Universality: Kant, Hegel, Lacan, Marx
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2015-07-07 · 1:36:11 · 14,751 words
ideologyhegel-dialecticspsychoanalysisdemocracycommunism-socialismcapitalismgeopolitics-warlanguagerace-antisemitismliberalism-political-correctnesscinema-art-culturephilosophy-general
A wide-ranging seminar talk at Birkbeck (likely during a Greece/SYRIZA-solidarity period) in which Žižek moves between several connected arguments: the Hegelian notion of determinate negation and concrete universality as a critique of abstract universalism; democracy as ideological fetish; the inadequacy of 'socialism' as a political concept versus communism; and the nature of power in technocratic regimes. The talk also engages extensively with questions about media, Chomsky's empirical method versus psychoanalytic-ideological critique, and Chinese political hermeneutics. Scattered throughout are interventions from audience members that provoke extended digressions on Yugoslavia, John Pilger, Steven Pinker, language and the unconscious, and the role of transgression in politics.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 14
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Žižek invokes Hegel's concept to argue that universality is always the product of a specific negated particularity, so universalism is never neutral but always 'colored' by the particular it transcended.
as “the color of universalism”
Žižek's phrase for the unavoidable particularity embedded in any putatively neutral universal claim, used especially to critique Western liberal universalism as secretly colored by Western particularity.
Hegel's idea, as Žižek reads it, that one particular species within a universal acts as its secret measure or tone, e.g. industrial production 'colors' all production under capitalism.
Implicit in Žižek's discussion of how one mode of labor (industrial) becomes the abstract measure for all labor under capitalism, echoing Marx's Grundrisse introduction on real abstraction.
as “universality in itself / universality for itself”
Marx's Hegelian distinction: 'universality in itself' is blind general sameness (everyone works), while 'universality for itself' is when subjects consciously experience themselves as universal, as in capitalism where workers are not bound to a fixed trade.
Lacan's object-cause of desire: the void-object that gives body to universality of desire without itself being a particular thing, Žižek links it to the fourth unwritten Kantian critique.
as “the pure desire / fourth Kantian critique”
Žižek proposes reading Lacan as writing the fourth unwritten Kantian critique, a 'Critique of Pure Desire', because for Kant desire is always contingently particular, while for Lacan there is an a priori structure of desire via objet a.
as “transgressive logic”
The political position Žižek rejects: the view that radical politics consists in festive transgression of normality, which he argues merely reproduces power's own cynical language.
Following Badiou, Žižek argues democracy functions as a fetish in the strict Freudian sense, the last thing seen before confronting the social antagonism or lack constitutive of any social field.
as “je sais bien mais quand même”
The classic fetishist formula ('I know very well, but nonetheless…') used to describe how citizens acknowledge exploitation yet take comfort in democratic institutions.
Implicit in the discussion of how Chinese political reading works through what is mentioned vs. omitted, what matters is the symbolic order's logic, not brute empirical content.
as “necessary illusions”
Chomsky's concept (discussed by an audience member) of systematic ideological illusions that serve institutional power; Žižek accepts the category but argues Chomsky's version remains naive about how illusions are internally constitutive rather than merely instrumental.
Žižek's reading of Lacan on human language: speech is not accidentally limited by repression but is structured around a constitutive impossibility, we speak because we cannot say everything.
Invoked in the Chomsky discussion: Žižek notes a 'surplus enjoyment' in the fury of Chomsky's attack on him, pointing to an excess of affect beyond any rational disagreement.
Stories he reaches for 5
A waiter tells Ninotchka they have no cream, only milk, so she can have coffee without milk instead. Though materially the same black coffee, the absent ingredient matters symbolically.
“coffee without cream is not the same as coffee without milk of course in the symbolic universe”
The first Haitian republic declared itself a black republic but also acknowledged that honest white soldiers (especially Poles) helped win independence from Napoleon. The solution: all Haitian citizens, regardless of skin color, are legally 'black.'
“Haiti is a black republic so all its citizens independently of the color of their skin are black”
Napoleon's Polish soldiers sent to crush the Haitian rebellion hear the slaves singing La Marseillaise and ask themselves if they are on the right side, then join the slaves.
“they came close you know what the blacks were singing La Marseillaise. And they joined the slaves”
Blockbusters like All the President's Men depict deep systemic corruption but end with the reassuring message that two ordinary journalists can bring down the mightiest man, the system works. This is fetishism: acknowledging the bad while holding onto a consoling remainder.
“the lesson is but nonetheless don't we live in a wonderful country where two ordinary guys journalists can bring down the mightiest man in the world”
A Polish proverb/graffiti: 'Life is a disease which always ends in death and which is transmitted by sex.' Žižek presents it as the only completely correct definition of life.
“life is a disease which always ends in death and which is transmitted by sex”
Works invoked 9
Grundrisse book
Marx's introduction cited for the concept of one mode of production (industrial) 'coloring' all others, key example of concrete universality.
The Pelican Brief film
Cited alongside All the President's Men as another example of the Hollywood Marxism / democracy-fetish genre.
Used as prime example of 'Hollywood Marxism', a film that depicts total systemic corruption but whose real message is that the system works (two journalists bring down the President), functioning as ideological fetish.
Žižek calls it 'really great cinema' by Jia Zhangke, who walks the edge without crossing it.
Chomsky and Herman's book praised by an audience member for 'excruciatingly detailed comparative analysis' of media-power relations; Žižek accepts its importance but argues it remains at the level of facts/illusions without grasping constitutive fantasy.
Financial Times journal
Surprisingly praised for a piece during the SYRIZA government saying Tsipras was the only one speaking reasonably.
Kant's third Critique cited for his argument that pleasures are irreducibly particular with no a priori, the foil for Žižek's Lacanian claim that there IS an a priori structure of desire.
Sex and Character book
Otto Weininger's infamous work: Žižek quotes its distinction between Aryan socialism and Jewish communism approvingly (in inverted form), using it to support communism as the properly universalist term.
Chinese prestige film about communist victory; Žižek praises the retroactive hermeneutic at work, noting cameo roles and the retroactively pro-Deng message put in Mao's mouth.
People invoked 32
Jacques Lacan positive
Used to articulate the a priori structure of desire (objet a as fourth Kantian critique), the constitutive impossibility of language, and the critique of Habermas. Some mild critical distance: 'where is the beef' in Lacan's sweeping pronouncements about the unconscious structured like language.
Francis Fukuyama negative
Referenced as having debated Žižek and conceded that antagonisms are practically unsolvable but still questioning why communism is needed.
Steven Pinker negative
Called an 'idiot' and 'stupid linguist'; criticized for his evolutionary-adaptive explanation of linguistic and cognitive limits, which Žižek finds circular and unable to account for why humans obsess over unanswerable questions.
Daniel Dennett positive
Cited as 'more intelligent' and as someone who engages seriously with the paradoxical nature of human consciousness and language.
Nadya Tolokonnikova negative
Žižek had an exchange-of-letters book with her. He criticizes her political logic of transgression vs. oppressive normality, arguing Putin is not oppressive normality but an obscene transgressor himself.
Robert Fisk positive
Compared favorably to Pilger as more complex.
Alain Badiou positive
Cited for the claim that democracy is our fetish, and for the criterion that a true idea divides.
Alexis Tsipras positive
Cited approvingly: Financial Times said he was 'the only guy who speaks reasonably' about Europe.
Tariq Ali negative
Žižek accuses Tariq Ali of a 'pretty stupid kind of racism' for blaming Slovenian egotism for Yugoslavia's dissolution.
Mentioned at the very end, Žižek notes she may or may not come the next day, and that Thursday's philosophy session is planned partly 'to annoy her.'
Mentioned by an audience member as the source of 'manufacturing consent' and 'necessary illusions' used by Chomsky.
Wang Hui positive
Chinese intellectual friend who showed Žižek the deleted chapter in the official CCP history book and evidence of China's intense internal class struggle.
Mentioned by an audience member as a possible source for 'necessary illusions' in Chomsky.
Yanis Varoufakis positive
Referenced approvingly as someone speaking reasonably about Europe in Brussels while being dismissed by technocrats as a clown.
Michel Foucault negative
In the Chomsky-Foucault debate, Žižek sides in principle with Foucault but says Foucault is 'smug, self-satisfied,' just repeating standard historicist pseudo-Marxist moves.
Jia Zhangke positive
Žižek praises Still Life as 'really great cinema,' calling Jia masterful at walking the edge.
John Pilger negative
Žižek sharply criticizes Pilger for racist characterizations of Kosovo ('primitive province run by local mobsters'), calling Slovenia and Croatia 'provinces' rather than republics, and for blaming Slovenian secession for Yugoslavia's dissolution.
Warren Buffett negative
Referenced in the context of a news headline about the poor not blaming the rich; Žižek says we shouldn't blame but 'cut their throats.'
Friendly dispute: Žižek disagrees with Costas's use of the colonel-flatulence anecdote as a liberation example, arguing obscene interruptions can be staged by power. Also disagrees about the value of preaching-to-the-converted solidarity meetings.
Bill Gates negative
Used as an example that 'socialism' as a term is meaningless because even Bill Gates can call himself a socialist.
Referenced in the context of Chinese official historiography, retroactive rewriting, and the deleted trade-union chapter; also a dissident who quoted Mao's support for multi-party democracy was silenced.
Henry Kissinger negative
Used as a counterexample to the cynical realist: Kissinger was supposedly the ultimate brutal realist but got everything wrong in terms of actual US interests.
Alex Callinicos negative
Žižek disputes Callinicos's claim that workers are always anti-racist and progressive, arguing Front National voting data in France shows otherwise.
Jürgen Habermas negative
Mentioned as wrongly thinking that language is constitutively complete and only accidentally repressed by social forces.
Georg Cantor positive
An audience member claims Chomsky's development of transformative grammar was influenced by reading Cantor on multiple infinities.
Vladimir Putin negative
Žižek argues Putin is not a 'serious master' but an obscene transgressive clown himself, and the correct response is to demand normality rather than oppose him with counter-transgression.
Otto Weininger positive
The 'crazy guy' of Sex and Character is cited positively (in inverted form) for distinguishing socialism as 'Aryan' and communism as 'Jewish', Žižek takes this as confirming communism as the properly universalist term.
Žižek admires Chomsky's empirical diligence and early linguistic work but argues his factual approach is insufficient for ideological critique, that his facts are sometimes wrong (on Yugoslavia, October revolution), and detects surplus enjoyment in Chomsky's furious attack on him. Audience members defend Chomsky's methodology at length.
Karl Marx positive
Grundrisse introduction on concrete universality and the coloring of universality by a dominant mode of production is cited as a key example.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Central reference throughout: determinate negation, concrete universality, universality in-itself vs. for-itself are all deployed as core argumentative tools.
François Jullien positive
Described as 'naive but very good' on the differential/structural logic of classical Chinese language, Žižek uses his work to illuminate how what is omitted in Chinese political texts is more important than what is said.
Immanuel Kant positive
Critique of Judgment cited on ethics of desire; Lacan is read as writing the fourth unwritten Kantian critique (of pure desire) by showing desire has an a priori structure.
What it argues
determinate negation and the color of universalismdemocracy as fetish obscuring social antagonismcommunism versus socialism as political conceptsChina's internal class struggle and Stalinist hermeneuticstechnocratic power and cynical immoralityChomsky's empiricism versus ideological-fantasy critiquelanguage as constitutively broken and the specificity of human speech
Dialectical moves 8
“The crisis of democracy means that democracy really works—the moment democracy actually functions is experienced as its crisis.”
The very appearance of democratic dysfunction (when real choice is open) is the sign that democracy is operating genuinely, not its failure.
“Putin is not a serious master oppressing carnivalesque dissidents; Putin is himself the obscene transgressive clown—the correct slogan is 'we want normality, Putin is the clown.'”
By inverting the Pussy Riot logic (they = transgression, Putin = oppressive normality), Žižek shows that power today operates through obscene transgression, not sober authority.
“We should not blame the rich for inequality—we should just cut their throats; blaming means you play their game.”
Moral blame of the rich is a trap that keeps one inside the discourse of moral appeal; the proper response is political action, not ethical recrimination.
“Universality is not just impossible (always colored by a particular); it is also at the same time necessary—you cannot escape it.”
Against pure historicism: the impossibility of neutral universality does not dissolve its compulsory character, this is the Lacanian Real of universality.
“The honest white soldiers who helped Haiti's black republic are honored by making all citizens 'black' regardless of skin color—Haiti is a black republic so all its citizens, whatever their color, are black.”
The solution to the tension between particular identity and universal inclusion is not to erase the particular but to universalize it via determinate negation.
“We speak because we cannot say everything—language is constitutively broken, not accidentally repressed.”
The creativity of human language arises not from surplus capacity but from a constitutive impossibility at its core.
“The cynical attitude of 'fuck it, it's all illusions, what matters is power and money' is sometimes the greatest naivety—illusions move the world.”
Cynical distance from ideology is not realism but its own form of ideological naivety, since people act and die for illusions.
“In China, the only way to be sure a rumor is true is when it is officially denied.”
Official denial functions as the reliable confirmation of the suppressed truth in a Stalinist hermeneutic where what is not said matters more than what is said.
Claims 15
asserts
Universalism is never neutral but always 'colored' by the specific particularity it negated in transcending—Western liberal universalism is secretly Western in its color.universalism and the particular
asserts
Democracy functions ideologically as a fetish in the strict Freudian sense—the consoling object we cling to so as not to confront the constitutive antagonism of social life.democracy
rejects
'Socialism' as a political term is useless because it no longer draws any line of separation—it is a compromise formula for communism, acceptable even to Bill Gates and Hitler.socialism as a political concept
asserts
China's Communist Party promotes 'Confucian socialism' and stability not because it has solved antagonism but because it is desperately afraid of the intense class struggle raging inside China.China and class struggle
asserts
Technocratic power today is legitimized by sarcastic cynical immorality, not by big normative words, and those who mock authority with irony are increasingly playing into power's own register.technocracy and political cynicism
reframes
Chomsky's empirical method, while admirable, is insufficient because it treats illusions as mere distortions of facts rather than as constitutive forces that move people to act and die.Chomsky's methodology versus ideological critique
rejects
Transgressive politics (the Pussy Riot logic of joyful rebellion against oppressive normality) is wrong because it accepts power's own framing and fails to address what comes after the transgressive moment.transgression as political strategy
asserts
The real political problem is not the moment of liberation but what happens two months later when things return to everyday normality—that is where radical change is won or lost.revolution and everyday life
asserts
Human language is constitutively broken: its creativity does not arise from having more capacity than animal communication but from a constitutive prohibition—a signifier is barred—that generates the structure of desire.language and the unconscious
rejects
Steven Pinker's evolutionary-adaptive explanation of why the mind cannot understand itself is wrong: it cannot explain why humans obsessively dwell on questions that have no evolutionary utility.Pinker on consciousness and language
asserts
Radical leftist politics requires accepting that one can never get a real majority—the most achievable is a sympathetic neutrality of the silent majority.mass politics and the left
asserts
People in democracies want the appearance of free decision while being clearly told what to choose; the crisis of democracy is precisely the moment when democracy actually functions and real choice is required.democracy and political subjectivity
asserts
Western media, while not monolithic, does have a hegemonic position that can set the parameters of debate even without being the majoritarian view.media ideology and hegemony
rejects
John Pilger's characterization of Slovenia and Kosovo in his writing on Yugoslavia is factually and politically wrong—bordering on racism toward small nations.John Pilger's analysis of Yugoslavia
asserts
Lacan should be read as having written the fourth unwritten Kantian critique: a Critique of Pure Desire, showing that unlike what Kant assumed, there is a priori structure to desire via objet a.Lacan and Kant
Quotes 14
“coffee without cream is not the same as coffee without milk of course in the symbolic universe”Slavoj Žižek · symbolic difference versus material sameness; the importance of negation
“every universality is colored by a specific particular species of itself which gives the tone of the entire universality”Slavoj Žižek · concrete universality; the color of universalism
“Haiti is a black republic so all its citizens independently of the color of their skin are black”Slavoj Žižek · determinate negation applied to racial identity and citizenship
“democracy is our fetish… the last thing we see before we confront the lack or antagonism constitutive of social field”Slavoj Žižek · democracy as Freudian fetish
“fuck that moments of liberation I don't care about them I care only more and more about this okay you have your fucking big transgressive enthusiastic moments… what will happen two months later”Slavoj Žižek · critique of transgressive politics; the priority of institutionalization over liberation
“we shouldn't blame them we should just cut their throats you know because blaming means you play this game”Slavoj Žižek · rejection of moral blame in favor of political action against the rich
“the crisis of democracy means that democracy really works”Slavoj Žižek · dialectical reversal: the experience of democratic crisis as democracy functioning
“life is a disease which always ends in death and which is transmitted by sex”Slavoj Žižek · the human condition; death drive and sexuality as constitutive
“we speak because we cannot say everything… human language is a broken language consistently it's structured around an impossibility”Slavoj Žižek · language as constitutively broken; Lacanian linguistics
“today's power is more and more legitimized by a kind of a sarcastic cynical immorality”Slavoj Žižek · technocratic power and cynicism
“a true idea divides—when you are in a confused situation an idea is a concept which enables you to draw the separation”Slavoj Žižek · Badiou's criterion for a true political idea
“the cynical attitude of fuck it just illusions and so on what matters is power money blah blah this is sometimes the greatest naivety because you know illusions move the world”Slavoj Žižek · critique of cynical distance; ideology is real force
“you should always go into this differential structural principle not what is said but what is unsaid what is not said”Slavoj Žižek · structural hermeneutics; Chinese political reading; Lacanian approach to the symbolic
“if you have a rumor… there is only one way to be sure that it happened when it's officially denied”Slavoj Žižek · Stalinist hermeneutics; official denial as confirmation
Transcript 56 turns
unknown
In New York I signed some of my
In New York I signed some of my
Slavoj Žižek
books and two black guys came and gave me their books to sign. And I signed them and then I couldn't resist bad taste jokes. I told them I don't know which books belong to whom because you know you blacks are all the same we cannot differentiate. You know what was the result I noticed because we chatted a little bit. They started to call me brother. You see how at a certain level it works. But now I'm coming to the crucial point which is a very nice one. Afterwards I used this bad taste example the first one that is to say you can call me nigger with another black public and someone was a little bit hurt and told me but do you know that nonetheless it's a sensitive point like you cannot actually start calling black people niggers it has too many racist associations you know why I was hurt and then with the guy we immediately became friends because I told him this offer you can call me nigger. I'm not an idiot I mean it was strictly meant it's a very beautiful example of manners. It was meant as I always mention as an offer to be rejected. It wasn't meant as oh now I start no it was just a singular gesture of friendship but it was not an actual offer. That's what I find very important and you see this these are good manners for me where in such a way which may sound absurd you get you get the message of friendship across and so on and so on. This same guy made another criticism of me very Hegelian one. You know my line against this particular identities universality blah blah. And he told me but nonetheless isn't it that we blacks should insist on black power it's not only all of us should renounce our particular identity and so on and then we talk and came at a wonderful result which is very Hegelian it is a wonderful example of what Hegel calls determinate negation. You know to put it in more abstract terms every universality as Hegel teaches us is founded in a negated particularity. You overstep a certain particularity. The problem of course is that it matters which particularity you transcend. What I'm telling you now is warning now I will give you like a trigger warning but the coffee joke. The joke that I must have used here at least five times. Ninotchka give me coffee with without cream. Sorry we don't have cream we only have milk I can only give you coffee without milk you know. So you see although materially it is the same it matters if it's coffee although it's the same shitty black coffee but coffee without cream is not the same as coffee without milk of course in the symbolic universe and so on. So my point is this one that universalism should always be qualified on what base and this is for me politically important. If we black people white people sorry if we white people preach to the others universalism of course even if we sincerely renounce our particular identity it's nonetheless universalism as negated Western culture culture but this negation still echoes in it. So it should be what the most beautiful example which I also used probably already here is for me I'm sure you know it the case of Haiti Constitution where Haiti the new black republic they they wanted to be a black republic in the sense of independence and so on from their not even colonizers but slave owners. But at the same time they were honest to admit that their military victory over Napoleon's army was achieved by the help of some good honest white soldiers especially those those to their eternal honor Polish soldiers because you know the story Napoleon was screwing that Polish lady Maria Walewska or whatever okay. A rich Polish noblewoman became Napoleon's lover and out of respect for her Napoleon gave some kind of autonomy to Poland when he occupied Europe and because of this that's always the price you pay with Napoleon because of this they had to send an army you know. And okay quite a lot of white Napoleon's army soldiers sent to crash the black rebellion were of Polish origin and you know the story it's one of the most sublime moments in the history. They approach the black army and they heard some singing and they thought oh this must be some primitive tribal dances you know they came close you know what the blacks were singing La Marseillaise. And Napoleon and the Polish soldiers simply asked themselves the question fuck it I mean in my plastic interpretation fuck it are we on the right side here. And they joined the slaves and not crucially but also with some extent with their help the blacks won. So they were grateful to them. So how to unite this fact that honest white people should be allowed to stay there with the fact that Haiti should be a black republic. You know the joke article of the Haiti Constitution of Haiti is a black republic so all its citizens independently of the color of their skin are black. I absolutely admire this solution because you see the point without this and don't worry because some years in Brazil also I was accused of being in the last stage of cocaine no it doesn't matter. I never I feel so ashamed if I'm accused of it I should at least have tried something but what you know I'm the only guy of my generation that I know that hasn't tried not even marijuana nothing you know nothing I'm totally innocent and ah to tell you another thing about ideology you know what happened in my country when I was young old communist Yugoslavia drugs were tolerated tolerated at least soft drugs more than now. Why ah communists were not total idiots those who were in power it's the same as in I was also told in Brazil that whenever in favelas maybe now it's a little bit changed but years before I wonder if you tell me if true so yesterday we had a special representative you click CNN from Greece now we have a special one on TV from Brazil. I was told that at least in the tougher times of military dictatorship whenever you know favelas are usually what mobs wild capitalism and so on whenever there was a danger of some more politically radicalized organization in favelas all of a sudden police has shown much greater tolerance for drugs like you know let them drug themselves better than politicization. And my friends from Poland told me it was the same in when was it Jaruzelski's coup d'état to crash Solidarity. They told me you know what all of a sudden was totally tolerated all student campuses were overflowed by drugs plus pornography plus new age mysticism even the party newspapers started to bring guides to how to discover your inner true self blah blah and with all these messages you know reality doesn't matter all the truth is in this deep in you of course with all the truth in this deep in you then you will not bother them to go on power and so on. So back to this point so you see this is the true state of political power not only against particular identity for universalism but like watch the color of universalism. Or to take the other Hegel's lesson you know what Hegel calls concrete universality means precisely that there is no neutral universality that each universality is colored my God I was so vulgar no don't be afraid I will not answer but I put the phone on silence and just another dirty joke I cannot resist it's and now is like vibrating and I feel as if I have some better I don't say anything more than this simple thing okay. I want to say that every universality is colored by a specific particular species of itself which as Marx put it very nicely in his introduction to Grundrisse which in a way colors or gives the tone of the entire universality you know what is the point of Marx that for example although we have different kinds of production agriculture production artisanal production big industry in feudal times agriculture is the production as such it colors everything in capitalism it's industrial production so the nice example given by Marx even if all other fields of production then tend to be industrialized like agriculture is more and industrialized but this is precisely because they are all productions but one production industrial in this case stands for production as such. And even with art you know this is what Hegel means again by concrete universality it's a very materialist idea it's not as you read in bad books on Hegel it's not that stupidity of how you know somehow mysteriously the abstract idea screws itself and turns around itself and engenders all particular content no it's almost the exact opposite is that universality cannot ever be a truly neutral universality every neutral universality is colored and precisely again that's where as we all know that's where racism enters. I mean white people traditional liberals can be very open and so on and often they do have a message in their preaching universal rights but again if you look at it closely these universal rights already have a certain color although as a good Marxist Hegelian I must tell you what often historicists who insist on this point miss is that the opposite is also true. You know it's the Lacanian real which is I'm sorry if you know this lesson but it's very important again against any ideological mystification of Lacan that universality is not just impossible impossible in the sense that it's never a pure universality it's every universality is always colored by some part of its content. It's also the opposite that universality is something which is at the same time impossible but at the same time necessary you cannot escape. And this is the lesson that some historicists who claim you know universality is always fragile we always have to historicize produce each particular content the problem is that every particular content is also fragile inconsistent and so on and this is specifically the problem with capitalism today. You know I'm sorry if I repeat myself but it's a crucial Hegelian point you know that universality Marx distinguishes in a very Hegelian way between universality in itself just blind universality and universality for itself universality which is posited as such. What does this mean Marx gives this example for example in every society we have work. So work is universal we all work okay sorry but nevertheless in our own in our own way so we can say work is a general feature and then you have particular modalities of work but what happens with bourgeois society is something much more radical it's not just that we all work each in our particular sphere it's also not just what I've just said that one type of work industrial work serves as a secret model for all of it. It's something much more it's that only in modern capitalist society we in our immediate actual self-experience experience ourselves as universal in what sense in the simple sense that we are not fully identified by the particular field of what we work. You know we can change our profession which is as you probably know I repeat this all the time meaningless in medieval times we have professions profession is something that you contingently choose in medieval times they didn't have professions you cannot ask a knight what is your actual profession and he will say my profession is to be a knight or whatever no he was much more immediately identified by that is to say and one can say that in so-called consumerism the same goes even for even for pleasure pleasure is in this sense denaturalized or you know you don't have a particular object of pleasure which is privileged by nature desire is universal but what's the point the point okay this always was the point is that you immediately discover it sorry experience it as universal and this is the beauty of Lacan we don't have time to go into this because there is a particular object which as it were gives body to this universality but this object is what Lacan calls objet petit objet a because it's precisely the void in body and so on and so on okay we can go in here but we don't have time even into purely philosophical Kantian topic because as you maybe this would be one of the ways to condense to incidentally I talk too much so of course there is never you may have noticed it any time for debate at the end. So I want to be fair and give you a chance the only chance is you simply interrupt me and you can at any moment you want to ask some question no way no way as long as I live I'd rather die than to say at the end oh now we have minutes you can this will never happen I already told you probably this joke as when an idiot asked me why am I not a psychoanalyst no practicing. I told him can you really imagine me sitting quietly and listening to another person you know I told him the only way for me to be an analyst is you sit there I look at you a little bit and then I tell you everything what are your symptoms and interpret them and all you're allowed to do is to say yes professor and so on stupidity but let's go more seriously on so Kant in his especially the third one Kritik der Urteilskraft of judgment his argument against an ethics of desire is that precisely desire is or enjoyment as actualization or whatever of fulfillment of desire is irreducibly linked to particular contingent objects you eat this you your pleasure is that and so on that desire desire doesn't have a priori universality you know Kant's point that for example in natural sciences or in our experience of nature theoretical relating to nature we have certain universals not objects but forms everything that exists must be in time in space must have be submitted to the the categories of pure understanding you know everything must be determined by causality a cause an effect temporal existence and so on and so on. As for ethics Kant Kant this is Kant's point for a priori ethics that ethics also is not just linked to particular contingent objects you have an ethical a priori which is again purely formal. But for Kant at the level of pleasures satisfactions they are particular one object excites you another object is a horror for you there is no a priori well Lacan's answer is precisely there is and this is objet a the whole structure of desire the whole point of Lacan maybe this would be one wonderful way to conceptualize Lacan to say that he wrote the fourth unwritten Kant's critique a critique of pure desire because for Lacan for Kant precisely there is no pure desire desire is always contingent particular for Lacan there is the pure desire. Okay so let's go on ah yes okay I did mostly let me go a little bit on which may interest you again I like to attack people when they are absent no so let me make another remark on Costas you know oh my God I will tell you something which is pure friendship you met Costas yes you know he behaves all this time you know what was I was so I'm really this is for me the sign that he really maybe likes me a little bit because I otherwise he would have killed me probably once we were talking about this disgusting charity publicity you know you have you have the photo of a disfigured black guy with some lips twisted and then that stupid with five dollars you can make this guy happy you know change his life a cheap operation no I mean to be so nasty some some of you guessed what was my point what I said I imagined in a Greek newspaper his image and and like for five dollars you can make cutting this off this guy happy help Greece and so on and I'm infinitely grateful to him that he didn't kill me. I mean even I it happens even to very bad persons like me even I was a little bit shocked you know what I can say but now a little bit more serious I think that Costas like an old leftist this is also if you read that book but you shouldn't because I just recycled use all stuff that exchange of letters between me and the Pussy Riot girl no now okay I cannot resist vulgarity people asked me oh but she is beautiful what was the price did you fuck her or what. I'm sorry to tell you I haven't even met her she wanted to I didn't want to because I don't like you know once you get to know well-known people then you are expected to visit them every time then your life is not nice. Okay but with her there is nonetheless one serious theoretical point which is extremely important especially today I claim in that book this is I was nicely surprised by her because this is the real test there is a it's not just paying respect to each other a real politics for me she is too much caught into this simple opposition of regular life things running like ordinary and then those magic moments of holy madness carnival and so on when ecstatic moments and so on and for her then Putin is this oppressive normality and they Pussy Riot stand for this joyful transgression obscenity and so on I exploded at that. I think that if you accept this opposition then then you basically denigrate yourself if you want to be a true radical leftist you accept this cheap let's call it transgressive logic that you know because the point is that okay you have your transgression but the big problem is precisely how this transgressive liberation this is for me the only true test how it will be later translated into a new normal state of things. As I already repeated here fuck that moments of liberation I don't care about them I care only more and more about this okay you have your fucking big transgressive enthusiastic moments one million people on Syntagma Square blah blah what will happen two months later when things will let's say return to normal how will the people feel the difference at the everyday level that's the truly difficult job so I told her if you want to be just that transgressive moment oh we are now free and what a month later what Putin comes back no I told her you are doubly wrong first Putin is not a real normality Russia deserves much better Putin is a kind of an obscene transgressive normality I told her don't accept this logic Putin pretends to be a serious master we are refreshing clowns and so on no your thesis should be we want normality Putin is a clown you know you should turn this around the same the same thing with when Costas said that you know Varoufakis is playing a clown no European experts are really clowns playing the experts they are not even good economists and so on and so on I mean but more important so where was my my misunderstanding with Costas here I think he did it if you were at that meeting half a year ago or even less now in support of Greece here at Birkbeck where my first misunderstanding very friendly with him was that I considered that meeting totally useless you know in what sense we were just preaching to the convinced we felt well oh my God my God you should do what I'm now trying to do okay Guardian I'm out they did publish that long text on my online I don't know if it will be printed on at least online it will it did appear yesterday New Statesman it will appear in Newsweek now even in Newsweek at least the digital version you must somehow touch the public not just this self-satisfaction of preaching to the doggies. So Costas at that point half a year ago here gave an example which I think to at least ambiguous maybe even totally wrong. He told a story which I knew he told it to me he likes to tell it he is getting senile like me every month he forgets that he already told you but I'm doing the same so we hit it about how you remember when there was that military coup d'état and afterwards the military not even overthrown after the fiasco of the Cyprus adventure they had to step down and he told me that when the Cyprus adventure began he was in military barracks where some colonel came from Athens and all the soldiers were gathered and then he gave them a patriotic speech countryside now you know the usual bullshit the right-wingers are giving to you when things look bad for them you know now we should forget our divisions our countries in danger and so on and I will not use the other f-word here I'm too embarrassed to repeat but at the high point of his speech when he was on the point of shouting whatever he gave a sound of flatulence and that everyone start to laugh and that it was simply over like you know soldiers simply didn't take him over in that barracks so he left and simply soldiers went home and so on. Okay I told him already it's very difficult to give this as an example of liberation because from my own modest I never claim that I was a big dissident but modest dissident experience I encountered not exactly the same with the same sounds but very structurally the same similar examples which were staged by those in power. For example I remember some meeting in Ljubljana where people who were really distressed gave a speech on freedom dignity blah blah and people who later we discovered were provocateurs paid by the state did exactly that turn that around and they they succeeded in destroying all of it you know just like oh and uh who are you haha idiot and so on and you know what I mean like intelligent power structures today they are very apt in using obscenities for their own. So I absolutely don't have any admiration for obscenity I think that especially today when we have more and more technocrats ruling us and when I use the term technocrat let me be very clear here I almost believe in technocracy my reproach to them like the Brussels bureaucrats is not that they are technocrats but that they are stupid idiotic masters who pretend to be eurocrats that what I don't see is that they are not really technocrats their technocratic proposals apparently totally neutral managerialist just a question of numbers of balance and so on are really sustained by a whole series of strictly political non-technocratic decisions and so on. So what I want to say is that the fear today for those in power in a typical western society the fear of these technocratic masters is serious engagement as such. You know they like to talk the language not of big words which is why I forgot her name an American Chinese I'm so sorry now it maybe my spontaneous racism but I sincerely excuse myself maybe the name will come Chinese cultural studies woman very intelligent one wrote a wonderful text criticizing Brecht claiming that the Brecht strategy of mocking authorities and so on estrangement that today basically it no longer works is the language of power that this standard cynical attitude mocking big words blah blah is precisely the attitude used by those in power against any who want a real radical change. So that's the sad thing today the discourse of those in power works at two levels on the one hand is this falsely apparently neutral speech oh it's just numbers like Varoufakis talks about Europe in in Brussels they tell him listen but we are just talking about one percentage there there you you know like apparently neutral technical data whenever you want to go beyond you're immediately mocked at dismissed as a pathetic clown still believing in big words and so on and so on. So I think if I may now act what I really am in my heart it may surprise you as a very traditional deep moralist I claim that today's power is more and more legitimized by a kind of a sarcastic cynical immorality. It is so which is why again I no longer believe in all those gestures you know of mocking those in power again look at it who used this who uses this recently it's more and more again those in power. Okay now let me nonetheless let us now go ah perfect we have a lot of time now this was a short introduction now I will do exactly the two things I promised you for today tomorrow we go into difficult theory of sexual difference and so on about democracy socialism communism apropos China and then second part as I promised you about Heidegger. First democracy now we come the more boring part I will read it and so on. When Badiou claims that democracy is our fetish I think that we should take this not as a kind of a vague metaphor you know fetish in the sense of what we absolutely value and so on what we elevate into an absolute but we should take this statement literally in the precise Freudian sense. Democracy is our fetish is the last thing we see before we confront the lack or antagonism constitutive of social field the trauma of social antagonism. It is as if when we are confronted with the reality of domination and exploitation of brutal social struggles we can always add yes we have struggles we are in deep shit but we have democracy. You know it's exactly the form of je sais bien mais quand même I know we are screwed by rich people blah blah we are powerless but we have democracy. An example okay let me use again an old example which I think works perfectly this is are for me modern fetishist films which are not surprisingly representative of so-called ironically so-called Hollywood Marxism. Those apparently subversive American movies critical which are I think deeply conservative deeply conformist. I'm talking about blockbusters like *All the President's Men* or *Pelican Brief* they all are variations on the same story the official image of a society that you get there is a deeply pessimistic one like in both these films the corruption is tracked up to the top of society itself. The President of the United States is corrupted controlled by corporations whatever but what is the fetish. The fetish is the basic message of the film which is why we maybe like those films. Why do we feel good even if the social picture that we get in such a film is terrible. It's nonetheless then at the end the lesson is but nonetheless don't we live in a wonderful country where two ordinary guys journalists can bring down the mightiest man in the world and so on and so on. I think this is fetish this is precisely this this awareness which makes you feel well. And so going up now to politics I think that such people often ask me oh but I know we get your point social communism capitalism doesn't work you have to invent something but always I get this answer even Fukuyama when I debated him went half this way like yeah I get your point all the antagonisms practically unsolvable but why then do you need this deus ex machina why do you bring communism is it even more discredited. The answer I can give is the following one if there is a term that I more and more am tempted to reject is socialism why because in practice socialism is more and more becoming I claim a a word which you know Badiou said nicely that a true idea divides when you are in a confused situation an idea is a concept which enables you to draw the separation. This is why although now he is more sympathetic towards democracy a little bit this was Badiou's problem with democracy not that he is against the power of the people and so on but that today in practical use it's not a term which enables you to draw a line of separation no everyone practically is for democracy it's meaningless. Socialism I claim it's the same almost okay you have right-wing madmen who are not but isn't it that like that the term many post-communist parties call themselves like that the democratic parties of democratic socialism in Germany in Slovenia I understand strategic reasons to do it but theoretically I think it's the worst possible choice. Democracy is just the feeling of guilt why do they add democracy because they are afraid to be identified as old Stalinist and so on but the message is horrible the message between the lines is don't be too much afraid of us you know we don't really mean it radical change we will respect the game and so on rules of the game. Socialism socialism is a benign artifact it's a kind of a compromising formula for communism. Socialism means basically what everybody can be a socialist my God in one interview Bill Gates claims that in a way he is a socialist it simply means basically no I admit it everything should not be left just to the market we are not just cruel individuals we also we also need to care for our future children society and so on. I hate when people take think I totally reject this ecological line you know we borrowed the earth from future from our children fuck it the fact that we borrowed the earth from our children I have two of them I can tell you this is the strongest argument I can imagine to ruin this earth you know no children. Okay seriously you know socialism no wonder everybody can be a socialist it just means some communal sense Hitler was a socialist Bill Gates is a socialist it just means no it's not just individualism cruel market it doesn't draw the proper line of difference and as I already maybe mentioned it to you my great source here Otto Weininger the crazy guy *Sex and Character* who put it bluntly he meant it negatively I take it positively he says wrote in his *Sex and Character* socialism is Aryan communism is Jewish. Ah perfect I forgot okay now let me go because- could you distinguish between the old socialism 60s what do you mean by old socialism the socialist states like in europe they there were actually distinctions they were they were antagonisms of course no no sorry sorry sorry I didn't mean that in socialist countries there are no antagonisms of course there were what I'm saying and I will precisely make this point nicely about China today there is a ferocious class struggle as far as I can say going on in China but this Confucian socialism that they are preaching the true target is not bourgeois western liberals it's precisely to control the class struggle in China. China is you know because this is the basic rule China always emphasizes today the need for stability order and so on. Well I'm asking myself why do they emphasize this so much because they must be scared totally and they are. I mean just look at the data you should read media in detail. For example everybody is talking about how much did China lately raise the defense budget. I don't know if it's true are you the Chinese girl sorry you no because there was somebody because now we had a reporter from Brazil maybe we need another one from Brazil because I heard that they they tripled even more the budget for inner security. They now did something which is pretty horrible they till now they wanted to postpone it they organized a how to call them this not just local police but anti-riot security forces which are mobile can intervene here because they have so many according to did I already tell you this story once according to official sources already three years ago they told me this some official representatives that they have around per year serious disturbances. I love this bureaucratic tone and I ask them fuck you what does it mean serious disturbance and they gave me a wonderful clear formal definition serious disturbance is a local unrest strike demonstrations which is so strong that local police cannot deal with this that army have to intervene. per year imagine what is this three some five six per per day so now to avoid this embarrassment of army fighting the people they constitute this and there are sorry but I will come immediately back so you see my point of course there are differences antagonisms but what I'm saying is that socialism as a term works precisely in order to somehow cover up control these antagonisms which is why fascists never have a problem to use the term socialism. Yes there is behind you a guy who yes please- I really want to believe your statistics when you quote journalistic sources as friends in china and so on and so forth. Yeah but first be fair sorry I will immediately give you a chance be fair towards me I mean oh I quote them because there are no other sources. I know but yesterday in your lecture you made some very crass generalizations about western mass media for example for example that um it we all know it's lying it never gets to the truth it's ideological blah blah why you made it monolithic if nothing else. No I'm well aware wait a minute you talk like I talk like this we all talk like this of course it's not monolithic. For example with the way they relate to Greece of course there are many nuances different versions and some of them are very interesting I admit all the honor to them for example FT *Financial Times*. At some point I don't know what they are doing now I was pleasantly surprised about at the beginning of SYRIZA government you know that there was a text in *Financial Times* which says let's face it Tsipras is the only guy who speaks reasonable. They told so and not to mention some American conservative media and so on and so on so no but but I think you know that's how media in our countries world work there is nonetheless something which is clearly the hegemonic version for example take even Putin there are many even conservative voices which say for example a typical a typical isolationist conservative voice would have said screw the Russians who cares if they want whatever they want there even if they grab a land or two small around them it's not in our American interest why don't we you have all that but nonetheless isn't there a clear predominant hegemonic position. And now I will go even a state further which may be more problematic for you I would even say that this hegemonic position may even not be the majoritarian one somebody can determine the field while formally in a minority that's my point in United States for example politically correct permissive hedonist liberal left I doubt if they are really a majority I think it's more a phenomenon of big cities this high intellectual circles blah blah but they determine the field in the sense that all attacks are attacks on them you know they are reactions sorry. Are you familiar with the work of john pilger. Yeah and I have some problems with him so do i. Sorry. So do i. Okay then let's make a step further i have even very many problems with him you know why i tell you why because he pretends to be always that guy who tells the truth and so on and so on well what he wrote about ex-yugoslavia it's a total racist bullshit for example and i was shocked to hear this from him how he characterized okay maybe this is my patriotism he writes about slovenia this is his standard this is the new left review story we slovenes are guilty of everything because we were the first to leave yugoslavia and you know we were the first card to be taken out of a house of cards and then as robin blackburn i was shocked even told me with some weird sadism that it wasn't just that we were slovenes the first to leave it and then didn't pay any price this is not fair like all others then thousands had to die we did it and no what does he say first that kosovo look I think i quoted it i'm not sure or i will in the next in some of my books he describes kosovo as a primitive province ran by local mobsters my god even serb nationalists wouldn't go so far if you know to characterize i mean let's be formal what does he do an entire small nation there he characterizes as totally undeveloped run by mobsters and so on then when he speaks about secession of yugoslavia he calls slovenia and croatia provinces sorry but now i hate it to be now if i you know now i repeat golda meir here who said hypocritically that i really hate our opponents not for what they are doing to us but what they are forcing us to do to them this hypocritical morality well i feel the same that i hate pilger for turning me almost into a slovene nationalist but sorry yugoslavia was a federation where according to the constitution every republic has a full right to secede that's really interesting but but what he advocates which i'm sure you know. No i don't i stopped reading him when i read that. He takes this very marxist ultra marxist position which one which he regards as ultra marxist which is pilger takes this perspective yeah but which is the position which is that all journalism is is objective and its nirvana of of this telescopic distance so he has something important to say but in the in the name of resisting bourgeois forms he he he creates a new um monolithic kind of he always describes he always says that journalism should monitor the power of the people monitor the people look at the people resisting power so i totally oppose this entire approach this is i mean no this is as bad as the. Well you know robert fisk too- sorry robert fisk. Yeah of course but i still if i were to choose between fisk and- how do you pronounce the other guy pilger pilger it's yeah i would immediately select fisk. Yes he's more complex. Yeah more complex yes but what's interesting about pilger's nice circularity is that his latest documentary he makes some good films- yeah i agree with that. Is about china. And what is his view there i don't know it hasn't come out yet. Yeah but i don't know what he hasn't published anything recently he's working on his films. No you know what i know from my chinese friends okay but it's supported by some data and interesting thing that they have shown to me is that we in the west we present the conflict in china within china as the conflict between the old sterile party guard who just allows a certain degree of capitalism and private freedoms to enable the communist party rule to go on and some i don't know pro-western libertarians and so on and so on i can guarantee you that this is empirically false what the communist party is really afraid is not that and i give you wang hui my friend showed this to me a wonderful proof i'm sorry if you already know it because i mentioned it years ago you know every communist party in power has a a the ultimate book the book capitalized is the history of the party where they tell you the absolute truth you know like the stalinist history of bolshevik party and so on okay in china they also have it and it's of course re-edited every year every two years already a couple of years ago i was told and okay maybe he liked to me but he showed me i was able to see some differences i doubt that he liked to me but something very mysterious happened in the latest edition a chapter was censored deleted you know which chapter okay you can have many ironic points to be made for example you know when communists were taking over in they organized in in in the south nanjing big demonstrations against kuomintang chiang kai-shek rule and they accused chiang kai-shek of single party rule just kuomintang so the slogan of mao what we once want multi-party democracy now wang hui told me that he knows a dissident who just put this as a quote from mao we want multi-party democracy and then mao zedong collected works there and went with this on tiananmen basically he wasn't heard about nobody knows but he disappeared but back to that well you know in 1920s in the southern region of shanghai there was a kind of almost economic miracle development of industry enough of local commercial cinema there was a well-known actress mao's wife who was specialized in erotic comedies i have one they gave it to me my friend the young wife of mao so and then this was a moment of authentic sincere glory of communist party they organized trade unions strikes that chapter disappeared because it was considered that it may give the wrong idea for today you know it's incredible how one of the really glorious nice roles of the communist party organizing trade unions strikes it censored for being too and this is what i almost like about china they still have this totally naive stalinist hermeneutics where data don't matter what matters is the meaning and since in the old chinese style that guy how is he called françois jullien you should read him very i mean he is naive but very good at how chinese language functions and it's incredible to see how with all his modernity against tradition the chinese political life is still organized in that way where it's not that you say it directly what matters is whom you mention whom you didn't mention for example françois jullien quotes an a historical work which is apparently just celebrating a great ancient emperor and all appears just as a big celebration but he claims if you know how to read it it's a devastating criticism for example it says in the morning before the battle the general with his lieutenants visited the front you mean what's wrong ah if you know the background that the general is supposed the leader the commander to visit the front the previous evening and not with his lieutenants but alone so that he can catch people by surprise then you see that this is a devastating criticism and that you have to know to read in this way statements so again if you read it in this way in china today you discover practically you discover wonders of intense battles and so on and so on you should always go into this differential structural principle not like the coffee without milk coffee without you know not what is said but what is unsaid what is not said and so on you know it's interesting because gerardo once said just to justify that the violence criminality in sao paulo which one violence against yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
books and two black guys came and gave me their books to sign. And I signed them and then I couldn't resist bad taste jokes. I told them I don't know which books belong to whom because you know you blacks are all the same we cannot differentiate. You know what was the result I noticed because we chatted a little bit. They started to call me brother. You see how at a certain level it works. But now I'm coming to the crucial point which is a very nice one. Afterwards I used this bad taste example the first one that is to say you can call me nigger with another black public and someone was a little bit hurt and told me but do you know that nonetheless it's a sensitive point like you cannot actually start calling black people niggers it has too many racist associations you know why I was hurt and then with the guy we immediately became friends because I told him this offer you can call me nigger. I'm not an idiot I mean it was strictly meant it's a very beautiful example of manners. It was meant as I always mention as an offer to be rejected. It wasn't meant as oh now I start no it was just a singular gesture of friendship but it was not an actual offer. That's what I find very important and you see this these are good manners for me where in such a way which may sound absurd you get you get the message of friendship across and so on and so on. This same guy made another criticism of me very Hegelian one. You know my line against this particular identities universality blah blah. And he told me but nonetheless isn't it that we blacks should insist on black power it's not only all of us should renounce our particular identity and so on and then we talk and came at a wonderful result which is very Hegelian it is a wonderful example of what Hegel calls determinate negation. You know to put it in more abstract terms every universality as Hegel teaches us is founded in a negated particularity. You overstep a certain particularity. The problem of course is that it matters which particularity you transcend. What I'm telling you now is warning now I will give you like a trigger warning but the coffee joke. The joke that I must have used here at least five times. Ninotchka give me coffee with without cream. Sorry we don't have cream we only have milk I can only give you coffee without milk you know. So you see although materially it is the same it matters if it's coffee although it's the same shitty black coffee but coffee without cream is not the same as coffee without milk of course in the symbolic universe and so on. So my point is this one that universalism should always be qualified on what base and this is for me politically important. If we black people white people sorry if we white people preach to the others universalism of course even if we sincerely renounce our particular identity it's nonetheless universalism as negated Western culture culture but this negation still echoes in it. So it should be what the most beautiful example which I also used probably already here is for me I'm sure you know it the case of Haiti Constitution where Haiti the new black republic they they wanted to be a black republic in the sense of independence and so on from their not even colonizers but slave owners. But at the same time they were honest to admit that their military victory over Napoleon's army was achieved by the help of some good honest white soldiers especially those those to their eternal honor Polish soldiers because you know the story Napoleon was screwing that Polish lady Maria Walewska or whatever okay. A rich Polish noblewoman became Napoleon's lover and out of respect for her Napoleon gave some kind of autonomy to Poland when he occupied Europe and because of this that's always the price you pay with Napoleon because of this they had to send an army you know. And okay quite a lot of white Napoleon's army soldiers sent to crash the black rebellion were of Polish origin and you know the story it's one of the most sublime moments in the history. They approach the black army and they heard some singing and they thought oh this must be some primitive tribal dances you know they came close you know what the blacks were singing La Marseillaise. And Napoleon and the Polish soldiers simply asked themselves the question fuck it I mean in my plastic interpretation fuck it are we on the right side here. And they joined the slaves and not crucially but also with some extent with their help the blacks won. So they were grateful to them. So how to unite this fact that honest white people should be allowed to stay there with the fact that Haiti should be a black republic. You know the joke article of the Haiti Constitution of Haiti is a black republic so all its citizens independently of the color of their skin are black. I absolutely admire this solution because you see the point without this and don't worry because some years in Brazil also I was accused of being in the last stage of cocaine no it doesn't matter. I never I feel so ashamed if I'm accused of it I should at least have tried something but what you know I'm the only guy of my generation that I know that hasn't tried not even marijuana nothing you know nothing I'm totally innocent and ah to tell you another thing about ideology you know what happened in my country when I was young old communist Yugoslavia drugs were tolerated tolerated at least soft drugs more than now. Why ah communists were not total idiots those who were in power it's the same as in I was also told in Brazil that whenever in favelas maybe now it's a little bit changed but years before I wonder if you tell me if true so yesterday we had a special representative you click CNN from Greece now we have a special one on TV from Brazil. I was told that at least in the tougher times of military dictatorship whenever you know favelas are usually what mobs wild capitalism and so on whenever there was a danger of some more politically radicalized organization in favelas all of a sudden police has shown much greater tolerance for drugs like you know let them drug themselves better than politicization. And my friends from Poland told me it was the same in when was it Jaruzelski's coup d'état to crash Solidarity. They told me you know what all of a sudden was totally tolerated all student campuses were overflowed by drugs plus pornography plus new age mysticism even the party newspapers started to bring guides to how to discover your inner true self blah blah and with all these messages you know reality doesn't matter all the truth is in this deep in you of course with all the truth in this deep in you then you will not bother them to go on power and so on. So back to this point so you see this is the true state of political power not only against particular identity for universalism but like watch the color of universalism. Or to take the other Hegel's lesson you know what Hegel calls concrete universality means precisely that there is no neutral universality that each universality is colored my God I was so vulgar no don't be afraid I will not answer but I put the phone on silence and just another dirty joke I cannot resist it's and now is like vibrating and I feel as if I have some better I don't say anything more than this simple thing okay. I want to say that every universality is colored by a specific particular species of itself which as Marx put it very nicely in his introduction to Grundrisse which in a way colors or gives the tone of the entire universality you know what is the point of Marx that for example although we have different kinds of production agriculture production artisanal production big industry in feudal times agriculture is the production as such it colors everything in capitalism it's industrial production so the nice example given by Marx even if all other fields of production then tend to be industrialized like agriculture is more and industrialized but this is precisely because they are all productions but one production industrial in this case stands for production as such. And even with art you know this is what Hegel means again by concrete universality it's a very materialist idea it's not as you read in bad books on Hegel it's not that stupidity of how you know somehow mysteriously the abstract idea screws itself and turns around itself and engenders all particular content no it's almost the exact opposite is that universality cannot ever be a truly neutral universality every neutral universality is colored and precisely again that's where as we all know that's where racism enters. I mean white people traditional liberals can be very open and so on and often they do have a message in their preaching universal rights but again if you look at it closely these universal rights already have a certain color although as a good Marxist Hegelian I must tell you what often historicists who insist on this point miss is that the opposite is also true. You know it's the Lacanian real which is I'm sorry if you know this lesson but it's very important again against any ideological mystification of Lacan that universality is not just impossible impossible in the sense that it's never a pure universality it's every universality is always colored by some part of its content. It's also the opposite that universality is something which is at the same time impossible but at the same time necessary you cannot escape. And this is the lesson that some historicists who claim you know universality is always fragile we always have to historicize produce each particular content the problem is that every particular content is also fragile inconsistent and so on and this is specifically the problem with capitalism today. You know I'm sorry if I repeat myself but it's a crucial Hegelian point you know that universality Marx distinguishes in a very Hegelian way between universality in itself just blind universality and universality for itself universality which is posited as such. What does this mean Marx gives this example for example in every society we have work. So work is universal we all work okay sorry but nevertheless in our own in our own way so we can say work is a general feature and then you have particular modalities of work but what happens with bourgeois society is something much more radical it's not just that we all work each in our particular sphere it's also not just what I've just said that one type of work industrial work serves as a secret model for all of it. It's something much more it's that only in modern capitalist society we in our immediate actual self-experience experience ourselves as universal in what sense in the simple sense that we are not fully identified by the particular field of what we work. You know we can change our profession which is as you probably know I repeat this all the time meaningless in medieval times we have professions profession is something that you contingently choose in medieval times they didn't have professions you cannot ask a knight what is your actual profession and he will say my profession is to be a knight or whatever no he was much more immediately identified by that is to say and one can say that in so-called consumerism the same goes even for even for pleasure pleasure is in this sense denaturalized or you know you don't have a particular object of pleasure which is privileged by nature desire is universal but what's the point the point okay this always was the point is that you immediately discover it sorry experience it as universal and this is the beauty of Lacan we don't have time to go into this because there is a particular object which as it were gives body to this universality but this object is what Lacan calls objet petit objet a because it's precisely the void in body and so on and so on okay we can go in here but we don't have time even into purely philosophical Kantian topic because as you maybe this would be one of the ways to condense to incidentally I talk too much so of course there is never you may have noticed it any time for debate at the end. So I want to be fair and give you a chance the only chance is you simply interrupt me and you can at any moment you want to ask some question no way no way as long as I live I'd rather die than to say at the end oh now we have minutes you can this will never happen I already told you probably this joke as when an idiot asked me why am I not a psychoanalyst no practicing. I told him can you really imagine me sitting quietly and listening to another person you know I told him the only way for me to be an analyst is you sit there I look at you a little bit and then I tell you everything what are your symptoms and interpret them and all you're allowed to do is to say yes professor and so on stupidity but let's go more seriously on so Kant in his especially the third one Kritik der Urteilskraft of judgment his argument against an ethics of desire is that precisely desire is or enjoyment as actualization or whatever of fulfillment of desire is irreducibly linked to particular contingent objects you eat this you your pleasure is that and so on that desire desire doesn't have a priori universality you know Kant's point that for example in natural sciences or in our experience of nature theoretical relating to nature we have certain universals not objects but forms everything that exists must be in time in space must have be submitted to the the categories of pure understanding you know everything must be determined by causality a cause an effect temporal existence and so on and so on. As for ethics Kant Kant this is Kant's point for a priori ethics that ethics also is not just linked to particular contingent objects you have an ethical a priori which is again purely formal. But for Kant at the level of pleasures satisfactions they are particular one object excites you another object is a horror for you there is no a priori well Lacan's answer is precisely there is and this is objet a the whole structure of desire the whole point of Lacan maybe this would be one wonderful way to conceptualize Lacan to say that he wrote the fourth unwritten Kant's critique a critique of pure desire because for Lacan for Kant precisely there is no pure desire desire is always contingent particular for Lacan there is the pure desire. Okay so let's go on ah yes okay I did mostly let me go a little bit on which may interest you again I like to attack people when they are absent no so let me make another remark on Costas you know oh my God I will tell you something which is pure friendship you met Costas yes you know he behaves all this time you know what was I was so I'm really this is for me the sign that he really maybe likes me a little bit because I otherwise he would have killed me probably once we were talking about this disgusting charity publicity you know you have you have the photo of a disfigured black guy with some lips twisted and then that stupid with five dollars you can make this guy happy you know change his life a cheap operation no I mean to be so nasty some some of you guessed what was my point what I said I imagined in a Greek newspaper his image and and like for five dollars you can make cutting this off this guy happy help Greece and so on and I'm infinitely grateful to him that he didn't kill me. I mean even I it happens even to very bad persons like me even I was a little bit shocked you know what I can say but now a little bit more serious I think that Costas like an old leftist this is also if you read that book but you shouldn't because I just recycled use all stuff that exchange of letters between me and the Pussy Riot girl no now okay I cannot resist vulgarity people asked me oh but she is beautiful what was the price did you fuck her or what. I'm sorry to tell you I haven't even met her she wanted to I didn't want to because I don't like you know once you get to know well-known people then you are expected to visit them every time then your life is not nice. Okay but with her there is nonetheless one serious theoretical point which is extremely important especially today I claim in that book this is I was nicely surprised by her because this is the real test there is a it's not just paying respect to each other a real politics for me she is too much caught into this simple opposition of regular life things running like ordinary and then those magic moments of holy madness carnival and so on when ecstatic moments and so on and for her then Putin is this oppressive normality and they Pussy Riot stand for this joyful transgression obscenity and so on I exploded at that. I think that if you accept this opposition then then you basically denigrate yourself if you want to be a true radical leftist you accept this cheap let's call it transgressive logic that you know because the point is that okay you have your transgression but the big problem is precisely how this transgressive liberation this is for me the only true test how it will be later translated into a new normal state of things. As I already repeated here fuck that moments of liberation I don't care about them I care only more and more about this okay you have your fucking big transgressive enthusiastic moments one million people on Syntagma Square blah blah what will happen two months later when things will let's say return to normal how will the people feel the difference at the everyday level that's the truly difficult job so I told her if you want to be just that transgressive moment oh we are now free and what a month later what Putin comes back no I told her you are doubly wrong first Putin is not a real normality Russia deserves much better Putin is a kind of an obscene transgressive normality I told her don't accept this logic Putin pretends to be a serious master we are refreshing clowns and so on no your thesis should be we want normality Putin is a clown you know you should turn this around the same the same thing with when Costas said that you know Varoufakis is playing a clown no European experts are really clowns playing the experts they are not even good economists and so on and so on I mean but more important so where was my my misunderstanding with Costas here I think he did it if you were at that meeting half a year ago or even less now in support of Greece here at Birkbeck where my first misunderstanding very friendly with him was that I considered that meeting totally useless you know in what sense we were just preaching to the convinced we felt well oh my God my God you should do what I'm now trying to do okay Guardian I'm out they did publish that long text on my online I don't know if it will be printed on at least online it will it did appear yesterday New Statesman it will appear in Newsweek now even in Newsweek at least the digital version you must somehow touch the public not just this self-satisfaction of preaching to the doggies. So Costas at that point half a year ago here gave an example which I think to at least ambiguous maybe even totally wrong. He told a story which I knew he told it to me he likes to tell it he is getting senile like me every month he forgets that he already told you but I'm doing the same so we hit it about how you remember when there was that military coup d'état and afterwards the military not even overthrown after the fiasco of the Cyprus adventure they had to step down and he told me that when the Cyprus adventure began he was in military barracks where some colonel came from Athens and all the soldiers were gathered and then he gave them a patriotic speech countryside now you know the usual bullshit the right-wingers are giving to you when things look bad for them you know now we should forget our divisions our countries in danger and so on and I will not use the other f-word here I'm too embarrassed to repeat but at the high point of his speech when he was on the point of shouting whatever he gave a sound of flatulence and that everyone start to laugh and that it was simply over like you know soldiers simply didn't take him over in that barracks so he left and simply soldiers went home and so on. Okay I told him already it's very difficult to give this as an example of liberation because from my own modest I never claim that I was a big dissident but modest dissident experience I encountered not exactly the same with the same sounds but very structurally the same similar examples which were staged by those in power. For example I remember some meeting in Ljubljana where people who were really distressed gave a speech on freedom dignity blah blah and people who later we discovered were provocateurs paid by the state did exactly that turn that around and they they succeeded in destroying all of it you know just like oh and uh who are you haha idiot and so on and you know what I mean like intelligent power structures today they are very apt in using obscenities for their own. So I absolutely don't have any admiration for obscenity I think that especially today when we have more and more technocrats ruling us and when I use the term technocrat let me be very clear here I almost believe in technocracy my reproach to them like the Brussels bureaucrats is not that they are technocrats but that they are stupid idiotic masters who pretend to be eurocrats that what I don't see is that they are not really technocrats their technocratic proposals apparently totally neutral managerialist just a question of numbers of balance and so on are really sustained by a whole series of strictly political non-technocratic decisions and so on. So what I want to say is that the fear today for those in power in a typical western society the fear of these technocratic masters is serious engagement as such. You know they like to talk the language not of big words which is why I forgot her name an American Chinese I'm so sorry now it maybe my spontaneous racism but I sincerely excuse myself maybe the name will come Chinese cultural studies woman very intelligent one wrote a wonderful text criticizing Brecht claiming that the Brecht strategy of mocking authorities and so on estrangement that today basically it no longer works is the language of power that this standard cynical attitude mocking big words blah blah is precisely the attitude used by those in power against any who want a real radical change. So that's the sad thing today the discourse of those in power works at two levels on the one hand is this falsely apparently neutral speech oh it's just numbers like Varoufakis talks about Europe in in Brussels they tell him listen but we are just talking about one percentage there there you you know like apparently neutral technical data whenever you want to go beyond you're immediately mocked at dismissed as a pathetic clown still believing in big words and so on and so on. So I think if I may now act what I really am in my heart it may surprise you as a very traditional deep moralist I claim that today's power is more and more legitimized by a kind of a sarcastic cynical immorality. It is so which is why again I no longer believe in all those gestures you know of mocking those in power again look at it who used this who uses this recently it's more and more again those in power. Okay now let me nonetheless let us now go ah perfect we have a lot of time now this was a short introduction now I will do exactly the two things I promised you for today tomorrow we go into difficult theory of sexual difference and so on about democracy socialism communism apropos China and then second part as I promised you about Heidegger. First democracy now we come the more boring part I will read it and so on. When Badiou claims that democracy is our fetish I think that we should take this not as a kind of a vague metaphor you know fetish in the sense of what we absolutely value and so on what we elevate into an absolute but we should take this statement literally in the precise Freudian sense. Democracy is our fetish is the last thing we see before we confront the lack or antagonism constitutive of social field the trauma of social antagonism. It is as if when we are confronted with the reality of domination and exploitation of brutal social struggles we can always add yes we have struggles we are in deep shit but we have democracy. You know it's exactly the form of je sais bien mais quand même I know we are screwed by rich people blah blah we are powerless but we have democracy. An example okay let me use again an old example which I think works perfectly this is are for me modern fetishist films which are not surprisingly representative of so-called ironically so-called Hollywood Marxism. Those apparently subversive American movies critical which are I think deeply conservative deeply conformist. I'm talking about blockbusters like *All the President's Men* or *Pelican Brief* they all are variations on the same story the official image of a society that you get there is a deeply pessimistic one like in both these films the corruption is tracked up to the top of society itself. The President of the United States is corrupted controlled by corporations whatever but what is the fetish. The fetish is the basic message of the film which is why we maybe like those films. Why do we feel good even if the social picture that we get in such a film is terrible. It's nonetheless then at the end the lesson is but nonetheless don't we live in a wonderful country where two ordinary guys journalists can bring down the mightiest man in the world and so on and so on. I think this is fetish this is precisely this this awareness which makes you feel well. And so going up now to politics I think that such people often ask me oh but I know we get your point social communism capitalism doesn't work you have to invent something but always I get this answer even Fukuyama when I debated him went half this way like yeah I get your point all the antagonisms practically unsolvable but why then do you need this deus ex machina why do you bring communism is it even more discredited. The answer I can give is the following one if there is a term that I more and more am tempted to reject is socialism why because in practice socialism is more and more becoming I claim a a word which you know Badiou said nicely that a true idea divides when you are in a confused situation an idea is a concept which enables you to draw the separation. This is why although now he is more sympathetic towards democracy a little bit this was Badiou's problem with democracy not that he is against the power of the people and so on but that today in practical use it's not a term which enables you to draw a line of separation no everyone practically is for democracy it's meaningless. Socialism I claim it's the same almost okay you have right-wing madmen who are not but isn't it that like that the term many post-communist parties call themselves like that the democratic parties of democratic socialism in Germany in Slovenia I understand strategic reasons to do it but theoretically I think it's the worst possible choice. Democracy is just the feeling of guilt why do they add democracy because they are afraid to be identified as old Stalinist and so on but the message is horrible the message between the lines is don't be too much afraid of us you know we don't really mean it radical change we will respect the game and so on rules of the game. Socialism socialism is a benign artifact it's a kind of a compromising formula for communism. Socialism means basically what everybody can be a socialist my God in one interview Bill Gates claims that in a way he is a socialist it simply means basically no I admit it everything should not be left just to the market we are not just cruel individuals we also we also need to care for our future children society and so on. I hate when people take think I totally reject this ecological line you know we borrowed the earth from future from our children fuck it the fact that we borrowed the earth from our children I have two of them I can tell you this is the strongest argument I can imagine to ruin this earth you know no children. Okay seriously you know socialism no wonder everybody can be a socialist it just means some communal sense Hitler was a socialist Bill Gates is a socialist it just means no it's not just individualism cruel market it doesn't draw the proper line of difference and as I already maybe mentioned it to you my great source here Otto Weininger the crazy guy *Sex and Character* who put it bluntly he meant it negatively I take it positively he says wrote in his *Sex and Character* socialism is Aryan communism is Jewish. Ah perfect I forgot okay now let me go because- could you distinguish between the old socialism 60s what do you mean by old socialism the socialist states like in europe they there were actually distinctions they were they were antagonisms of course no no sorry sorry sorry I didn't mean that in socialist countries there are no antagonisms of course there were what I'm saying and I will precisely make this point nicely about China today there is a ferocious class struggle as far as I can say going on in China but this Confucian socialism that they are preaching the true target is not bourgeois western liberals it's precisely to control the class struggle in China. China is you know because this is the basic rule China always emphasizes today the need for stability order and so on. Well I'm asking myself why do they emphasize this so much because they must be scared totally and they are. I mean just look at the data you should read media in detail. For example everybody is talking about how much did China lately raise the defense budget. I don't know if it's true are you the Chinese girl sorry you no because there was somebody because now we had a reporter from Brazil maybe we need another one from Brazil because I heard that they they tripled even more the budget for inner security. They now did something which is pretty horrible they till now they wanted to postpone it they organized a how to call them this not just local police but anti-riot security forces which are mobile can intervene here because they have so many according to did I already tell you this story once according to official sources already three years ago they told me this some official representatives that they have around per year serious disturbances. I love this bureaucratic tone and I ask them fuck you what does it mean serious disturbance and they gave me a wonderful clear formal definition serious disturbance is a local unrest strike demonstrations which is so strong that local police cannot deal with this that army have to intervene. per year imagine what is this three some five six per per day so now to avoid this embarrassment of army fighting the people they constitute this and there are sorry but I will come immediately back so you see my point of course there are differences antagonisms but what I'm saying is that socialism as a term works precisely in order to somehow cover up control these antagonisms which is why fascists never have a problem to use the term socialism. Yes there is behind you a guy who yes please- I really want to believe your statistics when you quote journalistic sources as friends in china and so on and so forth. Yeah but first be fair sorry I will immediately give you a chance be fair towards me I mean oh I quote them because there are no other sources. I know but yesterday in your lecture you made some very crass generalizations about western mass media for example for example that um it we all know it's lying it never gets to the truth it's ideological blah blah why you made it monolithic if nothing else. No I'm well aware wait a minute you talk like I talk like this we all talk like this of course it's not monolithic. For example with the way they relate to Greece of course there are many nuances different versions and some of them are very interesting I admit all the honor to them for example FT *Financial Times*. At some point I don't know what they are doing now I was pleasantly surprised about at the beginning of SYRIZA government you know that there was a text in *Financial Times* which says let's face it Tsipras is the only guy who speaks reasonable. They told so and not to mention some American conservative media and so on and so on so no but but I think you know that's how media in our countries world work there is nonetheless something which is clearly the hegemonic version for example take even Putin there are many even conservative voices which say for example a typical a typical isolationist conservative voice would have said screw the Russians who cares if they want whatever they want there even if they grab a land or two small around them it's not in our American interest why don't we you have all that but nonetheless isn't there a clear predominant hegemonic position. And now I will go even a state further which may be more problematic for you I would even say that this hegemonic position may even not be the majoritarian one somebody can determine the field while formally in a minority that's my point in United States for example politically correct permissive hedonist liberal left I doubt if they are really a majority I think it's more a phenomenon of big cities this high intellectual circles blah blah but they determine the field in the sense that all attacks are attacks on them you know they are reactions sorry. Are you familiar with the work of john pilger. Yeah and I have some problems with him so do i. Sorry. So do i. Okay then let's make a step further i have even very many problems with him you know why i tell you why because he pretends to be always that guy who tells the truth and so on and so on well what he wrote about ex-yugoslavia it's a total racist bullshit for example and i was shocked to hear this from him how he characterized okay maybe this is my patriotism he writes about slovenia this is his standard this is the new left review story we slovenes are guilty of everything because we were the first to leave yugoslavia and you know we were the first card to be taken out of a house of cards and then as robin blackburn i was shocked even told me with some weird sadism that it wasn't just that we were slovenes the first to leave it and then didn't pay any price this is not fair like all others then thousands had to die we did it and no what does he say first that kosovo look I think i quoted it i'm not sure or i will in the next in some of my books he describes kosovo as a primitive province ran by local mobsters my god even serb nationalists wouldn't go so far if you know to characterize i mean let's be formal what does he do an entire small nation there he characterizes as totally undeveloped run by mobsters and so on then when he speaks about secession of yugoslavia he calls slovenia and croatia provinces sorry but now i hate it to be now if i you know now i repeat golda meir here who said hypocritically that i really hate our opponents not for what they are doing to us but what they are forcing us to do to them this hypocritical morality well i feel the same that i hate pilger for turning me almost into a slovene nationalist but sorry yugoslavia was a federation where according to the constitution every republic has a full right to secede that's really interesting but but what he advocates which i'm sure you know. No i don't i stopped reading him when i read that. He takes this very marxist ultra marxist position which one which he regards as ultra marxist which is pilger takes this perspective yeah but which is the position which is that all journalism is is objective and its nirvana of of this telescopic distance so he has something important to say but in the in the name of resisting bourgeois forms he he he creates a new um monolithic kind of he always describes he always says that journalism should monitor the power of the people monitor the people look at the people resisting power so i totally oppose this entire approach this is i mean no this is as bad as the. Well you know robert fisk too- sorry robert fisk. Yeah of course but i still if i were to choose between fisk and- how do you pronounce the other guy pilger pilger it's yeah i would immediately select fisk. Yes he's more complex. Yeah more complex yes but what's interesting about pilger's nice circularity is that his latest documentary he makes some good films- yeah i agree with that. Is about china. And what is his view there i don't know it hasn't come out yet. Yeah but i don't know what he hasn't published anything recently he's working on his films. No you know what i know from my chinese friends okay but it's supported by some data and interesting thing that they have shown to me is that we in the west we present the conflict in china within china as the conflict between the old sterile party guard who just allows a certain degree of capitalism and private freedoms to enable the communist party rule to go on and some i don't know pro-western libertarians and so on and so on i can guarantee you that this is empirically false what the communist party is really afraid is not that and i give you wang hui my friend showed this to me a wonderful proof i'm sorry if you already know it because i mentioned it years ago you know every communist party in power has a a the ultimate book the book capitalized is the history of the party where they tell you the absolute truth you know like the stalinist history of bolshevik party and so on okay in china they also have it and it's of course re-edited every year every two years already a couple of years ago i was told and okay maybe he liked to me but he showed me i was able to see some differences i doubt that he liked to me but something very mysterious happened in the latest edition a chapter was censored deleted you know which chapter okay you can have many ironic points to be made for example you know when communists were taking over in they organized in in in the south nanjing big demonstrations against kuomintang chiang kai-shek rule and they accused chiang kai-shek of single party rule just kuomintang so the slogan of mao what we once want multi-party democracy now wang hui told me that he knows a dissident who just put this as a quote from mao we want multi-party democracy and then mao zedong collected works there and went with this on tiananmen basically he wasn't heard about nobody knows but he disappeared but back to that well you know in 1920s in the southern region of shanghai there was a kind of almost economic miracle development of industry enough of local commercial cinema there was a well-known actress mao's wife who was specialized in erotic comedies i have one they gave it to me my friend the young wife of mao so and then this was a moment of authentic sincere glory of communist party they organized trade unions strikes that chapter disappeared because it was considered that it may give the wrong idea for today you know it's incredible how one of the really glorious nice roles of the communist party organizing trade unions strikes it censored for being too and this is what i almost like about china they still have this totally naive stalinist hermeneutics where data don't matter what matters is the meaning and since in the old chinese style that guy how is he called françois jullien you should read him very i mean he is naive but very good at how chinese language functions and it's incredible to see how with all his modernity against tradition the chinese political life is still organized in that way where it's not that you say it directly what matters is whom you mention whom you didn't mention for example françois jullien quotes an a historical work which is apparently just celebrating a great ancient emperor and all appears just as a big celebration but he claims if you know how to read it it's a devastating criticism for example it says in the morning before the battle the general with his lieutenants visited the front you mean what's wrong ah if you know the background that the general is supposed the leader the commander to visit the front the previous evening and not with his lieutenants but alone so that he can catch people by surprise then you see that this is a devastating criticism and that you have to know to read in this way statements so again if you read it in this way in china today you discover practically you discover wonders of intense battles and so on and so on you should always go into this differential structural principle not like the coffee without milk coffee without you know not what is said but what is unsaid what is not said and so on you know it's interesting because gerardo once said just to justify that the violence criminality in sao paulo which one violence against yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
unknown
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Slavoj Žižek
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
unknown
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Slavoj Žižek
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
unknown
yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah
Slavoj Žižek
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
unknown
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Slavoj Žižek
yeah
yeah
unknown
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Slavoj Žižek
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
unknown
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Slavoj Žižek
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
unknown
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Slavoj Žižek
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah- No what interests me is that this how do you call it this way where what matters is what you mention how I admire the Chinese because you know what I was told in China but everybody knows this that if you have a rumor like this some crime happened or not you never know that there is only one way to be sure that it happened when it's officially denied. That's the absolute rule that and you know where I see this hermeneutic reading I was in China when the the mayor of Shanghai was arrested for corruption and I was shocked how all my friends automatically no one took this as a pure criminal matter. You know they immediately translated it into which faction is fighting the other faction for them it literally it didn't mean it didn't mean anything I mean there is a certain great charm in this structure you know for example you know how North Korea years back signal its distance towards Soviet Union it was still Soviet Union I think not with any big declarations we are no longer on the same side but you just had to look the official biography of the second one Kim Jong-il. Because he really was born in Soviet Union where his father was close to Korea in Siberia all of a sudden there was a new version that he was born on some sacred mountain in Korea and set and so on you know it's not about the truth it's you use this totally to signal my favorite example if you read this way is did you see every years they make in up there in Korea sorry in China they make a big official fiction film about Chinese independence the final years of the war and I got through friends some of them are available legally on the video the last three ones is incredible how although all three films talk about past what happened in you it's the best indicator of what goes on today. For example in the last version which is incidentally excellent Hollywood style they even use all the well-known internationally Chinese actors in small cameo roles for example in an honest bourgeois journalist comes to visit Mao to interview him Jackie Chan is the journalist or when communists take over Beijing Mao calls some representatives of the youth to debate what should be the flag of the new China you know who
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah- No what interests me is that this how do you call it this way where what matters is what you mention how I admire the Chinese because you know what I was told in China but everybody knows this that if you have a rumor like this some crime happened or not you never know that there is only one way to be sure that it happened when it's officially denied. That's the absolute rule that and you know where I see this hermeneutic reading I was in China when the the mayor of Shanghai was arrested for corruption and I was shocked how all my friends automatically no one took this as a pure criminal matter. You know they immediately translated it into which faction is fighting the other faction for them it literally it didn't mean it didn't mean anything I mean there is a certain great charm in this structure you know for example you know how North Korea years back signal its distance towards Soviet Union it was still Soviet Union I think not with any big declarations we are no longer on the same side but you just had to look the official biography of the second one Kim Jong-il. Because he really was born in Soviet Union where his father was close to Korea in Siberia all of a sudden there was a new version that he was born on some sacred mountain in Korea and set and so on you know it's not about the truth it's you use this totally to signal my favorite example if you read this way is did you see every years they make in up there in Korea sorry in China they make a big official fiction film about Chinese independence the final years of the war and I got through friends some of them are available legally on the video the last three ones is incredible how although all three films talk about past what happened in you it's the best indicator of what goes on today. For example in the last version which is incidentally excellent Hollywood style they even use all the well-known internationally Chinese actors in small cameo roles for example in an honest bourgeois journalist comes to visit Mao to interview him Jackie Chan is the journalist or when communists take over Beijing Mao calls some representatives of the youth to debate what should be the flag of the new China you know who
unknown
makes the proposal that Mao accepts
makes the proposal that Mao accepts
Slavoj Žižek
that Zhang Ziyi the
that Zhang Ziyi the
unknown
beautiful young actress I'm not Gong Li who is a slight sorry. Yeah yeah yeah did you see the film The Birth of the Republic she makes the proposal she makes and the most beautiful moment of this retroactive rereading I loved it. Mao after communists take over Beijing Mao walks along Beijing and sees a traffic tobacco cigarette store and says to his guard let's go there I lack I don't have any more cigarettes I want to buy them and then the guard tells him sorry comrade Mao but you know
beautiful young actress I'm not Gong Li who is a slight sorry. Yeah yeah yeah did you see the film The Birth of the Republic she makes the proposal she makes and the most beautiful moment of this retroactive rereading I loved it. Mao after communists take over Beijing Mao walks along Beijing and sees a traffic tobacco cigarette store and says to his guard let's go there I lack I don't have any more cigarettes I want to buy them and then the guard tells him sorry comrade Mao but you know
Slavoj Žižek
the owner is a capitalist he escaped you know and then Mao says it's poor retroactive Deng Xiaoping years later Mao says oh my god are you telling me that that i cannot even buy my
the owner is a capitalist he escaped you know and then Mao says it's poor retroactive Deng Xiaoping years later Mao says oh my god are you telling me that that i cannot even buy my
unknown
cigarettes now sooner or later even if it takes years we will have to bring capitalists back you know said Mao there you know it's naive but i love it you know how you totally use the past to deliver to deliver a message and i love comrade Stalin when he was at his high point for example when in Nadezhda Krupskaya Lenin's wife for a brief moment sided with the left-wing opposition against Stalin and it's well known that Stalin told her you should think what you are doing if you'll be going on like this we will have to discover
cigarettes now sooner or later even if it takes years we will have to bring capitalists back you know said Mao there you know it's naive but i love it you know how you totally use the past to deliver to deliver a message and i love comrade Stalin when he was at his high point for example when in Nadezhda Krupskaya Lenin's wife for a brief moment sided with the left-wing opposition against Stalin and it's well known that Stalin told her you should think what you are doing if you'll be going on like this we will have to discover
Slavoj Žižek
another widow of Lenin you know and I like this okay whatever sorry but let me go on so that my god I really talk too much okay i will give you one bribe nonetheless if you think that i talk too much i promise through Julia or whoever is here is Julia the only boss here boss is there anyone here who have your emails. No because- We all have it we all have a choice. I know but fuck you I don't want to not literally it's a metaphor but but but i don't you know what i mean i don't have them but if you are i am ready to give you the texts themselves new unpublished texts because why should you suffer all the consequences from my private confusion okay no no but you mentioned do you know it that film you know which film i do like it's really great of the same guy i don't know how to pronounce it Jia Zhangke the Still Life Still Life it's really great cinema i claim. And he is masterful in how he so was described walks on the edge but nonetheless to conclude that debate so we are not so far no i i precisely think that what i hate about Marx it is people but let me tell you something horrible what do people want i claim if there is a lesson sad lesson from this last reawakenings from Tahrir Arab Spring Turkey here there is that you practically never can get the real majority real majority and here I'm a pessimist the most you can get is a sympathetic neutrality I claim that was the tragedy of Turkey of Egypt and so on okay you can have one million people on Tahrir Square but so what these are mostly middle-class intellectual feminists then the silent majority speaks you get what you get I'm even more pessimist here I think that point that I often repeated I think that I think that I think that people don't really I at least if you're an everyday guy do you really want to decide by decide I mean decide in the sense that there are elections and it's really open i would have felt terribly unsafe i want and i think this is how our democracy works and i'm not even ironically critical here it's that we want the appearance of free decision but we want to be clearly told what to choose i think it effectively works like that the moments when you really have to decide when officially we should have said oh democracy finally really functions they are experienced as the crisis of democracy the crisis of democracy means that democracy really works. Okay but no i mean just to conclude i'm sorry that i mean there is a certain type of british so-called radical left that we are in more or less open warfare already for years I'm with them for example Tariq Ali he started with this message that we Slovenes our egotism is guilty because of our egotism we left Yugoslavia we are responsible for it once i told him but are you aware that what you are doing is a pretty stupid kind of racism you characterize her i told him what about if i were to start to talk about pakistani corrupted and gay stupidity or whatever you know what i mean like one should be and especially another irony sloven egotism absolutely we slovenes are a pretty disgusting nation i have no problem with that but is he trying to tell me that others were not egotists or what in Yugoslav war they were all most even the greatest victims Bosnians you know remember the first year was the war more between Serbia and Croatia and Bosnians didn't want to join Croatia they thought that let the two big ones kill each other and then we will step in ah unfortunately they paid the price later and so on and so on. So no i think that i think that like there are still or for example i remember with who is your the other greek the trotskyite philosopher Callinicos. Once i just mentioned that many of working classes now go into this anti-immigrant racism and so on and he exploded no this is bourgeois propaganda workers are always racist progressive sorry anti-racist i mean where does he live i mean i think it's simply not true no i'm not saying that it's simply the opposite i'm just saying that my god i look at the data in france the main vote for front national especially le pen version is the closest you come now to a workers' party in france i'm sorry okay I again as he would have put it I exaggerated simplified I know but again I just like to to complicate things you know. Tomorrow I'm going to give you a copy of my thesis. Which is what Žižek is an idiot you cannot imagine. You're actually in it but it's where in a footnote such trash is not worth of mention. It was on journalistic agency and the subjective turn in british foreign correspondent discourse. Perfect thanks because you know what you know but i hope you at least stole from me you know how i like to steal let's say somebody tells me a new idea i steal it from him no i'm not doing it really but i dream about doing it here then you steal the idea but you add a footnote when this book was already written i discovered that a friend of mine also came to a similar idea you know so that you were clean you know. Okay whatever perfect no but you see just the last point you remember that scandal a year ago or when was it with with Noam Chomsky you know that was the same it was so unfair he started an extremely brutal attack and then here at some public talk somebody asked me that was me you was you were the one. but i just reacted to what he said i didn't know anything and then the media the media report media video relative report this as zizek answers or whatever but something must have happened because then he attacked me even more brutally then i wrote a much more moderate answer to him reasonable and then he stopped it's very interesting he did you see it he did give another interview where the guy who was interviewing him mentioned to me all the time trying to get his position on me and he never mentioned my name so i don't know what happened did somebody convince him to stop it or what do you know the fact. No i mean comrade zizek there's this meant ironically i'm afraid for you okay go on please I studied with those guys the analytic thinkers right and i i was a friend was a friend of chomsky's there's just seems to be a basic point here that isn't coming through and this to to just jump at at the comrade there with this idea of the monolithic and all yes that's right but there's a very basic point and it gets to the distinction between the methodological commitments of chomsky on the one hand and the method the operating procedure of what zizek is doing on the other zizek you're operating in two with with respect to chomsky you're operating in at a different level it seems to me i agree you're looking you're looking at the may i be specific you're looking at the the sort of the subjective position within a symbolic order yeah right now chomsky is not interested in that right chomsky is interested in a systematic comparative analysis of of the relationship between uh various determinate real actual structures of power institutions and looking at the logic that that unfolds between that and the media now i'm thinking of course of manufacturing consent it is an excruciatingly detailed comparative analysis that attempts to determine a systematic direction in the media but through painstaking systematic analysis that's one thing i appreciate it yeah and i appreciate it yeah all i'm saying is that- but you don't do that
another widow of Lenin you know and I like this okay whatever sorry but let me go on so that my god I really talk too much okay i will give you one bribe nonetheless if you think that i talk too much i promise through Julia or whoever is here is Julia the only boss here boss is there anyone here who have your emails. No because- We all have it we all have a choice. I know but fuck you I don't want to not literally it's a metaphor but but but i don't you know what i mean i don't have them but if you are i am ready to give you the texts themselves new unpublished texts because why should you suffer all the consequences from my private confusion okay no no but you mentioned do you know it that film you know which film i do like it's really great of the same guy i don't know how to pronounce it Jia Zhangke the Still Life Still Life it's really great cinema i claim. And he is masterful in how he so was described walks on the edge but nonetheless to conclude that debate so we are not so far no i i precisely think that what i hate about Marx it is people but let me tell you something horrible what do people want i claim if there is a lesson sad lesson from this last reawakenings from Tahrir Arab Spring Turkey here there is that you practically never can get the real majority real majority and here I'm a pessimist the most you can get is a sympathetic neutrality I claim that was the tragedy of Turkey of Egypt and so on okay you can have one million people on Tahrir Square but so what these are mostly middle-class intellectual feminists then the silent majority speaks you get what you get I'm even more pessimist here I think that point that I often repeated I think that I think that I think that people don't really I at least if you're an everyday guy do you really want to decide by decide I mean decide in the sense that there are elections and it's really open i would have felt terribly unsafe i want and i think this is how our democracy works and i'm not even ironically critical here it's that we want the appearance of free decision but we want to be clearly told what to choose i think it effectively works like that the moments when you really have to decide when officially we should have said oh democracy finally really functions they are experienced as the crisis of democracy the crisis of democracy means that democracy really works. Okay but no i mean just to conclude i'm sorry that i mean there is a certain type of british so-called radical left that we are in more or less open warfare already for years I'm with them for example Tariq Ali he started with this message that we Slovenes our egotism is guilty because of our egotism we left Yugoslavia we are responsible for it once i told him but are you aware that what you are doing is a pretty stupid kind of racism you characterize her i told him what about if i were to start to talk about pakistani corrupted and gay stupidity or whatever you know what i mean like one should be and especially another irony sloven egotism absolutely we slovenes are a pretty disgusting nation i have no problem with that but is he trying to tell me that others were not egotists or what in Yugoslav war they were all most even the greatest victims Bosnians you know remember the first year was the war more between Serbia and Croatia and Bosnians didn't want to join Croatia they thought that let the two big ones kill each other and then we will step in ah unfortunately they paid the price later and so on and so on. So no i think that i think that like there are still or for example i remember with who is your the other greek the trotskyite philosopher Callinicos. Once i just mentioned that many of working classes now go into this anti-immigrant racism and so on and he exploded no this is bourgeois propaganda workers are always racist progressive sorry anti-racist i mean where does he live i mean i think it's simply not true no i'm not saying that it's simply the opposite i'm just saying that my god i look at the data in france the main vote for front national especially le pen version is the closest you come now to a workers' party in france i'm sorry okay I again as he would have put it I exaggerated simplified I know but again I just like to to complicate things you know. Tomorrow I'm going to give you a copy of my thesis. Which is what Žižek is an idiot you cannot imagine. You're actually in it but it's where in a footnote such trash is not worth of mention. It was on journalistic agency and the subjective turn in british foreign correspondent discourse. Perfect thanks because you know what you know but i hope you at least stole from me you know how i like to steal let's say somebody tells me a new idea i steal it from him no i'm not doing it really but i dream about doing it here then you steal the idea but you add a footnote when this book was already written i discovered that a friend of mine also came to a similar idea you know so that you were clean you know. Okay whatever perfect no but you see just the last point you remember that scandal a year ago or when was it with with Noam Chomsky you know that was the same it was so unfair he started an extremely brutal attack and then here at some public talk somebody asked me that was me you was you were the one. but i just reacted to what he said i didn't know anything and then the media the media report media video relative report this as zizek answers or whatever but something must have happened because then he attacked me even more brutally then i wrote a much more moderate answer to him reasonable and then he stopped it's very interesting he did you see it he did give another interview where the guy who was interviewing him mentioned to me all the time trying to get his position on me and he never mentioned my name so i don't know what happened did somebody convince him to stop it or what do you know the fact. No i mean comrade zizek there's this meant ironically i'm afraid for you okay go on please I studied with those guys the analytic thinkers right and i i was a friend was a friend of chomsky's there's just seems to be a basic point here that isn't coming through and this to to just jump at at the comrade there with this idea of the monolithic and all yes that's right but there's a very basic point and it gets to the distinction between the methodological commitments of chomsky on the one hand and the method the operating procedure of what zizek is doing on the other zizek you're operating in two with with respect to chomsky you're operating in at a different level it seems to me i agree you're looking you're looking at the may i be specific you're looking at the the sort of the subjective position within a symbolic order yeah right now chomsky is not interested in that right chomsky is interested in a systematic comparative analysis of of the relationship between uh various determinate real actual structures of power institutions and looking at the logic that that unfolds between that and the media now i'm thinking of course of manufacturing consent it is an excruciatingly detailed comparative analysis that attempts to determine a systematic direction in the media but through painstaking systematic analysis that's one thing i appreciate it yeah and i appreciate it yeah all i'm saying is that- but you don't do that
unknown
sorry i mean- no of course
sorry i mean- no of course
Slavoj Žižek
i don't and i don't intend to do that what i'm saying is just two things first- that's an important difference. yeah yeah yeah but why didn't chomsky say that because- he was older he's older. no i'm quite but now i will prove to you that i'm a good chomskian do you remember- but there's a very important point that follows absolutely just as a matter of the logic of the position yeah but okay what is the connection what is the relation between you as a theorist and these actual structures of power i mean at the empirical level what is the relation between your theory and your theoretical position i got your point i got your point and i will answer at two levels first listen i not only admire that aspect of chomsky i can tell you a story i don't know how old are you but seconds the first book i read by chomsky is maybe you were still just an object of desire where your father was looking at your mother or whatever do you know his early book backroom boys isn't it something like this you see you even don't know it it the great tragic legend of the left he published with fontana or some publisher a mass pocket book i think backroom boys about how all this
i don't and i don't intend to do that what i'm saying is just two things first- that's an important difference. yeah yeah yeah but why didn't chomsky say that because- he was older he's older. no i'm quite but now i will prove to you that i'm a good chomskian do you remember- but there's a very important point that follows absolutely just as a matter of the logic of the position yeah but okay what is the connection what is the relation between you as a theorist and these actual structures of power i mean at the empirical level what is the relation between your theory and your theoretical position i got your point i got your point and i will answer at two levels first listen i not only admire that aspect of chomsky i can tell you a story i don't know how old are you but seconds the first book i read by chomsky is maybe you were still just an object of desire where your father was looking at your mother or whatever do you know his early book backroom boys isn't it something like this you see you even don't know it it the great tragic legend of the left he published with fontana or some publisher a mass pocket book i think backroom boys about how all this
unknown
bureaucratic background anonymous guide who make
bureaucratic background anonymous guide who make
Slavoj Žižek
decisions and fontana i think it was fontana or another mass publisher pocketbook american they were so embarrassed and under political
decisions and fontana i think it was fontana or another mass publisher pocketbook american they were so embarrassed and under political
unknown
pressure that just to
pressure that just to
Slavoj Žižek
prevent him publishing books with them they abolish cancel the entire book publisher they claim commercially doesn't work so not
prevent him publishing books with them they abolish cancel the entire book publisher they claim commercially doesn't work so not
unknown
just his books you get it the entire publishing subdivision was cancelled just to prevent him i
just his books you get it the entire publishing subdivision was cancelled just to prevent him i
Slavoj Žižek
admire that what i will say is just this that you say i just first point i wouldn't be as trustful as you towards this facts facts facts you know his facts are not always as perfect as you claim for example again my own example he sometimes is tempted by this anti-establishment view and when somebody is criticized by the united states for example the example i gave i remember reading some of his staff about post-yugoslav war serbia and so on where he basically misinterprets it claiming that you know behind the dissolution of yugoslavia was western interest to annoy blah blah sorry at that point i remember james baker was the foreign minister and he open it was coordinated when yugoslav army attacked made this wasn't a real war made small intervention in slovenia baker publicly supported it they did it with baker's green light the previous evening baker visited belgrade and said united states supports a limited military intervention of yugoslav army to secure the the territorial unity of yugoslavia so all this story you know that all this story about how the west contrived to whatever to destroy yugoslavia no
admire that what i will say is just this that you say i just first point i wouldn't be as trustful as you towards this facts facts facts you know his facts are not always as perfect as you claim for example again my own example he sometimes is tempted by this anti-establishment view and when somebody is criticized by the united states for example the example i gave i remember reading some of his staff about post-yugoslav war serbia and so on where he basically misinterprets it claiming that you know behind the dissolution of yugoslavia was western interest to annoy blah blah sorry at that point i remember james baker was the foreign minister and he open it was coordinated when yugoslav army attacked made this wasn't a real war made small intervention in slovenia baker publicly supported it they did it with baker's green light the previous evening baker visited belgrade and said united states supports a limited military intervention of yugoslav army to secure the the territorial unity of yugoslavia so all this story you know that all this story about how the west contrived to whatever to destroy yugoslavia no
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till at least till the west was in its great majority for yugoslavia
till at least till the west was in its great majority for yugoslavia
Slavoj Žižek
and there are so many mysteries there for example i will give
and there are so many mysteries there for example i will give
unknown
you a source who is definet- no what i'm saying is that this isn't a theoretical point i know but it's precisely when you emphasize how chomsky is doing factual he's quite often insufficient at that level i'll give you another example i read what he says about october revolution he basically buys the standard liberal version this was just a coup d'état sorry i know horrors of stalinism and so on but it was a coup d'état it was by whom lenin was alone when lenin in april announced we bolsheviks have a chance of take power nadezhda krupskaya wrote to bukharin vladimir ilich is getting crazy maybe we will have to hospitalize him and the truth is that then from below workers there was a pressure to do something people were there i mean and here and not to mention campuchia the khmer rouge and so on all that so his facts are not always as although i often admire what he does for example what he did in nicaragua that was nice and so on i also admire how he was critical when one needs to be critical you remember how he protested to chavez against some arrests and so on so all my respect for him the second thing i would say is that to do the right factual analysis you should always also treat fantasies dreams and so on as part of reality i think that to understand what is going on facts are
you a source who is definet- no what i'm saying is that this isn't a theoretical point i know but it's precisely when you emphasize how chomsky is doing factual he's quite often insufficient at that level i'll give you another example i read what he says about october revolution he basically buys the standard liberal version this was just a coup d'état sorry i know horrors of stalinism and so on but it was a coup d'état it was by whom lenin was alone when lenin in april announced we bolsheviks have a chance of take power nadezhda krupskaya wrote to bukharin vladimir ilich is getting crazy maybe we will have to hospitalize him and the truth is that then from below workers there was a pressure to do something people were there i mean and here and not to mention campuchia the khmer rouge and so on all that so his facts are not always as although i often admire what he does for example what he did in nicaragua that was nice and so on i also admire how he was critical when one needs to be critical you remember how he protested to chavez against some arrests and so on so all my respect for him the second thing i would say is that to do the right factual analysis you should always also treat fantasies dreams and so on as part of reality i think that to understand what is going on facts are
Slavoj Žižek
not enough and here i sometimes
not enough and here i sometimes
unknown
find it- well but he does have a notion
find it- well but he does have a notion
Slavoj Žižek
of fantasy right and it's almost- it's almost marxian in a sense in what sense i can tell you what he says really precisely in the following sense yeah um
of fantasy right and it's almost- it's almost marxian in a sense in what sense i can tell you what he says really precisely in the following sense yeah um
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it it almost follows the logic of of commodity fetishism
it it almost follows the logic of of commodity fetishism
Slavoj Žižek
that's wonderful if he had this and i'm thinking of his concept that he that he arrives at through an analysis yeah of the of the specific situation between the media and the
that's wonderful if he had this and i'm thinking of his concept that he that he arrives at through an analysis yeah of the of the specific situation between the media and the
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institution yeah he comes up with a notion that he calls necessary illusions and i believe he's quoting if i'm not- who he i believe he's quoting with that either the the theologian reinhold niebuhr or was it walter lippmann i i forget- no no lippmann is crucial here at the end because you
institution yeah he comes up with a notion that he calls necessary illusions and i believe he's quoting if i'm not- who he i believe he's quoting with that either the the theologian reinhold niebuhr or was it walter lippmann i i forget- no no lippmann is crucial here at the end because you
Slavoj Žižek
know probably better than i did lippmann in a positive sense opposite to chomsky and didn't lippmann invent the term of manufacturing and so on. so what he tries to show is that there is a systematic production of what he calls a necessary illusion such that the illusions though this is perhaps where it becomes naive such that the illusions merely serve the interest that we already know the institutions have where it isn't marxist is in the sense in which it's imminent in the very system of the of of the mode of production itself right no you know what okay can i ask you a simple question for me the crucial point is this the superficial impression i get from reading him is nonetheless that those in power are simply cynics know they are doing naively no i think they are naive they it's not that they produce illusions but they know what is the truth no they don't know and those who want to be realist cynics are the worst for me a big example is henry kissinger i don't think there was he is supposed to be the ultimate brutal realistic politician no illusions and so on he changed no is this a joke or no no no it's serious oh my god so he is now on the enemy this side sorry to know it warren buffett thinks the poor should stop blaming inequality on the rich well in a way i agree with it you know in what sense we shouldn't blame them we should just cut their throats you know because blaming means you play this game oh how could you do this what and then the rich will although do you know who is the good guy here his son you know that i quote him warren buffett's son did a friendly but nice criticism of his father claiming how okay he means doing well but he is just reproducing and so on the poverty and so on so back to that point i think that kissinger yes look he got everything wrong he made so many mistakes but not mistakes in some progressive sense factual mistakes mistakes in the sense of you know at so of the interest of the united states and so on so again i agree with you this would have been the crucial point this necessary illusion but this is again the the to understand marxism is really marxist notion of ideology again is to be aware how cynical distance when you say fuck it just illusions and so on what matters is power money blah blah this is in this is sometimes the greatest naivety because you know illusions move the world people are ready to die for illusions and so on it's it's you know what is for me for example the tragic example of this limit of factual analysis how is he called i'm sorry if i repeat the story there is a historian in israel revisionist who already some years ago is it benny something or what i don't know who wrote the revisionist history demonstrating that israelis in war did their own ethnic cleansing killing some entire palestinian villages blah blah and all the progressives started to jump you know ho ho now we know the truth but then they got a shock because this guy said yes but i'm sorry we should have done it even more his thesis is that the mistake of israel was that when they gained momentum either in or in even in they claimed that if israelis were to throw all the palestinians across into jordan then there would have been a little bit hot blood then but now it would have been peace. so you know what i mean like chomsky i think lives a little bit too much in this illusion of you have to tell to
know probably better than i did lippmann in a positive sense opposite to chomsky and didn't lippmann invent the term of manufacturing and so on. so what he tries to show is that there is a systematic production of what he calls a necessary illusion such that the illusions though this is perhaps where it becomes naive such that the illusions merely serve the interest that we already know the institutions have where it isn't marxist is in the sense in which it's imminent in the very system of the of of the mode of production itself right no you know what okay can i ask you a simple question for me the crucial point is this the superficial impression i get from reading him is nonetheless that those in power are simply cynics know they are doing naively no i think they are naive they it's not that they produce illusions but they know what is the truth no they don't know and those who want to be realist cynics are the worst for me a big example is henry kissinger i don't think there was he is supposed to be the ultimate brutal realistic politician no illusions and so on he changed no is this a joke or no no no it's serious oh my god so he is now on the enemy this side sorry to know it warren buffett thinks the poor should stop blaming inequality on the rich well in a way i agree with it you know in what sense we shouldn't blame them we should just cut their throats you know because blaming means you play this game oh how could you do this what and then the rich will although do you know who is the good guy here his son you know that i quote him warren buffett's son did a friendly but nice criticism of his father claiming how okay he means doing well but he is just reproducing and so on the poverty and so on so back to that point i think that kissinger yes look he got everything wrong he made so many mistakes but not mistakes in some progressive sense factual mistakes mistakes in the sense of you know at so of the interest of the united states and so on so again i agree with you this would have been the crucial point this necessary illusion but this is again the the to understand marxism is really marxist notion of ideology again is to be aware how cynical distance when you say fuck it just illusions and so on what matters is power money blah blah this is in this is sometimes the greatest naivety because you know illusions move the world people are ready to die for illusions and so on it's it's you know what is for me for example the tragic example of this limit of factual analysis how is he called i'm sorry if i repeat the story there is a historian in israel revisionist who already some years ago is it benny something or what i don't know who wrote the revisionist history demonstrating that israelis in war did their own ethnic cleansing killing some entire palestinian villages blah blah and all the progressives started to jump you know ho ho now we know the truth but then they got a shock because this guy said yes but i'm sorry we should have done it even more his thesis is that the mistake of israel was that when they gained momentum either in or in even in they claimed that if israelis were to throw all the palestinians across into jordan then there would have been a little bit hot blood then but now it would have been peace. so you know what i mean like chomsky i think lives a little bit too much in this illusion of you have to tell to
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the people the whole truth no this is not enough you have to ruin their illusions also sorry. yes i have one follow-up
the people the whole truth no this is not enough you have to ruin their illusions also sorry. yes i have one follow-up
Slavoj Žižek
question on
question on
unknown
that um a lot of my work stems from chomsky's theory of linguistics and it seems that he occupies a really different theoretical perspective than you yeah in some respects and that this kind of facticity that you can find in the world is found in the universal generative structure of grammar and i have problems
that um a lot of my work stems from chomsky's theory of linguistics and it seems that he occupies a really different theoretical perspective than you yeah in some respects and that this kind of facticity that you can find in the world is found in the universal generative structure of grammar and i have problems
Slavoj Žižek
with this notion but it is very much a kantian as it puts it ideal or sometimes cartesian and i wonder in your new book you criticize hawking for his
with this notion but it is very much a kantian as it puts it ideal or sometimes cartesian and i wonder in your new book you criticize hawking for his
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logical positivism as a very crude kind of empiricism but not not his physics although i have my- we didn't want to visit where they told me and i feel sad for this that now theoretically yeah no i thought it was very interesting and this is kind of what i'm wondering could you try to link your approach to subjectivity if
logical positivism as a very crude kind of empiricism but not not his physics although i have my- we didn't want to visit where they told me and i feel sad for this that now theoretically yeah no i thought it was very interesting and this is kind of what i'm wondering could you try to link your approach to subjectivity if
Slavoj Žižek
you want to the question of facticity in something like science i think that would be correct. I will i will okay first what i will tell you is that i think that i am not totally opposed here to to chomsky because whatever he is in his linguistics and when i was young i followed it closely i kept though but they first appeared as small books jobs on and on on- you have linguistics and politics i must read those. early ones yes that what i admired in him is that he precisely is not the primitive empiricist then he is very much into speculation it's up and even his cartesianism in a way in a way i like it i appreciate it so the problem even you know there was a big debate i think they now even published it some pages of debate between Foucault and Chomsky. and although in principle i would be on Foucault's side but i think Foucault is a little bit too smug self-satisfied you know in simply Foucault is simply repeating this standard european boring pseudo-marxist stuff haha no you're naturalizing it's really all historic mediated and so on and so on i mean chomsky is in a way in his theory that linguistic structure has to be in some way innate how do you call it no he is right it's not simply directly culture because to give a very primitive example if you raise an ape like a human up to a certain point i think till one year or what it will progress even faster but then when you go up to language it will not. My so here i i don't have although i am not qualified enough to judge all i know is that at least in europe what is now developing is neither the classical structural linguistics nor- it's almost analogous to Lacan's notion that the structure of the unconscious is similar or analogous to a language i've often thought that there were parallels between- no and even even here with Lacan you know now i will be critical so that you will not think that i am dogmatic i will be critical even against Lacan himself Lacan likes to make this sweeping abstract radical statements but how do americans say where is the beef the beef in this case is how far does it work in real detailed analysis you know and because what's so problematic is that when what Lacan does after this speak you know you can see like a royal announcement with trumpets ah blah blah unconscious structured like language and so on it's almost always even the same couple of examples usually signorelli from from psychoanalysis of everyday life and so on a lot more of work is needed there although Lacan is on to something there it's this counter-intuitive approach of signifier for example recently i read no but my enemy here is not chop- you know who is my enemy to conclude my god. To conclude my enemy are idiots like Steven
you want to the question of facticity in something like science i think that would be correct. I will i will okay first what i will tell you is that i think that i am not totally opposed here to to chomsky because whatever he is in his linguistics and when i was young i followed it closely i kept though but they first appeared as small books jobs on and on on- you have linguistics and politics i must read those. early ones yes that what i admired in him is that he precisely is not the primitive empiricist then he is very much into speculation it's up and even his cartesianism in a way in a way i like it i appreciate it so the problem even you know there was a big debate i think they now even published it some pages of debate between Foucault and Chomsky. and although in principle i would be on Foucault's side but i think Foucault is a little bit too smug self-satisfied you know in simply Foucault is simply repeating this standard european boring pseudo-marxist stuff haha no you're naturalizing it's really all historic mediated and so on and so on i mean chomsky is in a way in his theory that linguistic structure has to be in some way innate how do you call it no he is right it's not simply directly culture because to give a very primitive example if you raise an ape like a human up to a certain point i think till one year or what it will progress even faster but then when you go up to language it will not. My so here i i don't have although i am not qualified enough to judge all i know is that at least in europe what is now developing is neither the classical structural linguistics nor- it's almost analogous to Lacan's notion that the structure of the unconscious is similar or analogous to a language i've often thought that there were parallels between- no and even even here with Lacan you know now i will be critical so that you will not think that i am dogmatic i will be critical even against Lacan himself Lacan likes to make this sweeping abstract radical statements but how do americans say where is the beef the beef in this case is how far does it work in real detailed analysis you know and because what's so problematic is that when what Lacan does after this speak you know you can see like a royal announcement with trumpets ah blah blah unconscious structured like language and so on it's almost always even the same couple of examples usually signorelli from from psychoanalysis of everyday life and so on a lot more of work is needed there although Lacan is on to something there it's this counter-intuitive approach of signifier for example recently i read no but my enemy here is not chop- you know who is my enemy to conclude my god. To conclude my enemy are idiots like Steven
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Pinker and I was so glad to discover that he even hates me I don't know him but you know when some idiot attacked me when I said the obvious truth that I hate students and that most people are idiots you know i mean these are for me like you know the beginning of american declaration of independence there are some truths self-evident we- so okay i said and he said oh this must be a naughty guy arrogant somebody told me. But you know where i have a problem here Lacan is onto something that and some intelligent really bright cognitivists i'm not dismissive of brain sciences cognitivism
Pinker and I was so glad to discover that he even hates me I don't know him but you know when some idiot attacked me when I said the obvious truth that I hate students and that most people are idiots you know i mean these are for me like you know the beginning of american declaration of independence there are some truths self-evident we- so okay i said and he said oh this must be a naughty guy arrogant somebody told me. But you know where i have a problem here Lacan is onto something that and some intelligent really bright cognitivists i'm not dismissive of brain sciences cognitivism
Slavoj Žižek
as such get into it
as such get into it
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that again what characterizes human language in comparison with all those stupid bees who can signal fuck you if you go so much here left three steps left or whatever you will discover
that again what characterizes human language in comparison with all those stupid bees who can signal fuck you if you go so much here left three steps left or whatever you will discover
Slavoj Žižek
roses with a lot of honey whatever yes they can transmit communicate in the sense of transmitting a message in a wonderful way but Lacan's point is that human language is a broken language consistently it's structured around an impossibility of what you cannot say so the it's not that we have a perfect linguistic structure and then as Habermas thinks because of social repression whatever something gets oppressed language is broken no it's constitutively broken we speak because we cannot say everything you know speak human speak and now you will think i'm dreaming ah in dreaming in a scientific way i find not only Daniel Dennett who is more intelligent i think but quite many others who who got into this that it's much more paradoxical if you try to isolate the specificity of human language with regard to animal signs that it's absolutely not you should not focus simply on more like you know oh we humans do more no we humans can do more because precisely because we do less something to put it in Lacanian terms some signifier is prohibited is the structure of oppression and here creativity comes from and this is what stupid linguists like Steven
roses with a lot of honey whatever yes they can transmit communicate in the sense of transmitting a message in a wonderful way but Lacan's point is that human language is a broken language consistently it's structured around an impossibility of what you cannot say so the it's not that we have a perfect linguistic structure and then as Habermas thinks because of social repression whatever something gets oppressed language is broken no it's constitutively broken we speak because we cannot say everything you know speak human speak and now you will think i'm dreaming ah in dreaming in a scientific way i find not only Daniel Dennett who is more intelligent i think but quite many others who who got into this that it's much more paradoxical if you try to isolate the specificity of human language with regard to animal signs that it's absolutely not you should not focus simply on more like you know oh we humans do more no we humans can do more because precisely because we do less something to put it in Lacanian terms some signifier is prohibited is the structure of oppression and here creativity comes from and this is what stupid linguists like Steven
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Pinker don't see if i may repeat my old point he you know there is so-called enigma of consciousness you must know like
Pinker don't see if i may repeat my old point he you know there is so-called enigma of consciousness you must know like
Slavoj Žižek
why our mind cannot understand itself. well pinker gives a stupid simple answer because evolutionary it was not created for that language was created for communication in work process for seduction cooperation and for that it's perfect he even gives this unfortunate example that rabbits also don't understand higher mathematics infinitesimal account because evolutionary they don't need it. But isn't that something obviously wrong in this answer. Yes but rabbits also don't dwell upon infinitesimal account it's simply outside while why do we humans think all the time about impossible problems trying to you know and it's much more paradoxical i found this in intelligent brain scientists and cognitivists that it's precisely by how should i put it we if you just stick to the right rational questions you get nowhere you ask a crazy question which cannot be resolved and that by trying to elaborate it as a byproduct there is progress and it's interesting to read even inventions in this way how contrary to vulgar marxism machinery did not develop originally for industry and so on and then we use it for toys no the golden era of machinery was as we all know the court of louis the 14th where they have immense puppets of doing whatever and then so it was originally a pure surplus a toy then some idiot british came and said oh why don't we build i don't know some spinning wheel or whatever out of this it it much more refined much more paradoxical you know. So again i am not opposing this positivists for their positivism for their too rational
why our mind cannot understand itself. well pinker gives a stupid simple answer because evolutionary it was not created for that language was created for communication in work process for seduction cooperation and for that it's perfect he even gives this unfortunate example that rabbits also don't understand higher mathematics infinitesimal account because evolutionary they don't need it. But isn't that something obviously wrong in this answer. Yes but rabbits also don't dwell upon infinitesimal account it's simply outside while why do we humans think all the time about impossible problems trying to you know and it's much more paradoxical i found this in intelligent brain scientists and cognitivists that it's precisely by how should i put it we if you just stick to the right rational questions you get nowhere you ask a crazy question which cannot be resolved and that by trying to elaborate it as a byproduct there is progress and it's interesting to read even inventions in this way how contrary to vulgar marxism machinery did not develop originally for industry and so on and then we use it for toys no the golden era of machinery was as we all know the court of louis the 14th where they have immense puppets of doing whatever and then so it was originally a pure surplus a toy then some idiot british came and said oh why don't we build i don't know some spinning wheel or whatever out of this it it much more refined much more paradoxical you know. So again i am not opposing this positivists for their positivism for their too rational
unknown
approach
approach
Slavoj Žižek
i don't think there is at any point some necessity of some higher entity i'm just saying the way things progress it's not we are stupid animals and then oh i don't know who God or whatever miracles intervene it's a failure something goes terribly wrong and then even Chomsky is a nice example here you must know this i read somewhere that the way he developed his grammar transformative isn't it that first he was a more he was very young traditional linguist and then he played with these three structure three trees drawings of deep structure as a game to pass time with his colleague. It was actually after he read Cantor and was actually exposed to the mathematics of the infinite that he- I didn't know this you mean Cantor multiple infinities. Yeah the idea that semantic novelty emerges through these branching tree structures but nonetheless it never reaches a point where you can talk about all possible sentences that was really exposed in that in romantic poetry apparently. but really did he really refer to Cantor. yeah actually refers to it all the time in some of his texts early texts. now to conclude really i'm just very sad about that conflict with Chomsky because i don't know what is behind because you know at a certain level i can understand him dismissing me but if you read his attack on me admit it there is if i may use lacanian terms some surplus enjoyment in in the fury and i'm i'm at somebody remarked this that in spite of all these wild conflicts we end up signing the same stupid inefficient political protest so I'm sorry so again we lost the day but what is life you know what is the best definition of life I told it to you no absolutely correct one I'm sorry if I repeat myself there is a Polish proverb wonderful graffiti well known think about it it's totally true life is a disease which always ends in death and which is transmitted by sex totally true only correct definition of life you know. so okay i talked too much i know tomorrow so okay we just postpone it tomorrow is China and through Heidegger first part of philosophy then get ready took some laxatives whatever for for thursday thursday we do the big thing philosophy why just to annoy her again because i hope she will
i don't think there is at any point some necessity of some higher entity i'm just saying the way things progress it's not we are stupid animals and then oh i don't know who God or whatever miracles intervene it's a failure something goes terribly wrong and then even Chomsky is a nice example here you must know this i read somewhere that the way he developed his grammar transformative isn't it that first he was a more he was very young traditional linguist and then he played with these three structure three trees drawings of deep structure as a game to pass time with his colleague. It was actually after he read Cantor and was actually exposed to the mathematics of the infinite that he- I didn't know this you mean Cantor multiple infinities. Yeah the idea that semantic novelty emerges through these branching tree structures but nonetheless it never reaches a point where you can talk about all possible sentences that was really exposed in that in romantic poetry apparently. but really did he really refer to Cantor. yeah actually refers to it all the time in some of his texts early texts. now to conclude really i'm just very sad about that conflict with Chomsky because i don't know what is behind because you know at a certain level i can understand him dismissing me but if you read his attack on me admit it there is if i may use lacanian terms some surplus enjoyment in in the fury and i'm i'm at somebody remarked this that in spite of all these wild conflicts we end up signing the same stupid inefficient political protest so I'm sorry so again we lost the day but what is life you know what is the best definition of life I told it to you no absolutely correct one I'm sorry if I repeat myself there is a Polish proverb wonderful graffiti well known think about it it's totally true life is a disease which always ends in death and which is transmitted by sex totally true only correct definition of life you know. so okay i talked too much i know tomorrow so okay we just postpone it tomorrow is China and through Heidegger first part of philosophy then get ready took some laxatives whatever for for thursday thursday we do the big thing philosophy why just to annoy her again because i hope she will
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come now she told me maybe she will maybe she
come now she told me maybe she will maybe she
Slavoj Žižek
will not she is not here jacqueline rose no okay because i will replace jackie no okay thank you very much sorry.
will not she is not here jacqueline rose no okay because i will replace jackie no okay thank you very much sorry.