on, polluted, but i can imagine. living in kerala. so not to lose time i will try to indicate how i view the world today. i will do it on purpose in a slightly provocative way. because... i want to open the space for you. counter-attack me. maybe. some of my views are too eurocentric. and there will be some theoretical parts where they are not just. popular talk please listen to them carefully. so let me begin again with great gratitude. to you. what makes me really depressed today is that a strong part of the west wechtern, left. is more or less openly supporting russia, a state which acts as an empire attacking a neighboring state. a state which justifies its act. by an open appeal to neo-fascist ideas. russia supports extreme right in western europe, from marine le pen in france to alternative. for germany in germany. and. this bankruptcy of the left. is's not limited to europe. the newly re-elected president of kazile, lula recently said that the ukrainian president zelensky and his russian counterpart putin bear equal responsibility for the war in. ukraine. i disagree. the standard argument of the so-called third world neutral countries is that in ukraine we are dealing with a local conflict with pales compared to colonial horrors or to more recent events like the united states occupation of iraq. i think this argument misses the point. with the russian attack on ukraine, we got a brutal colonial war in europe itself, and solidarity should be with the colonized. if some third world states play neutrality they forfeit the right to complain about the horrors of colonization anywhere. it's the same with the palestinian resistance to israeli colonization of the west bank. if you really want to fight anti-semitism, you also have to support palestinian resistance. to walk sorry. palestinian resistance to what? israel is doing on the west bank. so how did we find ourselves in this mess? we live in an era of unholy alliances, a combination of ideological elements which violate the standard opposition of left and right. let me just mention one of the saddest recent examples. at the end of february, now a month ago. the parliament of uganda in africa. debated further. strengthening of the anti-gay legislation. the most radical proponents demanded death penalty or at least life imprisonment for those caught in a homosexual act. anita amk. speaker of the parliament said in the debate. you are either with us or you are with the western world. so. feminist, gay, trans struggles are... denounced as an instrument of western ideological colonialism. used to undermine african identity. and this immediately brings us to another unholy alliance, russia with its orthodox. christian fundamentalism presents itself as an ally of third world nations fighting colonialism. a fact that doesn't prevent parts of the western left. to lean towards russia in its aggression on ukraine. when sarah wagenknecht. the most popular representative of. die linke, the german leftist party. organized a big meeting for peace in dresden again a month ago in february calling for the end of. helping ukraine with arms björn höcke, one of the leading members of the extreme right alternative for germany. present at the meeting shouted at her please come to us. calling her to change her party affiliation. and the public applauded him. how can this happen? this unholy alliance of extreme left and really extreme proto-fascist. right. one of the causes, the trust a small suggestion. is death. b. leftist intellectuals always prefer.. what i call a symptal reading of an ideology. things are not what they claim to be. the truth is the opposite. you know all these standard marxist theories. freedom in the market is not real freedom, it's the form of exploitation or domination. universal human rights. mask imperialist exploitation and so on. so what does then the left do when it confronts a reactionary agent, which is what it claims to be? where there is no need for deep. symptonal analysis. here the left gets perplexed. what? if at some deeper level we are even worse than our reactionary opponent. you know, that's always the temptation of the left. you have a tyranny, but then. a leftist will come and say, but in a such sense, our false western democracy is even a worse tyrant. i admit that it's a moment of... truth in this, but it doesn't work as a general approach. next thing, now i go a little bit more into theory. leftists pacifists. present their position as an urgent call for awakening. in order to avoid the threat of global war and distraction. but their awakening, i think, is the wrong one. it is a way to continue to sleep. remember that totalitarian fascist powers also always use this term awakening. the nazi call in germany in 1933 was also deutschland erwache, germany awakened. now i will make a detour through very interesting dream reported by freud to clarify what i mean. one of freud's patients. dreamt he was a father whose son. died in an accident. uh. and the father fell asleep while keeping the guard on his son's coffin. and he had a dream. in this dream, his dead son appears to him pronouncing the terrible appeal father, can you see the i burning? then the father awakens. and he discovers that the cloth on the son's coffin caught fire since one of the burning candles fell down. so why did the father awaken? was it because the smell of the smoke got too strong? so that it was no longer possible to prolong the sleep by way of including it into the improvised dream. you know there's the usual strategy. you sleep, a phone rings and to prolong your sleep you begin to dream about the phone ringing so that it becomes part of the dream you don't have to awaken. no! there is a much more... radical reading. it was not the intrusion of the signal from external reality, smoke. that awakened the unfortunate father. but the unbearably traumatic character of what he encountered in his dream. the father! literally. awakened so that he could go on dreaming. the scenario was the following, one. when his sleep was disturbed by the smoke, the father constructed a dream which incorporated this disturbing element, smoke, fire. but what he confronted in the dream. the son, dead son reproaching him, father came to see the time burning me. and. father felt himself terribly guilty because he was responsible for his son's death. this was too traumatic what he encountered in the dream. so he awakened? into reality in order to avoid the true trauma. and i think. it is the same. today in the west, wit. quite a lot of what goes on in the so-called woke movement, political correctness and so on. they want to awaken us into the racist and sexist horrors. precisely to enable us to go on sleeping. ignoring the true root. and depth of racial and sexual traumas. and it is again the same, i think, with the pacifists today who call for awakening. their true goal is to allow us to continue our safe sleep and ignore! the threat. that the world neoconservative backlash. pose this to our basic emancipatory values. so. of course, we are today in deep. kris. three, four. t. pandemic, which is for the time being over, war. global warming and so on and so on. how should we react? in germany, i moderately, not totally, support the stance of the green party. which not only advocates full support for ukraine, but also proposes to use the ongoing oil and gas crisis as a unique opportunity to make our industries greener. the greens that does go in the exactly opposite. direction with regard to the predominant western politics which struggles with the problem of how to help ukraine while limiting the impact of this help on our established way of life. our comfortable still way of life. the german greens party plan is to use the ukrainian war in a positive way. not just as an obstacle, but as an incentive for a general reorientation of our economic and social life. or. it. joseph. stiglitz, american leftist economist. put it clearly, a quote. it is a mistake to think that the war can be won with a peacetime economy. no country has ever prevailed in a serious war by leaving markets alone. markets simply move too slowly for the kind of major structural changes that are. required. linked to this is, i think, a positive trend that goes on now in ukraine. i quote a recent report from some big media. people's desire for justice at home has not diminished with the war. if anything, it has got stronger, and rightly so. since most citizens are risking their lives to fight the genocidal threat posed by russia, people have such a personal stake in ukraine's future. they are more sensitive than ever about what kind of country we are becoming and how things should be after. the war. so. i hope that the ongoing anti-corruption campaign will grow into a more radical questioning about how things should be after the war. shoot ukraine simply catch up. we. the western liberal democracy accepts. began being economically colonized by western corporations. should it join the neo-conservative backlash as poland did? or will ukraine ris. and try to resuscitate the old social. democratic dream. this should be, i think, a true act. not just to repel russian aggression. but... to use this aggression to set in motion a radical social transformation which is really needed. what do i mean by this? even the financial times, the voice of big capital, declared recently in an editorial that neoliberalism has to descend from the global scene since its time has passed. capitalist dynamic more and more looks like a hamster running in the circle of its cage. so what is needed? the first thing. is to learn to cross the red lines imposed by neoliberal ideology. today's capitalism can survive much more radical interventions than it may appear. mariana mukato pointed out that the same system, ours in the west, which constantly repeated the mantra that we cannot raise the taxes to fight global warming, was able to spend not billions, but trillions to combat the omicron epidemic. you see and or now to spend billions for the time to help ukraine. so the lesson of this is... don't believe. the predominant ideology which in a strange way inverts the terms of possible impossible. we live in a world where we are dreaming about becoming a software living eternally from one to another hardware or that we can replace our organs whatever get connected with computers all this traveling to space all this is possible but it's not possible so they were telling us to raise taxes for 1% to help the poor. no. it is possible. to radically intervene. in today's economy without ruining it. so we should begin by courageously strengthening what peter slterdeijk, my friend who is even more conservative, called. objective social democracy. by objective, he doesn't mean social democratic parties, but social democratic values. which are inscribed already into entire state apparatus and accept that as common base. for example, in scandinavian countries, i don't want to idealize them, but there. free education, healthcare and so on. this is part of their life. it doesn't matter who wins the elections. i think that this should be our first. pressure. but... this will not be enough. when confronted with new global crisis. peace. we will have to act. fast! decisively and globally. simon jenkins. commenté à propos de... nhs crisis national health system in the united kingdom. and he said something very important, quote. the nhs crisis is historic. a war footing is the only way to deal with it. so we are left with today's emergency. nothing diminishes the support and affection for frontline staff. like soldiers in wartime, they are workers to whom people instinctively turn when all seems lost. did you notice this expansion of? warm. beta. to other spheres of life. now this will sound crazy. you will attack me, but i agree with it. because i think that. to militarize our life. i don't talk here about arms. i'm talking here about treating the situation in which we are as... emergency state. where we don't have time to trust the market, we have to act. just imagine some new global warming, mega catastrophe and so on and so on. you cannot leave to the market to resolve it. we have to act. now! show... for example, in western europe. things are approaching a catastrophe with health our health system. we claimed how we have the best healthcare system, except everyone. now, in my country, slovenia, in germany, in england, even if you have an emergency, heart attack and so on. a couple of my friends died like that. you go to emergency, you have to wait outside for over 20 hours. so, to cope with this ongoing crisis from threats to our environment, two other crisis we will need elements of what as a provocation and tempted to call war communism. mobilization that will have to violate the usual market and political rules. the existing multi-party parliamentary system is not effective enough to cope. with the crisis that beset us. we shouldn't fetishize multi-party parliamentary democracy. friedrich engels wrote in a letter to a fellow german social democrat august bebel in 1884 something very interesting. engels warned that pure democracy often becomes a slogan for counter-revolutionary reaction. a quote. at the moment of revolution. the entire reactionary mass will act as though they are democrats. at all events. at all events on the crucial day and the day after they will act as though they were democrat end of quote. that's... exactly this lock did exactly this not happen. when an emancipatory movement in power gets too radical for the establishment. remember evo morales in bolivia. the coup against him was done of course on behalf of democracy. but what does this mean? how to act. today. the most brutal. and depressive effects. of recent history is for me what? the only recent case of a violent revolutionary crowd invading the seat of power, as it happened, as you know, on the 6th of january. 2021 in washington when the crowd of trump supporters broke into the capitol in an attempt to deny the result of democratic elections. they proclaimed elections, bernard not. legitimate they were stolen. organized by corporate elites and so on and so on. this was up to a point even true. no wonder that there was a mix of fascination and horror. present in the left liberal reaction to the protesters breaking into the cap. that. many of my leftist friends said, but look, this was wonderful. thousands of ordinary people breaking into capital, the sacred seat of power, it was a carnival, a joyful event. i noticed in their reaction a little bit of envy and fascination. like, my god, we should be doing this. and what are we getting now? if. riding on this false rightist populist way is elon mark! which is a rightish establishment version of julian assange. musk is now releasing so-called twitter files in a way similar to the popular protests in the past, transforming themselves into the trump attack on the congress. we move from julian assange to elon musk. here is how one of n's supporters comments on his work. quote statues torn down, humiliating renunciations of thought crimes, deal and fakeaked. marxism is being pushed on kids to bring back pol pot and why your work is buying in buying twitter may be the last way to avoid genocide and civil war. end of quote so does this mean that the populist right stole from the left the last resort? of their resistance to the existing system. the popular attack on the seat of power. is our only choice the one between parliamentary elections controlled by corrupted elites and uprisings controlled by populist right? no wonder steve... benom. the ideologist of the new populist right openly declares himself to be the rightist leninist for the 21st century. steve benon is part of a long journey. the migration of revolutionary populist language, tactics and strategies from the left. to the right. here is the quote from bennon. i'm a leninist. lenin wanted to destroy the state and that's my goal too. i want to bring everything crashing down and destroy all of today's establishment. end of quote. so how to counteract? this now comes please the difficult part a little bit of theory in our contemporary apocalyptic situation, the ultimate horizon of our future is what? the french analyst of catastroph, jean-pierre dupuy, dup-p-u. what he, dupuy, calls the dystopian fixed point. the zero point of nuclear war, ecological breakdown, global economic and social chaos, and so on. even if this catastrophic zero point is. indefinitely postponed. this zero point is the virtual attractor towards which our reality left to itself tent. so i don't believe that we who are dead worried should still rely on this old pseudo-mark i think meta for off the train of history we are on the right side of history and so on and so on. no left to itself today's world history is moving towards a catastrophe and the way to combat the future catastrophe is through which interrupt. our drifting towards this fixed uh. this fix. point. how should we do this? if we are to confront properly the threat of a catastrophe, we have to introduce a new notion of time. dupuy calls it the time of a project. a kind of a closed circuit between the past and the future. the future is, of course. causally produced by our acts in the past. but the way we act is determined by our anticipation of the future and our reaction to this anticipation. bake. we should first perceive the catastrophe as our fate, as unavoidable, and then... projecting ourselves into this catastrophe, we should adopt we should rather retroactively insert into its past, the past of the future. counterfactual possibilities. if we were to do this or that, the catastrophe we are now in would not have occurred. to put it in another way, that's my paradox. the past is open to retroactive reinterpretations, while the future is closed, since we live in a deterministicist universe. this doesn't mean that we cannot change the future. it just means that in order to change our future, we should first change our past. not i'm not. into magic, not in its reality, but reinterpret it in such a way that it opens up towards a different future. will there be a new world war? the answer can only be paradoxical one. if there will be a new world war, it will be a necessary one. again, a short quote from dupuy. if an outstanding event takes place, a catastrophe for example it could not not have taken place. nonetheless, insofar as it did not take place, it is not inevitable. it is thus the event of actualization. the fact that it takes place which retroactively creates its necessity. let me explain this. once the full military conflict will explode. between united states and iran, between china and taiwan, between russia and nato. it will appear as necessary, that is to say, we will automatically read the past that led to it as a series of causes. which led to this explosion. if it will not happen, we will read it in the way we today read the cold war. of the 50s it's a series of dangerous moments where the catastrophes were avoided because both sides were aware of the deadly consequences of global conflict. what does this mean? and i will refer even to india here. there is an apocryphal, i know, but interesting legend about. true and lie, at that point the chinese prime minister when in 1953 he was in geneva for the peace negotiations to end the korean war. a french journalist asked him, what does he think about french revolution? true and la replied, it is still too early to tell. in a way, he was right. with the disintegration of european people's democracies, communist states in the late 1990s, the struggle for the historical place of the french revolution exploded again. liberal revisionists try to impose the notion that the disintegration of communism in 1980 nine, at least in eastern europe, occurred at exactly the right moment. two centuries after. 1789 french revolution. so that they claim this was these were the revolutionary. 200 years, that time is over. but i think that you see, now! two open the way for a new future which will not just be the repetition of the past we are. still caught him, we have also to reinterpret. theaf. to see how now the legacy of french revolution is not something outdated. it still goes on. and also in india, you remember you had the colonial uh colonial british rule we i read books on it i was deeply impressed at how. they played a very dirty game, the british. dirty game in the sense that they were not opposed to indian. tradition you have that horrible book in your tradition the laws of manu or the precise prescription how blah blah the british colonizers reprinted it. because they saw it clearly that the best way to dominate indians is to keep them in their caste system. so, to get... liberated. from english. domination, you also have to reinterpret your past. you are not just this inert stupid state controlled by islam. all the liberatory movements from buddhism onwards and so on and so on. back to q& live. now it seems that what most probably really happened is not. 1953 in geneva, but in 1972 when henry kissinger visited china, he asked through what he thinks about the 1968 rebellion, 68, the great may, in france. and it is to this question that he replied, it's too early to tell. and it was right. 19 68 was a leftist anti-establishment rebellion, but its slogans against alienated univers education for sexual freedom and so on. where immediately appropriated by the establishment and enabled the smooth passage to neoliberal permissive capitalismo. so, not to lose time. what does all this amount to? uh. how should we act? some people thinkink. de. neo-anarchism. offers a solution from normam tromomsky to david greber and so on and so on. i disagree with that. why? catherine malabou, a neo-anarchist but very critical one, points out two problems. first, anarchism is becoming today a key feature of global capitalism. quote from malabou. our current epoch is characterized by a coexistence between a de facto anarchism and a dawning or awakening anarchism. the de facto anarchism is the reign of anarcho-capitalism, which is contempor with the end of the welfare state. creating in citizens a feeling of abandonment. just think of the state of hospitals and healthcare today. my contention is that current capitalism is undertaking its anarchist or libertarian term. a generalized uberization, uber, you know, taxis and so on, of life. second point of catherine malabu. bet. intelligent one, i think. the anarcho-capitalism is the other side of new authoritarianism. yeah. quote. authoritarianism does not contradict the disappearance of the state. it is its messenger, the mask of this so-called collaborative economic which, by bringing professionals and users into direct contact through technological platforms, pulverizes all fixity. now, what this means is that the rising authoritarianism is the other side of the disappearance of the state. more precisely, of the most precious function of the state, that of providing public services. we thereby touch the vast domain of public services, healthcare, education, which cannot be provided just through expanding cooperatives and other forms of local self-organization. in his polemics with catherine malabou, étienne balar makes this point clear. a quote from balar. if you look at the poor in american suburbs, mainly african americans, what they suffer from is the fact that america never really had a welfare state or a social state like france or germany. the catastrophe for them is not that there is too much state, it is that there is not enough of the state. end of quote. so yes, popular mobilization outside party politics and state aar is needed. but communities evoked by anarchists rely on a thick texture of institutional mechanisms. where do electricity and water come from? guarantees the rule of law. to whom do we turn? for healthcare. so what is happening today? in the last years, global, i think we should stop criticizing neoliberaleralism, not because there is anything good in it. but because... i agree here with my friends like yis varfakis or joeody dean. that today global capitalism changed so radically. that... something new is emerging. with some people. varufakakis and j dean. call. ne-feudalism. the pandemic gave a boost to this new corporate order, with new feudal lords like bill gates or mark zuckerberg more and more controlling our common spaces of communication and exchange. so i think that although i'm not ready to buy this term neo-feudalism, i think it nonetheless designates something very. dangerous. marx already spoke about privatization of the commons. but what he meant was commons, forests and so on are privatized. one master gets this one, another one that part but today commons remain commons and are as such under a private control. for example. f. be of amazon, he almost had a monopoly on book and other distribution. bill gates more or less controls software. elon musk wants to control google. the main channel which is a commons it's a space in which we all communicate, exchange, and that space is privatized. and one should complicate even further the picture here. it is not just that the privatized commons are the space. within which exchange and communication takes place. the ideal counterparts of neo-feudal privatized commons are precarious workers who can experience themselves as free entrepreneurs since as a rule they own their own means of production. personal computer. of a programmer a card. foreign. uber driver preious workers, although still a minority, are gradually, i think, becoming. the typical fundamental. forum of work in our societies. and precarious work has a double advantage for the predominant ideology. it allows you to experience yourself as an independent. small capitalists selling your work freely. not earth. wait, slave. plus, you compete with other precarious workers. and this fact makes organizing solidarity between precarious workers very difficult. so the ideal we are approaching today is a multitude of precarious workers interacting in a commons controlled by a neo-feudal lord. the mystification is thus complete. everybody in this ideology is a capitalist. let's say you are an ordinary worker who distributes the food with your bicycle. they will tell you, no, it's just free competition. you decided to invest your little bit of money into buying a good bicycle and you are free to work wherever you want and so on and so on. i think that in this sense, neoliberal capitalism is already dying and the forthcoming battle will not be the one between neoliberalism and it's beyond but between one or another. form of this beyond, either corporate neo-feudism which promises protective bubbles against the threat like zuckerberg, metaverse. bubbles in which we can continue to dream or the root awakening which will compel us to invent new forms of solidarity. just slowly i approach conclusion. no. what characterizes an authentic emancipatory thought is not a vision of conflict-free, harmonious future. but the notion of antagonism, which is totally incompatible with the right-wing topic of the need of an enemy. to assert our self-identity. here is. here i'm opposed to heidegger, martin, although he was a big philosopher. here is heidegger's precise formulation of the need for an enemy from his course from 1933-34. a from heidegger, but listen to it carefully. an enemy is each and every person who poses an existential threat to the design being here. life world of the people and its members. the enemy does not have to be external and the external enemy is not even always the most dangerous one. and it can seem as if there were no enemies, then it is a fundamental requirement to find the enemy. to expose the enemy to the light or even first to make the enemy. so that this standing against the enemy may happen and so that das. our life may not lose its edge. the challenge is to bring the enemy into the open, to harbor no illusions about the enemy, to keep oneself ready for attack. to cultivate and intensify a constant readiness and to prepare the attack looking far ahead with the goal of total annihilation of the enemy. the most ominous aspect here is, i think. this to expose the enemy to the light or even first to make the enemy. show that. this standing against the enemy may happen. in short, it doesn't even matter if the enemy is a real enemy. if there is no enemy, it has to be invented so that people may be mobilized and can prepare the enemy's total annihilation. what we find here is the logic of anti-semitism and other racisms at their most elementary. because what heidegger ignores is the possibility that an enemy is invented to create the false unity of the people and thus cover up the immanent society antagonisms of a society. why did hitler need groups? so that he could focus in an external threat, we eliminate the jews, our society will be harmonious again and so on and so on. but now i come to my final warning. the true danger of this heidegger's stance is that he. presentresents the invention and elimination of the enemy. it a... proper ethical stance. but fidelity to a principled decision, what we identify as an ethical stance. i don't care about my own interests. i'm ready to fight. to my death for my cause. is not enough for an act. to qualify as truly ethical. sticking to a problematic principle doesn't help a lot in such cases since the principle itself is wrong. now i will mention my the most terrifying case that i know, maybe you have others. heinrich himmler, the leader of s. now please. germany gave a speech in posen, today's posna, on october 1943, where he spoke quite openly about the the earliest page in our history and one that has never been written and never can be written. he speaks here of the rhetoric which is today, i find it so dangerous getting more and more popular. the rhetoric of elevating brutal aggressivity into true courage. the idea is, yeah, everyone can sacrifice his life or do good things for his country, but a true patriot is the one who is ready to do horrible things discreetly for his country. this is true love of the country. a quote from himmler. you should hear it. it's a nightmare. to have gone through the extermination of the jews and at the same time to have remained decent, that has made us hard. and now not a critical step, but just to make you aware of the manipulation. this was himmler's problem. nazi ss units had to do horrible things, strangle, kill children, women and so on. how to remain decent? you know what was his solution? it disgusting manipulation of your legacy. bhagavad gita. himmler always had in his pocket a special leather-bound version of bhagavad gita. this is how himmler. read this wisdom of bhagavad gita to act at a distance. you can do all the killing, just don't get identified with it. again, i go on with. quote from himmler, our principle must be absolut! one principle must be absolute for our soldiers. we must be honest, decent, loyal and friendly to members of our blood and to no one else. whether the other races live in comfort or perish of hunger interest me only insofar as we need them as slaves for our culture. whether or not 10,000 russian women collapsed from exhaustion while digging. a tank ditch interests me only insofar as the tank ditch is completed for germany. end of quote you see what i find horrifying here and today is raising again. this! stands that i cannot but characterize as ethical evil. evil not a simple egotism. i rape a woman, i steal some money here, there, i exploit but. a kind of a. principled stance of evil, like for the nazis, jews must be killed even if we all die in it. yeah. i think that. this type of. principled evil. ethical evil, evil which is ethical in the simple sense that it's a cause for which you are ready to. sacrifice everything. already at a formal level can be opposed to authentic struggle for emancipation. how? eh. this struggle against enemy always aims at preserving our identity allegedly threatened by the other, like for the nazis, german identity is threatened by jews, by communists and so on. but the main task of an emancipatory movement is to change ourselves, our own identity. here i'm approaching the end, don't be afraid. i would like to repeat to you a quote from george orwell. who clearly described in 1937 the ambiguity of the predominant leftist attitude. quote. we all rail against class distinctions, but very few people seriously want to abolish them. here you come upon the important fact that every revolutionary opinion derives part of its strength from a sacred conviction that nothing can be changed so long as it is merely a question of ameliorating the worker's lot every decent person is agreed. but unfortunately, you get no further by only wishing class distinctions away. more exactly it is necessary to wish them away but your wish has no efficacy. unless you grasp what it involves. the fact that has to be faced is that to abolish class distinctions means abolishing a part of yourself. i have got to alter myself so completely that at the end i should hardly be recognizable as the same. wellson. this, i think, is still missing today. we have all these stupid, disgusting fake conferences like in glasgow, you remember two years ago, green world and so on. but these are just calls. there is no, none of this awareness that. to redeem our world, it's not enough for us in the so-called developed west. two give a little bit more help to the third world but remain our way of life. now, our basic way of life will have to change. radically. this is also. i will tell you to conclude of a wonderful experience i had in india some 10 years ago, i think. i was there in in new delhi. i. i uh... i. m, i don't know what name i forgot it you have, the lowest sub caste on the untouchables. those who clean, dry toilet. and i ask them. what is the basic premise of your? program what do you want? and they instantly gave me a perfect answer we don't want to be ourselves. we no longer want to be what we are. here. radical emancipatory movement begins. this is why be very careful now at least in the developed west. a new tendency is arising often. praise inc. the poor people. but just applying identity politics like you have movies which portray like the movie which i hate. cl zos from two years ago, it got the oscar. no wonders the best film nomadland. it's not even critical. it just... the is is how even these nomadic proletarians without a permanent home who live in trailers. are decent people full of spontaneous goodness, solidarity, small rituals, enjoying their modest happiness and so on and so on. no, i think that... i think that... we that's maybe the big thing. we have to abandon this comfortable stance of making big demands and so on. because today's... at least in the west, you should teach me how it is with you. today's predominant ideology, i claim, is cynical. cynical in the sense that you almost say the whole truth, but you say it in a way which you know will not lead to any act. it... for example, i already gave you the example of that glasgow conference. they said many right things. we need to change our lives, blah, blah, greening. nothing happened. effectively. you so you know which is my private target, the most disgusting thing this modern art biennales in europe. ven castle. if you read their programs, they are totally anti-capitalist. yes, we are all enslaved to capital. even the sphere of art, visual art, is part of the capital. we are eurocentric, blah, blah, blah. but as such, they worked, function. perfectly within the capitalist system of commercial of commercialized. ah. so, uh... what we need is much deeper analysis of where we are today. just to really conclude, i agree here with my german friend, karl-heinz delvon. who claim that today in... today, at least in the west, capitalism it is reasonable to speak no longer about masters and servants, but only about servants who command other servants. nobody wants to be the master. just some people claim we are servants of the people of the state, working for goodness and so on. and here what comes to my mind is... gandhi, of whom i'm otherwise critical, but he said something right. he said the fate of the serf servant is worse than that of the slave, for the slave has lost only his liberty, but the serf is the one who became unworthy, unworthy of his. liberty. so what i want to say is that although we even today's talk about catastrophes it's very fashionable. all the movies, tv series, postocalyptic they are secret. apologies. did you notice how often global catastrophe is presented as discreetly as a chance of a new emancipated society with more authentic relations and so on and so on. so even this our obsession with post-apocalyptic societies is already caught in the ruling what we have to accept we all of us. and here i will be critical of some. leftists in the west who like revolution but ha revolution which happens at a proper distance, you know. when i was young, vietnam cuba name them like we love palestinians for some i thought of them. what i'm saying is that the western left will have to break this search for an authentic emancipatory subject. somewhere. else far away. no again gandhi said and i'm very critical of him how he related to k and so on but he said that it. be the change that you want. 2 b. if you don't do it, there are no others who will do it for you. and we are far from this point. thank you very much for your patience.
Host
thank you, thank you, professor zik. thank you for this engaging, passionate and informative lecture. uh...
thank you, thank you, professor zik. thank you for this engaging, passionate and informative lecture. uh...
Slavoj Žižek
that with this you mean that you are, when you begin, sorry to interrupt you, but that's my evil nature. when you begin in such a nice way, it means that behind your back you are already sharpening the knife, you know. now comes bat. let's go to the bat.
that with this you mean that you are, when you begin, sorry to interrupt you, but that's my evil nature. when you begin in such a nice way, it means that behind your back you are already sharpening the knife, you know. now comes bat. let's go to the bat.
Host
yeah. um... prof. zak, i would like to know how much time do you have today available for the q&a session? but let's do some half an hour at least. no problem.
yeah. um... prof. zak, i would like to know how much time do you have today available for the q&a session? but let's do some half an hour at least. no problem.
Slavoj Žižek
l.
l.
Host
okay. yeah. so professor, we have a couple of questions. in the zoom chat box. um... and some of the participants, they really wanted to ask. question directly to you.
okay. yeah. so professor, we have a couple of questions. in the zoom chat box. um... and some of the participants, they really wanted to ask. question directly to you.
Co-host
um... when. you start with one question,. you read, you select one question and then we go.
um... when. you start with one question,. you read, you select one question and then we go.
Host
okay, sure, sure, sure, sure sir. uh... professorak, this is a question from a participant called upkarsh. and his question is that, is the reinterpretation of the past possible in reality? so is the real is the reinterpretation. of the past possible in reality. by what institutions and action do we carry out such a project?
okay, sure, sure, sure, sure sir. uh... professorak, this is a question from a participant called upkarsh. and his question is that, is the reinterpretation of the past possible in reality? so is the real is the reinterpretation. of the past possible in reality. by what institutions and action do we carry out such a project?
Slavoj Žižek
are you try to answer very, very briefly? okay. because otherwise i talk too much,. no, no, it's a very nice question. i don't think we should... we should we should even make a problem out of this. it happens spontaneously with you know who knew this well? even marx, but especially walter benjamin, who said that. our struggle for emancipation today. means that if we win, we will also redeem the past. like let benjamin man, for example, these great rebellions of the past in europe, spartacus rebellion, slave against rome, medieval serfs, farmers rebellions and so on. you know, all these will be reinterpreted as something that points towards what is happening today. in the same way that once you have feminism, it also reinterprets the whole past. feminism doesn't say in this this way. now. we women know what are our rights and then comes the disgusting historicist reactionary instead yes but we shouldn't blame people in the past at that time it was normal to have women half enslaved and so on and so on. no in some sense i think we have the right to interpret the past from today's standpoint. if you read the history of oof. women from today's point, you find many, many signs of resistance and so on and so on. the whole past appears as much more open. in a different way especially for you in india is needed for example i'm in advance i in advance apologize myself if i will say something that's not accurate but the way i see is that isn't the whole, i call it ironically under the quotation marks, narendra modi revolution. based on a certain reinterpretation of the past, which is, i will put it in an exaggerated way, as this formula. beneath every mosque, there is a hidden, hidden temple. let so what i'm saying is that don't underestimate battles for the past. it comes spontaneously. every revolutionary. reconstruct the past as much more open in the sense of we were losing but what we are doing now is just a culmination of what we were doing for hundreds of years and so on and so on. and this experience is also very liberating in some sense. so again, i'm not talking about some exquisite theoretical third books of reinterpretation. thinking about, although i don't always agree with it, about very, i'm not afraid to use this term, popular mythology. think about, for example, radical revolutionaries in the 20th century in latin america. they are... many of them directly refer to some progressive elements of the inca empire, of other tribal traditions and so on and so on. and i think it's too easy to say, oh, they're just projecting their dreams into the past. no, the past is open. the past is not fully determined. as walter benjamin saw it. clearly. the beak difference. between official history and our alternative history is that the official history as we all know is the history of winners. this group wins that's another one but we detect in the past. traces of d auf. resistance that's why you know how i know that even the ruling class knows this. that's why i don't know if this happens in india but here in the west those in power. like to declare any radical movement as you live in the past or you think we are still in 19th century and so on and so on. and then they go on. today there are no classes, we live in a free universe, whatever and so on and so on. so my idea is that again. of course, not past in the sense of reality. i'm not into magic, but past in the sense of our today's representation of fuck. and this is for me even, i will stop now. i can go an hour. it holds even for the art. look yeah. for example, the great guy. i know it. uh. i. for me, your great writer who is now in england, salman rdi, for me, he is way too liberal and so on. but in one of his talks, i was at a panel with him. he gave a wonderful answer. you maybe know it. to the question of't he didn't he sell himself too much to england? didn't he forget about his indian roots? you know what was his answer? it was no, two indian writers are the greatest influence on me. jane austen and charles dickens. and then he said, i tried to read the poor in bombay through charles dickens. i tried to read the fate of the lower middle classes where there is a problem, how we will marry your daughter, blah, blah, not yet poor, but lower middle classes through jane austen and so on. and i am not saying i not say my paradox is, and this is for me true multiculturalism, that sometimes this looking at a country from a foreign perspective, you understand it better than those people themselves do. i have here wonderful examples. for example, my i'm sorry if you know it. for me. the best version of hamlet. if. akira kurosawa, japanese from 1962, set in modern japan where hamlet is not named hamlet is a rich japanese student who returns home to his father, a boss of a big corporation, finds his father died, his mother is married to his evil uncle, blah, blah. but it works so wonderful that you see clearer, in a much more clear way, what is at stake. just this i wanted to say, that we need to rediscover the past.
are you try to answer very, very briefly? okay. because otherwise i talk too much,. no, no, it's a very nice question. i don't think we should... we should we should even make a problem out of this. it happens spontaneously with you know who knew this well? even marx, but especially walter benjamin, who said that. our struggle for emancipation today. means that if we win, we will also redeem the past. like let benjamin man, for example, these great rebellions of the past in europe, spartacus rebellion, slave against rome, medieval serfs, farmers rebellions and so on. you know, all these will be reinterpreted as something that points towards what is happening today. in the same way that once you have feminism, it also reinterprets the whole past. feminism doesn't say in this this way. now. we women know what are our rights and then comes the disgusting historicist reactionary instead yes but we shouldn't blame people in the past at that time it was normal to have women half enslaved and so on and so on. no in some sense i think we have the right to interpret the past from today's standpoint. if you read the history of oof. women from today's point, you find many, many signs of resistance and so on and so on. the whole past appears as much more open. in a different way especially for you in india is needed for example i'm in advance i in advance apologize myself if i will say something that's not accurate but the way i see is that isn't the whole, i call it ironically under the quotation marks, narendra modi revolution. based on a certain reinterpretation of the past, which is, i will put it in an exaggerated way, as this formula. beneath every mosque, there is a hidden, hidden temple. let so what i'm saying is that don't underestimate battles for the past. it comes spontaneously. every revolutionary. reconstruct the past as much more open in the sense of we were losing but what we are doing now is just a culmination of what we were doing for hundreds of years and so on and so on. and this experience is also very liberating in some sense. so again, i'm not talking about some exquisite theoretical third books of reinterpretation. thinking about, although i don't always agree with it, about very, i'm not afraid to use this term, popular mythology. think about, for example, radical revolutionaries in the 20th century in latin america. they are... many of them directly refer to some progressive elements of the inca empire, of other tribal traditions and so on and so on. and i think it's too easy to say, oh, they're just projecting their dreams into the past. no, the past is open. the past is not fully determined. as walter benjamin saw it. clearly. the beak difference. between official history and our alternative history is that the official history as we all know is the history of winners. this group wins that's another one but we detect in the past. traces of d auf. resistance that's why you know how i know that even the ruling class knows this. that's why i don't know if this happens in india but here in the west those in power. like to declare any radical movement as you live in the past or you think we are still in 19th century and so on and so on. and then they go on. today there are no classes, we live in a free universe, whatever and so on and so on. so my idea is that again. of course, not past in the sense of reality. i'm not into magic, but past in the sense of our today's representation of fuck. and this is for me even, i will stop now. i can go an hour. it holds even for the art. look yeah. for example, the great guy. i know it. uh. i. for me, your great writer who is now in england, salman rdi, for me, he is way too liberal and so on. but in one of his talks, i was at a panel with him. he gave a wonderful answer. you maybe know it. to the question of't he didn't he sell himself too much to england? didn't he forget about his indian roots? you know what was his answer? it was no, two indian writers are the greatest influence on me. jane austen and charles dickens. and then he said, i tried to read the poor in bombay through charles dickens. i tried to read the fate of the lower middle classes where there is a problem, how we will marry your daughter, blah, blah, not yet poor, but lower middle classes through jane austen and so on. and i am not saying i not say my paradox is, and this is for me true multiculturalism, that sometimes this looking at a country from a foreign perspective, you understand it better than those people themselves do. i have here wonderful examples. for example, my i'm sorry if you know it. for me. the best version of hamlet. if. akira kurosawa, japanese from 1962, set in modern japan where hamlet is not named hamlet is a rich japanese student who returns home to his father, a boss of a big corporation, finds his father died, his mother is married to his evil uncle, blah, blah. but it works so wonderful that you see clearer, in a much more clear way, what is at stake. just this i wanted to say, that we need to rediscover the past.
Host
okay, thank you, thank you. another question is about radical emancipation. so the question goes this way, does radical emancipation come from within the existing institutions and ideologies or from
okay, thank you, thank you. another question is about radical emancipation. so the question goes this way, does radical emancipation come from within the existing institutions and ideologies or from
Slavoj Žižek
but does it?
but does it?
Host
from from after from, i love you.
from from after from, i love you.
Slavoj Žižek
within. within. are. oh.
within. within. are. oh.
Host
the
the
Slavoj Žižek
the
the
Host
institution
institution
Slavoj Žižek
she.
she.
Host
ideologies.
ideologies.
Slavoj Žižek
or from a new of institution and ideology. that's a very good question. you know why? because this is the big problem and now i'm sorry if my answer will sound almost stalinist. i think we should fight here right-wing and left-wing dev. the right-wing deviation is that you say, oh, radical change is a utopia. we need to do it step by step, the long through the institutions and so on. let's be realists. but but there is also what i call left-wing principled opportunism. you stick to your pure principles and whenever there is an actual revolutionary movement you say no this is part of the ruling ideology don't take it seriously. this is how for example my friends many of them reacted to syriza in greece now that's nothing and so on or even with morales in bolivia and so on i think we still simply. it's a very common sense answer that i will give you. i think we simply shouldn't accept this as a choice. yes, we don't have time to sit and wait for the big authentic revolution. as rosa luxembberg, a great marxist, said, if you wait for the right moment, the right moment will never come. you have to do now whatever is possible in whatever way. i don't exclude violence. i don't exclude parliamentary action, whatever. i'm here for total opportunism. look, whatever you say about grow b. but... within the united states, he is the most social democratic president that they ever had. he put some real money into ecology helping the poor, healthcare and so on and so on. of course, it's very limited. but... it would be totally crazy to leave the initiative to the right. you know, and to say no, no, no, let's not try, let's just react. i think, again, my answer is a paradoxical compromise one. do everything you can, engage in all reformist gestures possible, but with the awareness that at the end they will not be enough. so then why do it? i believe in this you start with a small gesture which may appear. reformist. but then you see because the system is complex interconnected that to really do this, you have to change something more. it always goes a step further and so on and so on. but at the same time, i mean very seriously what i said. we should be aware that here i'm a moderate pessimist that we are approaching really hard times. ecologically, militarily and so on and we should get. ready for eight. we. should get ready to live in a state of emergency. and state of emergency is not always. aary thing we have this idea people are moving the reactionary power into a state of emergency no state of emergency is also what happened when more radical movement takes over of course it cannot last forever but i'm an absolute okay to end i'm an absolute opportunist here do everything you can don't allow the enemy to determine your terrain you know like what would you want to do this or that you are inconsistent yes my answer is yes i will not pronounce the vulgar f-u yes i'm inconsistent so what everything that were
or from a new of institution and ideology. that's a very good question. you know why? because this is the big problem and now i'm sorry if my answer will sound almost stalinist. i think we should fight here right-wing and left-wing dev. the right-wing deviation is that you say, oh, radical change is a utopia. we need to do it step by step, the long through the institutions and so on. let's be realists. but but there is also what i call left-wing principled opportunism. you stick to your pure principles and whenever there is an actual revolutionary movement you say no this is part of the ruling ideology don't take it seriously. this is how for example my friends many of them reacted to syriza in greece now that's nothing and so on or even with morales in bolivia and so on i think we still simply. it's a very common sense answer that i will give you. i think we simply shouldn't accept this as a choice. yes, we don't have time to sit and wait for the big authentic revolution. as rosa luxembberg, a great marxist, said, if you wait for the right moment, the right moment will never come. you have to do now whatever is possible in whatever way. i don't exclude violence. i don't exclude parliamentary action, whatever. i'm here for total opportunism. look, whatever you say about grow b. but... within the united states, he is the most social democratic president that they ever had. he put some real money into ecology helping the poor, healthcare and so on and so on. of course, it's very limited. but... it would be totally crazy to leave the initiative to the right. you know, and to say no, no, no, let's not try, let's just react. i think, again, my answer is a paradoxical compromise one. do everything you can, engage in all reformist gestures possible, but with the awareness that at the end they will not be enough. so then why do it? i believe in this you start with a small gesture which may appear. reformist. but then you see because the system is complex interconnected that to really do this, you have to change something more. it always goes a step further and so on and so on. but at the same time, i mean very seriously what i said. we should be aware that here i'm a moderate pessimist that we are approaching really hard times. ecologically, militarily and so on and we should get. ready for eight. we. should get ready to live in a state of emergency. and state of emergency is not always. aary thing we have this idea people are moving the reactionary power into a state of emergency no state of emergency is also what happened when more radical movement takes over of course it cannot last forever but i'm an absolute okay to end i'm an absolute opportunist here do everything you can don't allow the enemy to determine your terrain you know like what would you want to do this or that you are inconsistent yes my answer is yes i will not pronounce the vulgar f-u yes i'm inconsistent so what everything that were
Host
oh. next question is from dr. shibu. his question is that, how could one discern the subterranean link between identity politics and the apocalyptic growth of right-wing extremism? . sorry between identity politics and apocalyptic growth of the right-wing extremism.
oh. next question is from dr. shibu. his question is that, how could one discern the subterranean link between identity politics and the apocalyptic growth of right-wing extremism? . sorry between identity politics and apocalyptic growth of the right-wing extremism.
Slavoj Žižek
it very... good question. and i... think there is a link. i don't know the kind gentleman who asked me the question, did he mean this in a critical way that there is no link? but i... think that... identity politic. ich...... in its bad form. of course, all the racist ethnic groups, religions should have their identity. but at the same time, it's vital for them. to be aware of two things. a. debt. they never should just return to the identity that they lost, that to really emancipate themselves, they should reflect on how. the way they perceive themselves is already the product of their oppression. so they will have also to change themselves. and second thing, never abandon universality. every. every identity politics should aim at universality. for example, i fully support homosexual, gay, trans struggles. but not in the form of their exclusivity. i. support them insofar as they are. one of the symptomatic points of what is wrong with our general, universal, predominant conceptions of sexuality, of universality, of freedom and so on and so on. because the big lesson we learned from marx is that universalities are never really neutral. i accept this idea that human rights, okay, they are a great thing, but the way they are proposed by the west, you can see secrets. references in there, a certain form of individualism. let me tell you a very brief story which fascinates me at this level. you remember if you are old enough, i am. when was this? 89 or when the tiananian square, you know, in china? for us in the west, the paradigm photo, paradigmatic photo picture is you remember that a guy with a gasoline tank or whatever confronting alone a tank. approaching here. but then i spoke with my friends in china and they told me, no. this is not a central image there. this is western obsession one individual confronting. no, for them, tianan y was an authentic popular mass movement and so on. this focusing on an individual is for them a western misperception. you see, this was our projection. onto them. and this is for me today. that's my other problem of identity politics. would you agree that? the worst form of racism is for me racism which appears as its opposite. racism which presents itself as respect. you know, allus h me. i don't like him as a writer, but he wrote a wonderful travelogue in the 20s. he traveled through india, japan. and in india, he noticed something. he said how she noticed that this high level british colonial administrators. whenever he met them, they were full of admiration of like we are of ordinary indians we in the west we are we we just exploit nature, industry, technology. but that is more spiritual. deed in an ordinary poor indian farmer and so on this for me is the worst this false respect for the other. because then... hly et. that but whenever this spiritual indians rebelled or even less dangerously. whenever ordinary indians wanted also to master western technology and so on, they exploded. no, no, that's not for you and so on. they become very brutal. so, you know, isn't it the same also? in united states, how? i spoke with some, okay, not indians, however you call them, i don't like the term native americans, but... then. they hate so much despite liberals which come to them and say, oh, you are deeply connected with the earth, you live a more organic life and so on and so on. one told me that a rich guy, progressive from los angeles living there in a big villa came to visit them and said i admire your spirituality you live more holistic life and he told this white guy okay if you admire my life so much then why don't we exchange places give me your rich villa in los angeles and come to live in my poor hut here without running water and so on and so on you know like again, the one the most dangerous form of racism today is this you know who use this patronizing racism. you know that from my youth i remember i iraq. a propaganda book in english. of south africa when there still was apartheid right. you know how they justified apartheid, right? they said that if we finish apartheid, then all the races will mix and what about those wonderful small black tribes? they will be caught in our decadent western world of technology. they will lose their original culture and so on and so on. here i explode, you know. don't tell! po excluded people have to live their authentic lives.
it very... good question. and i... think there is a link. i don't know the kind gentleman who asked me the question, did he mean this in a critical way that there is no link? but i... think that... identity politic. ich...... in its bad form. of course, all the racist ethnic groups, religions should have their identity. but at the same time, it's vital for them. to be aware of two things. a. debt. they never should just return to the identity that they lost, that to really emancipate themselves, they should reflect on how. the way they perceive themselves is already the product of their oppression. so they will have also to change themselves. and second thing, never abandon universality. every. every identity politics should aim at universality. for example, i fully support homosexual, gay, trans struggles. but not in the form of their exclusivity. i. support them insofar as they are. one of the symptomatic points of what is wrong with our general, universal, predominant conceptions of sexuality, of universality, of freedom and so on and so on. because the big lesson we learned from marx is that universalities are never really neutral. i accept this idea that human rights, okay, they are a great thing, but the way they are proposed by the west, you can see secrets. references in there, a certain form of individualism. let me tell you a very brief story which fascinates me at this level. you remember if you are old enough, i am. when was this? 89 or when the tiananian square, you know, in china? for us in the west, the paradigm photo, paradigmatic photo picture is you remember that a guy with a gasoline tank or whatever confronting alone a tank. approaching here. but then i spoke with my friends in china and they told me, no. this is not a central image there. this is western obsession one individual confronting. no, for them, tianan y was an authentic popular mass movement and so on. this focusing on an individual is for them a western misperception. you see, this was our projection. onto them. and this is for me today. that's my other problem of identity politics. would you agree that? the worst form of racism is for me racism which appears as its opposite. racism which presents itself as respect. you know, allus h me. i don't like him as a writer, but he wrote a wonderful travelogue in the 20s. he traveled through india, japan. and in india, he noticed something. he said how she noticed that this high level british colonial administrators. whenever he met them, they were full of admiration of like we are of ordinary indians we in the west we are we we just exploit nature, industry, technology. but that is more spiritual. deed in an ordinary poor indian farmer and so on this for me is the worst this false respect for the other. because then... hly et. that but whenever this spiritual indians rebelled or even less dangerously. whenever ordinary indians wanted also to master western technology and so on, they exploded. no, no, that's not for you and so on. they become very brutal. so, you know, isn't it the same also? in united states, how? i spoke with some, okay, not indians, however you call them, i don't like the term native americans, but... then. they hate so much despite liberals which come to them and say, oh, you are deeply connected with the earth, you live a more organic life and so on and so on. one told me that a rich guy, progressive from los angeles living there in a big villa came to visit them and said i admire your spirituality you live more holistic life and he told this white guy okay if you admire my life so much then why don't we exchange places give me your rich villa in los angeles and come to live in my poor hut here without running water and so on and so on you know like again, the one the most dangerous form of racism today is this you know who use this patronizing racism. you know that from my youth i remember i iraq. a propaganda book in english. of south africa when there still was apartheid right. you know how they justified apartheid, right? they said that if we finish apartheid, then all the races will mix and what about those wonderful small black tribes? they will be caught in our decadent western world of technology. they will lose their original culture and so on and so on. here i explode, you know. don't tell! po excluded people have to live their authentic lives.
Host
hello. well, professor candid a participant.
hello. well, professor candid a participant.
Moderator
mich, he wants to ask you.
mich, he wants to ask you.
Host
sim.
sim.
Moderator
please. we should. my question to mr. slimoy is that you being a great admirer of ellen buddieu. you are in very much conformity with his ideas on. event how it changes life and how it... changes your whole viewpoint, how? oh... you just for. come out of the human rights, liberal discourse and. yeah. and and you also. uh badou's support for kame rouge. communist regime. so i mean but today the ideological state apparatus it is there forge. most predominantly for the liberal discourse so the left end. the liberal discourse. do you see them as antithetical or do you see this as a space? to reconcile them. because when they are being reconciled, the liberal discourse is eclipsing the left. so where do you think uh... who stand now.
please. we should. my question to mr. slimoy is that you being a great admirer of ellen buddieu. you are in very much conformity with his ideas on. event how it changes life and how it... changes your whole viewpoint, how? oh... you just for. come out of the human rights, liberal discourse and. yeah. and and you also. uh badou's support for kame rouge. communist regime. so i mean but today the ideological state apparatus it is there forge. most predominantly for the liberal discourse so the left end. the liberal discourse. do you see them as antithetical or do you see this as a space? to reconcile them. because when they are being reconciled, the liberal discourse is eclipsing the left. so where do you think uh... who stand now.
Slavoj Žižek
j... finished? sorry. is the question finished?
j... finished? sorry. is the question finished?
Host
yes, yeah.
yes, yeah.
Slavoj Žižek
okay, sorry. again, excellent question. it would take too much time. but let me tell you something, unfortunately. in the last five more years. i somehow lost contact with but you? because that's my point. he would have answered me. of course, in his own terms. when i mention this, principled opportunist, no? people who cling to some radical vision and dismiss all moderate attempts, he comes close to this. i remember when i supported morales and so on in latin america, he said,, don't take them seriously, this is nothing, syriza. he said, no, this is nothing, this is nothing and so on and so on. so for him, the only authentic event for him, there were only two authentic events. in the last 50, 60, 70, yes. it is. the chinese cultural revolution. end. it's european version may 68. but here i disagree. i think that and he was furious when i once told him this that. for me. d you know, you do something and you never know. what? will be the ultimate result of this. for me. deneng xiaoping's so-called reforms introducing capitalism was the ultimate result of the cultural revolution. because the motto of cultural revolution in china was let's erase the confucian past against tradition a new man. so they had a young generation, they deprived it of all this traditional legitization and the only thing that then and as such as tabula raza, they became open for new capitalism he didn't like this as for khmer roots no no no let's be serious i never. he even stepped back later and said this was a mistake and so on and so on. though i think it's interesting. i'm not dismissing what is happening now in china. i'm not saying. see, the new leader now is just a totalitarian opportunist, whatever they follow what he is saying. and some things are very interesting. like he said a couple of months ago already something wonderful. he said that maybe we should slow the growth. to enable ordinary people to profit from our development more. there is a new accent on women's rights even and so on and so on. i... it's not as simple as that, but nonetheless, i think that. because i know in detail, i read some of his books, wang hing. he is the third person now in china. he's the main ideologist of this new way. and he openly defines himself as neoconservative. he said, we want american dynamic. but without the decadent side of united states. so the idea is. let's have the reanimation of confucian traditional values to keep capitalist dynamic under control. i don't like this formula. i think it secretly comes too close to fascism. because, you know, the basic formula of fascism is conservative modernism. how to enjoy all the benefits of modern technology, but impose a traditional ideology or need of social harmony and so on to keep it. so as for event, you know, where was our misunderstanding? isn't it with bad you, he... for him, there are times of events, big time, enthusiasm and so on, and then an event runs out of its course. but for me. and for him this must too. pragmatic. he didn't accept it. for me. the minister of what? of the degree to which an event really is an event. i wonder if you will agree. the measure of this is for me precisely what remains after the enthusiasm of the event is over. what remains in the everyday life. here i even agree with advocates of 68. which said that even some liberals which said that, okay, we can make fun of 68 it was a maoist madness nobody took it serious but nonetheless like after 68, a certain kind of open racism is no longer publicly tolerated. you cannot speak in a certain way, malesovvinist about women and so on and so on. you know, this is for me the true measure of the event. after the event, when life returns to normal let's see what did it mean for ordinary people. how did their lives change? and here i see a problem already in the october revolution. for me, as i wrote about it, the true tragedy was after the victory in the civil war, 22, 21, 22. then it was the most difficult moment when bolsheviks had to turn to these everyday things, power relations, sexuality, how do you organize social rituals, funerals, and so on. and they desperately tried to. invent new forms and it didn't work. you know, that's the... that's the tragedy. so i i'm never such i call this my. marxism of the morning after, you know the expression the morning after means you have a nice night of drinking, whatever, and then you. you awaken sober, sorry, but with a headache and so on. no, no. i say. at the event, what happens the morning after when you return to reality. for this i'm then accused of being too romantic. but i don't like this vision of history which focuses on big events and then what is in between is just ordinary. way ordinary everyday life. true changes must be changes in everyday ordinary life.
okay, sorry. again, excellent question. it would take too much time. but let me tell you something, unfortunately. in the last five more years. i somehow lost contact with but you? because that's my point. he would have answered me. of course, in his own terms. when i mention this, principled opportunist, no? people who cling to some radical vision and dismiss all moderate attempts, he comes close to this. i remember when i supported morales and so on in latin america, he said,, don't take them seriously, this is nothing, syriza. he said, no, this is nothing, this is nothing and so on and so on. so for him, the only authentic event for him, there were only two authentic events. in the last 50, 60, 70, yes. it is. the chinese cultural revolution. end. it's european version may 68. but here i disagree. i think that and he was furious when i once told him this that. for me. d you know, you do something and you never know. what? will be the ultimate result of this. for me. deneng xiaoping's so-called reforms introducing capitalism was the ultimate result of the cultural revolution. because the motto of cultural revolution in china was let's erase the confucian past against tradition a new man. so they had a young generation, they deprived it of all this traditional legitization and the only thing that then and as such as tabula raza, they became open for new capitalism he didn't like this as for khmer roots no no no let's be serious i never. he even stepped back later and said this was a mistake and so on and so on. though i think it's interesting. i'm not dismissing what is happening now in china. i'm not saying. see, the new leader now is just a totalitarian opportunist, whatever they follow what he is saying. and some things are very interesting. like he said a couple of months ago already something wonderful. he said that maybe we should slow the growth. to enable ordinary people to profit from our development more. there is a new accent on women's rights even and so on and so on. i... it's not as simple as that, but nonetheless, i think that. because i know in detail, i read some of his books, wang hing. he is the third person now in china. he's the main ideologist of this new way. and he openly defines himself as neoconservative. he said, we want american dynamic. but without the decadent side of united states. so the idea is. let's have the reanimation of confucian traditional values to keep capitalist dynamic under control. i don't like this formula. i think it secretly comes too close to fascism. because, you know, the basic formula of fascism is conservative modernism. how to enjoy all the benefits of modern technology, but impose a traditional ideology or need of social harmony and so on to keep it. so as for event, you know, where was our misunderstanding? isn't it with bad you, he... for him, there are times of events, big time, enthusiasm and so on, and then an event runs out of its course. but for me. and for him this must too. pragmatic. he didn't accept it. for me. the minister of what? of the degree to which an event really is an event. i wonder if you will agree. the measure of this is for me precisely what remains after the enthusiasm of the event is over. what remains in the everyday life. here i even agree with advocates of 68. which said that even some liberals which said that, okay, we can make fun of 68 it was a maoist madness nobody took it serious but nonetheless like after 68, a certain kind of open racism is no longer publicly tolerated. you cannot speak in a certain way, malesovvinist about women and so on and so on. you know, this is for me the true measure of the event. after the event, when life returns to normal let's see what did it mean for ordinary people. how did their lives change? and here i see a problem already in the october revolution. for me, as i wrote about it, the true tragedy was after the victory in the civil war, 22, 21, 22. then it was the most difficult moment when bolsheviks had to turn to these everyday things, power relations, sexuality, how do you organize social rituals, funerals, and so on. and they desperately tried to. invent new forms and it didn't work. you know, that's the... that's the tragedy. so i i'm never such i call this my. marxism of the morning after, you know the expression the morning after means you have a nice night of drinking, whatever, and then you. you awaken sober, sorry, but with a headache and so on. no, no. i say. at the event, what happens the morning after when you return to reality. for this i'm then accused of being too romantic. but i don't like this vision of history which focuses on big events and then what is in between is just ordinary. way ordinary everyday life. true changes must be changes in everyday ordinary life.
Host
oh. so...
oh. so...
Audience Member 1
maybe one more interaction. me.
maybe one more interaction. me.
Host
okay, sure, sure. so, soay wants to ask you one question, sir. so joy, areé. so john.
okay, sure, sure. so, soay wants to ask you one question, sir. so joy, areé. so john.
Audience Member 1
yes. i'm here. sir, i just want to ask something that the identification of self is now coming out of a medium that is being sold by the different communities and now through it are we perceiving who we are. we have lost our sense of individuality in the pursuit of this narrow open-mindedness to learn the ways of society. we join different communities which entices us with schemes of individuality. we lost the sense of individuality and the identifying ourselves through the lens of the community instead of going through all of these complicated steps we should start accepting ourselves and our inherent individuality attained by the influence of the so-called community. sir, how do you think the counterculture will play against this role of group and communities? you you...
yes. i'm here. sir, i just want to ask something that the identification of self is now coming out of a medium that is being sold by the different communities and now through it are we perceiving who we are. we have lost our sense of individuality in the pursuit of this narrow open-mindedness to learn the ways of society. we join different communities which entices us with schemes of individuality. we lost the sense of individuality and the identifying ourselves through the lens of the community instead of going through all of these complicated steps we should start accepting ourselves and our inherent individuality attained by the influence of the so-called community. sir, how do you think the counterculture will play against this role of group and communities? you you...
Slavoj Žižek
no, i am here, an old marxist paranoiac. i never liked this terminology of, you didn't talk about them, i know, these small countercultures and so on and so on. i always ask myself, to what extent? they really... uh. function as a. limited open space where you can vent out release your frustrations and enable the system to function even more smoothly. to give you an example, it's not counterculture in my youth, i lived in a communist society. it was relatively open. everything was not bad. but at a certain point, those in power... make an ingenious decision. they no longer they no longer put you to trial or whatever if you were telling dirty jokes against those in power. there was even a rumor that they fabricated themselves jokes not about the opponents, but about themselves. because the idea of both you have to give to people. some sphere where they that fury. doesn't do any damage but they can release their frustrations no so i was always suspicious for example about political jokes and it's similar with with counterculture i mean yugoslav communists were much more intelligent they supported they tolerated drugs. they tolerated whatever you do, screw with ducks or whatever in sexuality. drugs, pseudo-oriental thought, mysticism and so on, pseudo. the idea was just to keep young people from politicization. you know, they were ready to tolerate. many, many things. the mistake of soviet union and those more orthodox countries was that they were not ready. to do ready to do this. so about individuality, isn't my gut this term? today so misused. what does it mean? to be individual. so just to provoke you. i read, you know, is he also famous in india, that guy with whom i don't agree always, but he had one good insight. i think that what we are. still in. we could jump. sorry. when there was that panic high point two years ago of the omicron, of the pandemic. he made he bunk. b yan or whatever, something like that, the well-known k now in germany, south korean he noticed how the fundamental part of communal life is rituals of mourning. they enable you to socialize your pain and to go through it in an organized way and how this was missing. i don't know again how it was with you, but in europe it was just people had outbursts, breakdowns, complaints, but there was no. there were no ritualized forms to do this. so i think that forget about individuality. we have more than enough of fake individuality today. maybe maybe we will have to forum new new rituals. for example. i often, i was attacked. from making fun of those i met them in southern greece. you still have them in parts of europe, but they are mostly as a tourist attraction now. i don't know how you call them if you have this in india, women whom you pay to mourn for you, you know. like your father blah blah die you are there but women cry for you do the lament and i and i made i made fun ah, that's rudali, you call it. i made fun. but then a friend from romania gave me a wonderful answer. he said, no, it's not just hypocrisy. it's something nice. let's say somebody close to you dies. you are too traumatized. to mourn publicly. and it it brings an inner peace to you when with the distance you can see in this communal sense how others are doing it for you. paradoxically, you can mourn through, do the mourning lamenting the dead through others, it brings peace to you because you are still too wounded. you cannot do it directly yourself. again. at least for me in europe. the pandemic pointed out that we miss these rituals. you know with this to conclude, you know the. the hollywood producer, my favorite, samuel goldwin of metro-goldwyn-mayer, he was the most... progressive even for the time and he was known for his he was known for his gold so-called goldwinisms apparently stupid statements but they were ingenious like once he got from the press sorry, you know this story a guy brought him reactions to his films from the press but they said there are too many old cliches in your films, no? and then he gave the order to his scenario department, we urgently need new cliches. he was right. the opposite of clichliche is not some crazy originality. this is for idiots. the true art is to organize new clichés, new clichaic formulas. and i love them. like, let's say, again. here there are cultural differences. i don't know how it is in europe. country if it's quite the same. but let's say i walk on the street and i meet somebody and i... don't like to meet him. but when we meet nonetheless i say, oh how are you? nice to see you. this is clichliche in mod sense. we probably both know three. don didn't want. to meet. but somehow it's not simply hypocrisy. this. politeness, even if it's not sincere. what? to bring. to produce safe social space of good rituals and so on and so on. today we live in a horrible time where everybody wants to express its. individuality and then this is what i don't like also. and then the reaction is that all that counts is, are you hurt? like i say something, the answer i get is this hurt me. and this is already an argument that i get often from some feminists from and so on and so on. no i i don't like this direct reference to your inert. feelings. i like. a certain level of alienated, objectized hypocrisy. it would have been a horrible society. can you imagine it? when we would all the time be open to each other about how we feel, how i feel about you and so on and so on. no, there is something very civilized in rituals. at the same time, i'm not an idiot. i know that. rituals also. imply certain social forms of dimin and so on and so on. but then we need new clich, new rituals. i think that rituals allow you the freedom of inner space. you are polite and so on, but you are not too engage in it.
no, i am here, an old marxist paranoiac. i never liked this terminology of, you didn't talk about them, i know, these small countercultures and so on and so on. i always ask myself, to what extent? they really... uh. function as a. limited open space where you can vent out release your frustrations and enable the system to function even more smoothly. to give you an example, it's not counterculture in my youth, i lived in a communist society. it was relatively open. everything was not bad. but at a certain point, those in power... make an ingenious decision. they no longer they no longer put you to trial or whatever if you were telling dirty jokes against those in power. there was even a rumor that they fabricated themselves jokes not about the opponents, but about themselves. because the idea of both you have to give to people. some sphere where they that fury. doesn't do any damage but they can release their frustrations no so i was always suspicious for example about political jokes and it's similar with with counterculture i mean yugoslav communists were much more intelligent they supported they tolerated drugs. they tolerated whatever you do, screw with ducks or whatever in sexuality. drugs, pseudo-oriental thought, mysticism and so on, pseudo. the idea was just to keep young people from politicization. you know, they were ready to tolerate. many, many things. the mistake of soviet union and those more orthodox countries was that they were not ready. to do ready to do this. so about individuality, isn't my gut this term? today so misused. what does it mean? to be individual. so just to provoke you. i read, you know, is he also famous in india, that guy with whom i don't agree always, but he had one good insight. i think that what we are. still in. we could jump. sorry. when there was that panic high point two years ago of the omicron, of the pandemic. he made he bunk. b yan or whatever, something like that, the well-known k now in germany, south korean he noticed how the fundamental part of communal life is rituals of mourning. they enable you to socialize your pain and to go through it in an organized way and how this was missing. i don't know again how it was with you, but in europe it was just people had outbursts, breakdowns, complaints, but there was no. there were no ritualized forms to do this. so i think that forget about individuality. we have more than enough of fake individuality today. maybe maybe we will have to forum new new rituals. for example. i often, i was attacked. from making fun of those i met them in southern greece. you still have them in parts of europe, but they are mostly as a tourist attraction now. i don't know how you call them if you have this in india, women whom you pay to mourn for you, you know. like your father blah blah die you are there but women cry for you do the lament and i and i made i made fun ah, that's rudali, you call it. i made fun. but then a friend from romania gave me a wonderful answer. he said, no, it's not just hypocrisy. it's something nice. let's say somebody close to you dies. you are too traumatized. to mourn publicly. and it it brings an inner peace to you when with the distance you can see in this communal sense how others are doing it for you. paradoxically, you can mourn through, do the mourning lamenting the dead through others, it brings peace to you because you are still too wounded. you cannot do it directly yourself. again. at least for me in europe. the pandemic pointed out that we miss these rituals. you know with this to conclude, you know the. the hollywood producer, my favorite, samuel goldwin of metro-goldwyn-mayer, he was the most... progressive even for the time and he was known for his he was known for his gold so-called goldwinisms apparently stupid statements but they were ingenious like once he got from the press sorry, you know this story a guy brought him reactions to his films from the press but they said there are too many old cliches in your films, no? and then he gave the order to his scenario department, we urgently need new cliches. he was right. the opposite of clichliche is not some crazy originality. this is for idiots. the true art is to organize new clichés, new clichaic formulas. and i love them. like, let's say, again. here there are cultural differences. i don't know how it is in europe. country if it's quite the same. but let's say i walk on the street and i meet somebody and i... don't like to meet him. but when we meet nonetheless i say, oh how are you? nice to see you. this is clichliche in mod sense. we probably both know three. don didn't want. to meet. but somehow it's not simply hypocrisy. this. politeness, even if it's not sincere. what? to bring. to produce safe social space of good rituals and so on and so on. today we live in a horrible time where everybody wants to express its. individuality and then this is what i don't like also. and then the reaction is that all that counts is, are you hurt? like i say something, the answer i get is this hurt me. and this is already an argument that i get often from some feminists from and so on and so on. no i i don't like this direct reference to your inert. feelings. i like. a certain level of alienated, objectized hypocrisy. it would have been a horrible society. can you imagine it? when we would all the time be open to each other about how we feel, how i feel about you and so on and so on. no, there is something very civilized in rituals. at the same time, i'm not an idiot. i know that. rituals also. imply certain social forms of dimin and so on and so on. but then we need new clich, new rituals. i think that rituals allow you the freedom of inner space. you are polite and so on, but you are not too engage in it.
Host
thank you. thank you, professor. so we have a lot of questions in the chat box and but slowly, slowly.
thank you. thank you, professor. so we have a lot of questions in the chat box and but slowly, slowly.
Slavoj Žižek
i warn you, i warned you about this. i'm a little bit tired.
i warn you, i warned you about this. i'm a little bit tired.
Co-host
but do you have?
but do you have?
Slavoj Žižek
let's one to more. okay, okay, okay.
let's one to more. okay, okay, okay.
Co-host
how much more time would you give us?
how much more time would you give us?
Slavoj Žižek
oh my god, i'm so sorry. like five minutes and'm slowly collapsing.
oh my god, i'm so sorry. like five minutes and'm slowly collapsing.
Co-host
five more minutes, yeah. maybe one more question, ethathan.
five more minutes, yeah. maybe one more question, ethathan.
Slavoj Žižek
okay.. okay, yeah, yeah. but you are the stalinist censor. you decide which question no?
okay.. okay, yeah, yeah. but you are the stalinist censor. you decide which question no?
Host
.
.
Slavoj Žižek
no, no, no, no. nothing works in every social interaction. here i'm a totalitarian. there should be freedom, but not too much freedom. somebody has to control it because otherwise you get idiot who. pretend to ask a question, but in reality they want to make their own two-minute. please go on.
no, no, no, no. nothing works in every social interaction. here i'm a totalitarian. there should be freedom, but not too much freedom. somebody has to control it because otherwise you get idiot who. pretend to ask a question, but in reality they want to make their own two-minute. please go on.
Co-host
but you have to answer in five minutes. now you are going to be stalin here.
but you have to answer in five minutes. now you are going to be stalin here.
Slavoj Žižek
no, you are stalin. or you, up to you.
no, you are stalin. or you, up to you.
Host
okay. so this is a question from sreshhtais. and her question is there. unholy alliances in real life can be tricky to even channelize. sorry i didn't get the unholy alliance. and i understand real life can be to to even channelize.
okay. so this is a question from sreshhtais. and her question is there. unholy alliances in real life can be tricky to even channelize. sorry i didn't get the unholy alliance. and i understand real life can be to to even channelize.
Slavoj Žižek
it can be tricky or what.
it can be tricky or what.
Host
of... so at times like this, do we actually judge the ali based on the world about them? or actually experience it, keeping it in a fair field.
of... so at times like this, do we actually judge the ali based on the world about them? or actually experience it, keeping it in a fair field.
Slavoj Žižek
i'm not sure i got. the question, right? but you know what's my point? why i talk about holy league. andoly. a lion fish. no, there are no holy airlines, unholy. some i don't know how popular he was in india. now he still has influenced my ex-friend. before he died, we split ernesto laclau. had this idea of hegemony and multiple discourses. he said that we live in a society where there are multiple antagonisms. let's say we have ecology as one field. are you for, against, do you think it's child problem, blah? then we have... economic antagonisms. we have democracy political we have sexual politics. antagonisms and so on. and for him there are no holy or unholy alliances. there is always battle, competition of different antagonisms and there is usually one antagonism which became the predominant one. today it is, and that's the complaint of many leftists today in. the developed west sexual and race antagonism. that's the big thing. the class antagonism is more or less ignored. so, lacl would have said... let's take ecology. yes, it's an antagonism in the sense that some people claim it's not a real threat, other people claim we are approaching a global ecological catastrophe. but for laccl, the way you link this antagonism to other antagonisms is contingent. for example, you have a... you can have a conservative ecologist who said the guilt of modern industry. let's return to modest, small communities. then you have feminist ecologists who said this male principle of domination is the problem of it all and so on and so on. so then you have even pro-capitalist ecologists who said, yes, it's a big problem, but the only solution is to tax the products which hurt economy and solve it on the market in this way. for le cloud there is no. bring the leak. link here and he goes even so far when you take. like racism. he said, yes, you can link anti-semitism to to working class if workers can be convinced to. prefer to prefer to project their hatred onto capitalism, into the jew and so on. it's deplorable, but. nothing can prevent it. now, i don't buy this. i think that behind, beneath all this plurality of antagonisms. there is what i call social antagonism of domination and exploitation, which is the crucial one. which is why i still think that alliances which are in this sense counter-intuitive like a leftist supporting right-wing authoritarian and so on we should keep them unholy we cannot just say yeah that's one possibility and so on and so on i'm an old-fashioned leftist i think that although of course there are situations where social struggle for domination is not the big threat. like let's say i'm even afraid to think about it tomorrow we discover that there will be a big comet mega danger which will hit the earth at that point, of course, we can all come together and see how we can, at least part of humanity, how it can survive and so on and so on. but i claim that and with again, feminist struggle. my reproach to many of these me too feminists is that they remain at a very superficial level all this, you know, how you address a woman. and there are even many of them secretly anti-feminist. i don't know again, that would interest me very much how it is in your country. you know what is for me a true miracle? the iranian revolt with women triggered it. it's a social revolt but women or in south korea, i admire their feminist movement, uh. what i don't like in in this... predominant form of the mit2 movement. ich that it. av this more basic. questions about the link between racism, sexism and social relations of power, economic domination and so on and so on. i think it's always mediated between this and social. and social domination. this is why i believe in miracles. no no no not religious miracles but miracles in the sense that life goes on and then unexpectedly something happ, for example, iran, my iranian friend warned me. but that there is a deep dissatisfaction in society, but nonetheless, when death women's protests started and they spread into general uprising. it was something. unique. i believe in this type of miracles. so my view. we live in difficult times, in deep heat. but... miracles happen. never miracles again, my god. i'm an atheist. miracles in the sense of out of concrete situations, something totally unexpected can. canna explode.
i'm not sure i got. the question, right? but you know what's my point? why i talk about holy league. andoly. a lion fish. no, there are no holy airlines, unholy. some i don't know how popular he was in india. now he still has influenced my ex-friend. before he died, we split ernesto laclau. had this idea of hegemony and multiple discourses. he said that we live in a society where there are multiple antagonisms. let's say we have ecology as one field. are you for, against, do you think it's child problem, blah? then we have... economic antagonisms. we have democracy political we have sexual politics. antagonisms and so on. and for him there are no holy or unholy alliances. there is always battle, competition of different antagonisms and there is usually one antagonism which became the predominant one. today it is, and that's the complaint of many leftists today in. the developed west sexual and race antagonism. that's the big thing. the class antagonism is more or less ignored. so, lacl would have said... let's take ecology. yes, it's an antagonism in the sense that some people claim it's not a real threat, other people claim we are approaching a global ecological catastrophe. but for laccl, the way you link this antagonism to other antagonisms is contingent. for example, you have a... you can have a conservative ecologist who said the guilt of modern industry. let's return to modest, small communities. then you have feminist ecologists who said this male principle of domination is the problem of it all and so on and so on. so then you have even pro-capitalist ecologists who said, yes, it's a big problem, but the only solution is to tax the products which hurt economy and solve it on the market in this way. for le cloud there is no. bring the leak. link here and he goes even so far when you take. like racism. he said, yes, you can link anti-semitism to to working class if workers can be convinced to. prefer to prefer to project their hatred onto capitalism, into the jew and so on. it's deplorable, but. nothing can prevent it. now, i don't buy this. i think that behind, beneath all this plurality of antagonisms. there is what i call social antagonism of domination and exploitation, which is the crucial one. which is why i still think that alliances which are in this sense counter-intuitive like a leftist supporting right-wing authoritarian and so on we should keep them unholy we cannot just say yeah that's one possibility and so on and so on i'm an old-fashioned leftist i think that although of course there are situations where social struggle for domination is not the big threat. like let's say i'm even afraid to think about it tomorrow we discover that there will be a big comet mega danger which will hit the earth at that point, of course, we can all come together and see how we can, at least part of humanity, how it can survive and so on and so on. but i claim that and with again, feminist struggle. my reproach to many of these me too feminists is that they remain at a very superficial level all this, you know, how you address a woman. and there are even many of them secretly anti-feminist. i don't know again, that would interest me very much how it is in your country. you know what is for me a true miracle? the iranian revolt with women triggered it. it's a social revolt but women or in south korea, i admire their feminist movement, uh. what i don't like in in this... predominant form of the mit2 movement. ich that it. av this more basic. questions about the link between racism, sexism and social relations of power, economic domination and so on and so on. i think it's always mediated between this and social. and social domination. this is why i believe in miracles. no no no not religious miracles but miracles in the sense that life goes on and then unexpectedly something happ, for example, iran, my iranian friend warned me. but that there is a deep dissatisfaction in society, but nonetheless, when death women's protests started and they spread into general uprising. it was something. unique. i believe in this type of miracles. so my view. we live in difficult times, in deep heat. but... miracles happen. never miracles again, my god. i'm an atheist. miracles in the sense of out of concrete situations, something totally unexpected can. canna explode.
Host
uh... so professor, thank you so much for this lecture and.
uh... so professor, thank you so much for this lecture and.
Slavoj Žižek
i'm grateful. for your patience. i'm grateful to you. just give me some time and we can in a couple of months, if you want, we can repeat it. you know what i propose to do? because always i talk to mac. i propose another form. what if i send you a deck? which you distribute to all the people and then we have just one hour or one hour and a half of live debate.
i'm grateful. for your patience. i'm grateful to you. just give me some time and we can in a couple of months, if you want, we can repeat it. you know what i propose to do? because always i talk to mac. i propose another form. what if i send you a deck? which you distribute to all the people and then we have just one hour or one hour and a half of live debate.
Moderator
but.
but.
Slavoj Žižek
so that we. presume that people know the text. i will send you a text. i can risk it, no problem, which will not be widely available outside this. so people will. get it? an original. i will publish it but later and then. you know so bad. people can have the time to ask. questions because it's very sad when i talk too much and then at the end i maybe i suspect myself i'm also evil that i talk on purpose too long. so that then i can avoid too many questions no like, you know what i do? to finish an evil detail. when i give a talk, at some american university where students you know. bon view after blah blah with questions. what i do is i ask a friend to play a dirty cap for me. students surround me that the friend comes and says you are urgently needed by the dean up there and then i can hypocritically say to students i would love to talk all the night with you but unfortunately i must go so on you know i want to avoid this and the only way to avoid this is that we simply jump directly into q q and a. and again, the only way to do this is that people already have, what do you think, the text. maybe i just do like five, ten minutes introduction to remind them and then we have a debate. you know.
so that we. presume that people know the text. i will send you a text. i can risk it, no problem, which will not be widely available outside this. so people will. get it? an original. i will publish it but later and then. you know so bad. people can have the time to ask. questions because it's very sad when i talk too much and then at the end i maybe i suspect myself i'm also evil that i talk on purpose too long. so that then i can avoid too many questions no like, you know what i do? to finish an evil detail. when i give a talk, at some american university where students you know. bon view after blah blah with questions. what i do is i ask a friend to play a dirty cap for me. students surround me that the friend comes and says you are urgently needed by the dean up there and then i can hypocritically say to students i would love to talk all the night with you but unfortunately i must go so on you know i want to avoid this and the only way to avoid this is that we simply jump directly into q q and a. and again, the only way to do this is that people already have, what do you think, the text. maybe i just do like five, ten minutes introduction to remind them and then we have a debate. you know.
Co-host
yeah, wonderful.
yeah, wonderful.
Slavoj Žižek
thank you very much. and.
thank you very much. and.
Co-host
that way you are yeah. i said that is opportunism also. it's a kind of opportunism.
that way you are yeah. i said that is opportunism also. it's a kind of opportunism.
Slavoj Žižek
i good opportunism. there is bad opportunism. you know that i even claim that maybe there is good and bad corruption. like i spoke with somebody close to lula when he was before president of brazil. and i asked him, what about all those things of corruption? he said yes, because he didn't have a full majority. there were some small parties and the only way to get through his reforms is to bribe these small parties. absolutely justified. i claim no. it would be wonderful to do this stupid marxist distinctions and claim that there is a struggle between progressive and reactionary corruption. progressive corruption. thank you very much. it was a pleasure.
i good opportunism. there is bad opportunism. you know that i even claim that maybe there is good and bad corruption. like i spoke with somebody close to lula when he was before president of brazil. and i asked him, what about all those things of corruption? he said yes, because he didn't have a full majority. there were some small parties and the only way to get through his reforms is to bribe these small parties. absolutely justified. i claim no. it would be wonderful to do this stupid marxist distinctions and claim that there is a struggle between progressive and reactionary corruption. progressive corruption. thank you very much. it was a pleasure.
Co-host
we have a short, you know, lot of fangs. you, please please. please stay. but i want to thank the small... your words of gratitude. please stay.
we have a short, you know, lot of fangs. you, please please. please stay. but i want to thank the small... your words of gratitude. please stay.
Slavoj Žižek
i yeah, but another thing i got. i got your, doesn't mean anything. i got your beautiful present. that's me anything.
i yeah, but another thing i got. i got your, doesn't mean anything. i got your beautiful present. that's me anything.
Co-host
yeah, it is used to decorate elephants. that is it.
yeah, it is used to decorate elephants. that is it.
Slavoj Žižek
telephone
telephone
Co-host
yeah.
yeah.
Slavoj Žižek
i didn't know that.
i didn't know that.
Co-host
but i'll send you the details probably. so many listening to you now, so maybe i'll send you.
but i'll send you the details probably. so many listening to you now, so maybe i'll send you.
Slavoj Žižek
not the elephant. i'm afraid of. be. okay, so what do i do now? there is some surprise you said.
not the elephant. i'm afraid of. be. okay, so what do i do now? there is some surprise you said.
Host
no.
no.
Slavoj Žižek
i don.
i don.
Host
out. it's open. you just stay there. just stay there.
out. it's open. you just stay there. just stay there.
Slavoj Žižek
okay.
okay.
Host
just for five minutes. so i invite dr. rajesh kin, associate professor, department of english to propose a vote of thanks for this event. professor sisek.
just for five minutes. so i invite dr. rajesh kin, associate professor, department of english to propose a vote of thanks for this event. professor sisek.
Moderator
am i audible? yes, i.
am i audible? yes, i.
Host
okay. i you.
okay. i you.
Moderator
yeah. professor cisek. uh... professor peggy thomas. and all the participants every very i'm very happy. to propose the vote thanks. to this lecture as well as to. this series of centenary lecture that we have initiated one year back. so... as everyone knows, that st. berkman's college. uh... is celebrating its 100th year.
yeah. professor cisek. uh... professor peggy thomas. and all the participants every very i'm very happy. to propose the vote thanks. to this lecture as well as to. this series of centenary lecture that we have initiated one year back. so... as everyone knows, that st. berkman's college. uh... is celebrating its 100th year.
Slavoj Žižek
mm-hmm
mm-hmm
Moderator
and... we have initiated this centenary lecture series. with a view to commemorate this hundredth year. and... with this lecture, we have come full circle to this lecture because back in 18th may last year. we started. wait, does he? and now we are closing this lecture. and we are closing our seminary celebrations too. with this lecture, again, in a befitting manner with the professor sing giving an animated a very eye-opening lecture. thank you very much, professor zizak, for your work. oh... what i like about your lecture is the kind of sincerity. and the kind of application that you have. given into this lecture. because... this was a lecture full of quotable quotes and this could be, i mean, even though you claim to be an atheist uh could be viewed from a very mystical point of view because many of the ideas that you have put forward here. are actually articulated by many of the mystics also around the world..
and... we have initiated this centenary lecture series. with a view to commemorate this hundredth year. and... with this lecture, we have come full circle to this lecture because back in 18th may last year. we started. wait, does he? and now we are closing this lecture. and we are closing our seminary celebrations too. with this lecture, again, in a befitting manner with the professor sing giving an animated a very eye-opening lecture. thank you very much, professor zizak, for your work. oh... what i like about your lecture is the kind of sincerity. and the kind of application that you have. given into this lecture. because... this was a lecture full of quotable quotes and this could be, i mean, even though you claim to be an atheist uh could be viewed from a very mystical point of view because many of the ideas that you have put forward here. are actually articulated by many of the mystics also around the world..
Slavoj Žižek
right.
right.
Moderator
i.
i.
Slavoj Žižek
now about materialist theosophy linked to mystics and so on i agree with you but can i say something to conclude? you know that i like dirty jokes, bad taste. so i will make one at myself. you know the way he described you had me, now you have me again, you know. doesn this remind you like when you got when you had me a year ago or when you know like you thought now we got rid of this idiot. now i am back. you know, to what this reminds me. when somebody annoys me a friend. i tell him, you know, you are a light, you know, when you have a... now comes the vulgarity. water toilet. which doesn't suck well. so no many how times you flush it, the shit comes back, no? so i hope this doesn't mean that i'm that kind of a shit for you. you got rid of me and i came back, you know. sorry. i cannot not answer with the... the only way for me is to finish with the loving vulgarity. thank you very much. it.
now about materialist theosophy linked to mystics and so on i agree with you but can i say something to conclude? you know that i like dirty jokes, bad taste. so i will make one at myself. you know the way he described you had me, now you have me again, you know. doesn this remind you like when you got when you had me a year ago or when you know like you thought now we got rid of this idiot. now i am back. you know, to what this reminds me. when somebody annoys me a friend. i tell him, you know, you are a light, you know, when you have a... now comes the vulgarity. water toilet. which doesn't suck well. so no many how times you flush it, the shit comes back, no? so i hope this doesn't mean that i'm that kind of a shit for you. you got rid of me and i came back, you know. sorry. i cannot not answer with the... the only way for me is to finish with the loving vulgarity. thank you very much. it.
Moderator
so thank you. okay so on behalf of everyone. um actively following this group. i'm very happy to thank but it was a z. for... your genuine involvement with sain berkmans and this group who who are following you very very ardently. thank you very much process.
so thank you. okay so on behalf of everyone. um actively following this group. i'm very happy to thank but it was a z. for... your genuine involvement with sain berkmans and this group who who are following you very very ardently. thank you very much process.
Slavoj Žižek
thank you very much. and the last question, this interests me. the last time i was in kerala. they told me, you were not doing so bad economically, no? it's still going on. how are you now? yeah, yeah, yeah, we are doing extremely. no you are still doing well, no? because i read that the communists who were in power in kolkata, bengal, didn't do so well, no?
thank you very much. and the last question, this interests me. the last time i was in kerala. they told me, you were not doing so bad economically, no? it's still going on. how are you now? yeah, yeah, yeah, we are doing extremely. no you are still doing well, no? because i read that the communists who were in power in kolkata, bengal, didn't do so well, no?
Co-host
that's it.
that's it.
Slavoj Žižek
you are better still. well, i wish you all the best.
you are better still. well, i wish you all the best.
Moderator
. thank you very much. okay, one second more. and i also would like to take this opportunity. to thank professor pj thomas who has been instrumental in in initiating this lecture series and bringing all the important scholars. to this program. and to the knowledge of everyone. for the information of everyone gathered here, i would like to say that professor pjige thomas is retiring this year in a couple of months. and uh uh... we are actually missing a giant of the department because it was he. who has... uh given and the international feminist has continued to give an international face. to our department at st. burman's college. and under his, i mean, when he was the head of the department. i think he has conducted more than two dozens of international lectures by great scholars in different areas of knowledge, different areas of humanities. i'm sure uh bruckman college. as well as the intellectual community which is following such lectures here with us. is's actually missing a great scholar and a great adventurer, i would say, because when i say this to my friends in other colleges, they are actually really amazed at the kind of connections that professor peter thomas is professor p thompson. has and how he puts that to great use for the benefit of the entire intellectual academic community in india. because the other day, some of the senior professors in other colleges called me and told me et. put on record their appreciation for professor p thomas. for the wonderful work. that he is doing not only for sb college but because i mean such entrepreneurial work that he is doing is benefiting. and the larger intellectual community in india. and i place on record on behalf of everyone gathered here. the great service. that professor p thomas has done. to academic community in india. thank you very much, professor thomas.
. thank you very much. okay, one second more. and i also would like to take this opportunity. to thank professor pj thomas who has been instrumental in in initiating this lecture series and bringing all the important scholars. to this program. and to the knowledge of everyone. for the information of everyone gathered here, i would like to say that professor pjige thomas is retiring this year in a couple of months. and uh uh... we are actually missing a giant of the department because it was he. who has... uh given and the international feminist has continued to give an international face. to our department at st. burman's college. and under his, i mean, when he was the head of the department. i think he has conducted more than two dozens of international lectures by great scholars in different areas of knowledge, different areas of humanities. i'm sure uh bruckman college. as well as the intellectual community which is following such lectures here with us. is's actually missing a great scholar and a great adventurer, i would say, because when i say this to my friends in other colleges, they are actually really amazed at the kind of connections that professor peter thomas is professor p thompson. has and how he puts that to great use for the benefit of the entire intellectual academic community in india. because the other day, some of the senior professors in other colleges called me and told me et. put on record their appreciation for professor p thomas. for the wonderful work. that he is doing not only for sb college but because i mean such entrepreneurial work that he is doing is benefiting. and the larger intellectual community in india. and i place on record on behalf of everyone gathered here. the great service. that professor p thomas has done. to academic community in india. thank you very much, professor thomas.
Slavoj Žižek
can i just add something very positive, no bad joke, no. professor thomas. but you don't look like you are. close to death. you are alive. so if you retire, i hope that this means that retirement which means for you less bureaucratic obligations and that now you will be able to fully begin to work.
can i just add something very positive, no bad joke, no. professor thomas. but you don't look like you are. close to death. you are alive. so if you retire, i hope that this means that retirement which means for you less bureaucratic obligations and that now you will be able to fully begin to work.
Moderator
yeah,'s a great advice process.
yeah,'s a great advice process.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah.
yeah.
Moderator
they. because in this part of the world in this part of the world, when people retire, everyone thinks, most of the people think. that it is all over. and the time is over, but... this is something. truly great for professor thomas because there's a lot to do more, i'm sure.
they. because in this part of the world in this part of the world, when people retire, everyone thinks, most of the people think. that it is all over. and the time is over, but... this is something. truly great for professor thomas because there's a lot to do more, i'm sure.
Slavoj Žižek
that very. mike. yes. wirklich for you. thank you very much and hope to see you again. at. it's not physically, at least. ah. we should all applaud, you know. in communism the leaders join applause, you know, like we are all people and so on. thank you very very much
that very. mike. yes. wirklich for you. thank you very much and hope to see you again. at. it's not physically, at least. ah. we should all applaud, you know. in communism the leaders join applause, you know, like we are all people and so on. thank you very very much
Moderator
i will pause within two minutes because i want to. i want want to thank formally thank a number of people also. i will just finished within two minutes, please please be patient enough. and i am... very happy to t all the is scholars who have been kind enough to speak on this forum. in addition to professor car giving two lectures, we had aquil bilgrami. and laura stoller. christopher norris and arjuna padurai. giving suddenly giving other lectures in this series. in the name of everyone gathered here, i thank all of them sincerely. and i'm sure the backbone in this lecture series is you, the people who are following us. who are part of this group. i am from the depth of our heart. we sincerely follow this intellectual community who have been uh... a support and inspiration for us to undertake such great events. i'm sure even after professor thomas is leaving, we have uhwe have other equally competent. teachers in the department who have actually who have actually been inspired by professor thomas to do this kind of work i'm sure you will be with us in the coming years too we will definitely undertake the proposal taken by i mean given by process is just now. and we look forward to seeing you all soon too. and i should thank all the teacher coordinators of our department of english who have been very kind enough to uh these different lectures. professor amal thomas professor dr. teddy andapai. professor neville thomas and professor nathan buris. for coordinating these events at different on different okay i mean at different dates on different dates and, um... i should also... tang all the technical and by preno of the bttv berkman tv and tojo. who have been handling the youtube link and all the communication regarding the lectures and all the teachers who have been coordinating the q&a sessions on these different meetings. and people who have been responsible for designing the brochures and certificates. and the people who have i been responsible for giving publicity to these events. and i should also thank the. the management of st. berman college father reverend father manager, reverend father principal. and the chairman of the centenary celebrations committee professor job joseph and others. and all the members of the committee. i thank all of you. uh sincerely for helping us in different ways to make this centenary lecture series a great success and i should also thank my colleagues in the department who have been instrumental. in supporting these events in different ways. so thank you very much, teachers and our students. so once again, thanking you all, i remain thank you very much. what?
i will pause within two minutes because i want to. i want want to thank formally thank a number of people also. i will just finished within two minutes, please please be patient enough. and i am... very happy to t all the is scholars who have been kind enough to speak on this forum. in addition to professor car giving two lectures, we had aquil bilgrami. and laura stoller. christopher norris and arjuna padurai. giving suddenly giving other lectures in this series. in the name of everyone gathered here, i thank all of them sincerely. and i'm sure the backbone in this lecture series is you, the people who are following us. who are part of this group. i am from the depth of our heart. we sincerely follow this intellectual community who have been uh... a support and inspiration for us to undertake such great events. i'm sure even after professor thomas is leaving, we have uhwe have other equally competent. teachers in the department who have actually who have actually been inspired by professor thomas to do this kind of work i'm sure you will be with us in the coming years too we will definitely undertake the proposal taken by i mean given by process is just now. and we look forward to seeing you all soon too. and i should thank all the teacher coordinators of our department of english who have been very kind enough to uh these different lectures. professor amal thomas professor dr. teddy andapai. professor neville thomas and professor nathan buris. for coordinating these events at different on different okay i mean at different dates on different dates and, um... i should also... tang all the technical and by preno of the bttv berkman tv and tojo. who have been handling the youtube link and all the communication regarding the lectures and all the teachers who have been coordinating the q&a sessions on these different meetings. and people who have been responsible for designing the brochures and certificates. and the people who have i been responsible for giving publicity to these events. and i should also thank the. the management of st. berman college father reverend father manager, reverend father principal. and the chairman of the centenary celebrations committee professor job joseph and others. and all the members of the committee. i thank all of you. uh sincerely for helping us in different ways to make this centenary lecture series a great success and i should also thank my colleagues in the department who have been instrumental. in supporting these events in different ways. so thank you very much, teachers and our students. so once again, thanking you all, i remain thank you very much. what?
Slavoj Žižek
think, sorry, something is missing for me in what you said. why don't you do this, what i call hegelian move of self-identification? do you dare to include yourself? you should finish with, and i'm thanking myself for putting this. that would be the real thing. thank you bye-bye.
think, sorry, something is missing for me in what you said. why don't you do this, what i call hegelian move of self-identification? do you dare to include yourself? you should finish with, and i'm thanking myself for putting this. that would be the real thing. thank you bye-bye.