Was Antigone a Man? Masculinity and other toxic entities
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2019-04-29 · 1:59:57 · 15,994 words
ideologypsychoanalysishegel-dialecticsecology-climatesexuality-gendertechnology-ai-cyberspacecinema-art-culturecapitalismdemocracyphilosophy-generalsubjectivityconsciousness-mind
This talk, delivered at what appears to be a summer school or lecture series in London, ranges across ecology, digital surveillance, ideology, sexuality, and psychoanalysis. Žižek opens with reflections on his debate with Jordan Peterson and proceeds to develop arguments about the ideological function of 'toxic masculinity' as a medical category, using Antigone as counter-example. The bulk of the lecture concerns ideology today (via Handmaid's Tale, expert discourse, and Trump-as-fetish), ecological catastrophe, Neuralink and digital control read through Hegel, and a sustained engagement with late Lacan's 'identification with the sinthome' versus Žižek's preferred immanent self-sabotage of the symbolic.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 20
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “fetishism (je sais bien mais quand même)”
The structure 'I know very well but nonetheless': Žižek uses this to describe liberal ecological inaction, we know the facts of catastrophe but act as though they do not fully apply.
as “transfunctionalization”
The process by which biologically determined features are not simply overridden by symbolic order but retained while being redirected into serving a totally different symbolic logic (e.g. human sexuality versus animal mating).
Ray Kurzweil's concept of the technological moment when collective brain immersion produces a secular self-actualization of God; Žižek treats it as a naïve materialist-theological resolution of the most speculative Hegelian problem.
as “the fall (Hegelian)”
Hegel's reading of the Fall not as a catastrophe to be undone but as already its own overcoming: the speculative insight is that human spirit (evil as abstraction-distance) is simultaneously the good of spirit, so paradise pre-Fall was mere animality.
Implied in the Ninotchka/coffee joke discussion: the object of desire is always constituted by its virtual-negative dimension, not by positive content, which digital machines cannot replicate.
as “absential”
Terence Deacon's term for an absence that positively determines the identity of what is present, Žižek endorses and links it to Hegel's logic of ideality immanent in matter.
Even if individual mental content is absorbed into a Neuralink collective mind, the pure formal 'I', the Lacanian subject as empty place, virtual negativity, would persist as what digital control cannot capture.
as “big Other”
Žižek invokes Miller's late-Lacanian position that sustaining desire requires 'making use of' the big Other as a fictional support, which Žižek regards as a cynical capitulation.
as “Trump as fetish”
Trump functions as the last object the liberal-left perceives before it would have to confront class struggle, an obsessive screen that permits comfortable anti-fascist opposition without asking structural questions.
Fredric Jameson's formula, invoked by Žižek to characterize The Handmaid's Tale: the dystopia is constructed to make the reader feel good about the existing liberal-permissive society rather than question it.
Žižek treats the APA category of toxic masculinity as an ideological-medical gesture that pathologizes radical subjective commitment and disqualifies exemplary figures (Antigone, Greta Thunberg) as deviant rather than heroic.
The Orthodox-derived humanist deviation attributed to Gorky: men through collective work can elevate themselves to divinity; Lenin pathologized it medically rather than critiquing it ideologically.
Earlier Lacanian formula for the end of analysis, passing through and dissolving the fantasy screen to confront the real, which Žižek contrasts unfavorably with identification with the sinthome, though both remain problematic for him.
as “identification with the sinthome”
Late Lacan's formula for the end of analysis: rather than traversing the fantasy to reach the pure real, one accepts the irreducible knot of fictional-real entanglement; Žižek finds this conclusion cynically resigned.
as “the real as deadlock of symbolization”
Žižek's preferred reading of Lacan's 'le réel est un impasse de la symbolisation': the real is not an external chaos resisting symbolization but the immanent self-sabotage of the symbolic order itself.
Balibar's concept that not only production but the very formation and education of the workforce has become a field of capital investment, redoubling subsumption; Žižek endorses the diagnosis but rejects Balibar's Lacanian use of 'non-all.'
The ideology of managerial capitalism: play the market game with full cynical awareness that it is 'just appearances,' which is precisely the most efficient way to participate in capitalism without guilt.
Žižek's polemical target for his next lecture: the Badiousian move of 'outsourcing' revolutionary subjectivity to immigrants, projecting onto them the role of the proletarian subject the Western left cannot find at home.
Žižek's ironic label for the left strategy of seeking local cultural or subcultural pockets of resistance to global capitalism rather than looking for immanent antagonisms within the system itself.
as “extimité (extimacy)”
Invoked in audience discussion of the proletarian position: intimate to the inside yet exterior, topologically twisted so that the outside is produced from within.
Stories he reaches for 5
In the joke, a café has run out of cream, so coffee 'without cream' is unavailable; the waiter offers coffee 'without milk' instead. The same black coffee, but a different virtual negation. Žižek uses this to argue that the Lacanian unconscious has a purely virtual-negative status that digital machines cannot replicate.
“coffee without milk it's not the same as coffee without cream. The unconscious is not some deep substance… the unconscious is this negative virtual dimension.”
Aquinas argues the blessed in heaven can see the suffering of the damned in hell; Žižek says this is exactly how TV news functions, boredom in the developed world relieved by watching catastrophe elsewhere.
“Those in heaven will also be able to see the suffering of the poor in hell… are you bored in our so-called developed societies you take a look at the news oh my God Yemen Somalia.”
Most canonical French dishes (rotten cheese, champagne from failed fermentation) originated as accidents or failures that were transformed into refinements, illustrating Žižek's dialectical point about human spirit transfunctionalizing biological drives.
“They were making cheese they got lazy cheese got rotten and they say oh my God let's sell this around. They were making wine something went wrong with fermentation oh we get champagne.”
Beckett's Unnamable models a Cartesian Cogito prior to any grounding in the big Other, a pure hallucinatory voice, which Žižek uses to predict what collective Neuralink consciousness might feel like from within.
“Beckett's dream was what we imagine a Cogito prior to finding reference or firm foundation in the big other. Cogito which remains in this pure hallucination.”
When Gorky wrote to Lenin about god-building, Lenin's reply was not an ideological critique but purely medical concern, 'you must be ill, go see German nerve specialists.' Žižek uses this to illustrate objectivizing medicalization as an ideological form.
“Lenin's answer I quote Dear Alexey Maximovich Gorky what are you doing then really it's terrible why are you doing this? It's painful take care of yourself more seriously.”
Works invoked 12
Antigone play
Central text: Žižek reads Antigone as an example of radical subjective commitment (what APA calls toxic masculinity) and Creon as the actual tragic hero; Ismene as the celebrated 'feminine' conformist ideal.
The Handmaid's Tale book
Žižek argues it is ideology at its most dangerous: produces nostalgia for the present liberal order and never raises the structural question of how fundamentalism could arise within a 'perfect' society.
Lukács' work cited as the first version of 'Hegel was right but too early', the proletariat is the subject-object of history that achieves Hegel's reconciliation.
Oedipus at Colonus play
Žižek's 'hero': Oedipus refuses guilt, manipulates everyone, stages his death strategically, a pure figure of desire who never compromises, in contrast to the conventional reading of him as a wise elder.
Summa Theologica book
Aquinas's argument that the blessed can watch the damned is used as an ideological precursor to TV news functioning as comfort for the developed-world viewer.
The Unnamable book
Beckett's novel, recently read by Žižek; he finds Beckett's Cogito-without-big-Other (Mahood/Worm) a model for what Neuralink collective consciousness might feel like from inside.
Žižek's own book, mentioned as forthcoming in September (the talk appears to be from early 2019).
Crisis and Critique journal
Digital Marxist journal edited by Agon Hamza and Frank Ruda; Žižek notes it gets tens of thousands of downloads and calls it 'a triumph.'
Girl film
Belgian film by Lukas Dhont about a transgender ballet student; Žižek uses it to argue against playful gender identity, the suffering is real and irreducible even in a maximally supportive environment.
Schiller's poem; Žižek calls it the 'most disgusting proto-fascist song' but uses it to illustrate that even ideological clichés locate a genuine tension within gendered identity.
Incomplete Nature book
Terence Deacon's book on absentials and ideality in matter; Žižek finds it a genuine pleasure to read and an idealist-materialist advance, though suspects Deacon is too Gestalt-formalist.
Adrian Johnston's text in Crisis and Critique; Žižek recommends it enthusiastically and is 'furious' at Johnston for making a link he himself had missed.
People invoked 35
Agon Hamza positive
Co-editor (with Frank Ruda) of Crisis and Critique journal, which published Adrian Johnston's Lacan text Žižek recommends.
Jean-Pierre Dupuy positive
Theorist of catastrophes whose insight Žižek invokes: accepting fate/catastrophe as certain is sometimes the only strategic way to prevent it.
Alenka Zupančič positive
Close collaborator; independently arrived at the same argument that Antigone exemplifies 'toxic masculinity'; her further point about Eichmann as the true 'feminine' figure Žižek endorses enthusiastically.
Todd McGowan positive
Friend mentioned in the context of the rap-lyrics/N-word paradox at a Vermont public event.
The occasion for Lenin's medical-ideological letter; his god-building deviation serves as historical illustration of how ideology gets medicalized.
Vladimir Lenin positive
The medical letter to Gorky is cited as 'brutal objectivizing Leninism', a pre-Stalinist form of ideological control that Žižek treats as a warning, not a model.
Georg Lukács positive
History and Class Consciousness cited as the first 'Hegel was right but too early' reading, reconciliation will come in communist revolution.
Jacques Lacan positive
Central theoretical reference throughout; Žižek endorses the formula 'the real is a deadlock of symbolization' against Miller's reading, criticizes the late Lacan's 'identification with the sinthome' as a cynical capitulation, and reads Antigone through the Ethics seminar.
Margaret Atwood negative
Part of the liberal establishment; The Handmaid's Tale functions ideologically to produce nostalgia for the present and never asks structural questions about how fundamentalism arose.
Francis Fukuyama negative
Second version of 'Hegel was right but too early', the end of history comes with liberal democracy, not communism.
Frank Ruda positive
Co-editor of Crisis and Critique with Agon Hamza.
Judith Butler negative
Implicitly targeted in the critique of 'playful LGBT identity', the view that gender is freely chosen and performatively shuffled, which Žižek opposes with the Lacanian account of the unconscious decision experienced as fate.
The Bell (Das Lied von der Glocke) cited as a 'most disgusting proto-fascist song' that nonetheless correctly locates a tension within gendered identity.
Žižek grudgingly 'admires' Trump's strategy of not breaking laws directly but violating their implicit customary texture; primarily uses Trump as the example of the liberal fetish screening class struggle.
Adolf Eichmann positive
Zupančič's example: Eichmann as the perfect case of 'feminine' ethics (following orders, not questioning ultimate justification), exposing the ideological danger of celebrating Ismene-style conformism.
Étienne Balibar negative
Žižek endorses Balibar's concept of absolute total subsumption under capital but argues he makes a 'fatal mistake' by using Lacan's non-all to posit external sites of resistance rather than immanent antagonism.
Raymond Kurzweil negative
Proponent of singularity; Žižek treats his vision of collective brain immersion as 'the last stupid version' of Hegelian reconciliation, after Lukács (proletarian revolution) and Fukuyama (liberal democracy).
Justin Trudeau negative
Dismissed as global capitalism with a 'slightly more human face', makes big symbolic gestures but approves fracking and nature destruction without hesitation.
Alain Badiou negative
Žižek deeply respects Badiou but rejects his version of the immigrant as the new proletarian revolutionary subject as 'outsourcing of revolution', West European Marxist arrogance finding a substitute subject.
Jacqueline Rose positive
Proposed the formula that Lacan's 'university discourse' is the new totalitarian-scientific expert discourse, which Žižek endorses as the predominant ideology after 1990.
Elon Musk negative
Proponent of Neuralink; Žižek cites his 'wouldn't it be wonderful to share sexual experiences with your friends via brain interface' as an example of banal propaganda for a profound philosophical problem.
Jean-Claude Milner positive
Previously criticized for being brought to the venue; now has a surprisingly pro-immigrant text that Žižek recommends as a good materialist analysis.
Fredric Jameson positive
Žižek invokes Jameson's formula 'nostalgia for the present' to diagnose The Handmaid's Tale's ideological function.
Julian Assange positive
Žižek supports Assange and considers it his duty to visit him in London; Assange's transfer to Belmarsh is the 'British Guantanamo.'
Adrian Johnston positive
American Lacanian-Hegelian who has written three books criticizing Žižek; Žižek recommends his text 'Lacan's End Game' in Crisis and Critique; furious at Johnston for making a link (Lacan's cynicism / transgressive model) that Žižek had missed.
Samuel Beckett positive
The Unnamable read as a Cartesian Cogito prior to the big Other; Žižek uses Mahood and Worm as figures for what collective brain-immersion might feel like.
Jacques-Alain Miller negative
Žižek opposes Miller's late Lacanian conclusion that we should 'make use of' symbolic fictions with cynical awareness; recalls a friendly debate in Los Angeles where Miller cited Rorty; finds his political consequence (parliamentary reformism with ironic distance) catastrophic.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez positive
Žižek approvingly mentions the Green New Deal proposal and defends it against economists who called it economically catastrophic.
Greta Thunberg positive
Žižek admires her; treats her autism as philosophically positive, it prevents the 'je sais bien mais quand même' fetishist structure; is shocked by the attacks on her including from Angela Merkel.
Angela Merkel negative
Disappointed Žižek by insinuating that Greta Thunberg might be autistic/crazy and possibly a Putin front, classic paranoid liberal dismissal.
Jordan Peterson negative
Žižek debated Peterson; finds his lobster-hierarchy argument simplistic and his failure to engage seriously with Marxism a strategic error, while acknowledging Peterson was confused and unprepared and that they 'talked beside each other.'
Terrence Deacon positive
Author of Incomplete Nature; Žižek credits Johnston for directing him to Deacon's concept of 'absentials'; values his idealist-materialist project but suspects he is too formalist/Gestalt-psychological.
Augustine of Hippo positive
Cited on the sexuality of Adam and Eve before the Fall: sex was like work (raising a shovel), lacking the paradox of human involuntary-spontaneous sexuality.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Central throughout: Žižek reads the Fall, tragedy, and the real through Hegel; references the Philosophy of Religion on Christianity and the speculative insight; writing a book on Hegel for the 2020 Hegel-year.
Thomas Aquinas positive
His Summa Theologica argument that the blessed can watch the damned in hell is used to illustrate how TV news functions as ideology, the 'heavenly' viewer is comforted by suffering elsewhere.
What it argues
toxic masculinity as ideological-medical categoryAntigone as figure of radical act versus conformist femininityecological catastrophe and the limits of fetishismNeuralink / Mind-Machine Interface and Hegelian singularitylate Lacan's resignation and identification with the sinthomeTrump as fetish of the liberal leftthe real as immanent deadlock of symbolization
Dialectical moves 10
“The fall is already its own overcoming — the speculative insight is not that we can overcome the fall, but that the fall itself, taken seriously, is already its own overcoming.”
Hegel's reading of the Fall dissolves the opposition between fall and redemption: spirit (evil as abstraction) is simultaneously the good, so there is nothing to overcome from outside.
“If God is dead, then nothing is permitted.”
Žižek inverts the Dostoevskian formula: without the big Other as a fiction to transgress, desire collapses, the death of God is more catastrophic for desire than its existence.
“Your ironic distance toward the game is the ultimate illusion — it is precisely the most efficient way to play the game.”
The cynical stance of 'I know it's just a game' does not exempt one from the game; it is the ideological form that enables the most frictionless participation in capitalism.
“Far from being a site of pure transgressive desire, Antigone is — by the APA's own definition — a case of toxic masculinity.”
The inversion exposes the ideological content of the medical category: it disqualifies heroic subjective commitment by reframing it as pathology.
“Adolf Eichmann was a woman (in the reactionary psychologist's sense) — he followed the law scrupulously without asking ultimate justification.”
Alenka Zupančič's reversal shows that the 'feminine' ethical stance of following rules without questioning them describes Eichmann perfectly, exposing the ideological danger of celebrating Ismene over Antigone.
“Trump's electoral victory is the proof of class struggle — the very thing Jordan Peterson says has disappeared.”
The workers who voted for Trump demonstrate that class antagonism remains operative even when the left has abandoned the concept.
“Trump is the last thing the left-liberal sees before they see class struggle — Trump is their fetish.”
Applying Freud's fetish logic: the liberal's obsession with Trump is a screen that arrests the gaze just before it would have to confront structural economic critique.
“Precisely by accepting catastrophe as fate, we create the only possibility of preventing it.”
Following Dupuy: only by treating ecological collapse as already decided (not as a matter of 'choice') can we think radically enough to actually prevent it.
“The real is a deadlock of symbolization — not an external chaos outside the symbolic, but the symbolic's own immanent self-sabotage.”
Žižek's key correction of Lacan: the real is not a substantial beyond but the necessary failure internal to any symbolization.
“We all have to go through the Oedipal complex — except Oedipus.”
Lacan's paradox: Oedipus himself is not the tragic figure of unconscious desire acknowledged as fate but the one who to the end refuses guilt and remains pure being of desire.
Claims 19
rejects
The APA category of 'toxic masculinity' is an ideological gesture that medicalizes a political category of patriarchy and serves pharmaceutical interests while pathologizing genuine radical commitment.toxic masculinity as medical/psychological category
asserts
Antigone exemplifies what the APA calls toxic masculinity — she is courageous, refuses dialogue, and acts uncompromisingly — demonstrating that the category disqualifies precisely the heroic stance.Antigone and the concept of toxic masculinity
asserts
The celebration of 'feminine' qualities (dialogue, holism, cooperation) in contemporary culture is an ideological promotion of Ismene-like conformism, not genuine femininity.feminist ideology and social normativity
asserts
The Handmaid's Tale is ideology at its most dangerous: it uses dystopian horror to produce nostalgia for the present liberal society and never asks how fundamentalists came to power within it.The Handmaid's Tale as ideology
asserts
Ideology is most efficient when it presents itself as non-ideology horrified at another ideology.ideology and self-concealment
asserts
Trump is the left-liberal's fetish: the last thing they see before class struggle, allowing comfortable anti-fascist opposition without structural economic critique.Trump, liberalism, and class struggle
asserts
The ecological, digital-control, and economic crises cannot be solved by leaving them to private companies combined with state power; some form of communist global coordination is the only adequate response.ecology, capitalism, and communist politics
asserts
Greta Thunberg's autism is a positive — it is precisely because she is autistic that she refuses the 'je sais bien mais quand même' fetishist structure around climate change.Greta Thunberg and ecological fetishism
asserts
Non-productive wartime spending (WWII, Reagan's arms race) shows that a Green New Deal style spending surge on ecology would work economically, contra mainstream economists.Green New Deal and Keynesian/military precedent
asserts
The real is not an external chaotic substance resisting symbolization; it is the immanent self-sabotage and deadlock of the symbolic order itself.Lacanian real and symbolization
rejects
Late Lacan's 'make use of fictions' / identification with the sinthome is a cynical deadlock that mirrors Western Buddhism and has the same political consequence as parliamentary reformism.late Lacan's identification with the sinthome
asserts
Even under Neuralink collective intelligence, the pure formal subject of the unconscious would persist as a virtual-negative dimension inaccessible to digital machines.Neuralink, digital control, and the Lacanian subject
asserts
Fichte's vision of the total surveillance police state has been vindicated by digital media and AI — today his model works without needing masses of human controllers.Fichte, digital surveillance, and the total state
reframes
Sexual identity is not biologically predetermined but is also not a playful free choice; it is an unconscious free decision experienced with the force of fate.transgender identity and Butlerian gender performativity
asserts
Lenin's purely medical response to Gorky's god-building is not yet Stalinism but an objectivizing brutalism that the Chinese government replicates today in treating Uyghur 'extremism' as a medical illness.medical-ideological objectivization from Lenin to China
reframes
Oedipus at Colonus is not a figure of tragic wisdom but of uncompromising desire — to the end he refuses guilt, manipulates strategically, and never reconciles with fate.Oedipus at Colonus and the tragic hero
asserts
Creon, not Antigone, is the true tragic hero of the Antigone play, because Creon undergoes the genuine tragic recognition (anagnorisis) — he acts, then recognizes catastrophic error.tragedy, Creon, and Antigone
reframes
The solution to the refugee crisis is not walls nor open borders but changing international relations so that Western policies stop producing refugees in the first place.refugees, migration, and global politics
rejects
Balibar's reading of absolute subsumption under capital makes a fatal mistake by using Lacan's 'non-all' to locate sites of external resistance; the productive move is to find the immanent antagonistic deadlock inside total subsumption.Balibar on subsumption and Lacanian non-all
Quotes 15
“Ideology is most efficient when it presents itself as non-ideology horrified at another ideology.”Slavoj Žižek · self-concealing ideology
“Trump is the last thing left-liberal sees before he sees class struggle.”Slavoj Žižek · Trump as fetish of the liberal left
“If God is dead then nothing is permitted.”Slavoj Žižek · inversion of Dostoevsky on desire and the big Other
“The real is a deadlock of symbolization — not an external chaos resisting the symbolic, but the symbolic's own immanent self-sabotage.”Slavoj Žižek · Lacanian real as immanent failure of symbolization
“Le réel est un impasse de la symbolisation — the real is a deadlock of symbolization.”Slavoj Žižek · Lacan on the real (Žižek's preferred reading)
“Your ironic distance toward the game is the ultimate illusion — it is precisely the way you play the game in the most efficient way.”Slavoj Žižek · cynical distance as ideological complicity
“We all have to go through Oedipal complex except Oedipus.”Slavoj Žižek · Oedipus as exception to his own complex
“She Greta knows very well that we everyday ecologists we know very well science is telling us… she is pure anti-fetishist.”Slavoj Žižek · Greta Thunberg as anti-fetishist subject
“Oedipus at Colonus is precisely the one who doesn't compromise his desire.”Slavoj Žižek · Oedipus at Colonus as being of desire
“Chorus is the site of stupidities of common wisdom.”Slavoj Žižek · the chorus in Greek tragedy as ideological common sense
“I remain a communist and I got from nobody a good answer to this one — if you take just ecology, digital control, economy, one thing is clear the worst thing to do is to leave it to private companies combined with state power.”Slavoj Žižek · communist necessity given triple crisis
“There are moments when my God you have to act like Antigone — she is simply a courageous person.”Slavoj Žižek · Antigone as model of radical commitment
“Charismatic big managers are today's Buddhists — you play the game but when you can cause the catastrophe for thousands it's just a fiction don't take it too seriously.”Slavoj Žižek · Western Buddhism as managerial ideology
“If you if some God would recreate Congo by taking away from Congo all the mineral wealth for the people of Congo it would have been much better.”Slavoj Žižek · resource curse and Western extraction
“Hegel's speculative insight is not we can overcome fall but we can just see how fall in itself if you take it seriously is already its own overcoming.”Slavoj Žižek · Hegel on the fall as its own overcoming
Transcript 56 turns
Slavoj Žižek
Oh, do you want to because it’s beneath my dignity. I’m used to participating in big debates of the century, so at least I want two people to introduce me. You know, one at the, if it’s only one it’s beneath my dignity. And I must say this will be a cynical attack on me. I must say that, that of course if I get a monthly salary, yes I’m generous enough to come here two, three times a year. No, my God how generous I am. Here I almost after in a private talk I agreed with Jordan Peterson who said why not I’m not ashamed to get money and we know where we where we understood each other. I hope you I wonder if you would agree. When somebody says but you care about money, this is not money, well usually middle classes who feel guilty say this. All the real working-class people that I know have, oh you get a chance for get some money grab it do it enjoy it you know. This is typical middle class feeling guilty you know like you must suffer and so on. I talk too much. Do you
Oh, do you want to because it’s beneath my dignity. I’m used to participating in big debates of the century, so at least I want two people to introduce me. You know, one at the, if it’s only one it’s beneath my dignity. And I must say this will be a cynical attack on me. I must say that, that of course if I get a monthly salary, yes I’m generous enough to come here two, three times a year. No, my God how generous I am. Here I almost after in a private talk I agreed with Jordan Peterson who said why not I’m not ashamed to get money and we know where we where we understood each other. I hope you I wonder if you would agree. When somebody says but you care about money, this is not money, well usually middle classes who feel guilty say this. All the real working-class people that I know have, oh you get a chance for get some money grab it do it enjoy it you know. This is typical middle class feeling guilty you know like you must suffer and so on. I talk too much. Do you
unknown
want to
want to
Slavoj Žižek
introduce him? No you don’t have to but. No uh yeah I am I’m happy to. You are all too happy. She was happy you are happy. Actually
introduce him? No you don’t have to but. No uh yeah I am I’m happy to. You are all too happy. She was happy you are happy. Actually
unknown
that thing you just said about generosity is part of what I was going to say in terms of what came through with your debate with Peterson. I know you don’t want us to talk about. Oh my God you are again. No, no. But the point is that you did inflict Peterson on us so we are allowed to, you know having had to watch him because we were going to watch you anyway now we can make some comments about how you came through.
that thing you just said about generosity is part of what I was going to say in terms of what came through with your debate with Peterson. I know you don’t want us to talk about. Oh my God you are again. No, no. But the point is that you did inflict Peterson on us so we are allowed to, you know having had to watch him because we were going to watch you anyway now we can make some comments about how you came through.
Slavoj Žižek
But I didn't. Sorry to interrupt you, didn’t you get the joke? I made my half-hour speech totally without reference to him, totally unprepared because I get from some spies the news that he will focus this was his big mistake. He could have been much better. I even told him afterwards jokingly you don’t you know because the myth is he has some mysterious advisors who read everything for him where were these ingenious advisors? I told him if we were to spare also your honorarium he could have asked me and you know I could have given him all my past sins where I defend Trotsky, terror and so on I mean sorry please.
But I didn't. Sorry to interrupt you, didn’t you get the joke? I made my half-hour speech totally without reference to him, totally unprepared because I get from some spies the news that he will focus this was his big mistake. He could have been much better. I even told him afterwards jokingly you don’t you know because the myth is he has some mysterious advisors who read everything for him where were these ingenious advisors? I told him if we were to spare also your honorarium he could have asked me and you know I could have given him all my past sins where I defend Trotsky, terror and so on I mean sorry please.
unknown
No, I mean I thought what came through in the in the debate was how incredibly generous you are despite the fact that you spent like decades telling us you are a monster and that the only good neighbor is a dead neighbor and love my neighbor no thanks but when it came to debating Peterson you performed this distinction you make between manners and political correctness and you were spontaneously really well-mannered.
No, I mean I thought what came through in the in the debate was how incredibly generous you are despite the fact that you spent like decades telling us you are a monster and that the only good neighbor is a dead neighbor and love my neighbor no thanks but when it came to debating Peterson you performed this distinction you make between manners and political correctness and you were spontaneously really well-mannered.
Slavoj Žižek
Yeah but didn’t you notice sorry again to interrupt that’s how I confused him. He afterwards told me that after the introductory half hour by me and he confirmed this to me his hands were shaking because he expected me a hard-line Marxist or whatever and he was totally at a loss and so on you know because again my point was not to fight him just this although I did in my half hour go through all the points. My point was to give this basic message you know you can be reasonable tolerant but you can still be for communism a radical leftist and so on and so on and that was I think the way to do it there.
Yeah but didn’t you notice sorry again to interrupt that’s how I confused him. He afterwards told me that after the introductory half hour by me and he confirmed this to me his hands were shaking because he expected me a hard-line Marxist or whatever and he was totally at a loss and so on you know because again my point was not to fight him just this although I did in my half hour go through all the points. My point was to give this basic message you know you can be reasonable tolerant but you can still be for communism a radical leftist and so on and so on and that was I think the way to do it there.
unknown
No in fact when I was watching it I was thinking.
No in fact when I was watching it I was thinking.
Slavoj Žižek
I didn’t watch I cannot stand my face I didn’t watch it. You did plan
I didn’t watch I cannot stand my face I didn’t watch it. You did plan
unknown
you did plan it really well I realized actually that in you know in the
you did plan it really well I realized actually that in you know in the
unknown
interview you gave to RT for your 70th birthday one of the many
interview you gave to RT for your 70th birthday one of the many
Slavoj Žižek
other big events that happened since we last saw him. He’s
other big events that happened since we last saw him. He’s
unknown
doesn’t look a day older obviously but that’s basically you said that you would address the audience like Kennedy did in the Nixon debate and I thought it was so shrewd I mean you were generous but also very shrewd almost like I was thinking about Themistocles when he in the Peloponnesian War when he he made sure Xerxes came and fought the Greek the outnumbered Greek ships in the narrow straits of Salamis even though they the Persians were outnumbered I mean what Themistocles did he sent his his slave the day before to Xerxes and say I’m on your side Themistocles is actually a traitor so what you need to do is go and attack the Greeks whilst they’re still in Salamis otherwise they’ll run away and Xerxes thought oh great yeah that’s what I’m going to do.
doesn’t look a day older obviously but that’s basically you said that you would address the audience like Kennedy did in the Nixon debate and I thought it was so shrewd I mean you were generous but also very shrewd almost like I was thinking about Themistocles when he in the Peloponnesian War when he he made sure Xerxes came and fought the Greek the outnumbered Greek ships in the narrow straits of Salamis even though they the Persians were outnumbered I mean what Themistocles did he sent his his slave the day before to Xerxes and say I’m on your side Themistocles is actually a traitor so what you need to do is go and attack the Greeks whilst they’re still in Salamis otherwise they’ll run away and Xerxes thought oh great yeah that’s what I’m going to do.
Slavoj Žižek
This was the Peloponnesian War. Yes and Themistocles was didn’t he change sides later? At that point he was still Athenian. He
This was the Peloponnesian War. Yes and Themistocles was didn’t he change sides later? At that point he was still Athenian. He
unknown
would. It’s a lesson for all of us we’ll have to keep watching you but at that point it was a a real ruse that Xerxes fell and I think that’s what you did with Peterson you brought him into the into your pattern into your schemata and then and he didn’t know what to do with that and one of the stupidest things I think he said was that you are a mystery to him I mean like someone you know like someone who’s completely transparent.
would. It’s a lesson for all of us we’ll have to keep watching you but at that point it was a a real ruse that Xerxes fell and I think that’s what you did with Peterson you brought him into the into your pattern into your schemata and then and he didn’t know what to do with that and one of the stupidest things I think he said was that you are a mystery to him I mean like someone you know like someone who’s completely transparent.
Slavoj Žižek
Well to be sarcastic I should have snapped back but you are unfortunately no mystery for me you know but I wanted to be polite you know. Yeah
Well to be sarcastic I should have snapped back but you are unfortunately no mystery for me you know but I wanted to be polite you know. Yeah
unknown
the only question he had by his own admission is like why don’t you why don’t you make more money you could be if you dropped the Marxism
the only question he had by his own admission is like why don’t you why don’t you make more money you could be if you dropped the Marxism
Slavoj Žižek
you could be. That’s sincere but you know sorry no just to say I really gave money but it’s not really charity I hate charities. Charities are how the ultra-rich people justify their wealth you know. It was I already mentioned this here and I checked it up because a day before Toronto I was in Winnipeg which is country with many Native Americans and how are they called Inuit no Eskimo so that I don’t make a mistake and I already told you here I think the numbers it’s a nightmare. A large percentage more than half people from Native American and Inuit families children are taken from families claiming that parents are drugged alcoholic and so on and they are put in these how do you call them boarding school houses where now I’m quoting official Canadian government report not some crazy local leftist whatever you know what is the sexual exploitation rate how many of the boys girls there in before even their teens in five, six, eight years percent. Of it’s absolute nightmare so that was the common place of people that I saw there that also many of them are disappointed by Justin Trudeau now claiming that okay he makes this big gestures but to with all the crucial point like fracking destroying nature no problem they are doing it and so on and so on. He is just this absolutely same global capitalism with the with the slightly more human face. Please I interrupted you two times
you could be. That’s sincere but you know sorry no just to say I really gave money but it’s not really charity I hate charities. Charities are how the ultra-rich people justify their wealth you know. It was I already mentioned this here and I checked it up because a day before Toronto I was in Winnipeg which is country with many Native Americans and how are they called Inuit no Eskimo so that I don’t make a mistake and I already told you here I think the numbers it’s a nightmare. A large percentage more than half people from Native American and Inuit families children are taken from families claiming that parents are drugged alcoholic and so on and they are put in these how do you call them boarding school houses where now I’m quoting official Canadian government report not some crazy local leftist whatever you know what is the sexual exploitation rate how many of the boys girls there in before even their teens in five, six, eight years percent. Of it’s absolute nightmare so that was the common place of people that I saw there that also many of them are disappointed by Justin Trudeau now claiming that okay he makes this big gestures but to with all the crucial point like fracking destroying nature no problem they are doing it and so on and so on. He is just this absolutely same global capitalism with the with the slightly more human face. Please I interrupted you two times
unknown
I know I'm not gonna. One last thing I wanted to say that happened since we last saw you obviously the book that he you talked uh what was you talked about Sex and the Failed Absolute and that’s now in the works it’s coming out
I know I'm not gonna. One last thing I wanted to say that happened since we last saw you obviously the book that he you talked uh what was you talked about Sex and the Failed Absolute and that’s now in the works it’s coming out
Slavoj Žižek
in September it is. Yeah but it’s
in September it is. Yeah but it’s
unknown
only in September yeah. And another thing that happened which actually underlines my point about Žižek’s generosity despite the fact
only in September yeah. And another thing that happened which actually underlines my point about Žižek’s generosity despite the fact
Slavoj Žižek
that he
that he
unknown
claims to be a monster another thing that happened since we last saw you was the taking of Assange from Ecuador Embassy to Belmarsh Prison which as you know is like the high-security prison
claims to be a monster another thing that happened since we last saw you was the taking of Assange from Ecuador Embassy to Belmarsh Prison which as you know is like the high-security prison
Slavoj Žižek
there. It’s called British Guantanamo and they
there. It’s called British Guantanamo and they
unknown
liberate the British Guantanamo where people are detained and what I like about Žižek and very few of his friends I mean you know it’s easy to be generous to your friends when they’re doing well or even when they are right and the good the thing about Žižek is that he’s continued to support Assange.
liberate the British Guantanamo where people are detained and what I like about Žižek and very few of his friends I mean you know it’s easy to be generous to your friends when they’re doing well or even when they are right and the good the thing about Žižek is that he’s continued to support Assange.
Slavoj Žižek
Yeah but now I will make I’m not
Yeah but now I will make I’m not
unknown
going to go too
going to go too
Slavoj Žižek
far but that’s the truth. No but now can I interrupt you for the third time all good things come in three to tell you to a small sincere psychological confession. Since when I’m in London it’s my duty but I have to lose half the day at least and go to visit Assange. You know what was my first association when I heard on the news? You don’t
far but that’s the truth. No but now can I interrupt you for the third time all good things come in three to tell you to a small sincere psychological confession. Since when I’m in London it’s my duty but I have to lose half the day at least and go to visit Assange. You know what was my first association when I heard on the news? You don’t
unknown
have to go to Belmarsh Prison
have to go to Belmarsh Prison
Slavoj Žižek
I don’t care how far. No no no my first association was fine now I don’t have to visit him. No I am so evil so don’t have doubts about about my monstrosity.
I don’t care how far. No no no my first association was fine now I don’t have to visit him. No I am so evil so don’t have doubts about about my monstrosity.
unknown
Well that’s sincerely because they precisely put him in the far-away prison where we can’t go and protest like we
Well that’s sincerely because they precisely put him in the far-away prison where we can’t go and protest like we
Slavoj Žižek
did when he was in. Okay so yeah like Žižek himself
did when he was in. Okay so yeah like Žižek himself
unknown
said really the debate on Peterson he did Žižekism came out I don’t you know that as he heartlessly called it so
said really the debate on Peterson he did Žižekism came out I don’t you know that as he heartlessly called it so
Slavoj Žižek
uh who knows more Žižekisms today. No no well actually I have a
uh who knows more Žižekisms today. No no well actually I have a
unknown
question even before you start because you finished the Peterson debate by saying how pessimistic you are about the and you say that a lot not just in the Peterson debate about how you know if you see a light at the end of the tunnel it’s actually
question even before you start because you finished the Peterson debate by saying how pessimistic you are about the and you say that a lot not just in the Peterson debate about how you know if you see a light at the end of the tunnel it’s actually
Slavoj Žižek
another. I repeated my old joke
another. I repeated my old joke
unknown
you did you always do but that’s fine. But the question is you know now looking at the abstract you’ve given for the next two talks is that like despite the fact that the future is already foreclosed despite the fact that already we are in deep catastrophe that we shouldn’t lose nerve so I can’t really reconcile how how we might maintain our optimism maintain our nerve if there’s no light at the end of the tunnel but other than that.
you did you always do but that’s fine. But the question is you know now looking at the abstract you’ve given for the next two talks is that like despite the fact that the future is already foreclosed despite the fact that already we are in deep catastrophe that we shouldn’t lose nerve so I can’t really reconcile how how we might maintain our optimism maintain our nerve if there’s no light at the end of the tunnel but other than that.
Slavoj Žižek
No no no I will I have I don’t want to repeat myself but I have even a theoretical foundation which I think I already did you notice incidentally that my classes here are very ecological recycling you know I recycle old jokes here and I already developed a couple this wonderful theory of that theories of catastrophes Jean-Pierre Dupuy I often mentioned him. How when we are in a situation like today we shouldn’t simply say we have a choice and so on. We should say no there is fate if things go on the way they go it is apocalyptic we are approaching a catastrophe but the nice lesson from predestination in religion and so on to other tendencies is that precisely by accepting this as a fate that we are lost it’s sometimes strategically the only way to prevent it because you must just think a little bit more radically. It is we don’t only have ecological apocalypse we have also obviously and digital apocalypse. I mean what I learned now the more I learned the more I’m a pessimist there. How we are already incredibly totally controlled you know in what sense. Now I am writing a new book on Neuralink digital control where I will begin with this polemics between Fichte and Hegel where Fichte has had this vision of total police state everybody is controlled and so on and Hegel goes against this in a rather cheap way that haha then half the people job would have been just to control others and so on and so on. But today with with the new supercomputers and digital media Fichte won in a sense. You don’t need so many people and the computers which control us are getting so intelligent even if you are in a country like China you can each citizen already has an individual file and it works. I read in news a month or two ago that you know that patriotic standing that you get in China each citizen gets a a couple of points like if you give something to charity or whatever you get some point if you if you are involved in any if you are condemned or dissident activities you lose points. This already works in million people were prohibited to buy plane and fast train tickets because their points were the points were too low and so on. It can be done and again don’t fall into this trap of just criticizing China it’s all too comfortable for us to say yeah yeah the Chinese but with us exactly the same things are happening. But let’s not lose time I want nonetheless I hope I will have let me first tell you what it will disorder under heaven. I left for the summer course the last week of June the big theory. I’m now working on a book which is apropos Hegel’s two one quarter of a millennium next year will be years of Hegel’s birth it will be the Hegel year. So some publishers asked me Bloomsbury here Fischer in Germany to do a short popular book it will not turn as popular as I hope on on something on Hegel. And I I’ve chosen something that I think will be popular enough you know this idea not just this society of surveillance everything is registered but this direct MM Mind-Machine Interface or what Elon Musk calls in a popular way Neuralink all the prejudices there are there the dangers what will happen it will be a very serious short book which means for me now I’m in pages we will see what will be in a very systematic way precisely because Hegel didn’t have any idea about it. How what can a Hegelian view tell us about this very simple questions if my mind for example this extremely naive questions like Elon Musk makes this propaganda like wouldn’t it be wonderful you have an intense sexual experience you put in your brain and your friends can share in it. Well I don’t find this so fascinating no but and this will be the only other I wasn’t able to develop it there fully reference to the unfortunate Jordan Peterson debate where when I was dealing with that his famous lobster problem or whatever no my point was that human sexuality is like if you were unfortunate enough to listen to the parts that part was the original one I really liked it when I improvised about French cuisine you know which is very dialectical. Okay French cuisine now it’s losing but when I was young it was the model of haute cuisine of high refined eating but if you look at it closely most of their dishes are failure turned into success. They were making cheese they got lazy cheese got rotten and they say oh my God let’s sell this around. They were making wine something went wrong with fermentation oh we get champagne you know and so on. Practically all French dishes can be explained in this way and typically Jordan Peterson okay he didn’t have time didn’t go into this because that’s my point against his lobster we are biologically predetermined and so on and so on. But there listen it wasn’t a serious debate and I don’t blame him we simply talked beside each other. But what I wanted to make him see is that yes I accept all that stuff how my God of course we are in some sense biologically predetermined you maybe know the percentage better than me but I think that if you take highly developed chimpanzees I don’t know which our DNA is like percent the same. But I think here we must be dialectical the point is of course we are absolutely almost determined but human spirit means that all these features remain operative but they are I’m sorry for this complex word they are transfunctionalized into serving getting caught nonetheless in a totally different symbolic logic. For example and here I drew I don’t know if it worked there the parallel with French cuisine. With all the similarity and yes we are sexually predetermined and so on I mean our sexual life but for example imagine something like courtly love which is from the logic of biological mating and sexual reproduction totally suicidal meaningless. You make the most passionate love affair of an encounter where you basically endlessly postpone the act. Or take the basic feature the basic perversion of human sexuality. You take something which at best if you take sexuality as something biologically determined that serves procreation should have been just you know before we do it bam-bam I like to squeeze you to touch you in this way which should be just a tiny element of foreplay but it can become the focus of life. So that’s that’s where I don’t get it and especially you know what I forget what I forgot to tell him it would have been a nice argument. He claims how nonetheless hierarchies are based on real competencies no. Well he attacks so much academia where he is isolated no. And I wanted to ask him at least he should agree that American and Canadian academia your power there is definitely not based in real competence you know. No it’s simply you know what he doesn’t get competence is socially determined dialectical category. For example to succeed as a banker yes you have to be competent but competent for what? For cheating for this cheap strategic games and so on and so on. I mean okay let’s not lose time there just to tell you the big speculative event will be at the end of June where I really prepared a detailed report it’s not just first what is I will be very elementary not just what is this idea of Neuralink then its simple implications then I will go into all these new age theories actualization of God and so on something extremely perverse is happening now. Not in my sense but in much more literal sense materialist theology they claim that if we scientifically succeed in connecting our brains and we are then all immersed into one collective brain that it’s something like self-actualization of God. You even have they call this singularity Ray Kurzweil you know you even get Hegelian partisans of singularity and it’s a wonderful naivete because you know all big readings of Hegel usually go into or develop the idea that Hegel was basically right just he came too early. First you have the young Lukács History and Class Consciousness whose idea is yes Hegel was right reconciliation of substance subject but he gave the idealized spiritual version because he didn’t see that the reconciliation of historical collective subjectivity proletariat and substance capital will happen only in the Communist revolution. So again Hegel was too early. Then you get Fukuyama basically it’s yes Hegel was right the end of history but he didn’t see it that it’s only with liberal democracy no a little bit too early. Now we get the last stupid version of this singularity Hegel was right the reconciliation of mind and matter because the idea is this one when we get immersed into this collective awareness it’s not only that our mind directly becomes social it’s that it’s no longer our mind it’s in a way the self-awareness of the universe of reality itself. So you know this speculative moment that all great mystics and even German idealists were after that our finite mind precisely set I’m here thinking about reality but we cannot imagine this speculative point where as Hegel put it and many intelligent mystics my awareness of reality or of God is self-awareness of God himself. Only through my self-awareness God fully becomes God and so on. So you but you know why I’m nonetheless fascinated by this cheap New Age speculations about singularity because they do something very shocking in a way they propose a concrete brutal scientific resolution to the most speculative problem. You know when we think about our unity with God or whatever you think about deep immersion spiritual speculation they said no no no let me just wire your brain and you will be godlike we will do it and so on. Then I will go into the problem of fall fall in the religious sense. Because you know what’s the problem with this vision of singularity all serious materialist theologists as I call them like Hegel and so on they knew as I already repeated here a couple of times they knew that Hegel’s solution is not we fall into our finite bodily existence no and then somehow magically through speculation we get out of it. No Hegel’s speculative term is again like French cuisine you know that you discover that the fall itself as Hegel puts it please read it you can download it on the web wonderful passages on Christianity in Hegel’s philosophy of religion where Hegel literally says that the speculative insight is not we can overcome fall but we can just see how fall in itself if you take it seriously is already its own overcoming. Because as Hegel said in wonderful terms the choice when you eat that apple and so on is not fall bad or good. Hegel says fall means that human thinking as such spirit is evil because thinking means abstraction distance and so on. And it’s at the same time good in the sense that it’s spirit and so on. As Hegel puts it literally that’s speculations fall is fall from goodness but before fall you don’t get goodness you know it’s this basic dialectics only through the fall you get what it is a fall from. You don’t you cannot this is why as Hegel puts it literally if you undo the fall in paradise in Hegel’s simplified reading they were animals Adam and Eve before and as we know from intelligent sexology theological ones it’s not that they were pure they sorry permit me my vulgarity as Saint Augustine put it Adam and Eve were fucking like crazy but it wasn’t sex. As Saint Augustine puts it for them sex was like work raising Saint Augustine raising the penis for the man was like when you raise a shovel or whatever when you work on the field it was you know you didn’t have this basic paradox of human sexuality that it’s at the same time ultra-spontaneous but you never control it and so on. Okay then I will go into some other wonderful paradoxes that I discovered if you want an intelligent book I wonder if I mentioned it here on evolutionary thought my compatriot he attacks me all the time but in a friendly way and I often disagree with him Adrian Johnston he drew my attention to a really intelligent Darwinian biologist not I’m an old guy I was still too stigmatized by the earlier generation Stephen Jay Gould and so on. Did you hear about Terence Deacon Incomplete Nature? I’m not saying I all the time agree with him but he’s really sorry for this crazy expression but I would say this idealist materialist in the sense that in materialist terms he tries to account for the rise of ideality itself in nature. He introduces this beautiful dialectical term absentials like absence no something which is not there but determines the identity of what is there. What is here my God this is Hegel you can only understand by a reference through absential. And for example already with living beings it’s clear but already in so-called dead nature take magnetism. If you spill all those little pieces of iron or what they all tend towards a certain form. But this form is nowhere there you cannot grasp the form but it’s an absential in the sense that form this I don’t know usually it’s U-shaped or whatever how it works in magnetism is an immaterial form which can only be deduced from as the point of reference which is never fully achieved but always failed by what effectively exists. And then in wonderful speculations he goes Terence Deacon back to the very beginning how already in quantum physics you find this in this idea of superposition of states and so on that what is is the finding by defined sorry by what is not there up to in a very intelligent way up to the reference of theology how but he means it in a materialist way how some kind of divinity is the absention of large part of human existence. God doesn’t exist if we all as we are now approaching closely to the moment when we will do it if we destroy ourselves of course there will be no God but God is the absential of us humans and so on. It’s really a pleasure to read a book like this you know why because he is very open towards this ideal absential dimension but think about it I wonder if you will agree with this where I try to catch him is that nonetheless he is too much of a Gestalt psychology formalist his model of absential is a form and he gives all these simple examples you know this ah-ah-ah big mystery now intelligent physicist mechanics have an idea how you know I’m ashamed to mention it so simple you know when you have when you have in a desert sands and wind is blowing and although and the same form mountain or what shifts and reproduces itself although the grains the pieces grains of sand are all the time different. But here also you have a certain ideality as it were no. He goes what I like is that he is a complete materialist that’s what we should learn to do I think. I’m losing time just to give you because my conclusion will be then I can give you the key that what will singularity by singularity mean our immersing into a collective brain I’m I finish with some daring no now I will make I hope you will get it fun of myself no I make there some I’m ironically referring to debate of the century I’m making some predictions of the century no the the end of my idea is that usually you have two readings of this our entrance into a shared intelligence and so on either for traditional humanists it will be a total catastrophe in the sense as we lose our singular individuality we become like ants and so on collective we lose it or the same shit but in different packing some higher mystical experience and so on. My more refined thesis I hope so is that of course the that the subject will survive but as this pure absential abstract Lacanian subject in the sense that even let’s say if I participate in a collective mind all my thoughts all the content of my mind I know they are shared but the pure form of me is still there. And another thing I will try to prove using old jokes that you all know but we will go very much in detail using yes those who you of you who know my work will just laugh you know repeating old jokes I think already improvised on this once that this okay I’m afraid sorry sorry Ninotchka joke you know coffee without milk coffee without cream. My thesis will be that for Lacan the unconscious has purely this virtual negative status. Like co you know the joke no coffee without milk it’s not the same as coffee without cream. The unconscious is not some deep substance and so on. The unconscious is this negative virtual dimension. And again I’m not bluffing now if some of you I was all the time asking people this. I think from reading quite some texts on this that computer digital space cannot cover this dimension. They can follow all our content blah whatever you want but I’m asking my friends who pretend at least to know this can a digital machine get the difference because it’s the same shitty coffee between plain coffee coffee without milk and coffee without cream. Can they get hold of this purely virtual negative dimension? So my conclusion will be a pretty Lacanian one that what will still elude this collective mind is precisely pure subject of the unconscious subject and this unconscious virtual dimension. But I made another pessimistic prediction double prediction. First that even with regard to the content you know who this may surprise you because I’m a barbarian but lately I read Beckett Unnamable if you read it you know it’s not just the unnamable which is and I was so glad to discover you know which was Beckett’s model for unnamable. It’s Cartesian Cogito. Beckett’s model was this one and I think this is maybe what will happen if we enter singularity. Beckett says somewhere Descartes has this pure Cogito you don’t know if it’s a vision hallucination dream then fuck him God intervenes you can distinguish truth falsity reality but Beckett’s dream was what we imagine a Cogito prior to finding reference or firm foundation in the big other. Cogito which remains in this pure hallucination. And even at this level I hope I will pronounce the names correctly with Cogito now in Beckett’s the Beckett in The Unnamable has then two incarnations I will pronounce it correctly I don’t know Mahood and Worm. Mahood is this like collective spiritual entity Worm is the other inertia and so on. So I do make I do make some predictions and so on and so on. I hope you will find this amusing but this comes afterwards. So now disorder under heaven. Yes let’s return to this. I will not talk generalities which you all know and so on. I’m afraid because of my illness maybe there will be some a little bit too much of ecology in what I will talk about today in the cynical way of recycling my old thoughts and so on. But I want to systematically develop some things because my basic idea about disorder under heaven and this would be the answer to this you know I I described to you disorder under heaven but then you know Mao gets on the situation is excellent you know. But I think it’s better not to talk too much about how the situation is excellent. But preach despair and you will and you know as you probably know I’m obsessed with learning from the enemies. You know from whom we should learn? How our enemies anti-communists won the Cold War. You are too young but I remember when there was that Helsinki Human Rights agreement and so on all the time the West was saying we are already lost we capitulated to the Soviets and so on and so on. It was a model of this strategy act as if everything is already lost but mobilize and at the end you win. In this sense also I will try to develop how to annoy you a little bit I think the left I think already even mentioned this here that we should learn from Trump. Where I admire Trump I’m repeating myself I know how what he does is something ingenious. He doesn’t directly he also does but his main strategy is not to break the laws directly. But every law regulation always implies a whole texture of implicit conditions customs how do you do it when he brutally cheats there. For example his proclaiming state of emergency. Of course people exploded wait a minute this is meant not if Mexicans or Salvadorans are approaching this is meant for a big catastrophe. He misused it. I would say fine he set a precedent and some right-wingers opposed Trump they got it. They said wait a minute what if we get some left democratic president and he will do something reasonable he will say wait a minute let’s proclaim national emergency for global warming and so on you know. Learn from Trump. Okay now work finally. I will come back to Trump here because I will try precisely to develop in which sense this obsession with Trump is in the strict Freudian sense fetishist that Trump is our fetish. In what sense? Fetish of left-liberals who don’t want to go more to the end into socialism class struggle and so on. Because my idea is this one you know this rather naive although it’s in Freud more complex theory of fetishism that if you find it ridiculous I’m sorry but be just follow the logic. Freud’s idea is that fetish is an object the last thing a boy sees before he discovers that the girl doesn’t have a penis no that’s why fetish when you undress or the girl undresses herself you see feet hair and so on the last thing you see. I think that’s my reading Trump is the last thing left-liberal sees before he sees class struggle. You know you have this obsession fascism yeah yeah yeah just and then you are in this comfortable opposition you know we good liberals against this dangerous threat but you never ask the question which is the question of the class struggle. How comes that how comes that Trump got so many workers’ votes and so on and so on because the left-liberals neglected okay I still call it class struggle and so on no. So when Jordan Peterson was asking me but how stupid is Communist Manifesto where do you see class struggle I didn’t want to press that line my answer would have been sorry but Trump’s electoral victory is the proof of class struggle no of how the right-wingers okay let me now go a little bit into don’t be afraid I will not just be associating around you will get a little bit of theory. I will repeat an old story but I will give to it a different twist which because I was in Toronto the idea came to me in Toronto because it’s Margaret Atwood her Handmaid’s Tale whom I want to criticize now even more. You remember I distinctly remember I was telling I don’t know if the same people were here about Saint Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologica draws this conclusion that those in heaven will also be able to see the suffering of the poor in hell and my idea was that what Aquinas was not ready to confront was the fact that to put it in brutally simplified terms heaven must be rather boring and that you know I imagine this scene you are in heaven but okay you get bored and then from time to time an angel says ah you are bored here let me show you how miserable life is in hell and then say yeah yeah yeah I don’t want to go no. But the serious lesson from this is do not our news average news on TV function exactly in the same way. Are you bored in our so-called developed societies you take a look at the news oh my God Yemen Somalia and so on all the horrors there in hell and it makes you feel good. Now I will go to why only now I discovered because again in Toronto speaking with some friends and ah the last joke on Peterson I was too tired you know what my friends wanted to do there you followed all those lobsters’ debates no my friends discovered there the most famous lobster restaurant in Toronto and the idea was to go there and I was too tired and I hate lobsters but that’s another thing. No so you know Handmaid’s Tale maybe you saw no. It’s not only what I already I know improvised about here that’s my standard criticism that this fascination with this dystopian society religious fundamentalists in power there and so on it comes uncannily close to some kind of fascination you know. I wonder how did you react but first me then I thought I’m a pervert no I discovered all my friends reacted like yes yes it’s horrible how the fate of women in that Republic of Gilead the universe of but secretly you you enjoy it oh my God you just look for all the details how the women are screwed there you know oh they can’t read this that. But it’s not just this I discovered something else now come to the new point that Handmaid’s Tale is the best example of what Fredric Jameson called nostalgia for the present. The basic message of the book is to make you feel good about what nice society we live in. Because all the time the book is written so that you feel nostalgia oh my God what a nice permissive society this is the past for the heroes of the book but for us is the present. Which is why the book never raises the question of but if we live in such a perfect society how comes then that fundamentalists took over what is wrong no it’s all this nostalgia for the present and isn’t this ideology at its purest. It paints the world of horror fundamentalism and so on to make you feel good in exactly the society in which we live. This is why in my communist KGB style I asked my friends in Toronto how does she work Margaret Atwood function socially and they told me all the same story. She is strictly part of this liberal establishment the moment you step a little bit too much towards towards the left they don’t want it so again this is you see this is ideology maybe at its most dangerous. Books like Handmaid’s Tale because you are deeply morally satisfied oh my God I read that book I’m horrified about fundamentalism and so on and so on but it’s all one big apology for the societies in which we live. That’s my first point of how ideology functions today. I think this is almost the universal formula of ideology today. Ideology never perceives itself as ideology. Ideology is most efficient when it presents itself as non-ideology horrified at another ideology. Oh my God we are not that crazy ideology we are whatever we are this is ideology today. So another point this is why today and I remember Jacqueline Rose once proposed this formula that what Lacan calls universal discourse is this new totalitarian scientific expert discourse. This is for me today maybe even the predominant form of ideology today. This is ideology which exploded in 1990s with the fall of communism it is we got rid of big ideological projects now we have to be pragmatic we know economic expertise and so on and so on. So repeating a couple of my old points let me now go into this topic of expert knowledge ideology today sorry for some repetitions but at the end of this line I will arrive at the title of today’s talk which is Antigone Toxic Masculinity again I know I already talked about this here. So let me begin with an old story of mine. In the fall of Lenin wrote a couple of letters to Maxim Gorky the writer deeply disturbed by Gorky’s support of the humanist ideology of the so-called Bogostroitel’stvo construction of God. Lenin implied that Gorky succumbed to this deviation because of his bad nerves and it’s an incredible exchange of letters where Gorky says maybe we should support this idea which is incidentally a typical Orthodox Christian idea of man the Orthodox formula which I hate is that God became man so that we men could become like God. And so this idea of Bogostroitel’stvo you forget God but we men through constant work can elevate ourselves to divinity and so on and so on. And Lenin is shocked by this. But and this is not a nice Lenin for me he doesn’t explode at Gorky by ideological criticism you’re a victim of religious indoctrination shame on you no Lenin it’s incredible look Gorky writes him a letter on construction of God. Lenin’s answer I quote Dear Alexey Maximovich Gorky what are you doing then really it’s terrible why are you doing this? It’s painful take care of yourself more seriously really so that you will be able to travel in winter without catching cold and visit best specialists in Switzerland and so on. What shocked me so much is that confronted with this Lenin’s reaction is purely medical. Gorky got crazy nothing to do with ideological confusion it must be a physical illness it should be treated as such. And although and it’s so nice that he has even in this letter a cynical stab at at Bolsheviks because then Lenin writes please go to doctors but not to Bolshevik doctors they are stupid go to serious German nerve specialists and so on. Why I’m saying this because I’ve written about it maybe you know that this is not yet Stalinism. This is brutal objectivizing Leninism. Stalin does Stalinism does a step more in Stalinism resubjectivizes the situation in Stalinism you are subjectively guilty again. But I want to say something more that recently in China the same ideology exploded. Did you read it? Did Guardian write about it I’m not sure although I don’t trust Guardian the the Chinese now try to justify their mass persecution of so-called Uyghurs Muslims and I didn’t know it they justify it in strictly same medical terms that this should be treated as a collective disease that their concentration camps are not political camps are big medical establishments and that it’s an illness and there is always a problem of falling back into it and so on and so on. Okay I will not go into it just at how this is how through this you are arguing ideologically and this is the most horrible ideology that you get this type of objectivizing almost medical treatment of an answer. Now why am I talking about this we know all this because I claim that it’s easy to make fun of yes Bolshevik totalitarianism yes Stalinism because you know I often refer to this in the 60s in so-called it was so-called Serbsky Institute in Moscow in 70s which is even now thriving the same doctors they proclaimed it was big news when I was young in the early 70s that they discovered the virus for dissidence no and they reduced dissidence to some megalomaniac mind you think you know better than society what and of course they immediately medicalized it they developed drugs to fight it was a medical problem not even a problem of at least in Stalinism it was more a problem of social struggle you know ideological no here there was no ideological counter-revolutionary activity it simply medical. Now you will say but this is past what am I talking about why am I talking about it? It’s maybe true for stupid I’m mocking it this is not my position stupid Chinese who are totalitarian they are not for our societies. Now comes probably you know them I’ve written about it the bad news. I find this is the reason why I’m opposed to this new category introduced by American Psychological Association I already talked about it here you know of toxic masculinity. That the first danger I see is that it’s probably of course there is something like poisonous aggressive toxic masculine violence and so on but my God it’s not it’s not a medical category it’s a category of ideological struggle patriarchy and so on and so on. And you know when American Psychological Association does it it means its billions of dollars are at stake because when the category is introduced then you can develop drugs to treat it they already working on it and so on and so on. But what worries me more is this quote how American Psychological Association defines toxic masculinity traits of so-called traditional masculinity like suppressing emotions and masking distress often start early in life and have been linked to less willingness by boys and men to seek help more risk taking and aggression possibly harming themselves and those with whom they interact. That’s the quote the definition. My comment you cannot miss the mixture of ideology and expertise in this definition. A strong ideological gesture of excluding phenomena considered unacceptable is presented as a neutral description of a medical of a medical fact. So that’s my first problem but my second problem and that’s how I would counterattack it not just yeah it’s ideological but still it’s male pathology and so on. I’m tempted to say and I know already briefly mentioned this here I’m tempted to say and with my colleague Alenka Zupančič it was a magical moment she called me and I didn’t allow her to speak I presented to her this idea and she was furious because at the same point she came to this idea because she took this definition seriously you know you don’t share your emotions you just act crazily in danger for yourself and she engaged and me I also did came to the same example in let’s try to imagine first in literature examples of this. And the first that came to our mind is Antigone. She’s pure toxic masculinity. She’s in deep shit shit in the sense that she wants to bury her brother blah blah blah but she doesn’t want to share her thoughts with other no dialogue and so on she insists on her and so on and so on she is simply a courageous person. There are moments when my God you have to act like this. Then me and Alenka Zupančič maybe in Slovenia are a pathological country but we asked looked around and asked people it’s not a representative sample of sociology but we set people to whom you associate this type of you know you are in trouble you have to make a tough decision and most of the examples they came up were women. That so I think that that what is behind this disqualification of toxic masculinity is a certain subtle elevation of false femininity which is pure ideological category. Today we don’t like radical disruptive acts you must debate you must coordinate and so on and so on and women are celebrated as those who are more dialogic holistic and so on and so on. So I ah didn’t I already tell you I’m not sure that Alenka Zupančič even found another example wonderful one where some reactionary psychologist claimed only men can do this what is toxic masculinity you know you are right you disregard the law you just do what is right even if it hurts you while women are much more conscientious they don’t care about ultimate justification they just follow the law and so on. So Alenka Zupančič’s point was so now we know Antigone was a man and Adolf Eichmann was a woman. Because Adolf Eichmann did exactly this his defense was sorry I was just executing orders and I didn’t know I organized train transports to Auschwitz what do I know what was in those trains and so on he just you know so why am I mentioning this for two reasons. First that be very careful when today femininity is celebrated so-called feminine qualities be very careful what type of social normativity is projected into it social normativity which is not really about women but women are brutally misused her to to promote a certain ethics of conformism and so on and so on. You know whom they are promoting basically back to Antigone they are promoting Ismene her sister. She is the soft one don’t provoke and so on and so on. But for me now I’m not saying who cares about I’m not talking now about an essential femininity and so on but there are nonetheless certain ideological configurations which define how we perceive femininity masculinity but my temptation would be this one to say femininity is not simply more understanding and so on that masculinity and femininity in our historical tradition are defined by a certain duality tension just this tension is different already at the level of most stupid superficial prejudices. You noticed how this is male chauvinist ideology but it’s typical how it’s already a tension in each position. According to traditional male chauvinist ideology men are at the same time do you have these stupid proverbs we in Slovenia have them that women just talk blah empty talk man is a man of his word men really mean it. So again men are more stable women are blah blah flirting lying whatever. But at the same time this cliché is supplemented by the opposite one which is women are more stable for home order and this is again where I but we didn’t have time to go it where I had another question for Jordan Peterson. His point is man is order women are disorder. Even at the level of clichés this is not true. It is true only in this male chauvinist sense that men are order in the sense of participating in public order and so on women are unreliable blah flirting you cannot trust them. But at the same time women stand for family stability taking care of men are the adventurers. Like this is big male chauvinist topic like I already quoted it or you find the chapter which I quite like of myself one of the few on Schiller The Bell The Bell song the most disgusting proto-fascist song which describes normal order women stay at home man goes around adventurer brings the wealth home women takes care of it and then his explanation of the French Revolution women also went out. Strictly women are guilty for revolutionary terror and so on and so on. But what is correct in this view which is disgusting is that it at least locates in both identities masculine and feminine it doesn’t define them by a certain feature but by a certain tension. They both have a tension in themselves. Women are Ismene versus Antigone. Men I will not go into it now men have a different tension. Now why this have has such a meaning today I think already talked about it so I will be very brief here. Oh we have time okay. I like the girl you can guess whom. Greta from Sweden. You know why because I’m so shocked how much bad propaganda she got now you know who really disappointed me Angela Merkel I thought she would be she said the worst possible thing about a month ago typical paranoia. She said this girl is just authentic autistic a little bit crazy who knows who is behind her probably Putin. Oh my god you know I mean here reading all this about Putin I’m tempted but don’t be afraid I will not to become no but what I’m saying is that if isn’t this Greta pure case of toxic masculinity arrogant I like her basic I think her autism is a positive it’s not in spite of being autistic she no it’s because she is autistic. What does her autism mean to put it in very simplistic terms? She doesn’t buy this bullshit usual which is yeah we are in trouble ecology but then it begins we shouldn’t act too fast we don’t know it yet if it’s serious of course fuck it we will never know it we will know it for sure when it will be too late you know. Or this it’s more complex and so on and so on you know to use she is pure anti-fetishist if we define fetishism as je sais bien mais quand même I know very well but. She Greta knows very well that we everyday ecologists we know very well science is sciences are telling us even incidentally Jordan Peterson. He then admitted there that he is skeptical about certain aspects of global warming but then he admitted privately then he told me that for example what is happening in our oceans better not to think about it. So much plankton dying and so on and how this will affect the entire change and so on. So you know her point is simply je sais bien I know and fuck you with your but mais quand même but nonetheless there is no nonetheless. That’s her basic very and she her point is not we really know of course we don’t know many things but for me when those who doubt global warming say but we don’t know it for sure I never got it as if this means oh so we can rest a little bit more to see no this throws me in an even more panic. We don’t know it maybe you know because there is a lot of fetishism here as work maybe this is something more fundamental not simple ideology. But you know how we translate our anxiety into precise numbers which are pure superstition like we say what is now usually two percent warming if it’s two percent or less it’s okay if it’s a we don’t know maybe one percent degree sorry not percent Celsius will already be a catastrophe maybe three percent we will survive it but that doesn’t make it easier that’s make it that’s what makes it even worse. And here also don’t trust economists not just because she is I’m a dirty old guy sexually attractive that Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez you admitted no don’t yeah yeah. You know when she proposed that Green New Deal or what. I was so shocked all these economists claimed this is spending money non-productive way economic catastrophe. Are they crazy if there is something to learn from the 20th century history is that non-productive spending of incredible amounts of money always worked. Look Second World War read a good history of it. The crisis was not over in late 30s. America got out of crisis only through World War II where they spent in a way which was not immediately productive arms extraordinary amounts of money. And you know what economic miracle this was. Do you know that in United States even if you discount arms if you take just ordinary consumerist objects in they produced more of them than ever. Or take unfortunate example take Reagan take Bush they were printing and spending money for arms like crazy. And I’m saying I’m really becoming a kind of ecological militarist. Why not use ecology as an excuse for declaring new national emergency spend incredible amounts of money and I claim economically it would have worked. But okay so let’s go so again I am not covering up problems here things are terribly uncertain. For example did I already talk about this here they have now some idea of spraying our entire stratosphere with some aerosols I don’t know want to prevent all those sun rays to hit the earth. Sounds nice but it’s so unpredictable what other processes you can trigger. But again I hate people who claim oh so better do nothing. No one thing is sure if we do nothing we are doomed. And it’s not only this that’s why as I tried to hint in Toronto that’s why I remain a communist and I got from nobody a good answer to this one. It’s absolutely obvious if you take just these three big problems ecology, digital control, the incredible amount of how we are controlled. How will we cope with it? One thing is clear the worst thing to do is to leave it to private companies combined with state power. This is now happening in China in United States here and obviously something has to be done here and I add of course worldwide class struggle economy and so on. I mean it’s again I oppose both standard versions. One is walls there is a mess in the third world so let’s build walls. My problem is but it will not work first because we cannot isolate ourselves we are so economically interdependent and point two but all the examples that we know of third-world troubles we are co-responsible for them. Now refugees from Middle East it’s absolutely clear that without the mess in Syria which has almost nothing to do with Syria. And this is what makes me but with what did you notice these are small signs of catastrophe that now two weeks ago when the American Congress wanted to stop American support for Saudi Arabia role in Yemen Trump vetoed it. This is are we aware what is happening now in Yemen the whole nation is destroyed tens of thousand of children dying and then we wonder where do refugees come from. So walls don’t work but I also not that I don’t sympathize with them I don’t believe this liberal left version open our borders and so on and so on. Yes much more but the point is even if you think it’s utopian it’s the only solution to change international relations so that our politics at a global level will no longer produce refugees there. Like I spoke recently again with a guy from Congo. He was doing some I met him in Toronto of all jokes waiting as a waiter. And in this patronizing way he caught me in my white racism. I ask him okay ah you came from Congo how did you came here what you know it was already this white patronizing oh so nice even a primitive guy like you you found a job here. And he gave me a lesson he said yes as a Congolese I am a doctor in computer sciences in France I was educated but you and then he told me something so sad. He told me that the chaos of Congo state in ruins warlords rule is directly linked to the fact of how Western companies deal with local warlords about coltan and all those minerals. He told me something so sad. He told me if you if some God would recreate Congo by taking away from Congo all the mineral wealth for the people of Congo it would have been much better. Isn’t this sad I mean you know so again that’s what we or when I was in Korea preaching them the same thing. They Korea like play oh we are small victims what do you know. I asked them how much fertile earth did you acquire recently in Africa? You know that immense amounts of the best earth there in the poorest countries even Somalia, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Madagascar and this is a catastrophe for the local population and so on and so on. But okay we did this. So now I want to go if you allow me a little bit more time into nonetheless a little bit of theory. First an yes how this is my basic point here I remain a classical almost Maoist Marxist when you want to define a category like femininity today don’t look at clichés even if you deal with clichés look at the antagonism the tension. Woman is not just this woman is even in ideological identity today a certain categorization of a certain opposition of passivity activity the way men are and so on and so on and I think it’s crucial to deal with this antagonistic characters. Also for example the more in for example what goes on today LGBT plus. The more I learn about them the more I am for them when you are dealing with real problems it’s tremendous and so on and so on. But we shouldn’t again escape for problems we psychoanalysts I think can even provide intelligent solutions them. For example a male chauvinist and I like intelligent male chauvinists if they’re intelligent conservatives they draw out some paradoxes you know and it’s interesting stimulating to analyze these paradoxes. Because for example I think already even mentioned it here did you hear about this obvious paradox. And it’s very complex difficult to give a good answer there. If you use the N-word N for black people or whatever dirty words it’s absolutely prohibited in our public space with one big exception. You know which one? Rap lyrics. There you can N screw fuck up your mother kill torture. Friends of mine were shocked in this was in Vermont country where I was before Burlington, Vermont. They told me there was recently a scandal my friend Todd McGowan took children to a public ball everything politically correct then all of a sudden he couldn’t believe the words from. Now I think it’s too easy to squeeze out in this politically correct way by saying yes but this is authentic black protest and so on you know. It’s not as simple as that because apparently it is respect you know they really suffer they should be allowed but really it’s white patronizing arrogance. You treat them as spoiled children who do not have our ability of our ethical standards so they must be pardoned and so on. And my black friends immediately accepted another problem of this antagonism exception. It’s a very simple observation made by a conservative guy but he hit something and I challenge I think I found an answer there I mean how to resolve it. They notice this tension that if you speak with these transgender theorists no in practice what they do in kindergartens I learned and so on. If you are a boy a man who identifies himself as a man all this machinery bombards you but you must be aware that this is not a natural determination you know being a man is a symbolic contingent historical construct you are bombarded by this message it’s contingent historical and so on. If you are a man who identifies herself as a woman that biological at least what we perceive as biological sex and symbolic social identity then of course they wouldn’t admit it that is determinism but they then treat it as a mega urgency you know oh we must take care of you must all of a sudden your inner feminine self if you are biologically more a boy becomes although they wouldn’t use the term natural but becomes simply a kind of a firm fact and yes even I was told by my friend that for example in kindergartens at least when a friend of mine rather his girlfriend worked in Norway they have strict instructions. You must observe young boys when they play and the moment you see any sign that he likes to play more with girls or with dolls oh you must support this you know like and so on. But nonetheless you how would I now what’s my solution here ah you must know it I was repeating this all the time. This is you see the big mistake for me of this I call it too playful LGBT plus. Yes our sexual identity is contingent in the sense of it’s not biologically predetermined it relies on symbolic facts and so on. But if a decision is free, free in the sense of you are responsible for it not biologically predetermined it can still be an extremely strong decision that you experience as fate. And here again as I developed many times here Freud and Lacan follow this lesson of Kant, Schelling and so on where they claim that the truly free decisions are unconscious which are experienced as fate like I repeat myself I was often using this example here falling in love. Of course it’s a free decision in some sense sense. But as a free decision you never decide all of a sudden it’s absolute fate for you if it’s authentic love. Or did I already mention this to you although at some point I admit it self-critically I had problems with India but this is a standard joke from my Indian friends they told me oh you are the most beloved India Indiaphobic guy no but something so beautiful happened there. Did you read it? It was in our media just those small news eccentric which are more fall. A guy there my God a true speculative Hegelian Indian sued his parents that they gave birth to him without his consent. He was right in a sense our and that’s the freedom also of sexual identity and so on. You don’t choose it consciously. It’s not that you know that’s an illusion that a small boy or girl or X it at a certain point he asks himself or she or it oh my God what should I choose. No that moment never arrives but it’s nonetheless decision you are totally responsible for it. And that’s where I would correct this usual pseudo-she is not so stupid pseudo-Judith Butler playful LGBT identity. Oh I play today I’m gay tomorrow I’m hetero then I’m asexual and so on and so on. You know this basic decision is your decision but it it defines your self. You know you are not out and then oh I’m this I’m that. So again that would have been this is again another example of what I hope I will convince them LGBT my friends of where psychoanalysis is not just some binary bullshit which spoils their game it can give a new boost to them you know. Precisely can you imagine all the suffering of let’s say a boy who wants to become a girl and it’s not just did you see that movie I don’t want to repeat my story but I know I already mentioned it here The Girl, Lukas Dhont from a Belgian movie. Did I already mention it here? It’s a wonderful example. It’s a movie about a boy biologically who wants to become not only a girl but a ballerina. And all her environs are totally supportive of her. Father tells her you realize yourself be what you truly want all the colleagues but nonetheless she suffers a lot. And it’s incredible how this is based on a true story. And although the girl on whose story this movie is based said the movie faithfully reproduced my traumas this the fact that you cannot attribute the problems in which the girl boy becoming girl finds herself to the male oppression because on the contrary the entire surrounding is extremely supportive of her. Of course many of these standard LGBT ideologists exploded. It’s secretly male chauvinist movie. It disturbed them they even claim that he this painful depicting of her troubles is a kind of a male chauvinist sadistic pornography and so on and so on. No my God you know there is nothing male chauvinist in the fact that precisely this transgender things these are serious things these are not playful games my God it hurts it hurts. So again here we should. Okay now the last point if you allow me I will not finish it today but I like this topic. You can find I will here refer to two texts one I would especially advise you to read it you can get it my colleague who wrote already three books criticizing me we are still friends American Lacanian Hegelian Adrian Johnston but he did now something which is very good. In you know that journal edited by my friends Agon Hamza and Frank Ruda Crisis and Critique. It’s a triumph you know one German unemployed he was one guy from Kosovo Albanian started a leftist Marxist digital journal which now tens of thousands downloads it gets immediately there in the last issue of Lacan Adrian Johnston publish a published a text download it it’s very good called Lacan’s End Game Philosophy, Science and Religion in the Final Seminars of Jacques Lacan. And he does something which I was suspecting a lot of times but I wasn’t sure about it how to put it. You know that all the late Lacan very late is obsessed by this idea first Lacan dismissed imaginary then even symbolic as another domain of fiction semblance and this idea although it’s never so simple with Lacan but basically getting at the pure real. Even unfortunately Miller in his last texts goes into this that with today’s capitalism reality itself is a chaotic real no longer symbolic law sexuality Miller in a way that I don’t agree got into this how even Lacan’s formulas of sexuation are still symbolic fictions even mathemes should be dismissed it’s just pure lawless chaotic real and so on and so on. But Adrian Johnston notes something in his seminars of the last ones it’s really tragic reading there very short if you read them Lacan in some sense breaks down. He makes a he claims that our striving to arrive at some pure real true mathematical formulas and so on always fails the domain of symbolic fictions and of imaginary traps is irreducible to our existence and that the ultimate reality I simplify it now very much but you find all the quotes in this text by Adrian Johnston that the that all that we can arrive at is in a resigned gesture we should declare as it were our failure. We are caught in fictions and these fictions even have consequences in the real. And you know Adrian Johnston located something wonderful here. He noticed something very surprising that in the very last two, three years Lacan all of a sudden starts to refer he liked provocatively to mention before dialectical materialism now it’s all of a sudden historical materialism no. And the point is a rather naive one that in the same way that for Marx ideological illusions fictions are not just up in the air they form they form our reality itself. Our social reality can only reproduce itself through symbolic fictions. And Johnston’s point is that’s why Lacan all of a sudden refers to historical materialism in the same way as for Marx you cannot study pure real of capitalism you have to include fetishism and all other ideologies. This is why for Lacan the final formula here it assumes its meaning of psychoanalysis is no longer traversing the fantasy because this would still have meant reaching arriving at some point of pure experience of the real but identification with the symptom. We are sorry politically it’s problematic I give you the right to have me police waiting for me let’s have a chat what did you mean by that identification with the symptom no identification with the sinthome we cannot get and Lacan even writes sinthome not symptom that knot of the real that we have to accept that we are caught in this game of [unintelligible] impenetrable meanings and so on we have to accept it. I find this conclusion problematic if you ask me because I will try to because this topic now I come to something that I can tell you without shame it’s a theoretical point. Adrian Johnston very intelligently links this problem of impossibility to arrive at the pure real. Adrian Johnston notices how this model of arriving at the pure real is still caught in the trap of the transgressive mode. This is why Lacan already in the next seminar Desire and its Interpretation immediately abandons the logic of his reading of Antigone in Antigone traversing the fantasy is this you know momentary transgression. You pass through fantasies you confront the real but you cannot remain there you have to fall back into the game. But the sad thing is that the last Lacan returns to this. So again you know and I’m mad at myself that I didn’t get this. You know that the late Lacan very late often uses this term to to make use of fictions he said we are materialists but we should make use of God make use of the big other make use of name of the father make use of and so on. And now here comes the moment when I’m furious at Johnston because he’s good furious because I didn’t get and he got it this wonderful link. You remember the line I often repeated here this Lacan’s wonderful formula if God is dead then nothing is permitted. And Johnston idea is that Lacan confronted this paradox if nothing is permitted then no God kills our desire then it’s a terrifying universe of total sabotage so that the idea is if you want to sustain your desire you need something like the big other God which you know it’s a fiction but you need it as a fiction to transgress to violate it again and again and so on and so on. And so again what I don’t like is this almost cynical version of Lacan. And I remember when I was still on speaking terms with Miller this was in I think we had a friendly debate in Los Angeles I think on this where he even quoted Rorty he went into this that I too purist for him and we must have this playful attitude playing with fictions and so on and so on. Yeah but what I don’t like is this cynical implication. We know that it’s a fiction but since persisting in this atheist truth would kill our desire so to sustain our desire we would we should return from the blinding gaze of the real back into symbolic fictions and play games there just so then I will ask you sorry for vulgarity fuck you what did then we learn in psychoanalysis. The point is we learn that it’s nonetheless a fiction so that you don’t play it too seriously. But with ironic distance that’s for me a catastrophe that’s for me how ideology functions today. Play the game but don’t take it seriously play the social that’s why all big managers today from Elon Musk to Bill Gates are Buddhists you know. You play the game but when you play the market game you can you can you can cause the catastrophe for thousands but it’s just a fiction don’t take it too seriously. I think that Lacan’s mistake here is now I will just quickly conclude but I hope you will get my point. Because I’m often reproached by clinical Lacanians for the idea that ah I’m too much a philosopher no that I don’t know clinics and so on but I think that this conclusion of Lacan make use of play it’s precisely a proof that Lacan was not enough a philosopher. He got caught into this cynical deadlock because he didn’t think to the end philosophical consequences which are what. Although Lacan knew that’s my suspicion we may debate it some of you may know more. Although Lacan knew very well there is a wonderful formula in in Encore seminar that le réel est un impasse de la symbolisation the real is a deadlock of symbolization which I think should be taken literally. It doesn’t mean there is outside some chaotic real and we cannot grasp it through symbolic fictions it resists no no no the self-sabotaging is absolutely immanent. There is no real outside the symbolic. Real is just the necessary deadlock of symbolization itself. And to give you kind of a vorlust foreplay for tomorrow I will try I got this from Etienne Balibar in a text published in another volume on Marxism no capital ideas and so on. Balibar came to a wonderful notion of absolute total subsumption under capital. Claiming that till now subsumption under capital was just you know there are no spheres of production outside but now in the last decades something much more radical is happening with this self-education investment in education, healthcare for me that it’s not only that all work is work for the capital but that the very formation, education of the workforce is itself a field of capital investment. It gets kind of a redoubled and okay this let’s leave this for tomorrow because Balibar I think here in a wonderful text makes a fatal mistake. Because he even mentions Lacan the logic of non-all but uses it in a traditional sense like this means something resists. No no no I think the way to undermine capital is precisely when even the production of the workforce becomes capital investment then capitalist reproduction gets caught in a certain antagonistic deadlock and this way is much more productive than this search of there is some Brazilian tribe Oscar or French once went you remember into this deviation there is some in northern Amazon some tribe which resists capitalism they have a formula there. No I think that look for immanent antagonism. But let’s go on so in spite of Lacan knowing this again and again Lacan and Miller when he wrote the text the real of 21st century or whatever is still obsessed with this idea although theoretically he knows it’s not true as if there is some pure chaotic real outside symbolization outside symbolic fictions and that we have to we have to open ourselves to it. How that’s my problem. There are couple of solutions here first is the impossible one that although we know we are always caught in symbolic fictions we should nonetheless strive even if it’s impossible to aim at the pure real get rid of symbolic illusions and so on and so on. Second one is the postmodern one yes we cannot get out because there is no real all that is are symbolic fictions and we should just this the postmodern version playfully enjoy them and so on and so on. The third version would have been this I call it cynical manipulative. We cannot get out of fictions but we should accept it that they are just fictions and knowing that they are just fictions play with them and so on and so on. I think that I believe in the fourth version which also solves that problem of if there is no God nothing is nothing is permitted and so on and so on. If you just persist to the end in this absolutely immanent status of the real. The real is not some obstacle outside. The real is so that to touch the real but the real in its traumatic dimension and so on and so on you don’t have to move outside the symbolic you just have to bring the symbolic to its own self-sabotage inconsistency then I think you have a way to confront to break out of this of this cynical of this cynical conclusion. Which again bothers me in its political consequences and Miller unfortunately draws them no. Which is we should accept the game of parliamentary politics we just should be aware that this is the domain of illusory identifications and like play the game but be aware that it’s not a totally serious game. The problem for me is that again what if the real relations are inverted? What if your distance towards the game is the ultimate illusion? It’s precisely the way you play the game in the most efficient way. That’s why as many I call them ironically Western Buddhists are aware of it no. How Western Buddhism is the most efficient way to function in today’s crazy capitalism because it’s so crazy with all speculations on futures and so on and so on that the only way to survive is to tell yourself never forget it’s just a game of appearances and so on and so on you survive it and so on you know. I was a little bit confused I’m sorry so tomorrow you get this Balibar and I will really you know what will be my focus this big problem and I will try to address it in a very consistent way which means not simplifying jumping too much the title is I think Nomadic Proletarians No Thanks. Sorry? And it says no thanks. No absolutely no sex listen I was. Ah yeah no thanks you said no thanks. That’s what you say in your title you said Nomadic Proletarians question mark no thanks. Ah yeah yeah no because you know this is my implicit polemics with Alain Badiou. I deeply respect him but I don’t buy his version I think it’s part of what I call West European how should I call it outsourcing of revolution you know. We arrogant Western Marxists we like to imagine a proletarian revolution and we don’t get the subject. And now they got it oh my God what if we will outsource it to immigrants you know we finally found the proper proletarian subject. And my point will be not against immigrants but more against this maybe we should also redefine the proletarian position and I will play with this although proletarians are nothing but determinate nothing. Nothing the zero point of the existing order and immigrants are precisely less than nothing in this structural sense. They cannot even be located as the zero point in our society. You know who was a good surprise here for me he now moved to the left you remember we were criticized couple of times for bringing him here Jean-Claude Milner. Yes. He now has a very good text on immigrants which is surprisingly pro-surprisingly pro-immigrant. And he goes in a very materialist way on how in what sense they cannot be located how desperately we try to locate them all the hypocritical strategies that we use segregation and so on. Jordan Peterson would be the next one that he would be writing pro-immigrant. It’s nice to know you may be may be next year yeah yeah. Okay so we still have five minutes or what if you have some please some question why not. Some there. This is me you stole this from me. It was making too much noise it was annoying me. Yes please. Hi thank you very much for your master class. I have the following question um going back to the late Lacan’s cynicism and Miller. But he wouldn’t use the term cynicism that’s my reading. I agree. Yeah yeah. Where the real has this noumenal kind of transcendental status right. Yeah. What do you think what is your take on contemporary quote accelerationism which sustains something in the same vein which I would read personally as Christian eschatology but secular version through metaphysics particularly Deleuze and De Landa and Land but with somehow still retains this cynicism right. The day after tomorrow. Yeah yeah yeah. No I agree many accelerationists have this cynical approach let’s push it to the end because we know that at the end it will turn but no no I agree with you you know which point of accelerationism nonetheless I accept this idea that accelerationism can be a good medicine against this how should I call it resistentialism. Global capitalism then you look for some local sites of resistance as if the solution is to locate places which still resist capitalism you know it can be culture subcultures or whatever. In this sense only I’m for accelerationism like it will be inner antagonisms that will break the system not not Latino-American or African tribes which have some holistic wisdom or whatever you know. But you know but nonetheless for me today it’s almost greater danger because as far as I know accelerationism I don’t know how efficient it is as a political force while this resistentialism how should I call it has a certain power in Latin America, in Africa and so on. And I for me always beginning with in South Africa I remember as a young boy I was following there all the strikes and how again my oft repeated motive African National Congress never fell into this trap we must retain our African identity and so on. King Buthelezi who was literally paid for in the service of apartheid forces he played this game our African identity and so on and so on. You know so this all this holistic we sorry I talk too much okay. What do I care? What does it matter? It doesn’t matter. Okay. Um I’ve recently heard Etienne in relation to this question of no inside everything’s inside there’s no outside. Yeah. Um he keeps way of thinking it was a topological one where you twist the inside which is what Lacan does you twist the inside to produce an outside. And the proletarian is traditionally that outside the extimité. It’s intimate too the inside but exterior at the same time. And I’m thinking of Badiou’s event would be exactly that as well it’s a supplement of excess in the state of the situation. Yes it’s a twist of the topology that allows a supplement of excess within a state of the situation. If you encounter it you move from the bad infinity to a transitive infinity and that’s the act. Yeah that’s an act. But I just want to say one other thing because you mentioned you put no Antigone and Ismene. Yeah. I would say Oedipus and Creon. You said you hadn’t come out with the masculine pair and I would say Oedipus and Creon. That would be very good. This is wonderful what you said but I have a counterpoint. You know who I’m sorry please please for sorry sorry yes. I just think that this idea that Antigone is transgressive is I think a profound misunderstanding because in the Ethics Lacan asks what’s the stake of Antigone’s act um of burying Polynices and it’s the burying of Ate transgenerational contamination which separates whether what whatever he might have done his history from the fact that he’s the bearer of the sign. Yeah yeah yeah. And so the stake of Antigone’s act he says is it a the jouissance of transgression he says no. Is it the jouissance of destruction no. Is it the jouissance of defiance no. So what is it? Well it’s something else it might be on the side of self-knowledge so he Lacan actually says in the Ethics seminar very clearly and I can’t see that this can be improved on in anything else you say in your negative work that it’s not the jouissance of transgression because the content of the act she may transgress a limit. Yeah. She may defy the state. Yeah yeah. She may just be destructive it may produce all kinds of destructions in its wake. Yeah yeah. But it’s not the content of the act it’s not defiance destruction or disobedience. It’s the it she wants to bury Ate she wants to you know it’s the limit of the second death she’s actually burying a transgenerational contamination and I think that’s the stake of psychoanalysis. You get what I’m saying? It’s not destruction creation ex nihilo. Yes yes yes yeah. Are you following what I’m saying? Yeah yeah. But you know what’s my problem here I see what you are saying and I would make in this direction even a step further that as you already hinted at that in her act Antigone
No no no I will I have I don’t want to repeat myself but I have even a theoretical foundation which I think I already did you notice incidentally that my classes here are very ecological recycling you know I recycle old jokes here and I already developed a couple this wonderful theory of that theories of catastrophes Jean-Pierre Dupuy I often mentioned him. How when we are in a situation like today we shouldn’t simply say we have a choice and so on. We should say no there is fate if things go on the way they go it is apocalyptic we are approaching a catastrophe but the nice lesson from predestination in religion and so on to other tendencies is that precisely by accepting this as a fate that we are lost it’s sometimes strategically the only way to prevent it because you must just think a little bit more radically. It is we don’t only have ecological apocalypse we have also obviously and digital apocalypse. I mean what I learned now the more I learned the more I’m a pessimist there. How we are already incredibly totally controlled you know in what sense. Now I am writing a new book on Neuralink digital control where I will begin with this polemics between Fichte and Hegel where Fichte has had this vision of total police state everybody is controlled and so on and Hegel goes against this in a rather cheap way that haha then half the people job would have been just to control others and so on and so on. But today with with the new supercomputers and digital media Fichte won in a sense. You don’t need so many people and the computers which control us are getting so intelligent even if you are in a country like China you can each citizen already has an individual file and it works. I read in news a month or two ago that you know that patriotic standing that you get in China each citizen gets a a couple of points like if you give something to charity or whatever you get some point if you if you are involved in any if you are condemned or dissident activities you lose points. This already works in million people were prohibited to buy plane and fast train tickets because their points were the points were too low and so on. It can be done and again don’t fall into this trap of just criticizing China it’s all too comfortable for us to say yeah yeah the Chinese but with us exactly the same things are happening. But let’s not lose time I want nonetheless I hope I will have let me first tell you what it will disorder under heaven. I left for the summer course the last week of June the big theory. I’m now working on a book which is apropos Hegel’s two one quarter of a millennium next year will be years of Hegel’s birth it will be the Hegel year. So some publishers asked me Bloomsbury here Fischer in Germany to do a short popular book it will not turn as popular as I hope on on something on Hegel. And I I’ve chosen something that I think will be popular enough you know this idea not just this society of surveillance everything is registered but this direct MM Mind-Machine Interface or what Elon Musk calls in a popular way Neuralink all the prejudices there are there the dangers what will happen it will be a very serious short book which means for me now I’m in pages we will see what will be in a very systematic way precisely because Hegel didn’t have any idea about it. How what can a Hegelian view tell us about this very simple questions if my mind for example this extremely naive questions like Elon Musk makes this propaganda like wouldn’t it be wonderful you have an intense sexual experience you put in your brain and your friends can share in it. Well I don’t find this so fascinating no but and this will be the only other I wasn’t able to develop it there fully reference to the unfortunate Jordan Peterson debate where when I was dealing with that his famous lobster problem or whatever no my point was that human sexuality is like if you were unfortunate enough to listen to the parts that part was the original one I really liked it when I improvised about French cuisine you know which is very dialectical. Okay French cuisine now it’s losing but when I was young it was the model of haute cuisine of high refined eating but if you look at it closely most of their dishes are failure turned into success. They were making cheese they got lazy cheese got rotten and they say oh my God let’s sell this around. They were making wine something went wrong with fermentation oh we get champagne you know and so on. Practically all French dishes can be explained in this way and typically Jordan Peterson okay he didn’t have time didn’t go into this because that’s my point against his lobster we are biologically predetermined and so on and so on. But there listen it wasn’t a serious debate and I don’t blame him we simply talked beside each other. But what I wanted to make him see is that yes I accept all that stuff how my God of course we are in some sense biologically predetermined you maybe know the percentage better than me but I think that if you take highly developed chimpanzees I don’t know which our DNA is like percent the same. But I think here we must be dialectical the point is of course we are absolutely almost determined but human spirit means that all these features remain operative but they are I’m sorry for this complex word they are transfunctionalized into serving getting caught nonetheless in a totally different symbolic logic. For example and here I drew I don’t know if it worked there the parallel with French cuisine. With all the similarity and yes we are sexually predetermined and so on I mean our sexual life but for example imagine something like courtly love which is from the logic of biological mating and sexual reproduction totally suicidal meaningless. You make the most passionate love affair of an encounter where you basically endlessly postpone the act. Or take the basic feature the basic perversion of human sexuality. You take something which at best if you take sexuality as something biologically determined that serves procreation should have been just you know before we do it bam-bam I like to squeeze you to touch you in this way which should be just a tiny element of foreplay but it can become the focus of life. So that’s that’s where I don’t get it and especially you know what I forget what I forgot to tell him it would have been a nice argument. He claims how nonetheless hierarchies are based on real competencies no. Well he attacks so much academia where he is isolated no. And I wanted to ask him at least he should agree that American and Canadian academia your power there is definitely not based in real competence you know. No it’s simply you know what he doesn’t get competence is socially determined dialectical category. For example to succeed as a banker yes you have to be competent but competent for what? For cheating for this cheap strategic games and so on and so on. I mean okay let’s not lose time there just to tell you the big speculative event will be at the end of June where I really prepared a detailed report it’s not just first what is I will be very elementary not just what is this idea of Neuralink then its simple implications then I will go into all these new age theories actualization of God and so on something extremely perverse is happening now. Not in my sense but in much more literal sense materialist theology they claim that if we scientifically succeed in connecting our brains and we are then all immersed into one collective brain that it’s something like self-actualization of God. You even have they call this singularity Ray Kurzweil you know you even get Hegelian partisans of singularity and it’s a wonderful naivete because you know all big readings of Hegel usually go into or develop the idea that Hegel was basically right just he came too early. First you have the young Lukács History and Class Consciousness whose idea is yes Hegel was right reconciliation of substance subject but he gave the idealized spiritual version because he didn’t see that the reconciliation of historical collective subjectivity proletariat and substance capital will happen only in the Communist revolution. So again Hegel was too early. Then you get Fukuyama basically it’s yes Hegel was right the end of history but he didn’t see it that it’s only with liberal democracy no a little bit too early. Now we get the last stupid version of this singularity Hegel was right the reconciliation of mind and matter because the idea is this one when we get immersed into this collective awareness it’s not only that our mind directly becomes social it’s that it’s no longer our mind it’s in a way the self-awareness of the universe of reality itself. So you know this speculative moment that all great mystics and even German idealists were after that our finite mind precisely set I’m here thinking about reality but we cannot imagine this speculative point where as Hegel put it and many intelligent mystics my awareness of reality or of God is self-awareness of God himself. Only through my self-awareness God fully becomes God and so on. So you but you know why I’m nonetheless fascinated by this cheap New Age speculations about singularity because they do something very shocking in a way they propose a concrete brutal scientific resolution to the most speculative problem. You know when we think about our unity with God or whatever you think about deep immersion spiritual speculation they said no no no let me just wire your brain and you will be godlike we will do it and so on. Then I will go into the problem of fall fall in the religious sense. Because you know what’s the problem with this vision of singularity all serious materialist theologists as I call them like Hegel and so on they knew as I already repeated here a couple of times they knew that Hegel’s solution is not we fall into our finite bodily existence no and then somehow magically through speculation we get out of it. No Hegel’s speculative term is again like French cuisine you know that you discover that the fall itself as Hegel puts it please read it you can download it on the web wonderful passages on Christianity in Hegel’s philosophy of religion where Hegel literally says that the speculative insight is not we can overcome fall but we can just see how fall in itself if you take it seriously is already its own overcoming. Because as Hegel said in wonderful terms the choice when you eat that apple and so on is not fall bad or good. Hegel says fall means that human thinking as such spirit is evil because thinking means abstraction distance and so on. And it’s at the same time good in the sense that it’s spirit and so on. As Hegel puts it literally that’s speculations fall is fall from goodness but before fall you don’t get goodness you know it’s this basic dialectics only through the fall you get what it is a fall from. You don’t you cannot this is why as Hegel puts it literally if you undo the fall in paradise in Hegel’s simplified reading they were animals Adam and Eve before and as we know from intelligent sexology theological ones it’s not that they were pure they sorry permit me my vulgarity as Saint Augustine put it Adam and Eve were fucking like crazy but it wasn’t sex. As Saint Augustine puts it for them sex was like work raising Saint Augustine raising the penis for the man was like when you raise a shovel or whatever when you work on the field it was you know you didn’t have this basic paradox of human sexuality that it’s at the same time ultra-spontaneous but you never control it and so on. Okay then I will go into some other wonderful paradoxes that I discovered if you want an intelligent book I wonder if I mentioned it here on evolutionary thought my compatriot he attacks me all the time but in a friendly way and I often disagree with him Adrian Johnston he drew my attention to a really intelligent Darwinian biologist not I’m an old guy I was still too stigmatized by the earlier generation Stephen Jay Gould and so on. Did you hear about Terence Deacon Incomplete Nature? I’m not saying I all the time agree with him but he’s really sorry for this crazy expression but I would say this idealist materialist in the sense that in materialist terms he tries to account for the rise of ideality itself in nature. He introduces this beautiful dialectical term absentials like absence no something which is not there but determines the identity of what is there. What is here my God this is Hegel you can only understand by a reference through absential. And for example already with living beings it’s clear but already in so-called dead nature take magnetism. If you spill all those little pieces of iron or what they all tend towards a certain form. But this form is nowhere there you cannot grasp the form but it’s an absential in the sense that form this I don’t know usually it’s U-shaped or whatever how it works in magnetism is an immaterial form which can only be deduced from as the point of reference which is never fully achieved but always failed by what effectively exists. And then in wonderful speculations he goes Terence Deacon back to the very beginning how already in quantum physics you find this in this idea of superposition of states and so on that what is is the finding by defined sorry by what is not there up to in a very intelligent way up to the reference of theology how but he means it in a materialist way how some kind of divinity is the absention of large part of human existence. God doesn’t exist if we all as we are now approaching closely to the moment when we will do it if we destroy ourselves of course there will be no God but God is the absential of us humans and so on. It’s really a pleasure to read a book like this you know why because he is very open towards this ideal absential dimension but think about it I wonder if you will agree with this where I try to catch him is that nonetheless he is too much of a Gestalt psychology formalist his model of absential is a form and he gives all these simple examples you know this ah-ah-ah big mystery now intelligent physicist mechanics have an idea how you know I’m ashamed to mention it so simple you know when you have when you have in a desert sands and wind is blowing and although and the same form mountain or what shifts and reproduces itself although the grains the pieces grains of sand are all the time different. But here also you have a certain ideality as it were no. He goes what I like is that he is a complete materialist that’s what we should learn to do I think. I’m losing time just to give you because my conclusion will be then I can give you the key that what will singularity by singularity mean our immersing into a collective brain I’m I finish with some daring no now I will make I hope you will get it fun of myself no I make there some I’m ironically referring to debate of the century I’m making some predictions of the century no the the end of my idea is that usually you have two readings of this our entrance into a shared intelligence and so on either for traditional humanists it will be a total catastrophe in the sense as we lose our singular individuality we become like ants and so on collective we lose it or the same shit but in different packing some higher mystical experience and so on. My more refined thesis I hope so is that of course the that the subject will survive but as this pure absential abstract Lacanian subject in the sense that even let’s say if I participate in a collective mind all my thoughts all the content of my mind I know they are shared but the pure form of me is still there. And another thing I will try to prove using old jokes that you all know but we will go very much in detail using yes those who you of you who know my work will just laugh you know repeating old jokes I think already improvised on this once that this okay I’m afraid sorry sorry Ninotchka joke you know coffee without milk coffee without cream. My thesis will be that for Lacan the unconscious has purely this virtual negative status. Like co you know the joke no coffee without milk it’s not the same as coffee without cream. The unconscious is not some deep substance and so on. The unconscious is this negative virtual dimension. And again I’m not bluffing now if some of you I was all the time asking people this. I think from reading quite some texts on this that computer digital space cannot cover this dimension. They can follow all our content blah whatever you want but I’m asking my friends who pretend at least to know this can a digital machine get the difference because it’s the same shitty coffee between plain coffee coffee without milk and coffee without cream. Can they get hold of this purely virtual negative dimension? So my conclusion will be a pretty Lacanian one that what will still elude this collective mind is precisely pure subject of the unconscious subject and this unconscious virtual dimension. But I made another pessimistic prediction double prediction. First that even with regard to the content you know who this may surprise you because I’m a barbarian but lately I read Beckett Unnamable if you read it you know it’s not just the unnamable which is and I was so glad to discover you know which was Beckett’s model for unnamable. It’s Cartesian Cogito. Beckett’s model was this one and I think this is maybe what will happen if we enter singularity. Beckett says somewhere Descartes has this pure Cogito you don’t know if it’s a vision hallucination dream then fuck him God intervenes you can distinguish truth falsity reality but Beckett’s dream was what we imagine a Cogito prior to finding reference or firm foundation in the big other. Cogito which remains in this pure hallucination. And even at this level I hope I will pronounce the names correctly with Cogito now in Beckett’s the Beckett in The Unnamable has then two incarnations I will pronounce it correctly I don’t know Mahood and Worm. Mahood is this like collective spiritual entity Worm is the other inertia and so on. So I do make I do make some predictions and so on and so on. I hope you will find this amusing but this comes afterwards. So now disorder under heaven. Yes let’s return to this. I will not talk generalities which you all know and so on. I’m afraid because of my illness maybe there will be some a little bit too much of ecology in what I will talk about today in the cynical way of recycling my old thoughts and so on. But I want to systematically develop some things because my basic idea about disorder under heaven and this would be the answer to this you know I I described to you disorder under heaven but then you know Mao gets on the situation is excellent you know. But I think it’s better not to talk too much about how the situation is excellent. But preach despair and you will and you know as you probably know I’m obsessed with learning from the enemies. You know from whom we should learn? How our enemies anti-communists won the Cold War. You are too young but I remember when there was that Helsinki Human Rights agreement and so on all the time the West was saying we are already lost we capitulated to the Soviets and so on and so on. It was a model of this strategy act as if everything is already lost but mobilize and at the end you win. In this sense also I will try to develop how to annoy you a little bit I think the left I think already even mentioned this here that we should learn from Trump. Where I admire Trump I’m repeating myself I know how what he does is something ingenious. He doesn’t directly he also does but his main strategy is not to break the laws directly. But every law regulation always implies a whole texture of implicit conditions customs how do you do it when he brutally cheats there. For example his proclaiming state of emergency. Of course people exploded wait a minute this is meant not if Mexicans or Salvadorans are approaching this is meant for a big catastrophe. He misused it. I would say fine he set a precedent and some right-wingers opposed Trump they got it. They said wait a minute what if we get some left democratic president and he will do something reasonable he will say wait a minute let’s proclaim national emergency for global warming and so on you know. Learn from Trump. Okay now work finally. I will come back to Trump here because I will try precisely to develop in which sense this obsession with Trump is in the strict Freudian sense fetishist that Trump is our fetish. In what sense? Fetish of left-liberals who don’t want to go more to the end into socialism class struggle and so on. Because my idea is this one you know this rather naive although it’s in Freud more complex theory of fetishism that if you find it ridiculous I’m sorry but be just follow the logic. Freud’s idea is that fetish is an object the last thing a boy sees before he discovers that the girl doesn’t have a penis no that’s why fetish when you undress or the girl undresses herself you see feet hair and so on the last thing you see. I think that’s my reading Trump is the last thing left-liberal sees before he sees class struggle. You know you have this obsession fascism yeah yeah yeah just and then you are in this comfortable opposition you know we good liberals against this dangerous threat but you never ask the question which is the question of the class struggle. How comes that how comes that Trump got so many workers’ votes and so on and so on because the left-liberals neglected okay I still call it class struggle and so on no. So when Jordan Peterson was asking me but how stupid is Communist Manifesto where do you see class struggle I didn’t want to press that line my answer would have been sorry but Trump’s electoral victory is the proof of class struggle no of how the right-wingers okay let me now go a little bit into don’t be afraid I will not just be associating around you will get a little bit of theory. I will repeat an old story but I will give to it a different twist which because I was in Toronto the idea came to me in Toronto because it’s Margaret Atwood her Handmaid’s Tale whom I want to criticize now even more. You remember I distinctly remember I was telling I don’t know if the same people were here about Saint Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologica draws this conclusion that those in heaven will also be able to see the suffering of the poor in hell and my idea was that what Aquinas was not ready to confront was the fact that to put it in brutally simplified terms heaven must be rather boring and that you know I imagine this scene you are in heaven but okay you get bored and then from time to time an angel says ah you are bored here let me show you how miserable life is in hell and then say yeah yeah yeah I don’t want to go no. But the serious lesson from this is do not our news average news on TV function exactly in the same way. Are you bored in our so-called developed societies you take a look at the news oh my God Yemen Somalia and so on all the horrors there in hell and it makes you feel good. Now I will go to why only now I discovered because again in Toronto speaking with some friends and ah the last joke on Peterson I was too tired you know what my friends wanted to do there you followed all those lobsters’ debates no my friends discovered there the most famous lobster restaurant in Toronto and the idea was to go there and I was too tired and I hate lobsters but that’s another thing. No so you know Handmaid’s Tale maybe you saw no. It’s not only what I already I know improvised about here that’s my standard criticism that this fascination with this dystopian society religious fundamentalists in power there and so on it comes uncannily close to some kind of fascination you know. I wonder how did you react but first me then I thought I’m a pervert no I discovered all my friends reacted like yes yes it’s horrible how the fate of women in that Republic of Gilead the universe of but secretly you you enjoy it oh my God you just look for all the details how the women are screwed there you know oh they can’t read this that. But it’s not just this I discovered something else now come to the new point that Handmaid’s Tale is the best example of what Fredric Jameson called nostalgia for the present. The basic message of the book is to make you feel good about what nice society we live in. Because all the time the book is written so that you feel nostalgia oh my God what a nice permissive society this is the past for the heroes of the book but for us is the present. Which is why the book never raises the question of but if we live in such a perfect society how comes then that fundamentalists took over what is wrong no it’s all this nostalgia for the present and isn’t this ideology at its purest. It paints the world of horror fundamentalism and so on to make you feel good in exactly the society in which we live. This is why in my communist KGB style I asked my friends in Toronto how does she work Margaret Atwood function socially and they told me all the same story. She is strictly part of this liberal establishment the moment you step a little bit too much towards towards the left they don’t want it so again this is you see this is ideology maybe at its most dangerous. Books like Handmaid’s Tale because you are deeply morally satisfied oh my God I read that book I’m horrified about fundamentalism and so on and so on but it’s all one big apology for the societies in which we live. That’s my first point of how ideology functions today. I think this is almost the universal formula of ideology today. Ideology never perceives itself as ideology. Ideology is most efficient when it presents itself as non-ideology horrified at another ideology. Oh my God we are not that crazy ideology we are whatever we are this is ideology today. So another point this is why today and I remember Jacqueline Rose once proposed this formula that what Lacan calls universal discourse is this new totalitarian scientific expert discourse. This is for me today maybe even the predominant form of ideology today. This is ideology which exploded in 1990s with the fall of communism it is we got rid of big ideological projects now we have to be pragmatic we know economic expertise and so on and so on. So repeating a couple of my old points let me now go into this topic of expert knowledge ideology today sorry for some repetitions but at the end of this line I will arrive at the title of today’s talk which is Antigone Toxic Masculinity again I know I already talked about this here. So let me begin with an old story of mine. In the fall of Lenin wrote a couple of letters to Maxim Gorky the writer deeply disturbed by Gorky’s support of the humanist ideology of the so-called Bogostroitel’stvo construction of God. Lenin implied that Gorky succumbed to this deviation because of his bad nerves and it’s an incredible exchange of letters where Gorky says maybe we should support this idea which is incidentally a typical Orthodox Christian idea of man the Orthodox formula which I hate is that God became man so that we men could become like God. And so this idea of Bogostroitel’stvo you forget God but we men through constant work can elevate ourselves to divinity and so on and so on. And Lenin is shocked by this. But and this is not a nice Lenin for me he doesn’t explode at Gorky by ideological criticism you’re a victim of religious indoctrination shame on you no Lenin it’s incredible look Gorky writes him a letter on construction of God. Lenin’s answer I quote Dear Alexey Maximovich Gorky what are you doing then really it’s terrible why are you doing this? It’s painful take care of yourself more seriously really so that you will be able to travel in winter without catching cold and visit best specialists in Switzerland and so on. What shocked me so much is that confronted with this Lenin’s reaction is purely medical. Gorky got crazy nothing to do with ideological confusion it must be a physical illness it should be treated as such. And although and it’s so nice that he has even in this letter a cynical stab at at Bolsheviks because then Lenin writes please go to doctors but not to Bolshevik doctors they are stupid go to serious German nerve specialists and so on. Why I’m saying this because I’ve written about it maybe you know that this is not yet Stalinism. This is brutal objectivizing Leninism. Stalin does Stalinism does a step more in Stalinism resubjectivizes the situation in Stalinism you are subjectively guilty again. But I want to say something more that recently in China the same ideology exploded. Did you read it? Did Guardian write about it I’m not sure although I don’t trust Guardian the the Chinese now try to justify their mass persecution of so-called Uyghurs Muslims and I didn’t know it they justify it in strictly same medical terms that this should be treated as a collective disease that their concentration camps are not political camps are big medical establishments and that it’s an illness and there is always a problem of falling back into it and so on and so on. Okay I will not go into it just at how this is how through this you are arguing ideologically and this is the most horrible ideology that you get this type of objectivizing almost medical treatment of an answer. Now why am I talking about this we know all this because I claim that it’s easy to make fun of yes Bolshevik totalitarianism yes Stalinism because you know I often refer to this in the 60s in so-called it was so-called Serbsky Institute in Moscow in 70s which is even now thriving the same doctors they proclaimed it was big news when I was young in the early 70s that they discovered the virus for dissidence no and they reduced dissidence to some megalomaniac mind you think you know better than society what and of course they immediately medicalized it they developed drugs to fight it was a medical problem not even a problem of at least in Stalinism it was more a problem of social struggle you know ideological no here there was no ideological counter-revolutionary activity it simply medical. Now you will say but this is past what am I talking about why am I talking about it? It’s maybe true for stupid I’m mocking it this is not my position stupid Chinese who are totalitarian they are not for our societies. Now comes probably you know them I’ve written about it the bad news. I find this is the reason why I’m opposed to this new category introduced by American Psychological Association I already talked about it here you know of toxic masculinity. That the first danger I see is that it’s probably of course there is something like poisonous aggressive toxic masculine violence and so on but my God it’s not it’s not a medical category it’s a category of ideological struggle patriarchy and so on and so on. And you know when American Psychological Association does it it means its billions of dollars are at stake because when the category is introduced then you can develop drugs to treat it they already working on it and so on and so on. But what worries me more is this quote how American Psychological Association defines toxic masculinity traits of so-called traditional masculinity like suppressing emotions and masking distress often start early in life and have been linked to less willingness by boys and men to seek help more risk taking and aggression possibly harming themselves and those with whom they interact. That’s the quote the definition. My comment you cannot miss the mixture of ideology and expertise in this definition. A strong ideological gesture of excluding phenomena considered unacceptable is presented as a neutral description of a medical of a medical fact. So that’s my first problem but my second problem and that’s how I would counterattack it not just yeah it’s ideological but still it’s male pathology and so on. I’m tempted to say and I know already briefly mentioned this here I’m tempted to say and with my colleague Alenka Zupančič it was a magical moment she called me and I didn’t allow her to speak I presented to her this idea and she was furious because at the same point she came to this idea because she took this definition seriously you know you don’t share your emotions you just act crazily in danger for yourself and she engaged and me I also did came to the same example in let’s try to imagine first in literature examples of this. And the first that came to our mind is Antigone. She’s pure toxic masculinity. She’s in deep shit shit in the sense that she wants to bury her brother blah blah blah but she doesn’t want to share her thoughts with other no dialogue and so on she insists on her and so on and so on she is simply a courageous person. There are moments when my God you have to act like this. Then me and Alenka Zupančič maybe in Slovenia are a pathological country but we asked looked around and asked people it’s not a representative sample of sociology but we set people to whom you associate this type of you know you are in trouble you have to make a tough decision and most of the examples they came up were women. That so I think that that what is behind this disqualification of toxic masculinity is a certain subtle elevation of false femininity which is pure ideological category. Today we don’t like radical disruptive acts you must debate you must coordinate and so on and so on and women are celebrated as those who are more dialogic holistic and so on and so on. So I ah didn’t I already tell you I’m not sure that Alenka Zupančič even found another example wonderful one where some reactionary psychologist claimed only men can do this what is toxic masculinity you know you are right you disregard the law you just do what is right even if it hurts you while women are much more conscientious they don’t care about ultimate justification they just follow the law and so on. So Alenka Zupančič’s point was so now we know Antigone was a man and Adolf Eichmann was a woman. Because Adolf Eichmann did exactly this his defense was sorry I was just executing orders and I didn’t know I organized train transports to Auschwitz what do I know what was in those trains and so on he just you know so why am I mentioning this for two reasons. First that be very careful when today femininity is celebrated so-called feminine qualities be very careful what type of social normativity is projected into it social normativity which is not really about women but women are brutally misused her to to promote a certain ethics of conformism and so on and so on. You know whom they are promoting basically back to Antigone they are promoting Ismene her sister. She is the soft one don’t provoke and so on and so on. But for me now I’m not saying who cares about I’m not talking now about an essential femininity and so on but there are nonetheless certain ideological configurations which define how we perceive femininity masculinity but my temptation would be this one to say femininity is not simply more understanding and so on that masculinity and femininity in our historical tradition are defined by a certain duality tension just this tension is different already at the level of most stupid superficial prejudices. You noticed how this is male chauvinist ideology but it’s typical how it’s already a tension in each position. According to traditional male chauvinist ideology men are at the same time do you have these stupid proverbs we in Slovenia have them that women just talk blah empty talk man is a man of his word men really mean it. So again men are more stable women are blah blah flirting lying whatever. But at the same time this cliché is supplemented by the opposite one which is women are more stable for home order and this is again where I but we didn’t have time to go it where I had another question for Jordan Peterson. His point is man is order women are disorder. Even at the level of clichés this is not true. It is true only in this male chauvinist sense that men are order in the sense of participating in public order and so on women are unreliable blah flirting you cannot trust them. But at the same time women stand for family stability taking care of men are the adventurers. Like this is big male chauvinist topic like I already quoted it or you find the chapter which I quite like of myself one of the few on Schiller The Bell The Bell song the most disgusting proto-fascist song which describes normal order women stay at home man goes around adventurer brings the wealth home women takes care of it and then his explanation of the French Revolution women also went out. Strictly women are guilty for revolutionary terror and so on and so on. But what is correct in this view which is disgusting is that it at least locates in both identities masculine and feminine it doesn’t define them by a certain feature but by a certain tension. They both have a tension in themselves. Women are Ismene versus Antigone. Men I will not go into it now men have a different tension. Now why this have has such a meaning today I think already talked about it so I will be very brief here. Oh we have time okay. I like the girl you can guess whom. Greta from Sweden. You know why because I’m so shocked how much bad propaganda she got now you know who really disappointed me Angela Merkel I thought she would be she said the worst possible thing about a month ago typical paranoia. She said this girl is just authentic autistic a little bit crazy who knows who is behind her probably Putin. Oh my god you know I mean here reading all this about Putin I’m tempted but don’t be afraid I will not to become no but what I’m saying is that if isn’t this Greta pure case of toxic masculinity arrogant I like her basic I think her autism is a positive it’s not in spite of being autistic she no it’s because she is autistic. What does her autism mean to put it in very simplistic terms? She doesn’t buy this bullshit usual which is yeah we are in trouble ecology but then it begins we shouldn’t act too fast we don’t know it yet if it’s serious of course fuck it we will never know it we will know it for sure when it will be too late you know. Or this it’s more complex and so on and so on you know to use she is pure anti-fetishist if we define fetishism as je sais bien mais quand même I know very well but. She Greta knows very well that we everyday ecologists we know very well science is sciences are telling us even incidentally Jordan Peterson. He then admitted there that he is skeptical about certain aspects of global warming but then he admitted privately then he told me that for example what is happening in our oceans better not to think about it. So much plankton dying and so on and how this will affect the entire change and so on. So you know her point is simply je sais bien I know and fuck you with your but mais quand même but nonetheless there is no nonetheless. That’s her basic very and she her point is not we really know of course we don’t know many things but for me when those who doubt global warming say but we don’t know it for sure I never got it as if this means oh so we can rest a little bit more to see no this throws me in an even more panic. We don’t know it maybe you know because there is a lot of fetishism here as work maybe this is something more fundamental not simple ideology. But you know how we translate our anxiety into precise numbers which are pure superstition like we say what is now usually two percent warming if it’s two percent or less it’s okay if it’s a we don’t know maybe one percent degree sorry not percent Celsius will already be a catastrophe maybe three percent we will survive it but that doesn’t make it easier that’s make it that’s what makes it even worse. And here also don’t trust economists not just because she is I’m a dirty old guy sexually attractive that Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez you admitted no don’t yeah yeah. You know when she proposed that Green New Deal or what. I was so shocked all these economists claimed this is spending money non-productive way economic catastrophe. Are they crazy if there is something to learn from the 20th century history is that non-productive spending of incredible amounts of money always worked. Look Second World War read a good history of it. The crisis was not over in late 30s. America got out of crisis only through World War II where they spent in a way which was not immediately productive arms extraordinary amounts of money. And you know what economic miracle this was. Do you know that in United States even if you discount arms if you take just ordinary consumerist objects in they produced more of them than ever. Or take unfortunate example take Reagan take Bush they were printing and spending money for arms like crazy. And I’m saying I’m really becoming a kind of ecological militarist. Why not use ecology as an excuse for declaring new national emergency spend incredible amounts of money and I claim economically it would have worked. But okay so let’s go so again I am not covering up problems here things are terribly uncertain. For example did I already talk about this here they have now some idea of spraying our entire stratosphere with some aerosols I don’t know want to prevent all those sun rays to hit the earth. Sounds nice but it’s so unpredictable what other processes you can trigger. But again I hate people who claim oh so better do nothing. No one thing is sure if we do nothing we are doomed. And it’s not only this that’s why as I tried to hint in Toronto that’s why I remain a communist and I got from nobody a good answer to this one. It’s absolutely obvious if you take just these three big problems ecology, digital control, the incredible amount of how we are controlled. How will we cope with it? One thing is clear the worst thing to do is to leave it to private companies combined with state power. This is now happening in China in United States here and obviously something has to be done here and I add of course worldwide class struggle economy and so on. I mean it’s again I oppose both standard versions. One is walls there is a mess in the third world so let’s build walls. My problem is but it will not work first because we cannot isolate ourselves we are so economically interdependent and point two but all the examples that we know of third-world troubles we are co-responsible for them. Now refugees from Middle East it’s absolutely clear that without the mess in Syria which has almost nothing to do with Syria. And this is what makes me but with what did you notice these are small signs of catastrophe that now two weeks ago when the American Congress wanted to stop American support for Saudi Arabia role in Yemen Trump vetoed it. This is are we aware what is happening now in Yemen the whole nation is destroyed tens of thousand of children dying and then we wonder where do refugees come from. So walls don’t work but I also not that I don’t sympathize with them I don’t believe this liberal left version open our borders and so on and so on. Yes much more but the point is even if you think it’s utopian it’s the only solution to change international relations so that our politics at a global level will no longer produce refugees there. Like I spoke recently again with a guy from Congo. He was doing some I met him in Toronto of all jokes waiting as a waiter. And in this patronizing way he caught me in my white racism. I ask him okay ah you came from Congo how did you came here what you know it was already this white patronizing oh so nice even a primitive guy like you you found a job here. And he gave me a lesson he said yes as a Congolese I am a doctor in computer sciences in France I was educated but you and then he told me something so sad. He told me that the chaos of Congo state in ruins warlords rule is directly linked to the fact of how Western companies deal with local warlords about coltan and all those minerals. He told me something so sad. He told me if you if some God would recreate Congo by taking away from Congo all the mineral wealth for the people of Congo it would have been much better. Isn’t this sad I mean you know so again that’s what we or when I was in Korea preaching them the same thing. They Korea like play oh we are small victims what do you know. I asked them how much fertile earth did you acquire recently in Africa? You know that immense amounts of the best earth there in the poorest countries even Somalia, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Madagascar and this is a catastrophe for the local population and so on and so on. But okay we did this. So now I want to go if you allow me a little bit more time into nonetheless a little bit of theory. First an yes how this is my basic point here I remain a classical almost Maoist Marxist when you want to define a category like femininity today don’t look at clichés even if you deal with clichés look at the antagonism the tension. Woman is not just this woman is even in ideological identity today a certain categorization of a certain opposition of passivity activity the way men are and so on and so on and I think it’s crucial to deal with this antagonistic characters. Also for example the more in for example what goes on today LGBT plus. The more I learn about them the more I am for them when you are dealing with real problems it’s tremendous and so on and so on. But we shouldn’t again escape for problems we psychoanalysts I think can even provide intelligent solutions them. For example a male chauvinist and I like intelligent male chauvinists if they’re intelligent conservatives they draw out some paradoxes you know and it’s interesting stimulating to analyze these paradoxes. Because for example I think already even mentioned it here did you hear about this obvious paradox. And it’s very complex difficult to give a good answer there. If you use the N-word N for black people or whatever dirty words it’s absolutely prohibited in our public space with one big exception. You know which one? Rap lyrics. There you can N screw fuck up your mother kill torture. Friends of mine were shocked in this was in Vermont country where I was before Burlington, Vermont. They told me there was recently a scandal my friend Todd McGowan took children to a public ball everything politically correct then all of a sudden he couldn’t believe the words from. Now I think it’s too easy to squeeze out in this politically correct way by saying yes but this is authentic black protest and so on you know. It’s not as simple as that because apparently it is respect you know they really suffer they should be allowed but really it’s white patronizing arrogance. You treat them as spoiled children who do not have our ability of our ethical standards so they must be pardoned and so on. And my black friends immediately accepted another problem of this antagonism exception. It’s a very simple observation made by a conservative guy but he hit something and I challenge I think I found an answer there I mean how to resolve it. They notice this tension that if you speak with these transgender theorists no in practice what they do in kindergartens I learned and so on. If you are a boy a man who identifies himself as a man all this machinery bombards you but you must be aware that this is not a natural determination you know being a man is a symbolic contingent historical construct you are bombarded by this message it’s contingent historical and so on. If you are a man who identifies herself as a woman that biological at least what we perceive as biological sex and symbolic social identity then of course they wouldn’t admit it that is determinism but they then treat it as a mega urgency you know oh we must take care of you must all of a sudden your inner feminine self if you are biologically more a boy becomes although they wouldn’t use the term natural but becomes simply a kind of a firm fact and yes even I was told by my friend that for example in kindergartens at least when a friend of mine rather his girlfriend worked in Norway they have strict instructions. You must observe young boys when they play and the moment you see any sign that he likes to play more with girls or with dolls oh you must support this you know like and so on. But nonetheless you how would I now what’s my solution here ah you must know it I was repeating this all the time. This is you see the big mistake for me of this I call it too playful LGBT plus. Yes our sexual identity is contingent in the sense of it’s not biologically predetermined it relies on symbolic facts and so on. But if a decision is free, free in the sense of you are responsible for it not biologically predetermined it can still be an extremely strong decision that you experience as fate. And here again as I developed many times here Freud and Lacan follow this lesson of Kant, Schelling and so on where they claim that the truly free decisions are unconscious which are experienced as fate like I repeat myself I was often using this example here falling in love. Of course it’s a free decision in some sense sense. But as a free decision you never decide all of a sudden it’s absolute fate for you if it’s authentic love. Or did I already mention this to you although at some point I admit it self-critically I had problems with India but this is a standard joke from my Indian friends they told me oh you are the most beloved India Indiaphobic guy no but something so beautiful happened there. Did you read it? It was in our media just those small news eccentric which are more fall. A guy there my God a true speculative Hegelian Indian sued his parents that they gave birth to him without his consent. He was right in a sense our and that’s the freedom also of sexual identity and so on. You don’t choose it consciously. It’s not that you know that’s an illusion that a small boy or girl or X it at a certain point he asks himself or she or it oh my God what should I choose. No that moment never arrives but it’s nonetheless decision you are totally responsible for it. And that’s where I would correct this usual pseudo-she is not so stupid pseudo-Judith Butler playful LGBT identity. Oh I play today I’m gay tomorrow I’m hetero then I’m asexual and so on and so on. You know this basic decision is your decision but it it defines your self. You know you are not out and then oh I’m this I’m that. So again that would have been this is again another example of what I hope I will convince them LGBT my friends of where psychoanalysis is not just some binary bullshit which spoils their game it can give a new boost to them you know. Precisely can you imagine all the suffering of let’s say a boy who wants to become a girl and it’s not just did you see that movie I don’t want to repeat my story but I know I already mentioned it here The Girl, Lukas Dhont from a Belgian movie. Did I already mention it here? It’s a wonderful example. It’s a movie about a boy biologically who wants to become not only a girl but a ballerina. And all her environs are totally supportive of her. Father tells her you realize yourself be what you truly want all the colleagues but nonetheless she suffers a lot. And it’s incredible how this is based on a true story. And although the girl on whose story this movie is based said the movie faithfully reproduced my traumas this the fact that you cannot attribute the problems in which the girl boy becoming girl finds herself to the male oppression because on the contrary the entire surrounding is extremely supportive of her. Of course many of these standard LGBT ideologists exploded. It’s secretly male chauvinist movie. It disturbed them they even claim that he this painful depicting of her troubles is a kind of a male chauvinist sadistic pornography and so on and so on. No my God you know there is nothing male chauvinist in the fact that precisely this transgender things these are serious things these are not playful games my God it hurts it hurts. So again here we should. Okay now the last point if you allow me I will not finish it today but I like this topic. You can find I will here refer to two texts one I would especially advise you to read it you can get it my colleague who wrote already three books criticizing me we are still friends American Lacanian Hegelian Adrian Johnston but he did now something which is very good. In you know that journal edited by my friends Agon Hamza and Frank Ruda Crisis and Critique. It’s a triumph you know one German unemployed he was one guy from Kosovo Albanian started a leftist Marxist digital journal which now tens of thousands downloads it gets immediately there in the last issue of Lacan Adrian Johnston publish a published a text download it it’s very good called Lacan’s End Game Philosophy, Science and Religion in the Final Seminars of Jacques Lacan. And he does something which I was suspecting a lot of times but I wasn’t sure about it how to put it. You know that all the late Lacan very late is obsessed by this idea first Lacan dismissed imaginary then even symbolic as another domain of fiction semblance and this idea although it’s never so simple with Lacan but basically getting at the pure real. Even unfortunately Miller in his last texts goes into this that with today’s capitalism reality itself is a chaotic real no longer symbolic law sexuality Miller in a way that I don’t agree got into this how even Lacan’s formulas of sexuation are still symbolic fictions even mathemes should be dismissed it’s just pure lawless chaotic real and so on and so on. But Adrian Johnston notes something in his seminars of the last ones it’s really tragic reading there very short if you read them Lacan in some sense breaks down. He makes a he claims that our striving to arrive at some pure real true mathematical formulas and so on always fails the domain of symbolic fictions and of imaginary traps is irreducible to our existence and that the ultimate reality I simplify it now very much but you find all the quotes in this text by Adrian Johnston that the that all that we can arrive at is in a resigned gesture we should declare as it were our failure. We are caught in fictions and these fictions even have consequences in the real. And you know Adrian Johnston located something wonderful here. He noticed something very surprising that in the very last two, three years Lacan all of a sudden starts to refer he liked provocatively to mention before dialectical materialism now it’s all of a sudden historical materialism no. And the point is a rather naive one that in the same way that for Marx ideological illusions fictions are not just up in the air they form they form our reality itself. Our social reality can only reproduce itself through symbolic fictions. And Johnston’s point is that’s why Lacan all of a sudden refers to historical materialism in the same way as for Marx you cannot study pure real of capitalism you have to include fetishism and all other ideologies. This is why for Lacan the final formula here it assumes its meaning of psychoanalysis is no longer traversing the fantasy because this would still have meant reaching arriving at some point of pure experience of the real but identification with the symptom. We are sorry politically it’s problematic I give you the right to have me police waiting for me let’s have a chat what did you mean by that identification with the symptom no identification with the sinthome we cannot get and Lacan even writes sinthome not symptom that knot of the real that we have to accept that we are caught in this game of [unintelligible] impenetrable meanings and so on we have to accept it. I find this conclusion problematic if you ask me because I will try to because this topic now I come to something that I can tell you without shame it’s a theoretical point. Adrian Johnston very intelligently links this problem of impossibility to arrive at the pure real. Adrian Johnston notices how this model of arriving at the pure real is still caught in the trap of the transgressive mode. This is why Lacan already in the next seminar Desire and its Interpretation immediately abandons the logic of his reading of Antigone in Antigone traversing the fantasy is this you know momentary transgression. You pass through fantasies you confront the real but you cannot remain there you have to fall back into the game. But the sad thing is that the last Lacan returns to this. So again you know and I’m mad at myself that I didn’t get this. You know that the late Lacan very late often uses this term to to make use of fictions he said we are materialists but we should make use of God make use of the big other make use of name of the father make use of and so on. And now here comes the moment when I’m furious at Johnston because he’s good furious because I didn’t get and he got it this wonderful link. You remember the line I often repeated here this Lacan’s wonderful formula if God is dead then nothing is permitted. And Johnston idea is that Lacan confronted this paradox if nothing is permitted then no God kills our desire then it’s a terrifying universe of total sabotage so that the idea is if you want to sustain your desire you need something like the big other God which you know it’s a fiction but you need it as a fiction to transgress to violate it again and again and so on and so on. And so again what I don’t like is this almost cynical version of Lacan. And I remember when I was still on speaking terms with Miller this was in I think we had a friendly debate in Los Angeles I think on this where he even quoted Rorty he went into this that I too purist for him and we must have this playful attitude playing with fictions and so on and so on. Yeah but what I don’t like is this cynical implication. We know that it’s a fiction but since persisting in this atheist truth would kill our desire so to sustain our desire we would we should return from the blinding gaze of the real back into symbolic fictions and play games there just so then I will ask you sorry for vulgarity fuck you what did then we learn in psychoanalysis. The point is we learn that it’s nonetheless a fiction so that you don’t play it too seriously. But with ironic distance that’s for me a catastrophe that’s for me how ideology functions today. Play the game but don’t take it seriously play the social that’s why all big managers today from Elon Musk to Bill Gates are Buddhists you know. You play the game but when you play the market game you can you can you can cause the catastrophe for thousands but it’s just a fiction don’t take it too seriously. I think that Lacan’s mistake here is now I will just quickly conclude but I hope you will get my point. Because I’m often reproached by clinical Lacanians for the idea that ah I’m too much a philosopher no that I don’t know clinics and so on but I think that this conclusion of Lacan make use of play it’s precisely a proof that Lacan was not enough a philosopher. He got caught into this cynical deadlock because he didn’t think to the end philosophical consequences which are what. Although Lacan knew that’s my suspicion we may debate it some of you may know more. Although Lacan knew very well there is a wonderful formula in in Encore seminar that le réel est un impasse de la symbolisation the real is a deadlock of symbolization which I think should be taken literally. It doesn’t mean there is outside some chaotic real and we cannot grasp it through symbolic fictions it resists no no no the self-sabotaging is absolutely immanent. There is no real outside the symbolic. Real is just the necessary deadlock of symbolization itself. And to give you kind of a vorlust foreplay for tomorrow I will try I got this from Etienne Balibar in a text published in another volume on Marxism no capital ideas and so on. Balibar came to a wonderful notion of absolute total subsumption under capital. Claiming that till now subsumption under capital was just you know there are no spheres of production outside but now in the last decades something much more radical is happening with this self-education investment in education, healthcare for me that it’s not only that all work is work for the capital but that the very formation, education of the workforce is itself a field of capital investment. It gets kind of a redoubled and okay this let’s leave this for tomorrow because Balibar I think here in a wonderful text makes a fatal mistake. Because he even mentions Lacan the logic of non-all but uses it in a traditional sense like this means something resists. No no no I think the way to undermine capital is precisely when even the production of the workforce becomes capital investment then capitalist reproduction gets caught in a certain antagonistic deadlock and this way is much more productive than this search of there is some Brazilian tribe Oscar or French once went you remember into this deviation there is some in northern Amazon some tribe which resists capitalism they have a formula there. No I think that look for immanent antagonism. But let’s go on so in spite of Lacan knowing this again and again Lacan and Miller when he wrote the text the real of 21st century or whatever is still obsessed with this idea although theoretically he knows it’s not true as if there is some pure chaotic real outside symbolization outside symbolic fictions and that we have to we have to open ourselves to it. How that’s my problem. There are couple of solutions here first is the impossible one that although we know we are always caught in symbolic fictions we should nonetheless strive even if it’s impossible to aim at the pure real get rid of symbolic illusions and so on and so on. Second one is the postmodern one yes we cannot get out because there is no real all that is are symbolic fictions and we should just this the postmodern version playfully enjoy them and so on and so on. The third version would have been this I call it cynical manipulative. We cannot get out of fictions but we should accept it that they are just fictions and knowing that they are just fictions play with them and so on and so on. I think that I believe in the fourth version which also solves that problem of if there is no God nothing is nothing is permitted and so on and so on. If you just persist to the end in this absolutely immanent status of the real. The real is not some obstacle outside. The real is so that to touch the real but the real in its traumatic dimension and so on and so on you don’t have to move outside the symbolic you just have to bring the symbolic to its own self-sabotage inconsistency then I think you have a way to confront to break out of this of this cynical of this cynical conclusion. Which again bothers me in its political consequences and Miller unfortunately draws them no. Which is we should accept the game of parliamentary politics we just should be aware that this is the domain of illusory identifications and like play the game but be aware that it’s not a totally serious game. The problem for me is that again what if the real relations are inverted? What if your distance towards the game is the ultimate illusion? It’s precisely the way you play the game in the most efficient way. That’s why as many I call them ironically Western Buddhists are aware of it no. How Western Buddhism is the most efficient way to function in today’s crazy capitalism because it’s so crazy with all speculations on futures and so on and so on that the only way to survive is to tell yourself never forget it’s just a game of appearances and so on and so on you survive it and so on you know. I was a little bit confused I’m sorry so tomorrow you get this Balibar and I will really you know what will be my focus this big problem and I will try to address it in a very consistent way which means not simplifying jumping too much the title is I think Nomadic Proletarians No Thanks. Sorry? And it says no thanks. No absolutely no sex listen I was. Ah yeah no thanks you said no thanks. That’s what you say in your title you said Nomadic Proletarians question mark no thanks. Ah yeah yeah no because you know this is my implicit polemics with Alain Badiou. I deeply respect him but I don’t buy his version I think it’s part of what I call West European how should I call it outsourcing of revolution you know. We arrogant Western Marxists we like to imagine a proletarian revolution and we don’t get the subject. And now they got it oh my God what if we will outsource it to immigrants you know we finally found the proper proletarian subject. And my point will be not against immigrants but more against this maybe we should also redefine the proletarian position and I will play with this although proletarians are nothing but determinate nothing. Nothing the zero point of the existing order and immigrants are precisely less than nothing in this structural sense. They cannot even be located as the zero point in our society. You know who was a good surprise here for me he now moved to the left you remember we were criticized couple of times for bringing him here Jean-Claude Milner. Yes. He now has a very good text on immigrants which is surprisingly pro-surprisingly pro-immigrant. And he goes in a very materialist way on how in what sense they cannot be located how desperately we try to locate them all the hypocritical strategies that we use segregation and so on. Jordan Peterson would be the next one that he would be writing pro-immigrant. It’s nice to know you may be may be next year yeah yeah. Okay so we still have five minutes or what if you have some please some question why not. Some there. This is me you stole this from me. It was making too much noise it was annoying me. Yes please. Hi thank you very much for your master class. I have the following question um going back to the late Lacan’s cynicism and Miller. But he wouldn’t use the term cynicism that’s my reading. I agree. Yeah yeah. Where the real has this noumenal kind of transcendental status right. Yeah. What do you think what is your take on contemporary quote accelerationism which sustains something in the same vein which I would read personally as Christian eschatology but secular version through metaphysics particularly Deleuze and De Landa and Land but with somehow still retains this cynicism right. The day after tomorrow. Yeah yeah yeah. No I agree many accelerationists have this cynical approach let’s push it to the end because we know that at the end it will turn but no no I agree with you you know which point of accelerationism nonetheless I accept this idea that accelerationism can be a good medicine against this how should I call it resistentialism. Global capitalism then you look for some local sites of resistance as if the solution is to locate places which still resist capitalism you know it can be culture subcultures or whatever. In this sense only I’m for accelerationism like it will be inner antagonisms that will break the system not not Latino-American or African tribes which have some holistic wisdom or whatever you know. But you know but nonetheless for me today it’s almost greater danger because as far as I know accelerationism I don’t know how efficient it is as a political force while this resistentialism how should I call it has a certain power in Latin America, in Africa and so on. And I for me always beginning with in South Africa I remember as a young boy I was following there all the strikes and how again my oft repeated motive African National Congress never fell into this trap we must retain our African identity and so on. King Buthelezi who was literally paid for in the service of apartheid forces he played this game our African identity and so on and so on. You know so this all this holistic we sorry I talk too much okay. What do I care? What does it matter? It doesn’t matter. Okay. Um I’ve recently heard Etienne in relation to this question of no inside everything’s inside there’s no outside. Yeah. Um he keeps way of thinking it was a topological one where you twist the inside which is what Lacan does you twist the inside to produce an outside. And the proletarian is traditionally that outside the extimité. It’s intimate too the inside but exterior at the same time. And I’m thinking of Badiou’s event would be exactly that as well it’s a supplement of excess in the state of the situation. Yes it’s a twist of the topology that allows a supplement of excess within a state of the situation. If you encounter it you move from the bad infinity to a transitive infinity and that’s the act. Yeah that’s an act. But I just want to say one other thing because you mentioned you put no Antigone and Ismene. Yeah. I would say Oedipus and Creon. You said you hadn’t come out with the masculine pair and I would say Oedipus and Creon. That would be very good. This is wonderful what you said but I have a counterpoint. You know who I’m sorry please please for sorry sorry yes. I just think that this idea that Antigone is transgressive is I think a profound misunderstanding because in the Ethics Lacan asks what’s the stake of Antigone’s act um of burying Polynices and it’s the burying of Ate transgenerational contamination which separates whether what whatever he might have done his history from the fact that he’s the bearer of the sign. Yeah yeah yeah. And so the stake of Antigone’s act he says is it a the jouissance of transgression he says no. Is it the jouissance of destruction no. Is it the jouissance of defiance no. So what is it? Well it’s something else it might be on the side of self-knowledge so he Lacan actually says in the Ethics seminar very clearly and I can’t see that this can be improved on in anything else you say in your negative work that it’s not the jouissance of transgression because the content of the act she may transgress a limit. Yeah. She may defy the state. Yeah yeah. She may just be destructive it may produce all kinds of destructions in its wake. Yeah yeah. But it’s not the content of the act it’s not defiance destruction or disobedience. It’s the it she wants to bury Ate she wants to you know it’s the limit of the second death she’s actually burying a transgenerational contamination and I think that’s the stake of psychoanalysis. You get what I’m saying? It’s not destruction creation ex nihilo. Yes yes yes yeah. Are you following what I’m saying? Yeah yeah. But you know what’s my problem here I see what you are saying and I would make in this direction even a step further that as you already hinted at that in her act Antigone
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insists
insists
Slavoj Žižek
also on the signifier like Polynices’ death becomes a
also on the signifier like Polynices’ death becomes a
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pure
pure
Slavoj Žižek
name and as such disconnected from the content of his acts. So that I agree with you that for him burying Polynices does mean his reduction to the real sorry reduction to the pure signifier. So it’s not real some mystical real beyond it’s pure signifier. But I think I admit totally that it gets immediately more complex. I think that this is the reason why Lacan immediately as I often repeated in the next year in his Desire and its Interpretation went to Sygne de Coûfontaine which is his anti-Antigone. And this is why in this sense of reducing to a pure signifier Antigone is a model of desire when he says pure desire but you know when I often mention this when at the last page of Seminar Lacan says the desire of the analyst is not a pure desire. I think this is a criticism of this model. But nonetheless I think things I see your point of course that things get more complex here because what about all the dimension of death drive to die and so on and so on? I I don’t think that it can be reduced to this symbolic dimension. But something else I want to tell you when you mentioned Oedipus another duality now fascinates me. Oedipus versus Oedipus at Colonus.
name and as such disconnected from the content of his acts. So that I agree with you that for him burying Polynices does mean his reduction to the real sorry reduction to the pure signifier. So it’s not real some mystical real beyond it’s pure signifier. But I think I admit totally that it gets immediately more complex. I think that this is the reason why Lacan immediately as I often repeated in the next year in his Desire and its Interpretation went to Sygne de Coûfontaine which is his anti-Antigone. And this is why in this sense of reducing to a pure signifier Antigone is a model of desire when he says pure desire but you know when I often mention this when at the last page of Seminar Lacan says the desire of the analyst is not a pure desire. I think this is a criticism of this model. But nonetheless I think things I see your point of course that things get more complex here because what about all the dimension of death drive to die and so on and so on? I I don’t think that it can be reduced to this symbolic dimension. But something else I want to tell you when you mentioned Oedipus another duality now fascinates me. Oedipus versus Oedipus at Colonus.
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Oedipus
Oedipus
Slavoj Žižek
at Colonus is my hero you know why. This utter stupidity of seeing in Oedipus at Colonus the ultimate figure of wisdom he has seen it all and so on. No
at Colonus is my hero you know why. This utter stupidity of seeing in Oedipus at Colonus the ultimate figure of wisdom he has seen it all and so on. No
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Oedipus who survives his
Oedipus who survives his
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blinding and so on. Oedipus at Colonus is precisely
blinding and so on. Oedipus at Colonus is precisely
Slavoj Žižek
the one who doesn’t compromise his desire.
the one who doesn’t compromise his desire.
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Because you know typically everybody majority even of interpreters refers to Oedipus at Colonus this words the greatest luck not having been born at all as Oedipus’ wisdom. No read
Because you know typically everybody majority even of interpreters refers to Oedipus at Colonus this words the greatest luck not having been born at all as Oedipus’ wisdom. No read
Slavoj Žižek
it it’s the stupid chorus who says this. Oedipus is way too aggressive Oedipus’ message is I may be blind half dead but no I want to hurt Thebes I want my revenge I don’t make any compromise and so on. He is precisely if there is a figures of the you know Alenka Zupančič she only has it in Slovene wrote a text now wonderful in Slovene on Oedipus at Colonus where she says how already Lacan says something wonderful was it in Antigone somewhere he says that there is a deep truth in this that we all have to go through Oedipal complex except Oedipus. Oedipus is the one who and she points how different things are like Oedipus is usually read as a tragic hero like you do something which expresses articulates your unconscious desire and the tragic greatness is that although you experience it as fate oh my God it happened I didn’t know but nonetheless since your unconscious desire you assume no so as Hegel put it nicely this tragic logic that the greatest humiliation for a hero was that if you don’t if you don’t recognize his guilt it’s his honor to be guilty to be guilty means that at a deeper
it it’s the stupid chorus who says this. Oedipus is way too aggressive Oedipus’ message is I may be blind half dead but no I want to hurt Thebes I want my revenge I don’t make any compromise and so on. He is precisely if there is a figures of the you know Alenka Zupančič she only has it in Slovene wrote a text now wonderful in Slovene on Oedipus at Colonus where she says how already Lacan says something wonderful was it in Antigone somewhere he says that there is a deep truth in this that we all have to go through Oedipal complex except Oedipus. Oedipus is the one who and she points how different things are like Oedipus is usually read as a tragic hero like you do something which expresses articulates your unconscious desire and the tragic greatness is that although you experience it as fate oh my God it happened I didn’t know but nonetheless since your unconscious desire you assume no so as Hegel put it nicely this tragic logic that the greatest humiliation for a hero was that if you don’t if you don’t recognize his guilt it’s his honor to be guilty to be guilty means that at a deeper
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level he is responsible but if you read closely Oedipus already The King Oedipus not at Colonus he absolutely you never get this moment where Oedipus would say oh now I admit. He doesn’t blind himself for seeing the truth he to the end rejects his responsibility. He said I took by mistake that road I killed my father I didn’t want it he is not absolutely not that guy who at some deeper level followed his desire and so on and so on he is never reconciled with with his guilt in the sense
level he is responsible but if you read closely Oedipus already The King Oedipus not at Colonus he absolutely you never get this moment where Oedipus would say oh now I admit. He doesn’t blind himself for seeing the truth he to the end rejects his responsibility. He said I took by mistake that road I killed my father I didn’t want it he is not absolutely not that guy who at some deeper level followed his desire and so on and so on he is never reconciled with with his guilt in the sense
Slavoj Žižek
of I’m deeply responsible for it and so on so in this sense only at
of I’m deeply responsible for it and so on so in this sense only at
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Colonus he becomes true being of desire. He is my guy there he is pure evil almost you know what’s his problem his problem is he knows that the place where he will die will bring luck to the city and it’s the entire
Colonus he becomes true being of desire. He is my guy there he is pure evil almost you know what’s his problem his problem is he knows that the place where he will die will bring luck to the city and it’s the entire
Slavoj Žižek
manipulation of how to sell his death expensive the
manipulation of how to sell his death expensive the
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most expensive way not only this he manipulates like crazy you know how he stages his dying the whole spectacle and so on. Pure being of desire I think he is my hero. And do you know it’s wonderful to read the story you know what role did this game play Sophocles’ last game you know the irony we know from history it’s wonderful. Do you know that Oedipus was Sophocles was very old which was incredible for ancient Greece and his
most expensive way not only this he manipulates like crazy you know how he stages his dying the whole spectacle and so on. Pure being of desire I think he is my hero. And do you know it’s wonderful to read the story you know what role did this game play Sophocles’ last game you know the irony we know from history it’s wonderful. Do you know that Oedipus was Sophocles was very old which was incredible for ancient Greece and his
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sons or one I don’t know were prosecuting him
sons or one I don’t know were prosecuting him
Slavoj Žižek
for money want to proclaim him old senile crazy. And he wrote Oedipus at Colonus to prove that he is not stupid enough is so even the play was written fuck you I’m but you will not get my money you know. I love this total naivete and this is so important not to project on Oedipus this figure of tragic wisdom or already I agree with you already with Antigone it’s more complicated Creon is the only figure of tragic in in Antigone. Creon does something then he discovers he kills his son blah this moment of how do you call when you recognize my God the external enemies my own act. This is Creon. Antigone is not a tragic hero Oedipus is not a tragic hero Oedipus I love him now it’s crazy. Oedipus’ message read in detail when he has to admit that he killed his father what he is saying. He is not saying oh my tragic fate blah blah he is saying fuck you I’m not guilty I didn’t want it and Lacan emphatically agrees with it you know. No no I sorry I don’t have more time but these are it’s so refreshing to return to classics and just see how different they are from what we expect. Again it’s automatically everybody assumes that Oedipus said of this deep wisdom better to not to be born. No that’s the stupid chorus chorus is the site of stupidities of common wisdom chorus sorry yeah. Don’t you think Tiresias is a very interesting figure Tiresias? Yeah but at but for this yes making Lacan’s table of sexuation to think the complexity of his sexuation? Yeah this yeah is he male at all is he more feminine? He was both for a while but yeah that’s it that’s it yeah. He sees two serpents in the mountain at the junction and he hits them and they turn him into well but you know whom I love in Oedipus at Colonus? When Creon comes to Colonus how he Creon totally manipulates first he says to who is the Theseus who is the. Theseus. First he says to Theseus how can you receive this guy he killed his screws his mother he killed this is disgusting Oedipus. Then he turns to Oedipus in the same speech and says we admire you in Thebes come to us to you know like total manipulation so I have a certain sympathy for Creon even there. Uh we did have two more questions do you need to close? No we are seven minutes past if you will be here tomorrow we can simply begin with if sorry will you be here tomorrow? Then please begin tomorrow. And there’s one here as well. Okay okay so we are so now I will be disgusting ironically masculine so yin yang male and female are balanced you know. And I have a question lots of questions. Fuck off be all sexual gender binary positions are filled in so please don’t forget you and you begin tomorrow and then we go into that bullshit you know. Okay great. Oh no we tomorrow I warn you it will be more difficult a little bit.
for money want to proclaim him old senile crazy. And he wrote Oedipus at Colonus to prove that he is not stupid enough is so even the play was written fuck you I’m but you will not get my money you know. I love this total naivete and this is so important not to project on Oedipus this figure of tragic wisdom or already I agree with you already with Antigone it’s more complicated Creon is the only figure of tragic in in Antigone. Creon does something then he discovers he kills his son blah this moment of how do you call when you recognize my God the external enemies my own act. This is Creon. Antigone is not a tragic hero Oedipus is not a tragic hero Oedipus I love him now it’s crazy. Oedipus’ message read in detail when he has to admit that he killed his father what he is saying. He is not saying oh my tragic fate blah blah he is saying fuck you I’m not guilty I didn’t want it and Lacan emphatically agrees with it you know. No no I sorry I don’t have more time but these are it’s so refreshing to return to classics and just see how different they are from what we expect. Again it’s automatically everybody assumes that Oedipus said of this deep wisdom better to not to be born. No that’s the stupid chorus chorus is the site of stupidities of common wisdom chorus sorry yeah. Don’t you think Tiresias is a very interesting figure Tiresias? Yeah but at but for this yes making Lacan’s table of sexuation to think the complexity of his sexuation? Yeah this yeah is he male at all is he more feminine? He was both for a while but yeah that’s it that’s it yeah. He sees two serpents in the mountain at the junction and he hits them and they turn him into well but you know whom I love in Oedipus at Colonus? When Creon comes to Colonus how he Creon totally manipulates first he says to who is the Theseus who is the. Theseus. First he says to Theseus how can you receive this guy he killed his screws his mother he killed this is disgusting Oedipus. Then he turns to Oedipus in the same speech and says we admire you in Thebes come to us to you know like total manipulation so I have a certain sympathy for Creon even there. Uh we did have two more questions do you need to close? No we are seven minutes past if you will be here tomorrow we can simply begin with if sorry will you be here tomorrow? Then please begin tomorrow. And there’s one here as well. Okay okay so we are so now I will be disgusting ironically masculine so yin yang male and female are balanced you know. And I have a question lots of questions. Fuck off be all sexual gender binary positions are filled in so please don’t forget you and you begin tomorrow and then we go into that bullshit you know. Okay great. Oh no we tomorrow I warn you it will be more difficult a little bit.