Was will Europa?
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2014-12-20 · 2:24:57 · 20,089 words
capitalismideologygeopolitics-wardemocracypsychoanalysishegel-dialecticsliberalism-political-correctnessrevolution-violencehistoryphilosophy-generalcinema-art-cultureeconomics
Žižek delivers a wide-ranging lecture in Poland addressing capitalism's decoupling from democracy, the geopolitical parallels between the pre-WWI era and the present, and the logic of superego guilt as wielded by political correctness and debt ideology. He develops a Dupuy-influenced theory of 'enlightened catastrophism', accepting catastrophe as fate in order to act radically enough to prevent it, illustrated via counterfactual logic, Hitchcock's Vertigo, and the 'coffee without milk' joke. The Q&A extends into Ukraine/Putin, Piketty's tax proposal, Foucault and neoliberalism, and the figure of the authentic master.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 15
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Žižek's ironic label for authoritarian state capitalism pioneered by Singapore and spreading globally, which shows capitalism no longer needs liberal democracy.
Against vulgar Marxist historicism, Žižek insists that formal universality (human rights, democratic form) is never 'mere' form, it opens real sites of political mobilization, as proved by the Haitian Revolution.
Lazzarato's concept invoked by Žižek: debt as an ethical-anthropological category that structures subjectivity and constrains freedom while presenting itself as an expression of individual choice.
The ideological fantasy that all individuals, regardless of actual wealth, are equivalent entrepreneurs differing only in decimal places, used to present structural unfreedom as an expansion of freedom.
Implied in Žižek's discussion of the 'logic of the system' where no individual is guilty, a structural, anonymous force that produces outcomes without a conscious agent directing them.
as “post-democratic authoritarian system”
Žižek's term for the emergent political form where leaders mock themselves and dispense with insignia of power while still exercising authority, exemplified by Berlusconi.
Žižek contrasts Cold War MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) with today's NUTS (Nuclear Utilization Target Selection), signalling a dangerous shift toward believing limited nuclear strikes are survivable.
as “enlightened catastrophism”
Žižek's (via Dupuy) prescription: acknowledge catastrophe as our certain fate so as to mobilize the radical action needed to prevent it, rather than complacent optimism.
Lacan's object-cause of desire, illustrated by Žižek via the woman who would be perfect 'with two or three kilos less', the flaw is not an obstacle to perfection but its very cause.
as “counterfactual logic”
Žižek's method of imagining how the situation could have been otherwise in order to see the truth of how it actually is; part of the thing's identity is what it might have been but is not.
Something happens contingently, but once it happens it retroactively establishes its own necessity, the logic Žižek opposes to vulgar Marxist determinism (Plekhanov's 'Napoleon was interchangeable').
In the strict Freudian sense Žižek invokes here: an obscene moral agency whose defining paradox is that the more you obey it, the more guilty you feel, deployed to explain political correctness and debt-guilt.
as “enlightened hedonism”
Žižek's label for the predominant ideology of developed liberal academia: 'live authentically, experiment with yourself, be creative', which Butler's performative subversion merely mirrors rather than challenges.
Hegel's term Žižek uses against Badiou's position that authentic politics is always outside the state, a comfortable stance of moral purity that refuses to dirty its hands with power.
as “authentic master”
Žižek's figure of a master who does not give orders but opens up possibilities and restores freedom, exemplified by Marek Edelman, against the conservative notion of the master as controller of wild nature.
Stories he reaches for 12
In Lubitsch's Ninotchka, a customer asks for coffee with cream; the waiter says they only have milk, so he can only give coffee without milk, not coffee without cream. The absence is determinate, what you lack is specific and shapes your identity.
“Sorry we don't have cream, we only have milk. So I can only give you coffee without milk, I cannot give you coffee without cream.”
Native Americans Žižek met in Missoula, Montana, said they prefer 'Indian' because 'Native American' is potentially more racist (native = nature, you = culture), while 'Indian' at least memorializes white man's stupidity. They also boasted they destroyed more buffaloes than any white man could, resisting the patronizing myth of ecological natives.
“We much prefer the term Indian to Native American. Because Native American is potentially much more racist…at least our name is a monument to white man's stupidity.”
Žižek argues Malcolm X's greatness was refusing to seek African roots (unlike Alex Haley's Roots): the X, standing for lost family name and severed origins, gave Black Americans a unique chance to be more universal than whites, to create freedom from scratch.
“Malcolm X has had a much deeper insight. He said what this X…gives blacks a unique chance to be more universal than whites, to freely create their own space of freedom.”
Žižek rewrote Antigone in a Brechtian and Kieślowski-style triple structure: (1) Creon wins classically; (2) Antigone wins, catastrophically, burning Thebes; (3) the chorus, as a Jacobin Committee of Public Safety, arrests both and liquidates them. Žižek's preferred version is the third.
“While Antigone and Creon are fighting the chorus steps in, arrests both, and says, 'While the people are suffering…you with your feudal conflicts are ruining people, you will all both be liquidated.'”
Napoleon sent a largely Polish army to crush the Haitian Revolution; as they approached, the black fighters were singing the Marseillaise, causing many Polish soldiers to defect. The Haitian Constitution solved the question of white allies by declaring all citizens of Haiti 'black' regardless of skin color.
“Haiti is a black republic, so all citizens of Haiti independently of the color of their skin are black. It's a totally correct solution, I claim.”
Sloterdijk predicts that in a hundred years the only monuments built to figures of our era will be to Li Kuan Yew, founder of Singapore and inventor of 'capitalism with Asian values', because he demonstrated that capitalism can thrive without democracy.
“he gave a wonderful ingenious answer: Li Kuan Yew…the Singapore leader who invented…capitalism with Asian values.”
Dupuy's reading of Vertigo: when Scottie discovers Madeleine was fake from the beginning, he does not simply lose her, at the counterfactual level the past is changed, retroactively erasing a love that never really existed. This illustrates the political act that changes destiny.
“He doesn't lose her but he…retroactively discovers that there never even was a Madeleine.”
Marek Edelman, Warsaw Ghetto fighter, Bundist, Solidarity member, letter-writer supporting Palestinians, was refused a handshake by Rabin in Poland; Žižek uses him as the example of an 'authentic master' who opens up possibilities rather than commanding.
“The only authentic Jew…he restores your freedom to you, he opens up a possibility where you don't see it.”
Like the Sarajevo assassination that triggered WWI when everyone believed war impossible, Crimea is today's test: Putin hears a call from Crimea, swallows it, then may hear calls from Baltic states or Poland, the paranoiac logic of probing the opponent's limits.
“Putin hears calls for help. He heard it first for Crimea, now who knows maybe he will hear some future calls from Baltic republics, maybe even from Poland.”
A journalist from The Economist told Žižek that Berlusconi, in interview, immediately diverted from economics to offer a tour of his 'bunga bunga room', exemplifying how today's power legitimizes itself through self-mockery rather than solemn authority.
“Berlusconi told him, but forget about economy, let's talk about more nicer things, would you like to see the bunga bunga room”
Marx thought that removing the capitalist form from the system's productive dynamic would leave the dynamic intact or stronger; Žižek argues this is like the woman losing two or three kilos, the obstacle is constitutive of the very thing it appears to obstruct.
“Marx just thought that at a certain level of development of forces of production, you can take away the capitalist form and the dynamic will remain…Marx didn't see that what he thought is today an obstacle to capitalist development is its only frame.”
Sloterdijk argues that global capitalism is not merely worldwide but forms a dome (cupola): some are inside, some outside, and those inside literally cannot see the outside, illustrated by 15,000 illegal Chinese slave-workers in a suburb of Florence.
“in the suburb of Firenze, my god, the high point of Western civilization, there are fifteen thousand Chinese workers there illegally who work as slaves. So it's not back there…it's here.”
Works invoked 26
Vertigo film
Dupuy's favorite film and voted greatest of all time; Žižek uses it as the central illustration of retroactive change of the past and counterfactual temporality.
Ninotchka film
Ernst Lubitsch film containing the 'coffee without cream/milk' joke that Žižek uses constantly to illustrate determinate negation and counterfactual identity.
Less Than Nothing book
Žižek's own 1000-page book on Hegel; mentioned to rebut the charge that he is only an ironic philosopher, he argues systematically there for returning from Marx to Hegel.
Philosophy of Right book
Hegel's political work; Žižek via Pippin reads it as describing a social order whose time has already passed, consistent with the owl of Minerva.
Elysium film
Cited alongside Hunger Games as a Hollywood blockbuster obsessed with class division and approaching apartheid society.
The Hunger Games film
Hollywood blockbuster cited as evidence that even Hollywood knows we are approaching a new apartheid society, Hollywood 'trusts' class struggle.
Roots book
Alex Haley's bestseller (and TV series) about retracing Black American origins to an African tribe, Žižek cites it as the wrong response to X, the opposite of Malcolm X's universalism.
To Be or Not to Be film
Lubitsch Hitler comedy set in Warsaw; Žižek calls it 'maybe the best film which takes place in Poland'.
Trouble in Paradise book
Žižek's own new book; cited for the Marek Edelman example of the authentic master.
Underground film
Kusturica film Žižek thinks is wrong: it projects a Western fantasy of Balkan wildness (permanent orgy, violence, drink) rather than representing actual ex-Yugoslav life.
Malcolm X (film) film
Spike Lee film with Denzel Washington; Žižek references it to introduce his point about Malcolm X's universalism.
The Rapture film
Michael Tolkin's film used to illustrate radical Protestant theology: the heroine's refusal to declare love for Jesus even at the cost of eternal purgatory is 'in the best tradition of radical Christian experiments'.
Piketty's book (referred to as 'the book of Piketty' about to be published in Polish); Žižek admires it for opening a new discursive space but calls its global wealth tax proposal a utopia requiring already-won conditions.
The Ghost Writer film
Polanski film used to illustrate counterfactual truth: the Blair-wife-as-CIA-agent premise is known to be false but illuminates the entire situation if assumed.
Carmen opera
Bizet's opera used as a reductio ad absurdum of political correctness: banned by Perth opera for 'smoking propaganda'.
Žižek's own book; a questioner cites it for the claim that true communism must come with abolition of the state, Žižek disputes the reading.
The Balcony play
Jean Genet's play cited as illustrating how power no longer requires the insignia of authority.
Kieślowski film, Žižek's 'favorite', used as structural model for his three-version rewrite of Antigone: a single crucial moment branches into radically different outcomes.
Foucault's book that approaches a closed model where every resistance is already contained within power, leading to the deadlock Foucault tried to escape via care of the self.
Dupuy's last book; Žižek recommends buying it; contains the theory of enlightened catastrophism and counterfactual temporality with Vertigo as central example.
Lazzarato's book praised as showing 'in such a nice way' how debt as an ethical-anthropological category presents structural constraint as free choice.
Žižek calls it Foucault's 'absolute best' and 'least popular' book; treats statements as events, very Deleuzian.
Chinatown film
Žižek says he likes this Polanski noir.
Comradely Greetings book
Žižek's exchange with Pussy Riot's Tolokonnikova; described as containing a 'genuine conflict' with her carnival model of resistance.
Ida film
Pawlikowski's film; Žižek says a Slovenian director privately admitted it was the best of the three European Film of Year competitors, and Žižek had inadvertently supported the rival Slovenian film.
Žižek's own early book on Lenin; mentioned as expressing his admiration for Lenin's willingness to seize power.
People invoked 55
Mahatma Gandhi negative
Accused of betraying emancipation by defending the caste system ('each caste with the dignity it deserved'), thereby blocking genuine equality for untouchables.
Used as an example of how brutal neoliberal economics and radical Hindu nationalism combine perfectly, showing that local culture is no obstacle to global capital.
Jean-Pierre Dupuy positive
Described as a genius, 'philosopher of catastrophes', Žižek's 'good friend'; his theory of enlightened catastrophism and counterfactual temporality are central to the talk's theoretical core.
Robert Pippin positive
Called 'the great American Hegelian' with whom Žižek has polemics but is 'not stupid'; cited for the reading that Hegel's Philosophy of Right describes a social order already approaching its end.
Mentioned in passing: Žižek jokes that by a 'non-metaphysical notion of time' (Derrida) he hasn't really used up his hour.
Lee Kuan Yew positive
Cited via Sloterdijk as the emblematic figure of 'capitalism with Asian values', the man to whom monuments will be built, not personally admired but intellectually used as a diagnostic case.
Friedrich Hayek positive
Žižek quotes Hayek positively on envy: capitalism works because it is unjust and randomized, not meritocratic, so no one can envy a winner who simply got lucky.
Lars von Trier positive
Some early von Trier films cited alongside The Balcony as illustrating the point that today's master legitimizes himself by admitting fallibility.
Vladimir Lenin positive
Admired for not being a bullshitter, he saw a chance to take power and took it; his 1920s indigenization policy (giving cultural autonomy to non-Russian nations) praised as progressive; used as counter-example to Badiou's anti-state position.
Marek Edelman positive
Called 'one of my heroes', Warsaw Ghetto fighter, Bundist, Solidarity member, Palestinian sympathizer, exemplifies the authentic master who opens up freedom rather than commanding.
Gore Vidal positive
Attributed the line 'In capitalism it's not important that I win, even more important that the other guy loses', used to illustrate envy as the fundamental drive.
Deng Xiaoping positive
Žižek says Deng was 'right' to block democratization in the sense that this proves a critique of capitalism (which can function without democracy), not a defense of communism.
Jacques Lacan positive
Objet petit a invoked to explain the logic of the constitutive flaw; also implicit in the discussion of envy as desire of the Other.
John Rawls negative
Called 'the true idiot'; his theory of justice fails because it excludes envy, which Dupuy showed in debate with Rawls.
Oliver Stone negative
Criticized for being 'seduced by Putin' and announcing a pro-Putin documentary; cited via Assange as an example of the left's auto-idolization of strong anti-Western leaders.
Georgi Plekhanov negative
Called 'the most unfortunate Marxist philosopher Russian'; his determinism (if not Napoleon, another would have played the same role) is the wrong logic Žižek opposes with retroactive necessity.
G. K. Chesterton positive
Called 'my beloved Chesterton'; cited for the theological insight that sometimes a particular lie, known to be a lie, illuminates the truth of a situation.
Jean Genet positive
His play The Balcony (Le Balcon) cited as illustrating how today's power no longer needs the insignia of authority.
Francis Fukuyama positive
Žižek defends Fukuyama as 'not totally stupid, an honest guy' who privately conceded that 9/11 and biogenetics make the end of history thesis obsolete; Žižek uses the encounter to make a point about ex-communist capitalism.
Frank Ruda positive
Described as 'my friend, a German Hegelian philosopher'; cited for the example of Humboldt University professors teaching for free to maintain their CV while the university exploits this structurally.
Judith Butler negative
Žižek has 'personal good relations' with her but argues her performative subversion of identity describes not a threat to today's order but its implicit ideology, enlightened hedonism.
Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens negative
Called an 'original sinner': reframed precarious labor as self-reinvention and postmodern freedom, providing ideological cover for structural unfreedom.
Franco Berardi positive
Mentioned alongside Lazzarato as having 'some nice insights' on the ideology of self-entrepreneurship.
Nadya Tolokonnikova negative
Discussed via the Comradely Greetings book; Žižek disagrees with her carnival/holy-fool model of resistance, arguing the real brutal irony is already on the side of power.
Antonio Negri negative
His 'multitude' / local-democracy / anti-representation politics dismissed as 'a nightmare' of endless community meetings; Žižek prefers nicely alienated society.
Alain Badiou positive
Invoked for his concept of counterfactuals and 'signs from the future'; Žižek has an 'ongoing conflict' with Badiou's anti-state politics, which he calls 'beautiful soul', but uses his ideas productively.
George Orwell positive
Cited for his late-1930s 'vicious attack on the radical left' arguing that the left's constant talk about revolution is a superstitious logic to ensure it never happens.
Cited in the context of counterfactual Stalinism, might Trotsky have played a similar role to Stalin if he had come to power?, and as an example of leftist failure theorized brilliantly after the fact.
Samir Amin negative
Old anti-colonialist who Žižek says 'forgot to die'; accused of still blaming only the Western triad (US, EU, Israel) and naively promoting China/Russia as good alternatives, rebutted by Syriza members about Chinese ownership of Piraeus.
Fredric Jameson positive
Called 'my good friend American Marxist'; Žižek disagreed with Jameson's contempt for Cuban emigres, defending the ordinary Cuban's right to leave.
Wang Hui positive
Described as a Chinese dissident leftist (not old communist nostalgia), arrested at Tiananmen, who shared the Deng Xiaoping's daughter anecdote with Žižek.
Julian Assange positive
Described as 'a kind of a friend of mine'; visited at the Ecuadorian Embassy; cited for revealing TISA/TAFTA trade agreements kept secret.
Samuel Beckett positive
'Fail again, fail better' invoked as the basis for a crude sexual joke, then defended as obvious irony when a literal-minded American objected.
Alain Finkielkraut negative
Called 'half my friend, not an idiot'; but Žižek rejects his worry about global capitalism destroying the 'small French way of life', arguing local cultures are already playing the game of capital.
Bertolt Brecht positive
Žižek's rewrite of Antigone is explicitly described as 'Brechtian'; a Brecht poem on keeping one's word is quoted in the Chorus's interrogation of Antigone.
Mladen Dolar positive
Žižek quotes his 'wonderful formula': the European unconscious is structured like the Balkan.
Malcolm X positive
Described as 'radical' and admired for rejecting the search for African roots in favor of a universal freedom built from the X of lost origins.
Michel Foucault positive
Žižek rates The Archaeology of Knowledge as Foucault's best and least popular book; rejects the late Foucault (care of the self) and sees Discipline and Punish as leading to a closed model where all resistance is absorbed; also criticizes him for missing psychoanalysis.
Peter Sloterdijk positive
Žižek calls him a friend and 'not an idiot', appreciates his cupola metaphor and the Li Kuan Yew monument idea, disagrees with his 'celebrating rich people' thesis but recognizes the underlying concern for the welfare state.
Richard Sennett positive
Cited for the idea that public life is being privatized, there is less and less public life, not less private life.
Roman Polanski positive
Žižek has a 'strange mixed opinion' but likes Chinatown and The Ghost Writer; the latter is used to illustrate counterfactual truth-in-a-lie.
Krzysztof Kieślowski positive
Blind Chance cited as the model for Žižek's three-version rewrite of Antigone, the idea of the same crucial moment going in radically different directions.
Rosa Luxemburg positive
Cited for her debate with Lenin on national self-determination: she wanted to grant autonomy only if the left was in power, whereas Lenin gave unconditional right to secede.
Alfred Hitchcock positive
Vertigo is Dupuy's and by extension Žižek's central film example for retroactive change of the past and counterfactual temporality.
Žižek defends Obama against pseudo-leftist disappointment ('fuck you, what did they expect?'), says he did what was possible, but criticizes his belief in America's role as world policeman.
Jürgen Habermas negative
Žižek cannot understand the 'totally irrational hatred' of Habermasians toward Sloterdijk, implying Habermasians are the irrational faction; Habermas himself is implicitly positioned as the origin of this hostility.
Vladimir Putin negative
Žižek repeatedly insists he is not pro-Putin; calls him a 'pretty predictable example of authority in Russia' and says Putin is not good for Russian development itself; condemns his support for Marine Le Pen and Orbán.
Joseph Stalin negative
Attacked Lenin as a 'bourgeois-liberal nationalist' in 1922 for supporting Ukrainian autonomy; his 'Stalinist stupidity' of dismissing formal democracy as mere form is what Žižek rejects.
Noam Chomsky negative
Called an 'easy sparring partner'; attacked Žižek; described as offering only 'very vague anarchism' with no minimal positive vision of alternative society.
Karl Marx positive
Žižek says some of Marx's ideas were great (especially on form and history), but criticizes his communist vision as 'capitalism without capitalism' and says we should return from Marx to Hegel.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Cited for the owl of Minerva and 'philosophy can only paint gray on gray'; deployed against positive utopian visions; Žižek argues Hegel was more materialist than Marx on historical necessity.
Not explicitly named but the 'Balcon' reference touches Genet, who is named; Sartre implicit in the French philosophical context.
Emir Kusturica negative
Žižek says he is a good filmmaker but hates Underground for projecting a Western fantasy of Balkan wildness (permanent orgy, fighting, drinking) that does not represent actual Balkan life; accuses Kusturica of consciously performing this role for Western gaze.
Maurizio Lazzarato positive
His book The Making of the Indebted Man praised as showing 'in such a nice way' how debt as ethical-anthropological category presents structural constraint as free choice.
Thomas Piketty negative
Admired for opening a new discursive space on inequality, but Žižek calls his global progressive wealth tax a 'utopia in the worst sense', its implementation already presupposes global political authority that would mean capitalism had been transcended.
What it argues
capitalism's divorce from democracy and its new authoritarian formenlightened catastrophism: accepting fate to change itcounterfactual logic and retroactive necessitysuperego guilt, debt, and the ideology of self-entrepreneurshipEurocentrism defended as universal emancipatory legacythe pre-WWI parallel and the danger of a new world warthe authentic master as restorer of freedom
Dialectical moves 11
“The moment global capitalism truly won universally, the European legacy of egalitarianism and human rights is dismissed as Eurocentrism—precisely now we should stick to it more than ever.”
The apparent victory of global capitalism over European modernity is the moment to defend the Enlightenment most fiercely, not to abandon it.
“Personal freedoms are more and more guaranteed, but the very reference to our freedom is used to counteract actual freedom.”
The proliferation of small personal freedoms is itself the mechanism that blocks freedom in any systemic or structural sense.
“Actual unfreedom is often presented to us as a new form of freedom.”
Precarious labour and debt are ideologically repackaged as self-reinvention and entrepreneurial opportunity.
“The more you obey the superego, the more guilty you feel.”
Superego morality is vicious and self-reinforcing: compliance amplifies rather than diminishes guilt, making true satisfaction impossible.
“What appears as an obstacle to perfect beauty is the very effect of that obstacle—remove it and you get ordinary vulgarity.”
The objet petit a: the flaw or excess does not impede the ideal but retroactively produces it; eliminate the flaw and the ideal vanishes too.
“It's not that we can't have coffee without cream; we can only have coffee without milk.”
Absence is never a pure nothing but the absence of something specific; what you lack shapes your identity.
“Something happens contingently but retroactively establishes its own necessity.”
Against determinism: events are genuinely contingent, but once they happen they appear as destined, the past can be 'changed' at the counterfactual level.
“The true brutal irony who mocks us all is the Putin regime itself—not the carnival of dissidents against stable bureaucracy.”
Pussy Riot's self-image as carnivalesque subversion inverts the real structure: it is the power that is already ironic and self-mocking.
“We don't need carnival, we need better bureaucratic structures.”
Žižek inverts the left's fetish for spontaneous transgression: durable institutional change beats spectacular performance.
“Butler is not describing subversion; she is describing the implicit ideology of today's developed world.”
What counts as radical performative disruption is already the hegemonic norm, subversion has been absorbed into the system.
“We need a master to become actually free.”
Against the liberal fantasy of freedom-from-authority: the authentic master's function is to open up possibilities and restore freedom rather than constrain it.
Claims 20
asserts
Capitalism globally is entering a stage where it no longer needs liberal democracy.capitalism and democracy
asserts
The most dynamic capitalist states today (China, Singapore, South Korea) combine wild capitalism with authoritarian state control, not democracy.capitalism with Asian values
asserts
Our situation today parallels the pre-WWI period: a declining single hegemon, rising rival powers, proxy wars, and rhetoric of war that no one believes will actually happen—which is precisely why it can.geopolitical danger and world war
asserts
The correct response to approaching catastrophe is not cautious optimism but accepting catastrophe as our fate and then acting radically to prevent it (enlightened catastrophism via Dupuy).political strategy in crisis
asserts
Form is never merely formal: the abstract universality of human rights, though it privileged white property owners at first, genuinely enabled feminist and anti-racist and anti-colonial mobilization.Marxist critique of formal democracy
asserts
References to local cultural particularity do not resist global capitalism but play its game perfectly—there is no possibility of resistance through cultural identity.postcolonial identity politics
asserts
We should defend the European Enlightenment legacy of universalism, egalitarianism, and human rights more than ever now that capitalism no longer needs it.Eurocentrism and universalism
asserts
Political correctness operates as a superego mechanism: it individualizes guilt and responsibility rather than raising systemic questions, and the more you comply, the guiltier you feel.political correctness and superego
asserts
Self-entrepreneurship ideology presents structural unfreedom—precarious labor, debt—as a new and expanded form of personal freedom.ideology of self-entrepreneurship and precarity
asserts
Today's post-democratic power no longer requires the insignia of authority; it legitimizes itself through the leader's self-mockery and admission of human fallibility.new forms of authority
asserts
Marx's vision of communism is capitalism without capitalism: he wrongly believed that removing the capitalist form would preserve and intensify the system's dynamic, not destroy it.Marx's conception of communism
rejects
Piketty's global progressive wealth tax is utopian because implementing it would already presuppose a world political authority that would mean we had already won.Piketty's tax proposal
rejects
Butler's model of performative subversion of identities is not subversive but describes the implicit ideology of developed liberal societies.Judith Butler's performativity
rejects
The real state is stronger than ever under 'neoliberalism': no economy functions without heavy state mechanisms, and the most successful economies combine markets with strong state regulation.neoliberal ideology of the minimal state
rejects
Authentic politics requires willingness to take and exercise power, not the 'beautiful soul' posture of acting outside and against the state as Badiou proposes.Badiou's anti-state politics
asserts
An authentic master does not command or control but restores the subject's freedom by opening up possibilities the subject did not see.the figure of the master
rejects
The left's automatic self-guilt—always attributing Third World evil to Western neocolonialism—is a patronizing, inverted racism.left-wing anti-imperialism and self-guilt
rejects
Gandhi's support for the caste system—offering each caste 'dignity' rather than abolition—was a betrayal of genuine emancipation.Gandhi and the caste system
asserts
The Haitian Revolution's declaration that all citizens regardless of skin color are 'black' was the correct solution to including white fighters in a black republic.universalism and race in the Haitian Constitution
asserts
Hayek rightly saw that capitalism functions precisely because it is unjust and randomized by market luck—a 'just' capitalism would explode with envy.Hayek on envy and market justice
Quotes 18
“fuck it, capitalism is the most dynamic productive system that humanity has known.”Slavoj Žižek · honest acknowledgment of capitalism's productive superiority
“Haiti is a black republic, so all citizens of Haiti independently of the color of their skin are black. It's a totally correct solution, I claim.”Slavoj Žižek · universalism through formal inclusion
“form matters. Form is precisely never just a form.”Slavoj Žižek · against vulgar Marxist dismissal of formal rights
“capitalism is globally entering a new stage where, to put it in brutal terms, it no longer needs democracy.”Slavoj Žižek · capitalism's divorce from democracy
“actual unfreedom is often presented to us as a new form of freedom.”Slavoj Žižek · ideology of self-entrepreneurship and precarity
“the more you obey it, the more you feel guilty—it's this vicious cycle.”Slavoj Žižek · superego structure of political correctness
“Just don't lose two, three kilos. Because you know…this two, three kilos too much retroactively create the specter of a perfect body without these two, three kilos.”Slavoj Žižek · objet petit a: the flaw constitutes the ideal
“the way to deal with a catastrophe is first to recognize it as a fate…if the world goes on the way it goes on today, we are approaching if not a world war some kind of a conflict.”Slavoj Žižek · enlightened catastrophism
“Something happens contingently, but once it happens, it retroactively appears as necessary.”Slavoj Žižek · retroactive necessity vs. vulgar Marxist determinism
“We don't need carnival, we need better bureaucratic structures my god.”Slavoj Žižek · against performative subversion, for institutional change
“What interests me is how the difference is felt the day after, when the enthusiasm is over. Are there any actual changes?”Slavoj Žižek · critique of spectacular revolutionary moments
“I'm communist by default…I'm not having a big vision what it will be. I'm just saying negatively.”Slavoj Žižek · negative communism without positive utopia
“there is a legacy authentic in conservative values, but only a true radical revolutionary can redeem them.”Slavoj Žižek · Marx on redemption of conservative legacy
“In capitalism it's not important that I win, even more important that the other guy loses.”Slavoj Žižek · envy as fundamental drive under capitalism
“We need a master to become actually free.”Slavoj Žižek · paradox of the authentic master
“the biggest triumphs of leftist theory—whenever you have a revolutionary fiasco, there will always be an excellent Marxist book on why it had to fail.”Slavoj Žižek · critique of the left's retrospective theorization of failure
“philosophy can only paint gray on gray, it cannot give vision of the future.”Slavoj Žižek · Hegel's owl of Minerva: theory arrives too late
“I would love to live in a big apartment house where my neighbors are Iranian, Latino American, Chinese, and we politely ignore each other.”Slavoj Žižek · rehabilitation of alienation against forced multicultural intimacy
Transcript 73 turns
Slavoj Žižek
Thank you very much. I enjoy being here. I hope I will not talk too much in a confused way and I decided to do something very risky. I don’t, maybe you will be disappointed, I don’t want to underestimate you and just tell my usual political jokes and so on. So after the first part of the lecture which is more political and so on, I would like to make a theoretical point which provides a kind of a general formula of how to deal with a crisis, what attitude to adopt. Especially today when I’ve written, maybe it’s known to some of you, I will refer to it, a comment on what does it mean today, you know, almost every day we learn in the media that we are approaching a new world war and so on and so on, how to react to this. So let me begin by something, an anecdote that I used often in my books, a reference to my friend, this may sound strange but I appreciate him even if he is not exactly a leftist, more a liberal right-winger, but he is not an idiot, Peter Sloterdijk. You know it’s interesting, I never understood, do you know it, you made an interview with Habermas, no? Where does this come, this totally irrational hatred of Habermasians towards Sloterdijk? If you mention Sloterdijk they start with neo-Nazi, he wants to prolong Nazi genetic manipulations, whatever. I don’t get it because even when he talks crazy, like his basic idea how to, you know this crazy idea that we should celebrate rich people today, that we should stop this egalitarian logic of envy and so on. But what is behind it is simply an attempt to, I don’t agree with his attempt, to save the welfare state. Okay, another thought, another book that he recently published about global capital, he does something pretty intelligent there. It’s all based on this metaphor of globe like, how do you say it also in Polish, kupol, kopuła, you know. He said that capitalism is global not only in the sense of like global covering everything, but also in the sense that in today’s global capitalism there is a cupola, a globe, and there are some people who are in and there are some people who are out, and we who are hopefully in, we don’t even see the outside clearly. That’s the problem. For example, it’s fashionable today to say how, but work, physical work didn’t disappear, but people then immediately mention, I don’t know, Chinese gulags, Indonesia, factories in Indonesia. But do you remember two years ago, something weird happened in a suburb of Firenze, Italy? Some small wooden house burned and with it some fifteen, twenty Chinese workers. And then they discovered that in the suburb of Firenze, my god, the high point of Western civilization, there are fifteen thousand Chinese workers there illegally who work as slaves. So it’s not back there, Indonesia, India, China, it’s here. We just literally don’t see them. Okay, another idea of Sloterdijk, maybe you know it, but it’s wonderful idea by him. He told me that if there is a person to whom they will build monuments hundred years from now, he asked himself a simple question: Can we imagine a look from hundred years in the future at our age? To whom they will be building monuments from our era? And he gave a wonderful ingenious answer: Li Kuan Yew. You know, the founder of modern Singapore. The Singapore leader who invented what, well, what we poetically call capitalism with Asian values, which has nothing to do with Asia but everything with an authoritarian political regime. And I don’t know if you know this, but I saw this myself in Singapore because they show you these shots everything, at the beginning of his reforms, Deng Xiaoping visited Singapore and he said publicly: You should be now a model for all of China. And I learned that’s the sad thing today, that what does this signal? I think the trend which began with Li Kuan Yew has a world-historical meaning, namely till now, in contrast to what some people are saying, I am not some kind of a bitter mortal enemy of capitalism, I am the first to admit, fuck it, capitalism is the most dynamic productive system that humanity has known. Okay, communist regime did sometimes function for a couple of years, they did bring, I don’t know, health, education, fast industrialization, but at a certain point they simply became inoperative. Capitalism won. So till now one has to admit it, at least in most of the cases, capitalism seemed inextricably, sorry, linked with democracy. Okay, you had periods of dictatorship like recently South Korea, Chile, but when things start moving again, it’s always a demand for democracy. Okay, now we can debate in the old Marxist way was this real or just formal democracy and so on. But you know, if you are truly Marxists, you should totally reject this Stalinist stupidity of how, oh, this is just a formal democracy. The first lesson to be learned from Marx, who was at this level a Hegelian, is that form matters. Form is precisely never just a form. You know, usually vulgar Marxists are just historicists. Their point is, oh, it appears universal, you must know this mantra, it’s the big mantra of the left of the last decades. It appears universal, but in reality this universal form privileges certain people, like white males of wealth and so on. But it’s not as simple as that. Remember, human rights at the beginning definitely privileged white people of property. But you know the story. First women said, Mary Wollstonecraft and so on, why not us also? Then for me the greatest event of that era, more important than French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, where black people said, why not us? They wanted to establish a modern democratic republic along the French lines in Haiti. And it was something absolutely breathtaking, incredible. And I am proud to be here, in one of my books, maybe it’s even translated, I report on this, I learned it from a history book on Haiti, it’s really to make you cry. You know how was it with Haiti? Here all the honor goes to Jacobins who are usually just dismissed as bad totalitarian guys. When Haitian Revolution won, Jacobins immediately fully recognized them. It was a triumph when the black delegation came from Haiti, they were received in Assemblée nationale, applause. Then Napoleon, the moment he took power, it was the opposite. He sent the army there, whole army, and giving them terrifying instructions. Napoleon’s order was that this is such a dangerous model that black people can liberate themselves, he said it’s not enough to make them slaves again to subdue them. He said all of them, including children, women, should be killed and new slaves— Just to make you aware about the uprising and who really cracked it down, a Polish uprising— I know, that’s what I’m coming to, sorry. You ruined my dramaturgy, you know. That the main, this is why, even when the black took— you know there is a legend story that because of all those Marie Walewska, Napoleon’s love affairs or whatever, there was a strong contingent of Polish soldiers there. And it’s a legend, when the Napoleon’s army approached the black army, they heard some singing. And they expected, you know, those stupid slaves some stupid tribal songs or whatever. When they come closer, they were shocked. Black slaves were singing Marseillaise. And all the honor to Polish soldiers, they were the main deserters, but in a good sense. They said, sorry guys, we are fighting on the wrong side. And they changed sides. And then there is a wonderful way how ideology can function in a progressive way. When the black won, they had a problem. They wanted to be a black republic, but they also wanted to accept those honest white people who fought for them. You know how they solved it? I love it. They, if you take a look at the Article of the Haitian Constitution from you know what it says? Haiti is a black republic, so all citizens of Haiti independently of the color of their skin are black. It’s a totally correct solution, I claim. What do you do? But okay, let me go on. So what I want to say is that you
Thank you very much. I enjoy being here. I hope I will not talk too much in a confused way and I decided to do something very risky. I don’t, maybe you will be disappointed, I don’t want to underestimate you and just tell my usual political jokes and so on. So after the first part of the lecture which is more political and so on, I would like to make a theoretical point which provides a kind of a general formula of how to deal with a crisis, what attitude to adopt. Especially today when I’ve written, maybe it’s known to some of you, I will refer to it, a comment on what does it mean today, you know, almost every day we learn in the media that we are approaching a new world war and so on and so on, how to react to this. So let me begin by something, an anecdote that I used often in my books, a reference to my friend, this may sound strange but I appreciate him even if he is not exactly a leftist, more a liberal right-winger, but he is not an idiot, Peter Sloterdijk. You know it’s interesting, I never understood, do you know it, you made an interview with Habermas, no? Where does this come, this totally irrational hatred of Habermasians towards Sloterdijk? If you mention Sloterdijk they start with neo-Nazi, he wants to prolong Nazi genetic manipulations, whatever. I don’t get it because even when he talks crazy, like his basic idea how to, you know this crazy idea that we should celebrate rich people today, that we should stop this egalitarian logic of envy and so on. But what is behind it is simply an attempt to, I don’t agree with his attempt, to save the welfare state. Okay, another thought, another book that he recently published about global capital, he does something pretty intelligent there. It’s all based on this metaphor of globe like, how do you say it also in Polish, kupol, kopuła, you know. He said that capitalism is global not only in the sense of like global covering everything, but also in the sense that in today’s global capitalism there is a cupola, a globe, and there are some people who are in and there are some people who are out, and we who are hopefully in, we don’t even see the outside clearly. That’s the problem. For example, it’s fashionable today to say how, but work, physical work didn’t disappear, but people then immediately mention, I don’t know, Chinese gulags, Indonesia, factories in Indonesia. But do you remember two years ago, something weird happened in a suburb of Firenze, Italy? Some small wooden house burned and with it some fifteen, twenty Chinese workers. And then they discovered that in the suburb of Firenze, my god, the high point of Western civilization, there are fifteen thousand Chinese workers there illegally who work as slaves. So it’s not back there, Indonesia, India, China, it’s here. We just literally don’t see them. Okay, another idea of Sloterdijk, maybe you know it, but it’s wonderful idea by him. He told me that if there is a person to whom they will build monuments hundred years from now, he asked himself a simple question: Can we imagine a look from hundred years in the future at our age? To whom they will be building monuments from our era? And he gave a wonderful ingenious answer: Li Kuan Yew. You know, the founder of modern Singapore. The Singapore leader who invented what, well, what we poetically call capitalism with Asian values, which has nothing to do with Asia but everything with an authoritarian political regime. And I don’t know if you know this, but I saw this myself in Singapore because they show you these shots everything, at the beginning of his reforms, Deng Xiaoping visited Singapore and he said publicly: You should be now a model for all of China. And I learned that’s the sad thing today, that what does this signal? I think the trend which began with Li Kuan Yew has a world-historical meaning, namely till now, in contrast to what some people are saying, I am not some kind of a bitter mortal enemy of capitalism, I am the first to admit, fuck it, capitalism is the most dynamic productive system that humanity has known. Okay, communist regime did sometimes function for a couple of years, they did bring, I don’t know, health, education, fast industrialization, but at a certain point they simply became inoperative. Capitalism won. So till now one has to admit it, at least in most of the cases, capitalism seemed inextricably, sorry, linked with democracy. Okay, you had periods of dictatorship like recently South Korea, Chile, but when things start moving again, it’s always a demand for democracy. Okay, now we can debate in the old Marxist way was this real or just formal democracy and so on. But you know, if you are truly Marxists, you should totally reject this Stalinist stupidity of how, oh, this is just a formal democracy. The first lesson to be learned from Marx, who was at this level a Hegelian, is that form matters. Form is precisely never just a form. You know, usually vulgar Marxists are just historicists. Their point is, oh, it appears universal, you must know this mantra, it’s the big mantra of the left of the last decades. It appears universal, but in reality this universal form privileges certain people, like white males of wealth and so on. But it’s not as simple as that. Remember, human rights at the beginning definitely privileged white people of property. But you know the story. First women said, Mary Wollstonecraft and so on, why not us also? Then for me the greatest event of that era, more important than French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, where black people said, why not us? They wanted to establish a modern democratic republic along the French lines in Haiti. And it was something absolutely breathtaking, incredible. And I am proud to be here, in one of my books, maybe it’s even translated, I report on this, I learned it from a history book on Haiti, it’s really to make you cry. You know how was it with Haiti? Here all the honor goes to Jacobins who are usually just dismissed as bad totalitarian guys. When Haitian Revolution won, Jacobins immediately fully recognized them. It was a triumph when the black delegation came from Haiti, they were received in Assemblée nationale, applause. Then Napoleon, the moment he took power, it was the opposite. He sent the army there, whole army, and giving them terrifying instructions. Napoleon’s order was that this is such a dangerous model that black people can liberate themselves, he said it’s not enough to make them slaves again to subdue them. He said all of them, including children, women, should be killed and new slaves— Just to make you aware about the uprising and who really cracked it down, a Polish uprising— I know, that’s what I’m coming to, sorry. You ruined my dramaturgy, you know. That the main, this is why, even when the black took— you know there is a legend story that because of all those Marie Walewska, Napoleon’s love affairs or whatever, there was a strong contingent of Polish soldiers there. And it’s a legend, when the Napoleon’s army approached the black army, they heard some singing. And they expected, you know, those stupid slaves some stupid tribal songs or whatever. When they come closer, they were shocked. Black slaves were singing Marseillaise. And all the honor to Polish soldiers, they were the main deserters, but in a good sense. They said, sorry guys, we are fighting on the wrong side. And they changed sides. And then there is a wonderful way how ideology can function in a progressive way. When the black won, they had a problem. They wanted to be a black republic, but they also wanted to accept those honest white people who fought for them. You know how they solved it? I love it. They, if you take a look at the Article of the Haitian Constitution from you know what it says? Haiti is a black republic, so all citizens of Haiti independently of the color of their skin are black. It’s a totally correct solution, I claim. What do you do? But okay, let me go on. So what I want to say is that you
unknown
see formal freedom, okay, it was just formal freedom, but this gap between form and content wasn’t just a mystification
see formal freedom, okay, it was just formal freedom, but this gap between form and content wasn’t just a mystification
Slavoj Žižek
in the sense of, oh, the universal form masks particular interests, exploitation. No, it also served as a point of mobilization for all other demands, feminism, against racism, even workers' movement, everything. So again, it’s totally non-Marxist if we take seriously, I am very critical of Marx but some things he did were great, to play this Stalinist game of, you know, oh, this is just formal freedom. Again, form matters. So again, back to the point of democracy. So democracy was part of— what I fear is that today, and that’s what really makes me afraid, you know, is that today capitalism is globally entering a new stage where, to put it in brutal terms, it no longer needs democracy. The ultimate irony is the following one, and once at a round table I met Fukuyama and we laughed because he agreed with me. I told him, okay, you were right, capitalism— although, I mean, Fukuyama is not totally stupid, an honest guy. You know how you can detect this? You know that he no longer is a Fukuyamaist. I mean, he admitted to me that 11th of September, biogenetic problems and all that simply makes his dream of the end of history obsolete. It’s over. So I told to Fukuyama, listen, okay, capitalism won, but won’t you admit that ex-communists, where they are still in power as in China, are nonetheless the best managers of this new capitalism? That’s the paradox. So now I am coming back to China, to what, maybe you know him, Wang Hui is a Chinese dissident philosopher, a leftist but not in the sense of old communist nostalgia. He was arrested during what was that square, Tiananmen demonstrations and so on. And he told me he met once Deng Xiaoping’s daughter, you know when Deng Xiaoping was dying nobody could understand him, what he was, the daughter was the his Oracle interpreter, no. And he told me that the daughter told him that just before his death some dignitaries, nomenklatura visited him and asked him this kissing-the-ass narcissistic question: Okay, what do you think, Comrade Deng Xiaoping, is your greatest achievement? They expected that he would say some stupidity like, oh, opening up China, blah, blah. He said no. He said, do you know that when I opened up China in late 70s after Mao’s death, that the majority even in the Central Committee were inclined to go to the end. Let’s drop the Communist Party monopoly, let’s open it up to what ironically people call bourgeois democracy. And he said, I am most proud of the fact that I opposed it. Okay, it’s sad, but what makes me really depressed is that in a way he was right. And this is not for me a defense of communist rule but rather a critique of capitalism. He saw it clearly what is so difficult to admit that imagine that at that point, Tiananmen, China would really become a democratic country in the Western sense. I think liberals who think, oh my god, what would have been in China would develop even more, no, it would have been chaos and a catastrophe. And I see in this a general tendency at both levels. On the one hand, the most dynamic countries today, dynamic in the sense of wild capitalist development, like China, South Korea which is not fully authoritarian but still is, Singapore and so on, have this capitalism with Chinese values, which is slowly spreading even to Africa, look what is going on today in Angola and so on. On the other hand, even with us in the West, that’s what makes me sad, of course we have democracy. But let me ask you a very naive question. If somebody were to ask you, are you free? Yes. Then in what sense are you free? What do you experience as your freedom? You probably your answer would have been small personal freedoms, which I don’t despise, they are very important. Like you can read the books that you want, have sexual orientation you want, freely choose your job—okay, here already things get complicated if there are jobs to choose from, and so on and so on. But what I am claiming is that with all these freedoms which are more and more even guaranteed, at least in the Western countries, we should never forget that these freedoms, which again are very important, operate within a certain general framework of conditions. Within this general framework you make your choices, free choices. The problem is, are we free, does our freedom include also an open space, the freedom to change that frame? There I think our social totality, the way the whole system works, is becoming more and more impenetrable. And I am not again a Marxist paranoiac. I am not saying there is some secret meeting of capitalists and militaries where they decide how, but it’s simply the logic of global capital. This is why it is important to talk about, and it’s typical how there was a little bit of a fuss but not really, was it here? You know all those secret agreements that are now in preparation and only recently we began to talk about them, that TISA, TAFTA and some others. Are we aware what is happening there? Like that TISA agreement, it’s a mega agreement which should set the basic rules of flow of finances, flow of data and so on, along total neoliberal lines, no control. Not only this, some of the consequences of this agreement as we know now are pretty terrifying. Let’s say that I am a capitalist from one country that I invest money into another country. Then later a leftist social-democratic government takes power in that country, raises taxes, so I will get less profits than I expected. According to this agreement, I have the right to sue that country because they changed the rules and so on. So it’s tremendously important set of regulations which will determine the space of what an elected government can do, and as you probably know, not only we do not discuss about all this, okay, now we do because Assange, WikiLeaks and some others published it. But in the first draft of this TISA agreement, there was even that not only it was prepared in secrecy, but it says there that it should remain secret for five years after it will be endorsed, accepted. So again, I am not saying a dark plot of anti-democratic forces, whatever. I think it’s much darker because precisely no one is directly guilty. It’s the logic of the system. So you see my point? We are free at a personal level. But often our freedom itself is used, the reference to our freedom, the way we are interpelled, addressed as free, is used to counteract or to block actual freedom. What do I mean by this? Did you translate some of them here? I am not saying they are geniuses, but they have some nice insights, the two Italians, Franco "Bifo" Berardi and Maurizio Lazzarato. Oh, Lazzarato wrote a wonderful book entitled *The Making of the Indebted Man*, the structurally necessary role of debt today. Debt not only as an economic category, but also as an ethical anthropological category. You know, if you are indebted, this determines the scope of your freedom, how you react and so on. And what he shows in such a nice way is how this reference to debt, we are all more or less indebted today, is used to basically to justify the claim that we are basically all capitalists, just at a different level. The idea is this one: Let’s say, aha, you have million and I have nothing. Okay, you acquire a debt to expand your companies, I don’t know, you want more efficient slave labor in Indonesia, whatever you want. But I acquire a debt, I get indebted for euros too, and then the idea is this one: We are doing the same things. It’s just different decimal numbers, you know. You are thousand times higher level. The idea is this one: I am an ordinary working guy with almost no money. I get indebted. And then I freely decide what to do. You know, like I can use the money I get in this way, I don’t know, to invest into a larger apartment, to take my family to a holiday, to provide healthcare, to pay studies of my children. But you see what’s the idea? The idea, and they even have a term, self-entrepreneurship, that in a way we are all entrepreneurs today. And I think this is a wonderful way of how a situation which actually limits, constrains your freedom is presented in the terms which appear, which make it appear that your freedom got greater. I think the original sinners here were those New Labour philosophers or sociologists like Anthony Giddens, you know. When, I don’t know how it is with you in Poland, but I know even in my country, Slovenia, England, French are telling me in Germany, how especially in the spheres of journalism and universities precarious work is more and more important. And you know how perfectly the system works. My friend, a German Hegelian philosopher Frank Ruda, told me that there are now at Humboldt Universities dozens of professors who work for nothing. Why? Because if you are unemployed it’s very important if you want to have any chance to get a job later that you can say, but I am teaching here, there, that you are not out. University knows this, and again so they make contracts with dozens of professors to give lectures for nothing. The same happens with many journalists in Slovenia and so on. But okay, when this notion of no more long-term jobs but just one, two-year contracts at best, when this exploded, Anthony Giddens said, wait a minute, we shouldn’t look at this just as a negative phenomenon. Doesn’t it also, and here Giddens referred to all that postmodern stuff of we shouldn’t have fixed identities, we should reinvent, like it gives you every year a new chance to reinvent yourself, it multiplies your freedom and so on and so on. This is what is so crucial today, that actual unfreedom is often presented to us as a new form of freedom, to put it like this. And again, at all different levels. Also another aspect is at work here. The moment we have this logic of indebted man, the superego dimension is at work all the time. By superego, I mean superego, *Über-Ich*, in the strict Freudian sense. Superego in the Freudian sense is not just a moral agency, but it’s an obscene moral agency which you can immediately recognize by the paradox that the more you obey it, the more you feel guilty, to put it like this, it’s this vicious cycle. And I don’t know to what extent you are in it here in Poland, but precisely I think that that’s how political correctness work. I am totally pro-feminist, against racism, but I am shocked at how so-called political correctness, which presents itself as the most radical anti-racism, pro-feminism and so on, how in what negative ways it can work. Not only with regard to the pure ridicule of it. For example, I’m not kidding, I first thought it was a joke, then I contacted my Australian friends they confirmed it to me. Was it reported in your media that two, three months ago, Perth, you know, the rich new capital city Perth on the west coast of Africa— Australia— they have an opera. That opera decided never to perform *Carmen* again, Carmen Bizet opera. You know why? They claimed because Act takes place in front of a tobacco factory, so it could be considered as a smoking propaganda. So okay, we can laugh at all this, but much more important is another thing. The way superego works, and also it goes back to that logic of self-entrepreneurship, is that it individualizes your guilt and responsibility. Let’s say we have an ecological problem. The way we are addressed is not, let’s see how the system works, who are the true polluters and so on. At everyday level, it’s always this typically superego individualized guilt. Like you criticize the system and then they tell you, who are you to talk about it? Did you do your duty? Did you put aside all Coca-Cola cans? Did you put aside to recycle all paper and so on? It’s always this individualizing gesture where of course you are then infinitely guilty. And the same logic is I claim with sexism, racism and so on. I mean, in some American campuses even now things are crazy. You look a woman into the eye, and it happened to me a couple of times, you are accused of visual rape. You use a dirty word, it’s verbal rape and so on and so on. What, I’m not just making fun of it. What I’m saying is that you know, this is a wonderful instrument to make you guilty at an individual level, responsible, and in this way instead of raising more radical questions, it’s always you personally, did you do it, what did you do about it and so on and so on. So back to— so this I think is our predicament today, which is why the new authoritarian society, and if you ask me it will arrive. But I always specify this. It will not be the old Stalinist or fascist authoritarianism. You will not have an untouchable leader whom you will have to celebrate. No. Today it works, the post-democratic authoritarian system, if I may call it like this, will work with leaders who make fun of themselves, who mock themselves. You know, like for me Berlusconi would be an ideal here, you know. He made fun of himself all the time publicly. I spoke recently with a journalist from *The Economist* who told me he interviewed Berlusconi and Berlusconi told him, but forget about economy, let’s talk about more nicer things, would you like to see the *bunga bunga* room and you know, where we were doing that and so on. This is one— this is another aspect of what I’m trying to tell you, how today power in order to be exerted no longer has to be covered up with all the insignia of power. If you like popular media, let me give you a couple of elements here like Jean Genet’s play *The Balcony*, *Le Balcon*, is basically about this process. Then some early, how is it called, von Trier films and so on. They all make in a different levels this point that today’s master is no longer the master, this you know, untouchable totalitarian leader where any tiny detail that you learn about him is felt by the regime as a mortal threat. Which is why, for example in the case of Stalinism, it was totally prohibited any personal details and so on. No, today’s leader is someone who legitimizes himself by admitting in advance that he is human like us, nobody is perfect and so on and so on and so on. This is what interests me. This new form of power which again no longer needs this big insignia. No, you can have— you know where it all began, not began. I remember, maybe he wasn’t the worst foreign minister, Joschka Fischer. When he was German foreign minister some years ago, when they were deciding about war in Iraq, I was shocked. He gave a TV interview where he described all his inner traumas, how he had even to visit a psychiatrist prior to making a decision. I was shocked by that. Who cares about that, like, you know. Decision interests me, not to what— so I am totally opposed, I think it should be turned around, namely the standard idea that we are so controlled today by agencies that there is no private life. No, I think there is less and less, here I agree with Richard Sennett the sociologist of culture, there is less and less public life. Public life is privatized. It’s considered as one of that. Okay, so now I come nonetheless to my point after all this, this movement where we are moving of Europe, Eurocentrism. The title of this two, three minutes could have been: Why am I still a Eurocentrist? It’s so fashionable today even among some European liberal leftists to make, you know, to make fun of Europe. It’s a kind of a, I claim, inverted racism where if you in any way praise Europe, you are already one step towards all those populist right-wingers who fear for European legacy or whatever. No, I claim that all this narrative of how Western civilization is lost today, it’s time it’s over, we should really open ourselves to Third World experiences and so on and so on. I don’t believe at all in it. Why not? Not because I’m a racist Eurocentrist, but because I think that it’s so typical that precisely today at the moment when capitalism really won universally, and when effectively what was good in European legacy—egalitarianism, human rights, freedom, feminism, whatever—is often dismissed as Eurocentrism and so on. Now precisely when global capitalism no longer needs European ideology, it all of a sudden became acceptable to criticize it, to reject it. I think that on the contrary, now we should stick to European type of universality. Why? Because now I come to my second central point. You know, it’s totally wrong to think that global capitalism implies some kind of a global culture which is kind of a consumerist American and so on and so on. No, the sad lesson of last decade or two is that again, if you have a culture which is not the Western liberal hedonist culture, you can maybe do it even better with capitalist development. Like India is for me here a typical example. I have problems with India not because I’m against India, but because of the crucial struggle going on there. You see we don’t read this in our media. For example, the majority of the poor people and leftists there just don’t mention Gandhi to them. They consider him a traitor and I think they are right. You know what Gandhi did? Okay, he did many good things. But the crucial point: caste system. Gandhi was for it, claiming the usual bullshit, oh this is part of our historical tradition and so on and so on. And you know where, when you feel this, where you feel this bad, this influence of Gandhi in India. I was there and I asked them what about emancipation, equality, democracy. And they basically told me, why are you forcing on us those imperialist Western notions, whatever. Gandhi did a very dirty trick. He didn’t want to abolish castes. He just wanted to, as he put it, provide each caste with the dignity it deserved. His message to untouchables, the lowest caste, was not no untouchables, but you are also children of God, you have your own proper role to play within the organic community and so on and so on. So what I’m saying is that you see the sad irony. Yes, and back to India, you know the new Prime Minister that they have, Modi. It’s absolutely crucial that on the one hand he is the most brutal neoliberal in the sense that he openly said that now China is developing, getting too expensive, so there is now an opening for India to become the factory of the world because of cheap labor power, and that that’s his idea to totally open. At the same time he is a radical Hindu nationalist. What I want to tell you is that this is how today’s global capitalism works. There is nothing subversive as even some Latin American, Latin American leftists unfortunately think, there is nothing subversive in this idea that global capitalism is an abstract Eurocentric monster and then we should refer to our local cultures to resist it. No, all references to local culture already play the game of global capitalism. They fit it perfectly. There is no possibility of resistance there. And all serious freedom fighters knew it. That’s why I appreciate a guy who was a radical, Malcolm X. Okay, to speak in civilized terms, it’s ironic what I say now, you saw my Malcolm X read Denzel Washington in Spike Lee film, you know. But it’s true, you know what was the greatness of Malcolm X? Of course X stood for loss of roots, you know. Like we blacks, we were torn out of our concrete network of our native relations in Africa. X means we don’t have family names, where family name stands for the whole set of organic relations, your specific culture and so on. But what was the greatness of Malcolm X? That he didn’t play that game of, oh, so let’s search for our roots. I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember some twenty, thirty years ago there was a big bestseller, Alex Haley I think, *Roots*, and then a mega-successful TV series, where the point was a black American citizen, black of today, retraces his origins and at the end he visits some tribe in Ghana and, oh, that’s my great-great-grandmother and, you know, like he found roots. Nothing subversive. Malcolm X has had a much deeper insight. He said what this X, X which means I don’t have a firm identity I’m free, gives blacks a unique chance to be more universal than whites, to freely create their own space of freedom and so on. And this is why I remain here, in this sense only, a Marxist. I’m referring here to Marx’s famous text on results of British colonial rule in India, where he says yes it’s horrible what the British did, there were hungers, millions dead, exploitation, but at the same time they created the possibility for a new freedom. So I claim again that we absolutely have to, we absolutely have to stick to European legacy more than ever today. All these references to particular life worlds, you know like my friend, he is not an idiot and he’s honest, another conservative who is half my friend, Alain Finkielkraut in France. He is obsessed by this, there is bad global capitalism and then, oh my god, what will happen with our nice, small French way of life and so on and so on. Well, I told him you don’t have to worry, I mean, that’s how capitalism works, you will have your French way of life, but it will just become indifferent. Because the universality today is the universality of capital. Now the first part. Second part and then the third part. Second part still more political. Sorry, an opening. What does this universality mean today for our situation? I think the moment is dangerous. I’ve written about it, I’ll just recapitulate. It’s dangerous because we have United States whom I respect as a country and I always warned my leftist friends that don’t underestimate Obama. Namely it’s one of the most boring pseudo-leftist rituals today to claim, oh, how disappointed I am with Obama. Well, fuck you, what did they expect? Obama will introduce socialism in United States? He did what was possible to do. But what I’m saying is that unfortunately Obama believes in still in the role of United States as a world policeman. You know he gave a couple of, now two, three months ago an interview where he said something like, whenever there is trouble somewhere in the world, they don’t call Beijing, they don’t call Moscow, they call us. That’s how America works. Universal policeman. The tragedy is that America, precisely because we are already entering a multicentric world, America, the result of this, that you believe you are a world policeman where effectively it’s already multicentric world, is that America is winning the wars and losing the peace. That is to say, it intervenes but then the result is that it does the dirty work for their enemies precisely because they no longer control the entire situation. Just think about Iraq. What is the actual result of their intervention in Iraq? A: The state is falling apart. You have a Shia part who is more or less politically under control of Iran, and on the other hand you have guys who are even much worse, ISIS, no, the radical Islamists. And repeatedly they get caught into this trap, the United States. I think that, now I will propose a parallel, maybe I’m wrong, but I think there are good reasons to sustain it and you may have already read about it, it’s not a new parallel. Namely, that we are now in a situation which is dangerous precisely because it resembles the one years ago, decades before the Great War, World War I. We have one global power which is in decline, not economically, don’t underestimate United States, but in decline in the sense that it’s no longer the sole undisputed global power. years ago it was the British Empire, now it’s the United States. Then we have new rising powers which want their own slice, again years ago the main one was of course Germany, but also others. Today it’s of course China and Russia. And next problem, so and of course they play their wars by proxies. In years ago as you know it was Balkan, Sarajevo, where it exploded. Today it’s the Middle East and I think that what worries me is did you notice this weird schizophrenia? On the one hand we are all the time bombarded by news about how the new world war is coming, or at least there is a threat. My god, just read newspapers. I am now counting it, it’s literally practically every day. Like, "Aha, Russians has now a stealth fighter which is better than ours Americans," then America invents something, then Putin said this like two months ago I think he said, "Oh in one afternoon I can walk into Poland and Baltic states" or whatever. So how systematically, and I’m not saying it’s not really—that the danger is not real. Incidentally, I’m here no, I’m not in any way pro—which is why I have this—I’m not in any way pro-Putin. I’m just saying that what worries me is the entire situation where again all the time we have this rhetoric of new world war. Where are the dangers? Precisely because now you will tell me, "But this is rhetoric, don’t take it too seriously." That’s the problem for me. Because it was exactly the same if you go back years ago. Everyone was talking about the war but nobody believed that it can really happen. You know where you have traces of that? Like in the good old Cold War we had what we called MAD logic, mutually assured destruction. The idea is that each side knew that if we bomb them, they will absolutely have the ability to bomb us back so it’s the end. Today more and more systematically the idea is we somehow abstract—we think that limited nuclear strikes can be, you know this is the new way of strategic thinking. So again, what makes me afraid is precisely, sorry yes, today’s strategy is called, I like the name, it’s no longer MAD but NUTS, N-U-T-S, which means idiots. It’s nuclear utilization target selection. The idea is we can risk a nuclear conflict, it will not be the end and so on and so on. Again, you see what I’m aiming at. We are like before World War I in an era where the old bipolar world with at least it looked so after the disintegration of the Soviet Union America as the sole superpower is in decline. And here, as a friend of America—this is not a leftist statement—I think that all leftists and anti-Americanists should propose to build a big monument to George Bush, the younger president. He with his extremely stupid politics as we see today, the main result of Bush eight years is that America lost his world dominance which it still possessed under—in the Clinton years and so on. I mean he did—if there is a guy who did most damage to ruin America’s position it’s Bush, it’s clear. Sorry, but let me go on. So you see what I’m arguing. That this situation and it was again exactly the same before World War I. Everybody talk about war, nobody believed that it can really happen. And that’s why it can happen, I claim. We will—it can, I’m not saying it will happen. I am saying something very precise with which I’m approaching the last third part. That we have to change the entire frame of thinking. It’s not enough to claim we have to be very careful, not take—not risk too much. In this way we can inadvertently trigger war. No. We have to—and here I’m referring to my good friend American—French thinker philosopher of catastrophes, my god you should translate him he is a genius I claim. He works in Paris but now he is retired there he is mostly in Stanford, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, D-U-P-U-Y, like ypsilon. He has this wonderful theory that the way to deal with a catastrophe is first to recognize it as a fate. In the sense of it’s not just we are at a crossroad, no. If the world goes on the way it goes on today, we are approaching if not a world war some kind of a conflict. And I’m well aware, I’m writing about this in my new book, I’m well aware that superficially the situation is good. I know from firsthand. A year and a half ago I was in South Korea and I was telling them the usual bullshit crisis of capitalism and they started to laugh at me. And I asked them, "Why are you laughing?" And they gave me a counterargument which was quite reasonable. They said, "About what crisis are you talking? We in Far East Asia we developed more than ever. Latin America, at least at that point, was progressing as it never did. Sub-Saharan Africa, okay it’s not rich on our with our measures but it’s developing. Even they claimed and they mentioned you some European countries, Poland and so on they United States more or less it." They told me, "You claim to be anti-Eurocentrist leftist, but the only place really in crisis is parts of Southern and Europe. Maybe France and so on." They told me and you proclaim this worldwide crisis. "No, you are in crisis," they told me. And they even proved with statistics that never in the history of humanity was at the level of percentage of population so many people lived so well, there were so little wars and so on and so on. So all of this I admit it but of course one can complicate, it’s not as simple as that. But what I’m trying to say is that in spite of these appearances of, okay things are going well and so on, I think if you ask me that there are many reasons. One is this new multicentric system where we don’t yet know what are the rules of the game. The superpowers are testing each other like Putin is testing United States, "C-R-I-M-K-R-I-M-I-A Crimea, you swallow that, okay let—" like the problem is the paranoiac one, like Putin hears calls for help. He heard it first for Crimea, now who knows maybe he will hear some future calls from Baltic republics, maybe even from Poland and so on. So—but again Americans are doing the same and don’t misunderstand me I don’t in any way defend Putin. What worries me is this entire picture where again the immanent logic of the situation is accepted: our fate is world war, we are approaching a conflict. And what I’m saying is that the way to fight it is not some cheap optimism: "No, it’s not so bad, if we proceed cautiously we can—" No, we have to admit that World War is our fate and then act more radically to prevent it. What do I mean by this? Where are we now temporarily? Looks bad. Before the war? Yeah, but you know what I would like to do? You know usually when I talk too long and I often do the the joke I use is you know this notion by deconstructionist Derrida that we have this metaphysical linear notion of time. And I claim, yes, I used my hour if we apply this notion metaphysical of time. But if we apply a higher non-metaphysical notion of time, no. Okay, so what I wanted to develop here is a couple of things based on the work of Badiou. The first idea by him that I find so intelligent is the idea of so-called counterfactuals. You imagine the way the situation could have been, even it’s not, and in this way you can clearly see the truth of the way the situation is. What do I mean by this? Did you see the movie of one of your directors, although I have a strange mixed opinion of him, Roman Polanski? I do like his *Chinatown*, good noir, and I do like I must say strangely that film, you saw him with Pierce Brosnan as Tony Blair or whatever, *The Ghost* or *The Ghost Writer*. Okay, you know, you know what’s the thesis of the film, that not Blair but his wife in the film was from the very beginning CIA agent planted on him and that again the rise to power of Tony Blair was from the very beginning regulated by CIA and so on. Somebody wrote a wonderful comment on the film. He said that we know that probably that this is not true. But if it were true, everything would become all of a sudden clear. You know like the things would be. And that’s the result there. Sometimes as good theologians knew it, like my beloved Chesterton, like that you know sometimes in order to see the situation in truth you need a particular lie, which you know it’s a lie, but if you mention but if you use this lie cautiously you can see the entire situation in its truth. I mean and I’m ready to apply this even on Marx. Like as I repeatedly analyzed in my books, Marx’s vision of communism doesn’t work. Why? Because it’s still a—what Marx wants to imagine, imagined as communism is capitalism without capitalism. That is to say, Marx saw it clearly that this incredible dynamics of capitalism. Marx just thought that at a certain level of development of forces of production, you can take away the capitalist form and the dynamic will remain, even more, even stronger dynamic. Marx didn’t see that what he thought is today an obstacle to capitalist development is its only frame. What is wrong here? Oh, I don’t have time here to go into psychoanalysis, but this I think is a wonderful case of what Jacques Lacan called *objet petit a*, the object small a, what Lacan calls the object of desire. How do you fall in love usually? I mean this is even an empirical fact some sexologist told me. It’s never a perfectly beautiful woman. You can desire if you are a man, I’m not going now into, okay, the other way around also. You can desire a beautiful woman but to fall in love you need to notice some imperfection so that then you tell yourself, even if she is not perfect that’s why I love her. It’s always something like this. Okay, so let me go to my dirty joke detail. A friend from Portugal, who is a psychoanalyst, told me that she had she had a patient, a nice lady still sexually attractive in her early 40s, and that this lady told him her psychoanalyst that to boast herself that when the last lover saw her naked, her last lover, he told her, "My god, just with two, three kilos less your body would have been perfect." But my friend, who is a good Lacanian analyst, immediately got the point. He said that I told this lady: Just don’t lose two, three kilos. Because you know that’s the refined dialectic here. This two, three kilos too much retroactively create the the specter of a perfect body without these two, three kilos. But if you actually take away this two, three kilos, the effect will be just vulgarity. You see something that appears as an obstacle like here to perfect beauty, you would be perfect with two, three kilos less, is an effect of this very obstacle. You take away the two, three kilos, you get an ordinary vulgar girl. And even some big models knew this, like I read years ago when I was young when there were two model big mega models, Claudia Schiffer and Cindy Crawford. And I read a stupid opinion poll, whom would you prefer to marry in Europe? Majority said Cindy Crawford. Why? Because she had that birthmark, you know. Comrade Žižek, let’s come back to Marx. But I am, this is Marx. You know I have an I have an holistic approach to Marx, this is also part of it. No, no, sorry but what I’m saying is that Marx would dispute—Sorry? Yeah. So what I’m trying to say just is that is this again, this logic. This is was I think a similar the mistake of Marx. He thought that if you if the woman raises—sorry, loses two, three kilos, that is to say if you take from capitalist system the capitalist form, that you will have the pure self-reproducing, no, it doesn’t work in that way. But my point was a more important one here, this counterfactual logic, which I think is extremely important. Ultimately it means that things are not simply what they are. Part of the identity of the thing is what they might have been but are not. Like back to this lady, with two, three kilos less her body might have been perfect. But this is only true counterfactually. If she effectively if this becomes a fact she is not beautiful. She would not be beautiful. Now what I want to say is that an atheist, I don’t have time to develop this, has to approach even religion in this way, in a counterfactual way. That is to say, I’m an atheist but I have a great appreciation of Christianity, but nonetheless I like to complicate things here. Like you can download it for free at any moment, I advise you to download it, you get it for free you don’t even have to go to Pirate Bay, which is now re-emerged as old Pirate Bay, it works again if you want to know. A strange film from early 90s, *Rapture*, Michael Tolkin wrote the scenario and with Mimi Rogers. It’s a weird story of a woman who is promiscuous then she becomes a fundamentalist, marries Christian fun—has a daughter. And then she waiting to be—after her husband is killed—she waits for rapture. She thinks that she hears divine voice that God will take her and her daughter up. And then it’s very obscene movie but I’m very seriously then they wait in the desert for God to take them up. When nothing happens, the daughter tells her, six years old daughter, "Mommy why don’t you kill me, in this way and then you kill yourself and we will immediately join our father who died." Okay, she kills her daughter but cannot kill herself becoming aware that people who commit suicide don’t go to heaven. And then she is totally broken, she goes to police, confesses everything, is put in prison. Up to this point you can say it’s an ordinary psychological drama about deadlocks of radical belief. At that point, the last minutes, the film gets crazy. What happens then in prison is that real rapture and apocalypse happens. You see four riders of the apocalypse, you know the houses are disintegrating and so on. This is already a wonderful message. The message, it is as if God’s message is, "Haha when I talked about four riders of the apocalypse you thought I am talking in metaphors. No, no, I meant it quite literally, there will be four people riding there." So then a crazy thing happens. She is enraptured and is in some place which is something like purgatory, how do you call it, just close to heaven, not there. And her daughter approaches her from heaven and asks her, "Mommy, say I love Jesus and you can join me and your husband, my father, we will all be happy." And there comes the last shock of the film, that’s the very end. She says, "No. What God did, all the horrors by allowing me to kill you, by all the injustices, I cannot say that I love Jesus." And then daughter tells her, "But Mommy, you know what this means? Do you know how long you will stay here out of heaven?" And she, the heroine says, "I know, forever." The end of the film. I found this in the best tradition of this radical Christian experiments. You find it in Malebranche, in others. This idea that to go to the end in the divine experience, you must counterfactually imagine God as brutal, ignorant, because this is I think here I am unfortunately not as Catholic as you are here but more Protestant. I think that Protestantism the the secret of Protestant predestination is precisely that God is an ignorant idiot. He just distributed roles, he didn’t even care what we really did. So you will say but what use is this for an atheist? My point is that it’s very important to say, you know I want to repeat here the crucial joke from Ernst Lubitsch’s *Ninotchka*. Ernst Lubitsch is the guy who maybe did the best film which takes place in Poland, *To Be or Not to Be*, you know. You don’t know this? It’s a Hitler comedy, it takes place in Warsaw. It’s extra—but let’s drop that. What happens in this one, in *Ninotchka*, is I’m just referring I use it all the time in my books the most famous line of a dialogue, you know where a guy tells to Greta Garbo a joke. Like a guy about somebody who comes to a cafeteria and says, "Can I have coffee with cream please?" And the waiter says, "Sorry we don’t have cream, we only have milk. So I can only give you coffee without milk, I cannot give you coffee without cream." If you are old enough but you are not, you must immediately recognize the old I think I know it was also in Poland used this joke in my country, you know. A guy comes to a store and says, "Do you have I don’t know let’s say toilet paper?" And they tell him, "No we don’t, you are in the wrong store. We are the store which doesn’t have oil. The other store is the store which doesn’t have toilet paper" or whatever. You know but this counterfactual idea that what you are not counts as your—And now what I in this sense counterfactually we can change the past. For example, let me now and with this I will finish immediately just draw the distinction that I want to present you with. Two types of conditional propositions. The indicative one would have been, "If Shakespeare did not write *Hamlet*, someone else did." This is obviously true, *Hamlet* is written so if not Shakespeare someone else had to do it. But if you say, "If Shakespeare had not written *Hamlet*, someone else would have done it," ah, this is a much stronger thesis. This comes close to vulgar Marxist determinism, you know when Plekhanov, the most unfortunate Marxist philosopher Russian, said something like, "There was a historical tendency at the time of French Revolution for a passage from democracy, parliament to empire. But it was contingent that Napoleon was the guy who did it. So if not Napoleon another person would have assumed that role." And this is a very interesting point. Like it immediately becomes actual in how to account for Stalinism, you know. Is Stalinism an effect of this type of necessity so that we can say, there was an inner necessity in the early development of the Soviet movement for a move for a shift towards Stalinism, something like if not Stalin then another person, maybe even Trotsky, would have played the same role. It might have been a little bit different but basically the same. So this is the vulgar Marxist idea. We have a universal necessity, passage to Stalinism, passage to empire, and then you you—but it’s contingent which concrete guy will do it. I think this is the wrong logic. The logic I want to advocate, following Dupuy, is the opposite logic of something happens contingently but retroactively it establishes its own necessity. You know something happened happens, it might have not happened, but once it happens it retroactively appears as necessary. For example, ridiculously well-known example: Julius Caesar, Rubicon. Well, I’m not a determinist. He might have turned around and said, "No I don’t want to violate the laws of the republic let me go back to Gallia, France, and be a small king there." But once he did it, it was his destiny. And at this level you see what I’m trying to say, we can change the past. Nothing changes factually, but things change counterfactually. Where you thought you had a choice, you don’t have a choice. It was predestined. So okay now I will really conclude. The point of all this, well buy my next book where I develop this in detail or even better buy the book Dupuy, D-U-P-U-Y, his late last book is now it happened it emerged it came out recently is his last book is called simply *Economy and the Future*. And he is wonderfully educated man, his big example in this changing the past are for example films. His favorite film, he is fanatic for it, before even not only in the last years when it was voted the greatest film of all time is Hitchcock’s *Vertigo*. You know the story, no? His reading is this one. After when the false Madeleine it appears kills herself, Scotty the hero loses her. You lose your love object. But when at the end he discovers that Madeleine was fake from the beginning, he not simply loses her, but at this virtual counterfactual level the past is changed. He doesn’t lose her but he is—he retroactively discovers that there never even was a Madeleine. And you see my point, something like this has to be done. That’s the true political act. You don’t just make the right choice, you do something which in a way changes your destiny. And that’s what we have to do if we want to avoid catastrophe. Again it’s not enough to say, "Oh there are dangers, I hope Putin will not do something stupid, let’s not provoke too much." No. Something more radical will have to be done. Otherwise I’m a pessimist. I really think that we live in dangerous times. You precisely what makes them dangerous is that we don’t take the situation seriously. Thanks very much, I finish. [Applause] You know I feel like Stalin now, you know if you go to YouTube, put it on YouTube "Stalin angry." It’s a wonderful three minutes and a half clip where you see Stalin documentary at the end of a speech and people applaud. And you can see how "Okay nice nice," and then he gets tired of it, and he gets really angry but cannot stop them because they are afraid to stop, you know like—I felt a little bit like Stalin, but okay. Alright, let me first allow for a—maybe fruitful small revenge. Have you seen the film *Ida* by Pawlikowski? Not yet. I was even involved—No, no, it will amuse you what I will have to say. I will but it was already given to me, I was even involved in sabotaging it. No, no, not seriously. You know what happened, it had it was part of the three films competing for the European Film of the Year. And another of the three was a Slovenian film called *Class Enemy*, about a suicide that happens in a high school. And I like the Slovenian film and without knowing who is the competitor I made a short statement supporting that film. So I’m even involved in, to put it in old socialist terms, anti-social activities here with regard to—But it must be a wonder—Because no I will tell you a secret. The young guy, the Slovenian director of that film, told me, "You know privately I must admit the Polish one is the best one." So I, sorry yes. You see, retroactively you did a good job. I did, yeah. Okay, actually I just have a kind of—I'm obliged to ask for three pretty predictable and obvious comments. You mentioned, because we have this Agnieszka Wiśniewska gave us, we have it, and of course as you know it we are very engaged in what is going on but like actually you already comment on what—what you think about Putin. Putin is pretty predictable example, very typical authority in Russia. But actually I would like to ask about the position of the, I'm not only radical left, but generally the left, especially in Germany, but also some American intellectuals unfortunately, also many others who are claiming first of all, that you know like—that Ukraine is a kind of a source of nationalism and fascism and all this stuff, and justifying this way Putin. What does it mean? What do you think about it? How would you comment on it? No, no, here don’t be afraid. I even published a text for which I was—I'm not afraid, I don’t—some leftists even threatened to beat me up. You know, a text "Lenin in Ukraine." I think it was London Review of Books where I pointed out something that people even Ukrainians tend to forget. Listen, the Bolsheviks in the twenties, that was the golden era. They had a policy which was very progressive of so-called indigenization. The idea is give smaller nations, to anyone but Russians, full cultural autonomy. You know that Ukrainian became a full literally language with vocabularies and so on in the twenties. That was the golden era. In the tsarist regime it was not acknowledged as a language of its own. So Stalin was here—And that’s so nice. This Lenin’s tendency was here so radical that in '22 Stalin attacked Lenin as bourgeois-liberal, liberal nationalist. You know it was a big conflict even with Rosa Luxemburg who opposed here Lenin, because Lenin’s position was we should give full right to secede and to build their own state, nationalist, independently of who is in power them. While Rosa Luxemburg was—she said, "Why don’t we say we give them autonomy if our guys are there," you know she wanted—so what I’m saying that was one aspect. The other aspect, which is obvious, is that first as you said, yes you see these are people who really are not aware that we are approaching a multi-centric world today. And they still have this, my god I’ve written a lot against the United States, but nonetheless you know we have to admit it like whenever there is some crisis in the world it’s not automatically that United States, Western Europe and Israel, that’s the usual triad, are almost—are always automatically guilty. Let me tell you a wonderful anecdote which happened in Zagreb that subversive festival two years ago when I got in a ferocious conflict with Samir Amin, an old he is still alive because he forgot to die, he belongs to that era anti-colonialism. And he said still the evil is again Western Europe, Zionism, United States, and he said developing countries should open more towards China, Russia, these are not such bad nations. And then I didn’t have to say anything because there were some Greek friends of our from Syriza there and they exploded. They started to laugh and they tell us, for example, "Do you know that already a couple of years ago some Chinese company bought the port of Piraeus and did things that no Western company can allow to do? Immediately fired half the people, find some legal loophole to prevent all trade unions, the most brutal exploitation." So I hate this attitude of and this is part of the symptom that you were describing. This attitude of the left that not only are we always guilty but like this perverse superego pleasure of you know, whenever something horrible happens in Third World like Rwanda, Tutsi Hutu, oh it must be a consequence of neocolonialism. Like you know this is so patronizing, you don’t even allow poor Africans to be e-really evil. If they are evil, "Fuck you, you are like children you are too stupid, it must be us Europeans who are really evil and so on." You know this game of permanent self-guilt. It’s really like in the old days it was white man’s burden, today it’s a like the idea we white men have the burden to lead other nations to enlightenment, no? Now they have in Denmark a more a nicer, they did you know it’s a wonderful dirty joke, in Denmark the left ironically uses the term white woman’s burden. You know what it means? There are many immigrant workers there who are alone sexually starved so it’s the duty of white women to allow them to have sex with them and so on. But I like this irony, they call it white woman’s burden. But now white man’s burden is more like okay if we are not the best we at least should be the only one who are really bad, the worst. We still have—and this is why, I can understand them. In Missoula Montana I met some Indians, they are called now in a politically correct way Native Americans. Incidentally they hate this term. You know my old joke, no it’s wonderful. You know what they told me? They told me we much prefer the term Indian to Native American. Because Native American is potentially much more racist. Like native means we are nature and you are culture or what you write? And they told me we want to be called Indians because at least our name is a monument to white man’s stupidity, you know who thought they are in India. But what they told—one of them, a researcher told me, "I can prove it to you that we Indians killed more buffaloes, ruined more nature, burned more forest than than then you white people will at any point be able to do it." This was not obscenity. They saw very well how this patronizing attitude, "No, we white men are imperialist we exploit nature while the native people, you know with before they climb a mountain they ask the mountain for a permission, they are holistic they—" They hate this. They know that this is a patronizing paternalist racism. So I didn’t lose my thread. Going back to this I totally agree with you and I can give you some further examples. Like yesterday I was talking to his kind of a friend of mine Assange, Julian Assange in nice apartment Ecuadorian Embassy. The only thing I like there is that it’s close to small street at the backside of Harrods, Harrods department store, you know. Okay, so what he told me is that Oliver Stone was there and told—you know Oliver Stone was also seduced by Putin. He visited Putin now a month ago or when he said that’s the nice strong leader, that’s what Russia needs and he announced that he will do a documentary on Putin, pro-Putin. While I think this is horrible. And not just from some European democratic standpoint. I think Russia had much greater potentials. It’s in the terms of Russian economic development itself that Putin is not good enough. So I totally—but again this is part of the phenomenon that I am criticizing as you said. This automatic at the left you know what would be nice, maybe we could do it, to go through all these myths of the left. I am the victim of another myth in ex-Yugoslavia, it’s the same logic. Because Milošević was so attacked by the West, Milošević couldn’t be so bad. The true fascists are we Slovenians and Croats and so on. And it’s up I agree with you and they are so crazy like the same British left which in the case of Slovenia and Croatia it was clear we Slovenians are guilty we ruined Yugoslavia, ah in the case of Scotland they were all for Scottish independence you know when they had that vote. Like some nations can do independence others shouldn’t. And sorry go on. No but so let’s make it a bit harder. So what because the radical right actually is fascinated by Putin and now they created a kind of like new Comintern or something supporting—Is it so serious? I didn’t know it. So let’s let’s let’s put them aside. So actually what who really support Ukraine is this liberal center that we, you, used to criticize. Can you say something good about the liberal center? Still no, no, no. But what I can say is for you know, probably it’s true nobody is ideal that they have all those neo-fascist blah blah. But listen Putin had even more of them and they are not another party they are simply part part of his movement. I mean I know a little bit through my friends from Chto Delat group. I mean all this horrors this—how can Putin say this when wasn’t it now disclosed that Putin is now even directly supporting giving money to Marine Le Pen, Orbán is now flirting with with Putin and so on? So we have new friends for you in Russia, Chto Delat is supporting unfortunately Kremlin and really thinking that the Ukraine has a problem with nationalism. Whenever we write something, Chto Delat sending to us their answers and just—I didn’t know this seriously. I didn’t know that, you see you see. But uh but oh—But wait a minute, okay. No no no no, sorry I will not talk for half an hour. But let me make one point nonetheless clearly. I am not saying that Russia was without arguments. I mean if you look at it historically it is problematic, how do you pronounce it here? Crim, Crimea, whose it is? I agree with, you know there was only one guy in Duma who voted against the annexation. And he said something nice. He said, "We have some arguments for Crimea. But the way we did it is totally to be rejected in—" no? That would be my position. But I claim also to to make it even a bit hire—harder, that what Europe sees in Ukraine is exactly this kind of like a paradoxical feedback or realization of a nightmare and fascination in the same time. So Ukraine represent something which Europe already
in the sense of, oh, the universal form masks particular interests, exploitation. No, it also served as a point of mobilization for all other demands, feminism, against racism, even workers' movement, everything. So again, it’s totally non-Marxist if we take seriously, I am very critical of Marx but some things he did were great, to play this Stalinist game of, you know, oh, this is just formal freedom. Again, form matters. So again, back to the point of democracy. So democracy was part of— what I fear is that today, and that’s what really makes me afraid, you know, is that today capitalism is globally entering a new stage where, to put it in brutal terms, it no longer needs democracy. The ultimate irony is the following one, and once at a round table I met Fukuyama and we laughed because he agreed with me. I told him, okay, you were right, capitalism— although, I mean, Fukuyama is not totally stupid, an honest guy. You know how you can detect this? You know that he no longer is a Fukuyamaist. I mean, he admitted to me that 11th of September, biogenetic problems and all that simply makes his dream of the end of history obsolete. It’s over. So I told to Fukuyama, listen, okay, capitalism won, but won’t you admit that ex-communists, where they are still in power as in China, are nonetheless the best managers of this new capitalism? That’s the paradox. So now I am coming back to China, to what, maybe you know him, Wang Hui is a Chinese dissident philosopher, a leftist but not in the sense of old communist nostalgia. He was arrested during what was that square, Tiananmen demonstrations and so on. And he told me he met once Deng Xiaoping’s daughter, you know when Deng Xiaoping was dying nobody could understand him, what he was, the daughter was the his Oracle interpreter, no. And he told me that the daughter told him that just before his death some dignitaries, nomenklatura visited him and asked him this kissing-the-ass narcissistic question: Okay, what do you think, Comrade Deng Xiaoping, is your greatest achievement? They expected that he would say some stupidity like, oh, opening up China, blah, blah. He said no. He said, do you know that when I opened up China in late 70s after Mao’s death, that the majority even in the Central Committee were inclined to go to the end. Let’s drop the Communist Party monopoly, let’s open it up to what ironically people call bourgeois democracy. And he said, I am most proud of the fact that I opposed it. Okay, it’s sad, but what makes me really depressed is that in a way he was right. And this is not for me a defense of communist rule but rather a critique of capitalism. He saw it clearly what is so difficult to admit that imagine that at that point, Tiananmen, China would really become a democratic country in the Western sense. I think liberals who think, oh my god, what would have been in China would develop even more, no, it would have been chaos and a catastrophe. And I see in this a general tendency at both levels. On the one hand, the most dynamic countries today, dynamic in the sense of wild capitalist development, like China, South Korea which is not fully authoritarian but still is, Singapore and so on, have this capitalism with Chinese values, which is slowly spreading even to Africa, look what is going on today in Angola and so on. On the other hand, even with us in the West, that’s what makes me sad, of course we have democracy. But let me ask you a very naive question. If somebody were to ask you, are you free? Yes. Then in what sense are you free? What do you experience as your freedom? You probably your answer would have been small personal freedoms, which I don’t despise, they are very important. Like you can read the books that you want, have sexual orientation you want, freely choose your job—okay, here already things get complicated if there are jobs to choose from, and so on and so on. But what I am claiming is that with all these freedoms which are more and more even guaranteed, at least in the Western countries, we should never forget that these freedoms, which again are very important, operate within a certain general framework of conditions. Within this general framework you make your choices, free choices. The problem is, are we free, does our freedom include also an open space, the freedom to change that frame? There I think our social totality, the way the whole system works, is becoming more and more impenetrable. And I am not again a Marxist paranoiac. I am not saying there is some secret meeting of capitalists and militaries where they decide how, but it’s simply the logic of global capital. This is why it is important to talk about, and it’s typical how there was a little bit of a fuss but not really, was it here? You know all those secret agreements that are now in preparation and only recently we began to talk about them, that TISA, TAFTA and some others. Are we aware what is happening there? Like that TISA agreement, it’s a mega agreement which should set the basic rules of flow of finances, flow of data and so on, along total neoliberal lines, no control. Not only this, some of the consequences of this agreement as we know now are pretty terrifying. Let’s say that I am a capitalist from one country that I invest money into another country. Then later a leftist social-democratic government takes power in that country, raises taxes, so I will get less profits than I expected. According to this agreement, I have the right to sue that country because they changed the rules and so on. So it’s tremendously important set of regulations which will determine the space of what an elected government can do, and as you probably know, not only we do not discuss about all this, okay, now we do because Assange, WikiLeaks and some others published it. But in the first draft of this TISA agreement, there was even that not only it was prepared in secrecy, but it says there that it should remain secret for five years after it will be endorsed, accepted. So again, I am not saying a dark plot of anti-democratic forces, whatever. I think it’s much darker because precisely no one is directly guilty. It’s the logic of the system. So you see my point? We are free at a personal level. But often our freedom itself is used, the reference to our freedom, the way we are interpelled, addressed as free, is used to counteract or to block actual freedom. What do I mean by this? Did you translate some of them here? I am not saying they are geniuses, but they have some nice insights, the two Italians, Franco "Bifo" Berardi and Maurizio Lazzarato. Oh, Lazzarato wrote a wonderful book entitled *The Making of the Indebted Man*, the structurally necessary role of debt today. Debt not only as an economic category, but also as an ethical anthropological category. You know, if you are indebted, this determines the scope of your freedom, how you react and so on. And what he shows in such a nice way is how this reference to debt, we are all more or less indebted today, is used to basically to justify the claim that we are basically all capitalists, just at a different level. The idea is this one: Let’s say, aha, you have million and I have nothing. Okay, you acquire a debt to expand your companies, I don’t know, you want more efficient slave labor in Indonesia, whatever you want. But I acquire a debt, I get indebted for euros too, and then the idea is this one: We are doing the same things. It’s just different decimal numbers, you know. You are thousand times higher level. The idea is this one: I am an ordinary working guy with almost no money. I get indebted. And then I freely decide what to do. You know, like I can use the money I get in this way, I don’t know, to invest into a larger apartment, to take my family to a holiday, to provide healthcare, to pay studies of my children. But you see what’s the idea? The idea, and they even have a term, self-entrepreneurship, that in a way we are all entrepreneurs today. And I think this is a wonderful way of how a situation which actually limits, constrains your freedom is presented in the terms which appear, which make it appear that your freedom got greater. I think the original sinners here were those New Labour philosophers or sociologists like Anthony Giddens, you know. When, I don’t know how it is with you in Poland, but I know even in my country, Slovenia, England, French are telling me in Germany, how especially in the spheres of journalism and universities precarious work is more and more important. And you know how perfectly the system works. My friend, a German Hegelian philosopher Frank Ruda, told me that there are now at Humboldt Universities dozens of professors who work for nothing. Why? Because if you are unemployed it’s very important if you want to have any chance to get a job later that you can say, but I am teaching here, there, that you are not out. University knows this, and again so they make contracts with dozens of professors to give lectures for nothing. The same happens with many journalists in Slovenia and so on. But okay, when this notion of no more long-term jobs but just one, two-year contracts at best, when this exploded, Anthony Giddens said, wait a minute, we shouldn’t look at this just as a negative phenomenon. Doesn’t it also, and here Giddens referred to all that postmodern stuff of we shouldn’t have fixed identities, we should reinvent, like it gives you every year a new chance to reinvent yourself, it multiplies your freedom and so on and so on. This is what is so crucial today, that actual unfreedom is often presented to us as a new form of freedom, to put it like this. And again, at all different levels. Also another aspect is at work here. The moment we have this logic of indebted man, the superego dimension is at work all the time. By superego, I mean superego, *Über-Ich*, in the strict Freudian sense. Superego in the Freudian sense is not just a moral agency, but it’s an obscene moral agency which you can immediately recognize by the paradox that the more you obey it, the more you feel guilty, to put it like this, it’s this vicious cycle. And I don’t know to what extent you are in it here in Poland, but precisely I think that that’s how political correctness work. I am totally pro-feminist, against racism, but I am shocked at how so-called political correctness, which presents itself as the most radical anti-racism, pro-feminism and so on, how in what negative ways it can work. Not only with regard to the pure ridicule of it. For example, I’m not kidding, I first thought it was a joke, then I contacted my Australian friends they confirmed it to me. Was it reported in your media that two, three months ago, Perth, you know, the rich new capital city Perth on the west coast of Africa— Australia— they have an opera. That opera decided never to perform *Carmen* again, Carmen Bizet opera. You know why? They claimed because Act takes place in front of a tobacco factory, so it could be considered as a smoking propaganda. So okay, we can laugh at all this, but much more important is another thing. The way superego works, and also it goes back to that logic of self-entrepreneurship, is that it individualizes your guilt and responsibility. Let’s say we have an ecological problem. The way we are addressed is not, let’s see how the system works, who are the true polluters and so on. At everyday level, it’s always this typically superego individualized guilt. Like you criticize the system and then they tell you, who are you to talk about it? Did you do your duty? Did you put aside all Coca-Cola cans? Did you put aside to recycle all paper and so on? It’s always this individualizing gesture where of course you are then infinitely guilty. And the same logic is I claim with sexism, racism and so on. I mean, in some American campuses even now things are crazy. You look a woman into the eye, and it happened to me a couple of times, you are accused of visual rape. You use a dirty word, it’s verbal rape and so on and so on. What, I’m not just making fun of it. What I’m saying is that you know, this is a wonderful instrument to make you guilty at an individual level, responsible, and in this way instead of raising more radical questions, it’s always you personally, did you do it, what did you do about it and so on and so on. So back to— so this I think is our predicament today, which is why the new authoritarian society, and if you ask me it will arrive. But I always specify this. It will not be the old Stalinist or fascist authoritarianism. You will not have an untouchable leader whom you will have to celebrate. No. Today it works, the post-democratic authoritarian system, if I may call it like this, will work with leaders who make fun of themselves, who mock themselves. You know, like for me Berlusconi would be an ideal here, you know. He made fun of himself all the time publicly. I spoke recently with a journalist from *The Economist* who told me he interviewed Berlusconi and Berlusconi told him, but forget about economy, let’s talk about more nicer things, would you like to see the *bunga bunga* room and you know, where we were doing that and so on. This is one— this is another aspect of what I’m trying to tell you, how today power in order to be exerted no longer has to be covered up with all the insignia of power. If you like popular media, let me give you a couple of elements here like Jean Genet’s play *The Balcony*, *Le Balcon*, is basically about this process. Then some early, how is it called, von Trier films and so on. They all make in a different levels this point that today’s master is no longer the master, this you know, untouchable totalitarian leader where any tiny detail that you learn about him is felt by the regime as a mortal threat. Which is why, for example in the case of Stalinism, it was totally prohibited any personal details and so on. No, today’s leader is someone who legitimizes himself by admitting in advance that he is human like us, nobody is perfect and so on and so on and so on. This is what interests me. This new form of power which again no longer needs this big insignia. No, you can have— you know where it all began, not began. I remember, maybe he wasn’t the worst foreign minister, Joschka Fischer. When he was German foreign minister some years ago, when they were deciding about war in Iraq, I was shocked. He gave a TV interview where he described all his inner traumas, how he had even to visit a psychiatrist prior to making a decision. I was shocked by that. Who cares about that, like, you know. Decision interests me, not to what— so I am totally opposed, I think it should be turned around, namely the standard idea that we are so controlled today by agencies that there is no private life. No, I think there is less and less, here I agree with Richard Sennett the sociologist of culture, there is less and less public life. Public life is privatized. It’s considered as one of that. Okay, so now I come nonetheless to my point after all this, this movement where we are moving of Europe, Eurocentrism. The title of this two, three minutes could have been: Why am I still a Eurocentrist? It’s so fashionable today even among some European liberal leftists to make, you know, to make fun of Europe. It’s a kind of a, I claim, inverted racism where if you in any way praise Europe, you are already one step towards all those populist right-wingers who fear for European legacy or whatever. No, I claim that all this narrative of how Western civilization is lost today, it’s time it’s over, we should really open ourselves to Third World experiences and so on and so on. I don’t believe at all in it. Why not? Not because I’m a racist Eurocentrist, but because I think that it’s so typical that precisely today at the moment when capitalism really won universally, and when effectively what was good in European legacy—egalitarianism, human rights, freedom, feminism, whatever—is often dismissed as Eurocentrism and so on. Now precisely when global capitalism no longer needs European ideology, it all of a sudden became acceptable to criticize it, to reject it. I think that on the contrary, now we should stick to European type of universality. Why? Because now I come to my second central point. You know, it’s totally wrong to think that global capitalism implies some kind of a global culture which is kind of a consumerist American and so on and so on. No, the sad lesson of last decade or two is that again, if you have a culture which is not the Western liberal hedonist culture, you can maybe do it even better with capitalist development. Like India is for me here a typical example. I have problems with India not because I’m against India, but because of the crucial struggle going on there. You see we don’t read this in our media. For example, the majority of the poor people and leftists there just don’t mention Gandhi to them. They consider him a traitor and I think they are right. You know what Gandhi did? Okay, he did many good things. But the crucial point: caste system. Gandhi was for it, claiming the usual bullshit, oh this is part of our historical tradition and so on and so on. And you know where, when you feel this, where you feel this bad, this influence of Gandhi in India. I was there and I asked them what about emancipation, equality, democracy. And they basically told me, why are you forcing on us those imperialist Western notions, whatever. Gandhi did a very dirty trick. He didn’t want to abolish castes. He just wanted to, as he put it, provide each caste with the dignity it deserved. His message to untouchables, the lowest caste, was not no untouchables, but you are also children of God, you have your own proper role to play within the organic community and so on and so on. So what I’m saying is that you see the sad irony. Yes, and back to India, you know the new Prime Minister that they have, Modi. It’s absolutely crucial that on the one hand he is the most brutal neoliberal in the sense that he openly said that now China is developing, getting too expensive, so there is now an opening for India to become the factory of the world because of cheap labor power, and that that’s his idea to totally open. At the same time he is a radical Hindu nationalist. What I want to tell you is that this is how today’s global capitalism works. There is nothing subversive as even some Latin American, Latin American leftists unfortunately think, there is nothing subversive in this idea that global capitalism is an abstract Eurocentric monster and then we should refer to our local cultures to resist it. No, all references to local culture already play the game of global capitalism. They fit it perfectly. There is no possibility of resistance there. And all serious freedom fighters knew it. That’s why I appreciate a guy who was a radical, Malcolm X. Okay, to speak in civilized terms, it’s ironic what I say now, you saw my Malcolm X read Denzel Washington in Spike Lee film, you know. But it’s true, you know what was the greatness of Malcolm X? Of course X stood for loss of roots, you know. Like we blacks, we were torn out of our concrete network of our native relations in Africa. X means we don’t have family names, where family name stands for the whole set of organic relations, your specific culture and so on. But what was the greatness of Malcolm X? That he didn’t play that game of, oh, so let’s search for our roots. I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember some twenty, thirty years ago there was a big bestseller, Alex Haley I think, *Roots*, and then a mega-successful TV series, where the point was a black American citizen, black of today, retraces his origins and at the end he visits some tribe in Ghana and, oh, that’s my great-great-grandmother and, you know, like he found roots. Nothing subversive. Malcolm X has had a much deeper insight. He said what this X, X which means I don’t have a firm identity I’m free, gives blacks a unique chance to be more universal than whites, to freely create their own space of freedom and so on. And this is why I remain here, in this sense only, a Marxist. I’m referring here to Marx’s famous text on results of British colonial rule in India, where he says yes it’s horrible what the British did, there were hungers, millions dead, exploitation, but at the same time they created the possibility for a new freedom. So I claim again that we absolutely have to, we absolutely have to stick to European legacy more than ever today. All these references to particular life worlds, you know like my friend, he is not an idiot and he’s honest, another conservative who is half my friend, Alain Finkielkraut in France. He is obsessed by this, there is bad global capitalism and then, oh my god, what will happen with our nice, small French way of life and so on and so on. Well, I told him you don’t have to worry, I mean, that’s how capitalism works, you will have your French way of life, but it will just become indifferent. Because the universality today is the universality of capital. Now the first part. Second part and then the third part. Second part still more political. Sorry, an opening. What does this universality mean today for our situation? I think the moment is dangerous. I’ve written about it, I’ll just recapitulate. It’s dangerous because we have United States whom I respect as a country and I always warned my leftist friends that don’t underestimate Obama. Namely it’s one of the most boring pseudo-leftist rituals today to claim, oh, how disappointed I am with Obama. Well, fuck you, what did they expect? Obama will introduce socialism in United States? He did what was possible to do. But what I’m saying is that unfortunately Obama believes in still in the role of United States as a world policeman. You know he gave a couple of, now two, three months ago an interview where he said something like, whenever there is trouble somewhere in the world, they don’t call Beijing, they don’t call Moscow, they call us. That’s how America works. Universal policeman. The tragedy is that America, precisely because we are already entering a multicentric world, America, the result of this, that you believe you are a world policeman where effectively it’s already multicentric world, is that America is winning the wars and losing the peace. That is to say, it intervenes but then the result is that it does the dirty work for their enemies precisely because they no longer control the entire situation. Just think about Iraq. What is the actual result of their intervention in Iraq? A: The state is falling apart. You have a Shia part who is more or less politically under control of Iran, and on the other hand you have guys who are even much worse, ISIS, no, the radical Islamists. And repeatedly they get caught into this trap, the United States. I think that, now I will propose a parallel, maybe I’m wrong, but I think there are good reasons to sustain it and you may have already read about it, it’s not a new parallel. Namely, that we are now in a situation which is dangerous precisely because it resembles the one years ago, decades before the Great War, World War I. We have one global power which is in decline, not economically, don’t underestimate United States, but in decline in the sense that it’s no longer the sole undisputed global power. years ago it was the British Empire, now it’s the United States. Then we have new rising powers which want their own slice, again years ago the main one was of course Germany, but also others. Today it’s of course China and Russia. And next problem, so and of course they play their wars by proxies. In years ago as you know it was Balkan, Sarajevo, where it exploded. Today it’s the Middle East and I think that what worries me is did you notice this weird schizophrenia? On the one hand we are all the time bombarded by news about how the new world war is coming, or at least there is a threat. My god, just read newspapers. I am now counting it, it’s literally practically every day. Like, "Aha, Russians has now a stealth fighter which is better than ours Americans," then America invents something, then Putin said this like two months ago I think he said, "Oh in one afternoon I can walk into Poland and Baltic states" or whatever. So how systematically, and I’m not saying it’s not really—that the danger is not real. Incidentally, I’m here no, I’m not in any way pro—which is why I have this—I’m not in any way pro-Putin. I’m just saying that what worries me is the entire situation where again all the time we have this rhetoric of new world war. Where are the dangers? Precisely because now you will tell me, "But this is rhetoric, don’t take it too seriously." That’s the problem for me. Because it was exactly the same if you go back years ago. Everyone was talking about the war but nobody believed that it can really happen. You know where you have traces of that? Like in the good old Cold War we had what we called MAD logic, mutually assured destruction. The idea is that each side knew that if we bomb them, they will absolutely have the ability to bomb us back so it’s the end. Today more and more systematically the idea is we somehow abstract—we think that limited nuclear strikes can be, you know this is the new way of strategic thinking. So again, what makes me afraid is precisely, sorry yes, today’s strategy is called, I like the name, it’s no longer MAD but NUTS, N-U-T-S, which means idiots. It’s nuclear utilization target selection. The idea is we can risk a nuclear conflict, it will not be the end and so on and so on. Again, you see what I’m aiming at. We are like before World War I in an era where the old bipolar world with at least it looked so after the disintegration of the Soviet Union America as the sole superpower is in decline. And here, as a friend of America—this is not a leftist statement—I think that all leftists and anti-Americanists should propose to build a big monument to George Bush, the younger president. He with his extremely stupid politics as we see today, the main result of Bush eight years is that America lost his world dominance which it still possessed under—in the Clinton years and so on. I mean he did—if there is a guy who did most damage to ruin America’s position it’s Bush, it’s clear. Sorry, but let me go on. So you see what I’m arguing. That this situation and it was again exactly the same before World War I. Everybody talk about war, nobody believed that it can really happen. And that’s why it can happen, I claim. We will—it can, I’m not saying it will happen. I am saying something very precise with which I’m approaching the last third part. That we have to change the entire frame of thinking. It’s not enough to claim we have to be very careful, not take—not risk too much. In this way we can inadvertently trigger war. No. We have to—and here I’m referring to my good friend American—French thinker philosopher of catastrophes, my god you should translate him he is a genius I claim. He works in Paris but now he is retired there he is mostly in Stanford, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, D-U-P-U-Y, like ypsilon. He has this wonderful theory that the way to deal with a catastrophe is first to recognize it as a fate. In the sense of it’s not just we are at a crossroad, no. If the world goes on the way it goes on today, we are approaching if not a world war some kind of a conflict. And I’m well aware, I’m writing about this in my new book, I’m well aware that superficially the situation is good. I know from firsthand. A year and a half ago I was in South Korea and I was telling them the usual bullshit crisis of capitalism and they started to laugh at me. And I asked them, "Why are you laughing?" And they gave me a counterargument which was quite reasonable. They said, "About what crisis are you talking? We in Far East Asia we developed more than ever. Latin America, at least at that point, was progressing as it never did. Sub-Saharan Africa, okay it’s not rich on our with our measures but it’s developing. Even they claimed and they mentioned you some European countries, Poland and so on they United States more or less it." They told me, "You claim to be anti-Eurocentrist leftist, but the only place really in crisis is parts of Southern and Europe. Maybe France and so on." They told me and you proclaim this worldwide crisis. "No, you are in crisis," they told me. And they even proved with statistics that never in the history of humanity was at the level of percentage of population so many people lived so well, there were so little wars and so on and so on. So all of this I admit it but of course one can complicate, it’s not as simple as that. But what I’m trying to say is that in spite of these appearances of, okay things are going well and so on, I think if you ask me that there are many reasons. One is this new multicentric system where we don’t yet know what are the rules of the game. The superpowers are testing each other like Putin is testing United States, "C-R-I-M-K-R-I-M-I-A Crimea, you swallow that, okay let—" like the problem is the paranoiac one, like Putin hears calls for help. He heard it first for Crimea, now who knows maybe he will hear some future calls from Baltic republics, maybe even from Poland and so on. So—but again Americans are doing the same and don’t misunderstand me I don’t in any way defend Putin. What worries me is this entire picture where again the immanent logic of the situation is accepted: our fate is world war, we are approaching a conflict. And what I’m saying is that the way to fight it is not some cheap optimism: "No, it’s not so bad, if we proceed cautiously we can—" No, we have to admit that World War is our fate and then act more radically to prevent it. What do I mean by this? Where are we now temporarily? Looks bad. Before the war? Yeah, but you know what I would like to do? You know usually when I talk too long and I often do the the joke I use is you know this notion by deconstructionist Derrida that we have this metaphysical linear notion of time. And I claim, yes, I used my hour if we apply this notion metaphysical of time. But if we apply a higher non-metaphysical notion of time, no. Okay, so what I wanted to develop here is a couple of things based on the work of Badiou. The first idea by him that I find so intelligent is the idea of so-called counterfactuals. You imagine the way the situation could have been, even it’s not, and in this way you can clearly see the truth of the way the situation is. What do I mean by this? Did you see the movie of one of your directors, although I have a strange mixed opinion of him, Roman Polanski? I do like his *Chinatown*, good noir, and I do like I must say strangely that film, you saw him with Pierce Brosnan as Tony Blair or whatever, *The Ghost* or *The Ghost Writer*. Okay, you know, you know what’s the thesis of the film, that not Blair but his wife in the film was from the very beginning CIA agent planted on him and that again the rise to power of Tony Blair was from the very beginning regulated by CIA and so on. Somebody wrote a wonderful comment on the film. He said that we know that probably that this is not true. But if it were true, everything would become all of a sudden clear. You know like the things would be. And that’s the result there. Sometimes as good theologians knew it, like my beloved Chesterton, like that you know sometimes in order to see the situation in truth you need a particular lie, which you know it’s a lie, but if you mention but if you use this lie cautiously you can see the entire situation in its truth. I mean and I’m ready to apply this even on Marx. Like as I repeatedly analyzed in my books, Marx’s vision of communism doesn’t work. Why? Because it’s still a—what Marx wants to imagine, imagined as communism is capitalism without capitalism. That is to say, Marx saw it clearly that this incredible dynamics of capitalism. Marx just thought that at a certain level of development of forces of production, you can take away the capitalist form and the dynamic will remain, even more, even stronger dynamic. Marx didn’t see that what he thought is today an obstacle to capitalist development is its only frame. What is wrong here? Oh, I don’t have time here to go into psychoanalysis, but this I think is a wonderful case of what Jacques Lacan called *objet petit a*, the object small a, what Lacan calls the object of desire. How do you fall in love usually? I mean this is even an empirical fact some sexologist told me. It’s never a perfectly beautiful woman. You can desire if you are a man, I’m not going now into, okay, the other way around also. You can desire a beautiful woman but to fall in love you need to notice some imperfection so that then you tell yourself, even if she is not perfect that’s why I love her. It’s always something like this. Okay, so let me go to my dirty joke detail. A friend from Portugal, who is a psychoanalyst, told me that she had she had a patient, a nice lady still sexually attractive in her early 40s, and that this lady told him her psychoanalyst that to boast herself that when the last lover saw her naked, her last lover, he told her, "My god, just with two, three kilos less your body would have been perfect." But my friend, who is a good Lacanian analyst, immediately got the point. He said that I told this lady: Just don’t lose two, three kilos. Because you know that’s the refined dialectic here. This two, three kilos too much retroactively create the the specter of a perfect body without these two, three kilos. But if you actually take away this two, three kilos, the effect will be just vulgarity. You see something that appears as an obstacle like here to perfect beauty, you would be perfect with two, three kilos less, is an effect of this very obstacle. You take away the two, three kilos, you get an ordinary vulgar girl. And even some big models knew this, like I read years ago when I was young when there were two model big mega models, Claudia Schiffer and Cindy Crawford. And I read a stupid opinion poll, whom would you prefer to marry in Europe? Majority said Cindy Crawford. Why? Because she had that birthmark, you know. Comrade Žižek, let’s come back to Marx. But I am, this is Marx. You know I have an I have an holistic approach to Marx, this is also part of it. No, no, sorry but what I’m saying is that Marx would dispute—Sorry? Yeah. So what I’m trying to say just is that is this again, this logic. This is was I think a similar the mistake of Marx. He thought that if you if the woman raises—sorry, loses two, three kilos, that is to say if you take from capitalist system the capitalist form, that you will have the pure self-reproducing, no, it doesn’t work in that way. But my point was a more important one here, this counterfactual logic, which I think is extremely important. Ultimately it means that things are not simply what they are. Part of the identity of the thing is what they might have been but are not. Like back to this lady, with two, three kilos less her body might have been perfect. But this is only true counterfactually. If she effectively if this becomes a fact she is not beautiful. She would not be beautiful. Now what I want to say is that an atheist, I don’t have time to develop this, has to approach even religion in this way, in a counterfactual way. That is to say, I’m an atheist but I have a great appreciation of Christianity, but nonetheless I like to complicate things here. Like you can download it for free at any moment, I advise you to download it, you get it for free you don’t even have to go to Pirate Bay, which is now re-emerged as old Pirate Bay, it works again if you want to know. A strange film from early 90s, *Rapture*, Michael Tolkin wrote the scenario and with Mimi Rogers. It’s a weird story of a woman who is promiscuous then she becomes a fundamentalist, marries Christian fun—has a daughter. And then she waiting to be—after her husband is killed—she waits for rapture. She thinks that she hears divine voice that God will take her and her daughter up. And then it’s very obscene movie but I’m very seriously then they wait in the desert for God to take them up. When nothing happens, the daughter tells her, six years old daughter, "Mommy why don’t you kill me, in this way and then you kill yourself and we will immediately join our father who died." Okay, she kills her daughter but cannot kill herself becoming aware that people who commit suicide don’t go to heaven. And then she is totally broken, she goes to police, confesses everything, is put in prison. Up to this point you can say it’s an ordinary psychological drama about deadlocks of radical belief. At that point, the last minutes, the film gets crazy. What happens then in prison is that real rapture and apocalypse happens. You see four riders of the apocalypse, you know the houses are disintegrating and so on. This is already a wonderful message. The message, it is as if God’s message is, "Haha when I talked about four riders of the apocalypse you thought I am talking in metaphors. No, no, I meant it quite literally, there will be four people riding there." So then a crazy thing happens. She is enraptured and is in some place which is something like purgatory, how do you call it, just close to heaven, not there. And her daughter approaches her from heaven and asks her, "Mommy, say I love Jesus and you can join me and your husband, my father, we will all be happy." And there comes the last shock of the film, that’s the very end. She says, "No. What God did, all the horrors by allowing me to kill you, by all the injustices, I cannot say that I love Jesus." And then daughter tells her, "But Mommy, you know what this means? Do you know how long you will stay here out of heaven?" And she, the heroine says, "I know, forever." The end of the film. I found this in the best tradition of this radical Christian experiments. You find it in Malebranche, in others. This idea that to go to the end in the divine experience, you must counterfactually imagine God as brutal, ignorant, because this is I think here I am unfortunately not as Catholic as you are here but more Protestant. I think that Protestantism the the secret of Protestant predestination is precisely that God is an ignorant idiot. He just distributed roles, he didn’t even care what we really did. So you will say but what use is this for an atheist? My point is that it’s very important to say, you know I want to repeat here the crucial joke from Ernst Lubitsch’s *Ninotchka*. Ernst Lubitsch is the guy who maybe did the best film which takes place in Poland, *To Be or Not to Be*, you know. You don’t know this? It’s a Hitler comedy, it takes place in Warsaw. It’s extra—but let’s drop that. What happens in this one, in *Ninotchka*, is I’m just referring I use it all the time in my books the most famous line of a dialogue, you know where a guy tells to Greta Garbo a joke. Like a guy about somebody who comes to a cafeteria and says, "Can I have coffee with cream please?" And the waiter says, "Sorry we don’t have cream, we only have milk. So I can only give you coffee without milk, I cannot give you coffee without cream." If you are old enough but you are not, you must immediately recognize the old I think I know it was also in Poland used this joke in my country, you know. A guy comes to a store and says, "Do you have I don’t know let’s say toilet paper?" And they tell him, "No we don’t, you are in the wrong store. We are the store which doesn’t have oil. The other store is the store which doesn’t have toilet paper" or whatever. You know but this counterfactual idea that what you are not counts as your—And now what I in this sense counterfactually we can change the past. For example, let me now and with this I will finish immediately just draw the distinction that I want to present you with. Two types of conditional propositions. The indicative one would have been, "If Shakespeare did not write *Hamlet*, someone else did." This is obviously true, *Hamlet* is written so if not Shakespeare someone else had to do it. But if you say, "If Shakespeare had not written *Hamlet*, someone else would have done it," ah, this is a much stronger thesis. This comes close to vulgar Marxist determinism, you know when Plekhanov, the most unfortunate Marxist philosopher Russian, said something like, "There was a historical tendency at the time of French Revolution for a passage from democracy, parliament to empire. But it was contingent that Napoleon was the guy who did it. So if not Napoleon another person would have assumed that role." And this is a very interesting point. Like it immediately becomes actual in how to account for Stalinism, you know. Is Stalinism an effect of this type of necessity so that we can say, there was an inner necessity in the early development of the Soviet movement for a move for a shift towards Stalinism, something like if not Stalin then another person, maybe even Trotsky, would have played the same role. It might have been a little bit different but basically the same. So this is the vulgar Marxist idea. We have a universal necessity, passage to Stalinism, passage to empire, and then you you—but it’s contingent which concrete guy will do it. I think this is the wrong logic. The logic I want to advocate, following Dupuy, is the opposite logic of something happens contingently but retroactively it establishes its own necessity. You know something happened happens, it might have not happened, but once it happens it retroactively appears as necessary. For example, ridiculously well-known example: Julius Caesar, Rubicon. Well, I’m not a determinist. He might have turned around and said, "No I don’t want to violate the laws of the republic let me go back to Gallia, France, and be a small king there." But once he did it, it was his destiny. And at this level you see what I’m trying to say, we can change the past. Nothing changes factually, but things change counterfactually. Where you thought you had a choice, you don’t have a choice. It was predestined. So okay now I will really conclude. The point of all this, well buy my next book where I develop this in detail or even better buy the book Dupuy, D-U-P-U-Y, his late last book is now it happened it emerged it came out recently is his last book is called simply *Economy and the Future*. And he is wonderfully educated man, his big example in this changing the past are for example films. His favorite film, he is fanatic for it, before even not only in the last years when it was voted the greatest film of all time is Hitchcock’s *Vertigo*. You know the story, no? His reading is this one. After when the false Madeleine it appears kills herself, Scotty the hero loses her. You lose your love object. But when at the end he discovers that Madeleine was fake from the beginning, he not simply loses her, but at this virtual counterfactual level the past is changed. He doesn’t lose her but he is—he retroactively discovers that there never even was a Madeleine. And you see my point, something like this has to be done. That’s the true political act. You don’t just make the right choice, you do something which in a way changes your destiny. And that’s what we have to do if we want to avoid catastrophe. Again it’s not enough to say, "Oh there are dangers, I hope Putin will not do something stupid, let’s not provoke too much." No. Something more radical will have to be done. Otherwise I’m a pessimist. I really think that we live in dangerous times. You precisely what makes them dangerous is that we don’t take the situation seriously. Thanks very much, I finish. [Applause] You know I feel like Stalin now, you know if you go to YouTube, put it on YouTube "Stalin angry." It’s a wonderful three minutes and a half clip where you see Stalin documentary at the end of a speech and people applaud. And you can see how "Okay nice nice," and then he gets tired of it, and he gets really angry but cannot stop them because they are afraid to stop, you know like—I felt a little bit like Stalin, but okay. Alright, let me first allow for a—maybe fruitful small revenge. Have you seen the film *Ida* by Pawlikowski? Not yet. I was even involved—No, no, it will amuse you what I will have to say. I will but it was already given to me, I was even involved in sabotaging it. No, no, not seriously. You know what happened, it had it was part of the three films competing for the European Film of the Year. And another of the three was a Slovenian film called *Class Enemy*, about a suicide that happens in a high school. And I like the Slovenian film and without knowing who is the competitor I made a short statement supporting that film. So I’m even involved in, to put it in old socialist terms, anti-social activities here with regard to—But it must be a wonder—Because no I will tell you a secret. The young guy, the Slovenian director of that film, told me, "You know privately I must admit the Polish one is the best one." So I, sorry yes. You see, retroactively you did a good job. I did, yeah. Okay, actually I just have a kind of—I'm obliged to ask for three pretty predictable and obvious comments. You mentioned, because we have this Agnieszka Wiśniewska gave us, we have it, and of course as you know it we are very engaged in what is going on but like actually you already comment on what—what you think about Putin. Putin is pretty predictable example, very typical authority in Russia. But actually I would like to ask about the position of the, I'm not only radical left, but generally the left, especially in Germany, but also some American intellectuals unfortunately, also many others who are claiming first of all, that you know like—that Ukraine is a kind of a source of nationalism and fascism and all this stuff, and justifying this way Putin. What does it mean? What do you think about it? How would you comment on it? No, no, here don’t be afraid. I even published a text for which I was—I'm not afraid, I don’t—some leftists even threatened to beat me up. You know, a text "Lenin in Ukraine." I think it was London Review of Books where I pointed out something that people even Ukrainians tend to forget. Listen, the Bolsheviks in the twenties, that was the golden era. They had a policy which was very progressive of so-called indigenization. The idea is give smaller nations, to anyone but Russians, full cultural autonomy. You know that Ukrainian became a full literally language with vocabularies and so on in the twenties. That was the golden era. In the tsarist regime it was not acknowledged as a language of its own. So Stalin was here—And that’s so nice. This Lenin’s tendency was here so radical that in '22 Stalin attacked Lenin as bourgeois-liberal, liberal nationalist. You know it was a big conflict even with Rosa Luxemburg who opposed here Lenin, because Lenin’s position was we should give full right to secede and to build their own state, nationalist, independently of who is in power them. While Rosa Luxemburg was—she said, "Why don’t we say we give them autonomy if our guys are there," you know she wanted—so what I’m saying that was one aspect. The other aspect, which is obvious, is that first as you said, yes you see these are people who really are not aware that we are approaching a multi-centric world today. And they still have this, my god I’ve written a lot against the United States, but nonetheless you know we have to admit it like whenever there is some crisis in the world it’s not automatically that United States, Western Europe and Israel, that’s the usual triad, are almost—are always automatically guilty. Let me tell you a wonderful anecdote which happened in Zagreb that subversive festival two years ago when I got in a ferocious conflict with Samir Amin, an old he is still alive because he forgot to die, he belongs to that era anti-colonialism. And he said still the evil is again Western Europe, Zionism, United States, and he said developing countries should open more towards China, Russia, these are not such bad nations. And then I didn’t have to say anything because there were some Greek friends of our from Syriza there and they exploded. They started to laugh and they tell us, for example, "Do you know that already a couple of years ago some Chinese company bought the port of Piraeus and did things that no Western company can allow to do? Immediately fired half the people, find some legal loophole to prevent all trade unions, the most brutal exploitation." So I hate this attitude of and this is part of the symptom that you were describing. This attitude of the left that not only are we always guilty but like this perverse superego pleasure of you know, whenever something horrible happens in Third World like Rwanda, Tutsi Hutu, oh it must be a consequence of neocolonialism. Like you know this is so patronizing, you don’t even allow poor Africans to be e-really evil. If they are evil, "Fuck you, you are like children you are too stupid, it must be us Europeans who are really evil and so on." You know this game of permanent self-guilt. It’s really like in the old days it was white man’s burden, today it’s a like the idea we white men have the burden to lead other nations to enlightenment, no? Now they have in Denmark a more a nicer, they did you know it’s a wonderful dirty joke, in Denmark the left ironically uses the term white woman’s burden. You know what it means? There are many immigrant workers there who are alone sexually starved so it’s the duty of white women to allow them to have sex with them and so on. But I like this irony, they call it white woman’s burden. But now white man’s burden is more like okay if we are not the best we at least should be the only one who are really bad, the worst. We still have—and this is why, I can understand them. In Missoula Montana I met some Indians, they are called now in a politically correct way Native Americans. Incidentally they hate this term. You know my old joke, no it’s wonderful. You know what they told me? They told me we much prefer the term Indian to Native American. Because Native American is potentially much more racist. Like native means we are nature and you are culture or what you write? And they told me we want to be called Indians because at least our name is a monument to white man’s stupidity, you know who thought they are in India. But what they told—one of them, a researcher told me, "I can prove it to you that we Indians killed more buffaloes, ruined more nature, burned more forest than than then you white people will at any point be able to do it." This was not obscenity. They saw very well how this patronizing attitude, "No, we white men are imperialist we exploit nature while the native people, you know with before they climb a mountain they ask the mountain for a permission, they are holistic they—" They hate this. They know that this is a patronizing paternalist racism. So I didn’t lose my thread. Going back to this I totally agree with you and I can give you some further examples. Like yesterday I was talking to his kind of a friend of mine Assange, Julian Assange in nice apartment Ecuadorian Embassy. The only thing I like there is that it’s close to small street at the backside of Harrods, Harrods department store, you know. Okay, so what he told me is that Oliver Stone was there and told—you know Oliver Stone was also seduced by Putin. He visited Putin now a month ago or when he said that’s the nice strong leader, that’s what Russia needs and he announced that he will do a documentary on Putin, pro-Putin. While I think this is horrible. And not just from some European democratic standpoint. I think Russia had much greater potentials. It’s in the terms of Russian economic development itself that Putin is not good enough. So I totally—but again this is part of the phenomenon that I am criticizing as you said. This automatic at the left you know what would be nice, maybe we could do it, to go through all these myths of the left. I am the victim of another myth in ex-Yugoslavia, it’s the same logic. Because Milošević was so attacked by the West, Milošević couldn’t be so bad. The true fascists are we Slovenians and Croats and so on. And it’s up I agree with you and they are so crazy like the same British left which in the case of Slovenia and Croatia it was clear we Slovenians are guilty we ruined Yugoslavia, ah in the case of Scotland they were all for Scottish independence you know when they had that vote. Like some nations can do independence others shouldn’t. And sorry go on. No but so let’s make it a bit harder. So what because the radical right actually is fascinated by Putin and now they created a kind of like new Comintern or something supporting—Is it so serious? I didn’t know it. So let’s let’s let’s put them aside. So actually what who really support Ukraine is this liberal center that we, you, used to criticize. Can you say something good about the liberal center? Still no, no, no. But what I can say is for you know, probably it’s true nobody is ideal that they have all those neo-fascist blah blah. But listen Putin had even more of them and they are not another party they are simply part part of his movement. I mean I know a little bit through my friends from Chto Delat group. I mean all this horrors this—how can Putin say this when wasn’t it now disclosed that Putin is now even directly supporting giving money to Marine Le Pen, Orbán is now flirting with with Putin and so on? So we have new friends for you in Russia, Chto Delat is supporting unfortunately Kremlin and really thinking that the Ukraine has a problem with nationalism. Whenever we write something, Chto Delat sending to us their answers and just—I didn’t know this seriously. I didn’t know that, you see you see. But uh but oh—But wait a minute, okay. No no no no, sorry I will not talk for half an hour. But let me make one point nonetheless clearly. I am not saying that Russia was without arguments. I mean if you look at it historically it is problematic, how do you pronounce it here? Crim, Crimea, whose it is? I agree with, you know there was only one guy in Duma who voted against the annexation. And he said something nice. He said, "We have some arguments for Crimea. But the way we did it is totally to be rejected in—" no? That would be my position. But I claim also to to make it even a bit hire—harder, that what Europe sees in Ukraine is exactly this kind of like a paradoxical feedback or realization of a nightmare and fascination in the same time. So Ukraine represent something which Europe already
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doesn't have this kind of Euro enthusiasm and in the same time something which is a kind of a nightmare, so this kind
doesn't have this kind of Euro enthusiasm and in the same time something which is a kind of a nightmare, so this kind
Slavoj Žižek
of like rupture, you know collapse or something that might happen also to—Ah no, but I wrote another text now where I said something different but again it was typically censored by Guardian then I published, namely that why I think why you remember when I talked about how freedoms are for us more and more these small personal freedoms. I think that the reason we were so fascinated by Ukraine it wasn’t just this European narcissism, "Oh how nice those primitive people there are discovering the beauty of Western democracy they want to be like us." It was much more tragic thing. Something happened in Ukraine, people coming together hundreds of thousand and as collective agent enforced a change. Such an act is no longer even thinkable in Europe, you know. We are so constrained to our small personal freedoms. In this sense I think this fascination with Ukraine was a progressive one, was a fascination with how we can still imagine a great collective historical act. And again it’s not
of like rupture, you know collapse or something that might happen also to—Ah no, but I wrote another text now where I said something different but again it was typically censored by Guardian then I published, namely that why I think why you remember when I talked about how freedoms are for us more and more these small personal freedoms. I think that the reason we were so fascinated by Ukraine it wasn’t just this European narcissism, "Oh how nice those primitive people there are discovering the beauty of Western democracy they want to be like us." It was much more tragic thing. Something happened in Ukraine, people coming together hundreds of thousand and as collective agent enforced a change. Such an act is no longer even thinkable in Europe, you know. We are so constrained to our small personal freedoms. In this sense I think this fascination with Ukraine was a progressive one, was a fascination with how we can still imagine a great collective historical act. And again it’s not
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only what I said Putin but now you know I found that disgusting but that’s not the point namely that the last Eurovision song that Conchita Wurst that bearded lady. But nonetheless who won, you know that Russians Putin regime turned this now into an entire cultural war, you know against Western European decadence and so on. No it’s horrible how Putin is consciously playing not just the Russian nationalist way but elevating Russia into a kind of traditional values superpower against this impotent permissive obscenity of Western Europe and so on and so on. So no I have absolutely no sympathy if you mean here with with Putin. And that what I said about good bad in Ukraine. No I just what I just wanted to say is how Europe is usually here very narcissistic, you know
only what I said Putin but now you know I found that disgusting but that’s not the point namely that the last Eurovision song that Conchita Wurst that bearded lady. But nonetheless who won, you know that Russians Putin regime turned this now into an entire cultural war, you know against Western European decadence and so on. No it’s horrible how Putin is consciously playing not just the Russian nationalist way but elevating Russia into a kind of traditional values superpower against this impotent permissive obscenity of Western Europe and so on and so on. So no I have absolutely no sympathy if you mean here with with Putin. And that what I said about good bad in Ukraine. No I just what I just wanted to say is how Europe is usually here very narcissistic, you know
Slavoj Žižek
when it’s fascinated with a country it’s as a rule for wrong reasons. It projects like it’s the same thing that I said about Balkan, you know my friend Mladen Dolar proposed this wonderful formula twenty years ago that European unconscious is structured like Balkan. And that was my thesis why I really think he is dangerous and bad why I hate that director megastar Balkan Emir Kusturica. Did you see his film *Underground*? You know why I think it’s wrong and he is a good filmmaker I don’t doubt that. What image of ex-Yugoslavia do you get from that film? That permanent orgy, people fuck shoot each other and drink. This is not Balkan, this is the Western myth of Balkan. So I am not reproaching Kusturica for being too—no Balkan, no. He he plays the role of this Balkan wild man for Western European gaze and he does it consciously. I was with him he almost attacked me physically at some round tables in France where I noticed how everything is studied, you know he uses dirty words, "I will fuck your mother" and so on. He consciously plays this brutal Balkanian fool, you know. In that sense I only made—it has nothing to do with Ukraine itself. Okay so let me let me quote the last sentence of a of a book which actually—My god you will be a good Stalinist prosecutor, you see how he doesn’t let go on. Of course you have. It’s a best compliment I can get for you I think. Um okay but like your the last sentence of your book which is pretty similar to the way how you formulated the ending of your of your lecture, is like the like the let me quote: "We should fully accept this openness, guiding ourselves on nothing more than ambiguous signs from the future." Yeah. However the book is extremely interesting inside. Um doesn't it isn’t it like a theoretical capitulation? No, I think if you ask me that this—okay this is part now we would have to talk seriously, part of a much more complex line of argumentation. You know in between I did a totally crazy thing, I published a book *Less Than Nothing* which certainly doesn't weigh less than nothing because it’s over one thousand pages. Where I try to develop why we should return from Marx back to Hegel historically. What I meant by this signs from the future open is that what we usually refer to as Marxist theology, teleology sorry, in the sense that no matter how you can want to save Marx, something remains. Marx thought that he formulated an insight into where at least potentially history is moving, like the whole dynamic of capitalism points towards possibility of communist revolution. And then that you can have a historical agent, working-class Communist Party, which acts as an agent of this historical necessity or more relativistically objective possibility whatever. I think we should drop this, that was my point about fate. The only teleology that we have is a negative one, we are approaching catastrophe. And then there are mysterious here and there signs about alternate possibilities, alternatives, but I don’t I don’t think that we can risk today for precise Hegelian reasons a positive vision of what the alternative should be. I’m not ready to do that. I think we should be here Hegelians. Hegel was here much more materialist than Marx, you know. Hegel for Hegel the idea that oh we see where history is moving and we can jump on the train and help pushing it in that direction, that would be too crazy for Hegel. Hegel says, you know my not exactly friend we have polemics but he is not stupid, the great American Hegelian Robert Pippin. He drew a—you know usually people take as Hegel’s political manifesto his *Philosophy of Right*, his vision of a state there as a concrete state, three estates, kind of a rational bureaucratic state. But Pippin said something very nice. He said that you know Hegel, these are his most famous lines in his *Philosophy of Right*, where he says you know that famous quote that the owl of Minerva takes off in the evening. That is to say whenever philosophy or social theory describes a certain socio-political structure, that is to say when it is possible to describe theoretically in a rational scientific way a certain socio-political structure, it means that this structure this social order is already approaching its end. As Hegel put it, philosophy can only paint gray on gray, it cannot give vision of the future. And Pippin makes a simple remark: Isn't it that then Hegel was not a complete idiot, he must have known it that the same should hold also for his own *Philosophy of Right*. He is describing a certain vision there of rational society whose time has already passed. And I I here I’m ready to go to the end. I’m not saying we should become short-term pragmatists. And is not, okay now I will counter it to you, where do you see any vision today? Listen, 20th century is over. Communist Stalinist vision forget about it. It’s clear that social-democratic welfare state vision also doesn’t function. And the last obstacle that we should drop I think is this oh I hate it this you know how do they call this you know all this Negri stuff of you know local democracy against representation, multitude, people in councils, locally blah blah all that stuff. First I must tell you something extremely brutal: What a nightmare such a society would be. I live in a small town and I have to go to some stupid meeting how we distribute water, where we do this that. No, I want to live in a nicely alienated society where I don’t have to know too many people, where I can sit at home and watch my watch my films and read my books and write them. You know, I again I follow here Sloterdijk who has this nice idea that we should rehabilitate the notion of alienation. Not of course in this traditional Marxist sense, but in the sense of like I hate those liberals who play this game, "Oh we have a duty to learn other cultures" and so on. We are already caught in this superego logic, you know, that of course you never understand the others because you also don’t understand yourself. We don’t—so I let my ideal society is not where I have to study other people’s customs and I but a society where let’s say I live in a big apartment house, my one of my neighbors is Iranian, the other Latino American, a Chinese, and we politely ignore each other. I would love to live in such a society. Not in a society where they would tell me, "Oh would you like to taste our food?" and then I said no and I proclaimed the racist or whatever. You know I I we don’t have to interpenetrate each other totally and so on I mean. So again in
when it’s fascinated with a country it’s as a rule for wrong reasons. It projects like it’s the same thing that I said about Balkan, you know my friend Mladen Dolar proposed this wonderful formula twenty years ago that European unconscious is structured like Balkan. And that was my thesis why I really think he is dangerous and bad why I hate that director megastar Balkan Emir Kusturica. Did you see his film *Underground*? You know why I think it’s wrong and he is a good filmmaker I don’t doubt that. What image of ex-Yugoslavia do you get from that film? That permanent orgy, people fuck shoot each other and drink. This is not Balkan, this is the Western myth of Balkan. So I am not reproaching Kusturica for being too—no Balkan, no. He he plays the role of this Balkan wild man for Western European gaze and he does it consciously. I was with him he almost attacked me physically at some round tables in France where I noticed how everything is studied, you know he uses dirty words, "I will fuck your mother" and so on. He consciously plays this brutal Balkanian fool, you know. In that sense I only made—it has nothing to do with Ukraine itself. Okay so let me let me quote the last sentence of a of a book which actually—My god you will be a good Stalinist prosecutor, you see how he doesn’t let go on. Of course you have. It’s a best compliment I can get for you I think. Um okay but like your the last sentence of your book which is pretty similar to the way how you formulated the ending of your of your lecture, is like the like the let me quote: "We should fully accept this openness, guiding ourselves on nothing more than ambiguous signs from the future." Yeah. However the book is extremely interesting inside. Um doesn't it isn’t it like a theoretical capitulation? No, I think if you ask me that this—okay this is part now we would have to talk seriously, part of a much more complex line of argumentation. You know in between I did a totally crazy thing, I published a book *Less Than Nothing* which certainly doesn't weigh less than nothing because it’s over one thousand pages. Where I try to develop why we should return from Marx back to Hegel historically. What I meant by this signs from the future open is that what we usually refer to as Marxist theology, teleology sorry, in the sense that no matter how you can want to save Marx, something remains. Marx thought that he formulated an insight into where at least potentially history is moving, like the whole dynamic of capitalism points towards possibility of communist revolution. And then that you can have a historical agent, working-class Communist Party, which acts as an agent of this historical necessity or more relativistically objective possibility whatever. I think we should drop this, that was my point about fate. The only teleology that we have is a negative one, we are approaching catastrophe. And then there are mysterious here and there signs about alternate possibilities, alternatives, but I don’t I don’t think that we can risk today for precise Hegelian reasons a positive vision of what the alternative should be. I’m not ready to do that. I think we should be here Hegelians. Hegel was here much more materialist than Marx, you know. Hegel for Hegel the idea that oh we see where history is moving and we can jump on the train and help pushing it in that direction, that would be too crazy for Hegel. Hegel says, you know my not exactly friend we have polemics but he is not stupid, the great American Hegelian Robert Pippin. He drew a—you know usually people take as Hegel’s political manifesto his *Philosophy of Right*, his vision of a state there as a concrete state, three estates, kind of a rational bureaucratic state. But Pippin said something very nice. He said that you know Hegel, these are his most famous lines in his *Philosophy of Right*, where he says you know that famous quote that the owl of Minerva takes off in the evening. That is to say whenever philosophy or social theory describes a certain socio-political structure, that is to say when it is possible to describe theoretically in a rational scientific way a certain socio-political structure, it means that this structure this social order is already approaching its end. As Hegel put it, philosophy can only paint gray on gray, it cannot give vision of the future. And Pippin makes a simple remark: Isn't it that then Hegel was not a complete idiot, he must have known it that the same should hold also for his own *Philosophy of Right*. He is describing a certain vision there of rational society whose time has already passed. And I I here I’m ready to go to the end. I’m not saying we should become short-term pragmatists. And is not, okay now I will counter it to you, where do you see any vision today? Listen, 20th century is over. Communist Stalinist vision forget about it. It’s clear that social-democratic welfare state vision also doesn’t function. And the last obstacle that we should drop I think is this oh I hate it this you know how do they call this you know all this Negri stuff of you know local democracy against representation, multitude, people in councils, locally blah blah all that stuff. First I must tell you something extremely brutal: What a nightmare such a society would be. I live in a small town and I have to go to some stupid meeting how we distribute water, where we do this that. No, I want to live in a nicely alienated society where I don’t have to know too many people, where I can sit at home and watch my watch my films and read my books and write them. You know, I again I follow here Sloterdijk who has this nice idea that we should rehabilitate the notion of alienation. Not of course in this traditional Marxist sense, but in the sense of like I hate those liberals who play this game, "Oh we have a duty to learn other cultures" and so on. We are already caught in this superego logic, you know, that of course you never understand the others because you also don’t understand yourself. We don’t—so I let my ideal society is not where I have to study other people’s customs and I but a society where let’s say I live in a big apartment house, my one of my neighbors is Iranian, the other Latino American, a Chinese, and we politely ignore each other. I would love to live in such a society. Not in a society where they would tell me, "Oh would you like to taste our food?" and then I said no and I proclaimed the racist or whatever. You know I I we don’t have to interpenetrate each other totally and so on I mean. So again in
unknown
this sense I’m saying all these models of 20th century no all and I exactly believe in what you quoted. All we have is some wonderful signs from the future. In the sense of elements for utopia—like
this sense I’m saying all these models of 20th century no all and I exactly believe in what you quoted. All we have is some wonderful signs from the future. In the sense of elements for utopia—like
Slavoj Žižek
I think in one of my books I quote that
I think in one of my books I quote that
unknown
one, it’s maybe the most beautiful one. It’s an I’m sorry if some of you know it, an empirical research from one of the big universities I quote it which showed something so paradoxical. They measured the relationship
one, it’s maybe the most beautiful one. It’s an I’m sorry if some of you know it, an empirical research from one of the big universities I quote it which showed something so paradoxical. They measured the relationship
Slavoj Žižek
between the quality of your work and how well you are paid. And they come to a wonderful result. When you reach a certain income, not a very high one, just so that you can relatively comfortably survive, not only it doesn't matter how well you are paid, like if you are paid more you will do the same work, no, if you are paid much more even your work will be better. Sorry, will be worse. And first they thought this is some American perversion. Then they repeated
between the quality of your work and how well you are paid. And they come to a wonderful result. When you reach a certain income, not a very high one, just so that you can relatively comfortably survive, not only it doesn't matter how well you are paid, like if you are paid more you will do the same work, no, if you are paid much more even your work will be better. Sorry, will be worse. And first they thought this is some American perversion. Then they repeated
unknown
the same experiment in an Indian village, in a Chinese village and so on and came to this wonderful almost communist conclusion, you know. In other words they proved empirically
the same experiment in an Indian village, in a Chinese village and so on and came to this wonderful almost communist conclusion, you know. In other words they proved empirically
Slavoj Žižek
wrong this basic capitalist idea that it’s about competition, money, uh—no money and we already have such communities today where the logic is totally different. Like a friend of mine works in that how do you pronounce it? CERN, CERN, where they will ruin us all. You know that super-collider. You know that some people are afraid that if they really reproduce Big Bang, they will trigger a process and we will all—but what I want to say is that they told me it works like this there, you know. They are involved enthusiastically
wrong this basic capitalist idea that it’s about competition, money, uh—no money and we already have such communities today where the logic is totally different. Like a friend of mine works in that how do you pronounce it? CERN, CERN, where they will ruin us all. You know that super-collider. You know that some people are afraid that if they really reproduce Big Bang, they will trigger a process and we will all—but what I want to say is that they told me it works like this there, you know. They are involved enthusiastically
unknown
in a communal problem and money, okay it’s nice to have you but it’s not at that level at all that—So you see there are some signs some signs from the future. And are you ready to go a step further here? I am not, give me some ideas. Okay but aren’t all social critics like this today? Let’s take an enemy of mine, he attacked me, whom I nonetheless appreciate, let’s take Noam Chomsky. Does he give any except some vague anarchism, very vague, does he
in a communal problem and money, okay it’s nice to have you but it’s not at that level at all that—So you see there are some signs some signs from the future. And are you ready to go a step further here? I am not, give me some ideas. Okay but aren’t all social critics like this today? Let’s take an enemy of mine, he attacked me, whom I nonetheless appreciate, let’s take Noam Chomsky. Does he give any except some vague anarchism, very vague, does he
Slavoj Žižek
give any even minimal idea of what society he wants? No, but that’s an easy sparring partner let’s not—Okay
give any even minimal idea of what society he wants? No, but that’s an easy sparring partner let’s not—Okay
unknown
give me a serious one. Okay I will give you the serious
give me a serious one. Okay I will give you the serious
Slavoj Žižek
one or at least—But not some Polish genius from some village close to Belarus. Somebody that I know so that I can answer, yeah. Actually probably it would be more interesting than what I will ask for because it’s kind of a mandatory question. Yeah. Because I’m gonna ask you about a—Just don’t be the mandatory question, I hate them. This "What do I like most about Poland" or this type—Actually you never answer this questions. All other questions are pretty predictable. This kind of reference to Badiou or Rancière or other stuff you you were asked thousand times about it, you answer in the same way. So actually asking you like who are you or where is Poland or what do you think about it could be probably more even more fruitful as a kind of empty signifiers. Maybe, maybe. Um but let’s let’s let’s ask you and about a—and now I’m gonna it’s not gonna be crypto-advertisement, it’s gonna be the real advertisement. I don't do the crypto ones. We’re gonna publish the book of Piketty in May. Yeah. And he is maybe proposing something that would be very useful for you because it can create a world nicely alienated. You know the diagnosis and you know the proposal. The diagnosis is like let’s not follow salaries, let’s follow the what people owns and and actually the the answer is let’s implement the global progressive tax. Okay? Yeah. What's your comment on it? My comment is first let me express my great admiration for Piketty in the sense that he broke a certain how should I put it, common sense commonly accepted stupidity and like he opened a new space. This is important. We can reason talk in a new way. But apart from that, now comes my critical point and I wonder how you will answer to this. Not only I go to gulag, you also go to gulag if you don’t answer. If the word utopia has any sense at all, it’s his proposal. Why? And in a way he even knows it because okay universal—first my problem is this one: Of course we should do it and it’s a good thing, but in order to do what he proposes we should already have won. His the implementation of his measure proposes a worldwide political authority which can implement radical laws globally. My god, we already won if we have that. The big point is, you know, how do we come to that point? That’s first utopian moment. The second one is that basically and I don’t blame him for that there are good reasons to accept that, he accepts that capitalism is the only game in the town
one or at least—But not some Polish genius from some village close to Belarus. Somebody that I know so that I can answer, yeah. Actually probably it would be more interesting than what I will ask for because it’s kind of a mandatory question. Yeah. Because I’m gonna ask you about a—Just don’t be the mandatory question, I hate them. This "What do I like most about Poland" or this type—Actually you never answer this questions. All other questions are pretty predictable. This kind of reference to Badiou or Rancière or other stuff you you were asked thousand times about it, you answer in the same way. So actually asking you like who are you or where is Poland or what do you think about it could be probably more even more fruitful as a kind of empty signifiers. Maybe, maybe. Um but let’s let’s let’s ask you and about a—and now I’m gonna it’s not gonna be crypto-advertisement, it’s gonna be the real advertisement. I don't do the crypto ones. We’re gonna publish the book of Piketty in May. Yeah. And he is maybe proposing something that would be very useful for you because it can create a world nicely alienated. You know the diagnosis and you know the proposal. The diagnosis is like let’s not follow salaries, let’s follow the what people owns and and actually the the answer is let’s implement the global progressive tax. Okay? Yeah. What's your comment on it? My comment is first let me express my great admiration for Piketty in the sense that he broke a certain how should I put it, common sense commonly accepted stupidity and like he opened a new space. This is important. We can reason talk in a new way. But apart from that, now comes my critical point and I wonder how you will answer to this. Not only I go to gulag, you also go to gulag if you don’t answer. If the word utopia has any sense at all, it’s his proposal. Why? And in a way he even knows it because okay universal—first my problem is this one: Of course we should do it and it’s a good thing, but in order to do what he proposes we should already have won. His the implementation of his measure proposes a worldwide political authority which can implement radical laws globally. My god, we already won if we have that. The big point is, you know, how do we come to that point? That’s first utopian moment. The second one is that basically and I don’t blame him for that there are good reasons to accept that, he accepts that capitalism is the only game in the town
unknown
in the sense that the system which really works. So isn't his dream a little bit this one: Let’s have
in the sense that the system which really works. So isn't his dream a little bit this one: Let’s have
Slavoj Žižek
capitalism the way it is, just with much higher
capitalism the way it is, just with much higher
unknown
taxes. I don’t think you can do this. I think we should begin with what he says. But then you will discover in order to do this you have to do that, you have to do that, and so on and so on. So in this sense I’m not against what he proposes. I’m just saying that doing that will even if you somehow can do it in some states I don’t know what, would have triggered a process which we don’t know where it will lead us. And we are back to my
taxes. I don’t think you can do this. I think we should begin with what he says. But then you will discover in order to do this you have to do that, you have to do that, and so on and so on. So in this sense I’m not against what he proposes. I’m just saying that doing that will even if you somehow can do it in some states I don’t know what, would have triggered a process which we don’t know where it will lead us. And we are back to my
Slavoj Žižek
point. This is just one specific measure. It will take us somewhere we don’t know. But here you not consequent because you were claiming for many years, yeah, that it’s easier to imagine the *Star Wars* than even the small theoretical correction of the capitalism. And now you get it and now you dislike it. No, no, no, no. What I’m saying again is that yes, you can you what you cannot imagine, what is a true utopia, is that the system that he imagines, capitalism as we have it just with much higher taxes for the rich. That I think you cannot do. You cannot do it in the sense that you can begin by it but you will be immediately forced to do something more, to do that more, to do that more and so on. Okay so you’re the defeatist you go to gulag, but if you are in gulag with your jokes I’m following you, no problem. We’re close to—No now I will answer aggressively. Piketty proposes a joke for me. But you know what’s so interesting? How and Piketty is not here an exception, how for example not Krugman the other guy Stiglitz proposed something almost similar, no. He said it’s a nice idea, the problem is not capitalism the problem is democracy. But it’s a pure utopia that with a more authentically democratic system where political parties would not be controlled by all those secret funding blah blah rich people, we could simply change the laws, higher taxes and it could—I don’t think it works as simply as that. I am always from that’s my lesson from my communist youth, in the sense of living under communism, I always mistrust simple solutions. But again not in the sense that they don’t work, but in the sense again that they always trigger a process which will lead us who knows where. That’s my first dogma. My other dogma is we will more and more need and we can now play this Marxist game we can call it state or some kind of a what today’s state is doing, strong regulatory even global mechanisms with strong executive power and so on and so on. I am for authority if you ask me. All right. Now you ask Slavoj Žižek, but let me first check how many hands we have. So hands up. One, two—Ah I noticed you revisionism, you count only on the right side no? They were prepared. I noticed this, you brutally ignored the left. My brother from Israel, you want to ask question? Okay, so we have three then four. How many can you take? Uh just I will really I promise try to give short answers, but since I am getting old and senile, can I answer one by one fast? I’m not good in this and I promise I will—Of course, of course. Come on, everybody wants to have your answer on his or her own. So um so the fifth one we need and we’re gonna—Is there any fifth question? Ah, finally radical left, I hope you will—[Laughs] Okay, so Agata was first. Thank you, I totally enjoy everything you said. The last time I met you was in Chicago, I think no? I think it was in Chicago, yes, that’s true. Well, I totally enjoy everything you said. But... Of course when you start, you are a what they call, I mean it in a loving way, a big exception. Of course you you immediately know what I'm going to say. I mean when you start like this I already see how you are sharpening the knife there. No, I could I can show my hands, no no knife there. Because you’re a sovereign exception in the world of today’s left. You are, because you can say all the things that you said right now about the necessity of defending the European Enlightenment, the West as a *Leitkultur* for the world, the sort of old-school emancipatory values, defense of universalism against the postmodern flexible identities and so on. And you can get away with it and still remain a leftist. But it’s more and more difficult. Okay, I’m more and more denounced, I’m fascist, I’m heading towards it, okay. So if I said this, and actually I’m doing it all the time to my students and especially about this Negri stuff, I totally enjoyed what you said about them, they immediately dub me a neocon. Oh, you just telling me the sort of the old-hat neoconservative, neocon critic. I accept and I said something—so my question, so my question is because, you know, I’m not a sovereign exception in the world of the left, I’m probably closer to the liberal center I’m not ashamed of it. No problem. When we take power, it’s not gulag but re-education camp. I know, I know. It will be beautiful. For two years you will get up at five—No I’ll end up I’ll end up in a purgatory, purgatory and—Who is we? I’ll end up in a—Central Committee will decide who is we. Certainly not you. [Laughter] No, no, just just like in the rapture I will end up in eternal purgatory because I will never say I love Slavoj Žižek. But maybe this is the true but maybe this is the true paradise, you know all those jokes that probably heaven is the most boring place where—Yeah. Sure. But no, my question, okay back to the question is: Where is the difference? Where where is the difference between what you say about the necessity of the def-defendment of Western culture, *Leitkultur* and so on, and what basically the liberal center or the neocons are saying? Okay, I can give you a short precise answer. With all my terrible skepticism about 20th century solutions and the reason I still am some kind of a Marxist, I think to put it very simply that there are a series of systemic antagonisms in today’s world. Uh from biogenetics, the reason why Fukuyama is no longer a Fukuyamaist, to to to ecology, to financial capital, intellectual property, to new forms of apartheid and so on, I don’t see how in the long term liberal democratic capitalism will be able to not to resolve them, maybe they cannot be resolved, but even to deal with these problems. And I don’t know what, but I think some force which is not the market force or whatever will have to enter the game. How to do it? I don’t know but we are—you know but when people say, "Oh you are crazy," my answer is, my god I trust Hollywood. Look the latest Hollywood blockbusters, they know about class struggle, what once was called. Look at *Hunger Games*, *Elysium* and so on. Hollywood is obsessed with this maybe right insight that if we allow things to go on the way they do, we are approaching a new apartheid society and so on. So I’m like communist by default, you know what I mean? Like I’m not having a big vision what it will be. I’m just saying negatively. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. With ple-and with pleasure if I may put it like this, yes. But what you said so-about conservatism. Ah, Marx somewhere, no but before it was like you sound like a neocon. Uh uh Marx somewhere said something very beautiful. He said that there is a legacy authentic in conservative values, but only a true radical revolutionary can redeem them. That would be my motto. Very nice one. You find this in Benjamin, in
point. This is just one specific measure. It will take us somewhere we don’t know. But here you not consequent because you were claiming for many years, yeah, that it’s easier to imagine the *Star Wars* than even the small theoretical correction of the capitalism. And now you get it and now you dislike it. No, no, no, no. What I’m saying again is that yes, you can you what you cannot imagine, what is a true utopia, is that the system that he imagines, capitalism as we have it just with much higher taxes for the rich. That I think you cannot do. You cannot do it in the sense that you can begin by it but you will be immediately forced to do something more, to do that more, to do that more and so on. Okay so you’re the defeatist you go to gulag, but if you are in gulag with your jokes I’m following you, no problem. We’re close to—No now I will answer aggressively. Piketty proposes a joke for me. But you know what’s so interesting? How and Piketty is not here an exception, how for example not Krugman the other guy Stiglitz proposed something almost similar, no. He said it’s a nice idea, the problem is not capitalism the problem is democracy. But it’s a pure utopia that with a more authentically democratic system where political parties would not be controlled by all those secret funding blah blah rich people, we could simply change the laws, higher taxes and it could—I don’t think it works as simply as that. I am always from that’s my lesson from my communist youth, in the sense of living under communism, I always mistrust simple solutions. But again not in the sense that they don’t work, but in the sense again that they always trigger a process which will lead us who knows where. That’s my first dogma. My other dogma is we will more and more need and we can now play this Marxist game we can call it state or some kind of a what today’s state is doing, strong regulatory even global mechanisms with strong executive power and so on and so on. I am for authority if you ask me. All right. Now you ask Slavoj Žižek, but let me first check how many hands we have. So hands up. One, two—Ah I noticed you revisionism, you count only on the right side no? They were prepared. I noticed this, you brutally ignored the left. My brother from Israel, you want to ask question? Okay, so we have three then four. How many can you take? Uh just I will really I promise try to give short answers, but since I am getting old and senile, can I answer one by one fast? I’m not good in this and I promise I will—Of course, of course. Come on, everybody wants to have your answer on his or her own. So um so the fifth one we need and we’re gonna—Is there any fifth question? Ah, finally radical left, I hope you will—[Laughs] Okay, so Agata was first. Thank you, I totally enjoy everything you said. The last time I met you was in Chicago, I think no? I think it was in Chicago, yes, that’s true. Well, I totally enjoy everything you said. But... Of course when you start, you are a what they call, I mean it in a loving way, a big exception. Of course you you immediately know what I'm going to say. I mean when you start like this I already see how you are sharpening the knife there. No, I could I can show my hands, no no knife there. Because you’re a sovereign exception in the world of today’s left. You are, because you can say all the things that you said right now about the necessity of defending the European Enlightenment, the West as a *Leitkultur* for the world, the sort of old-school emancipatory values, defense of universalism against the postmodern flexible identities and so on. And you can get away with it and still remain a leftist. But it’s more and more difficult. Okay, I’m more and more denounced, I’m fascist, I’m heading towards it, okay. So if I said this, and actually I’m doing it all the time to my students and especially about this Negri stuff, I totally enjoyed what you said about them, they immediately dub me a neocon. Oh, you just telling me the sort of the old-hat neoconservative, neocon critic. I accept and I said something—so my question, so my question is because, you know, I’m not a sovereign exception in the world of the left, I’m probably closer to the liberal center I’m not ashamed of it. No problem. When we take power, it’s not gulag but re-education camp. I know, I know. It will be beautiful. For two years you will get up at five—No I’ll end up I’ll end up in a purgatory, purgatory and—Who is we? I’ll end up in a—Central Committee will decide who is we. Certainly not you. [Laughter] No, no, just just like in the rapture I will end up in eternal purgatory because I will never say I love Slavoj Žižek. But maybe this is the true but maybe this is the true paradise, you know all those jokes that probably heaven is the most boring place where—Yeah. Sure. But no, my question, okay back to the question is: Where is the difference? Where where is the difference between what you say about the necessity of the def-defendment of Western culture, *Leitkultur* and so on, and what basically the liberal center or the neocons are saying? Okay, I can give you a short precise answer. With all my terrible skepticism about 20th century solutions and the reason I still am some kind of a Marxist, I think to put it very simply that there are a series of systemic antagonisms in today’s world. Uh from biogenetics, the reason why Fukuyama is no longer a Fukuyamaist, to to to ecology, to financial capital, intellectual property, to new forms of apartheid and so on, I don’t see how in the long term liberal democratic capitalism will be able to not to resolve them, maybe they cannot be resolved, but even to deal with these problems. And I don’t know what, but I think some force which is not the market force or whatever will have to enter the game. How to do it? I don’t know but we are—you know but when people say, "Oh you are crazy," my answer is, my god I trust Hollywood. Look the latest Hollywood blockbusters, they know about class struggle, what once was called. Look at *Hunger Games*, *Elysium* and so on. Hollywood is obsessed with this maybe right insight that if we allow things to go on the way they do, we are approaching a new apartheid society and so on. So I’m like communist by default, you know what I mean? Like I’m not having a big vision what it will be. I’m just saying negatively. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. With ple-and with pleasure if I may put it like this, yes. But what you said so-about conservatism. Ah, Marx somewhere, no but before it was like you sound like a neocon. Uh uh Marx somewhere said something very beautiful. He said that there is a legacy authentic in conservative values, but only a true radical revolutionary can redeem them. That would be my motto. Very nice one. You find this in Benjamin, in
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Marx, in all true—This is why authentic leftist is never a simple progressist, you know we are just moving whatever. Okay the second one. Uh I I want to ask you because for first
Marx, in all true—This is why authentic leftist is never a simple progressist, you know we are just moving whatever. Okay the second one. Uh I I want to ask you because for first
Slavoj Žižek
time I hear Slavoj Žižek making some positive statements like for example convincing
time I hear Slavoj Žižek making some positive statements like for example convincing
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people to be self-entrepreneurs and—But wait a minute, I criticize that. I think it’s why do you think
people to be self-entrepreneurs and—But wait a minute, I criticize that. I think it’s why do you think
Slavoj Žižek
a positive statement? I am horrified by that. I think that it’s the best ideological invention that you can imagine. It proposed
a positive statement? I am horrified by that. I think that it’s the best ideological invention that you can imagine. It proposed
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you the very form of actual slavery as the form of your freedom. But sorry to interrupt you, go on. Okay that that changes the point a little bit because uh I mean the the effect of of speech can be can be different, it doesn't matter. You are a very ironic philosopher so uh you use irony often so I think that it's sometimes hard to recognize what the statements really are. So maybe I'm wrong but you I had this impression that you made some positive statements here uh so at this point for example the American role in the modern in this current situation of being a policeman this one was a sort of like a positive statements towards American politics uh and the other was probably Agata was asking about
you the very form of actual slavery as the form of your freedom. But sorry to interrupt you, go on. Okay that that changes the point a little bit because uh I mean the the effect of of speech can be can be different, it doesn't matter. You are a very ironic philosopher so uh you use irony often so I think that it's sometimes hard to recognize what the statements really are. So maybe I'm wrong but you I had this impression that you made some positive statements here uh so at this point for example the American role in the modern in this current situation of being a policeman this one was a sort of like a positive statements towards American politics uh and the other was probably Agata was asking about
Slavoj Žižek
this difference between being neo-conservative in this sense that that the machine of of criticism can produce an effect that will is can destroy any kind of uh practices I mean except of discursive practice. That's my question is that uh because you're a writer and so you're uh and you're a critical writer uh what do you see other other positive practices what are they also on discursive level but also on the practical level uh in you also com-maybe in communication? Yeah, yeah. Okay, very briefly. First okay again you ask me a difficult question to answer it properly it would be half an hour. But let me just say something that this is so strange because always people claim I don’t know what, no I consider myself basically a very naive philosopher and it’s not true that I’m just making fun ironically. My god I wrote a one thousand pages book on Hegel where I systematically describe how what is dialectical analysis and so on and so on. Uh so I think that on the contrary today’s system is already ironic. The whole pro—like I’ll put it in this way just to give a very short answer. You know I published without meeting any of them that stupid book *Comradely Greetings: Me and the Pussy Riot sex symbol* that Nadezhda Tolokonnikova no? And it was interesting because it wasn’t just a commercial endeavor, there was a genuine conflict there between the two of us. Her idea was and for me this is a nightmare there I told her, her idea is that we have a system stability rules and then we have
this difference between being neo-conservative in this sense that that the machine of of criticism can produce an effect that will is can destroy any kind of uh practices I mean except of discursive practice. That's my question is that uh because you're a writer and so you're uh and you're a critical writer uh what do you see other other positive practices what are they also on discursive level but also on the practical level uh in you also com-maybe in communication? Yeah, yeah. Okay, very briefly. First okay again you ask me a difficult question to answer it properly it would be half an hour. But let me just say something that this is so strange because always people claim I don’t know what, no I consider myself basically a very naive philosopher and it’s not true that I’m just making fun ironically. My god I wrote a one thousand pages book on Hegel where I systematically describe how what is dialectical analysis and so on and so on. Uh so I think that on the contrary today’s system is already ironic. The whole pro—like I’ll put it in this way just to give a very short answer. You know I published without meeting any of them that stupid book *Comradely Greetings: Me and the Pussy Riot sex symbol* that Nadezhda Tolokonnikova no? And it was interesting because it wasn’t just a commercial endeavor, there was a genuine conflict there between the two of us. Her idea was and for me this is a nightmare there I told her, her idea is that we have a system stability rules and then we have
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these crazy moments of explosion, holy fool you know freedom liberation. And I told her that he she is not she is not respectful enough towards their own practice.
these crazy moments of explosion, holy fool you know freedom liberation. And I told her that he she is not she is not respectful enough towards their own practice.
Slavoj Žižek
For example what they did in that stupid Moscow church that dance. I don’t read it like this, we have there the official power caught in its rituals and then through our ironic staging we subverted it. No. The message should be: The true brutal irony who mocks us all is Putin regime itself. So it’s totally wrong to see the
For example what they did in that stupid Moscow church that dance. I don’t read it like this, we have there the official power caught in its rituals and then through our ironic staging we subverted it. No. The message should be: The true brutal irony who mocks us all is Putin regime itself. So it’s totally wrong to see the
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opposition as you know we are the fresh wind of madness, carnival against stable bureaucratic
opposition as you know we are the fresh wind of madness, carnival against stable bureaucratic
Slavoj Žižek
structures. We don’t need carnival, we need better bureaucratic structures my god you know. At that point Putin should be beaten. Because I hate this typical right-wing celebration of revolutions where they say, "Okay things get boring once every years you need a little bit of comedy revolution blah blah and then what then a the day after things return to normal no." I am here even brutally a realist. I think it’s easy to do this cheap big events, you know. You see hundred thousand people on Tahrir Square, we all cry "Oh my god what a great thing." Fuck it. What interests me is how the difference is felt the day after, when the enthusiasm is over. Are there any actual changes? If we don’t find a solution here, then there will be always the same formula repeated as in Egypt. You have a minority which does its carnival freedom blah blah and then you have a free vote. I mean are we aware what a terrible lesson Egypt was? They wanted democracy they got it and they democratically got the Muslim Brothers and at the end the majority of the protesters supported the military coup d'état. You see that’s another pessimistic conclusion that I’m ready today. You know
structures. We don’t need carnival, we need better bureaucratic structures my god you know. At that point Putin should be beaten. Because I hate this typical right-wing celebration of revolutions where they say, "Okay things get boring once every years you need a little bit of comedy revolution blah blah and then what then a the day after things return to normal no." I am here even brutally a realist. I think it’s easy to do this cheap big events, you know. You see hundred thousand people on Tahrir Square, we all cry "Oh my god what a great thing." Fuck it. What interests me is how the difference is felt the day after, when the enthusiasm is over. Are there any actual changes? If we don’t find a solution here, then there will be always the same formula repeated as in Egypt. You have a minority which does its carnival freedom blah blah and then you have a free vote. I mean are we aware what a terrible lesson Egypt was? They wanted democracy they got it and they democratically got the Muslim Brothers and at the end the majority of the protesters supported the military coup d'état. You see that’s another pessimistic conclusion that I’m ready today. You know
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even the most popular radical movement, let’s be brutally clear, they are never really the majority.
even the most popular radical movement, let’s be brutally clear, they are never really the majority.
Slavoj Žižek
If you take all revolutions from October, Paris Commune, French Revolution, later, don’t you think that it’s maximum maybe I don’t know percent of people? The majority is witnessing
If you take all revolutions from October, Paris Commune, French Revolution, later, don’t you think that it’s maximum maybe I don’t know percent of people? The majority is witnessing
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maybe in a sympathetic way and so on and so on. So from here now comes the real horror. I’m almost tempted, but of course not in the totalitarian way, to
maybe in a sympathetic way and so on and so on. So from here now comes the real horror. I’m almost tempted, but of course not in the totalitarian way, to
Slavoj Žižek
rehabilitate this Leninist notion of active avant-garde. But of course not in the sense of "We rule you, we know better than you." But in the sense of, and I respect here
rehabilitate this Leninist notion of active avant-garde. But of course not in the sense of "We rule you, we know better than you." But in the sense of, and I respect here
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ordinary people, I don’t mean the
ordinary people, I don’t mean the
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majority is too stupid, but like—like I got in conflict with my good friend American Marxist Fredric Jameson when he told me how he despises
majority is too stupid, but like—like I got in conflict with my good friend American Marxist Fredric Jameson when he told me how he despises
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those
those
Slavoj Žižek
Cubans who emigrate to the United
Cubans who emigrate to the United
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States betraying their country. But I told him, "It’s easy for you to say
States betraying their country. But I told him, "It’s easy for you to say
Slavoj Žižek
this you’re a top paid American professor you know. Imagine an ordinary Cuban—" Because I spoke with some Cuban half dissidents and they
this you’re a top paid American professor you know. Imagine an ordinary Cuban—" Because I spoke with some Cuban half dissidents and they
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told me, "You know they can somehow survive but what is so horrible for ordinary Cubans, especially intellectuals, is that they experience the situation as how many things are happening in the world, digital revolution and we are left out of it, we missed it you know." So I don’t think we intellectuals have the right, you know, to play this arrogant role from our comfortable position. Like I will not name her, but a big feminist figure of sexual identity theories again recently attacked me and the line of association was this one: "You Lacanians, Name-of-the-Father, you are the official patriarchal theory, while we are the voice of those who are not allowed to speak, marginal voices." Well this person has recently got a job for which I would be ready to sell my mother into slavery you know, dollars per year with obligation only one course to teach per year, one semester, five-room apartment on Riverside Drive and so on, assistants and so on. Some a little bit sick and tired of these
told me, "You know they can somehow survive but what is so horrible for ordinary Cubans, especially intellectuals, is that they experience the situation as how many things are happening in the world, digital revolution and we are left out of it, we missed it you know." So I don’t think we intellectuals have the right, you know, to play this arrogant role from our comfortable position. Like I will not name her, but a big feminist figure of sexual identity theories again recently attacked me and the line of association was this one: "You Lacanians, Name-of-the-Father, you are the official patriarchal theory, while we are the voice of those who are not allowed to speak, marginal voices." Well this person has recently got a job for which I would be ready to sell my mother into slavery you know, dollars per year with obligation only one course to teach per year, one semester, five-room apartment on Riverside Drive and so on, assistants and so on. Some a little bit sick and tired of these
Slavoj Žižek
academics who claim to be you know radically subversive
academics who claim to be you know radically subversive
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but in
but in
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this as you
this as you
Slavoj Žižek
said shitty discursive way you know like, "We are the
said shitty discursive way you know like, "We are the
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voice of those
voice of those
Slavoj Žižek
whose voice should not be heard" and so on and so on. Here I am effectively an iconoclast and this may amuse
whose voice should not be heard" and so on and so on. Here I am effectively an iconoclast and this may amuse
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you. Recently last
you. Recently last
Slavoj Žižek
summer I did something that I never thought it will be possible for me to do it. I took three months, sorry three
summer I did something that I never thought it will be possible for me to do it. I took three months, sorry three
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weeks, and I rewrote *Antigone*. And it works very well. It is already accepted by Croat National Theater they will get Castorf the big German director and then there are already offers from my god maybe I will even earn some money from but you
weeks, and I rewrote *Antigone*. And it works very well. It is already accepted by Croat National Theater they will get Castorf the big German director and then there are already offers from my god maybe I will even earn some money from but you
Slavoj Žižek
know what I did it no I did it in a Brechtian way maybe you know the story no. It’s I really rewrote it all with many ironic historical reference the idea is this one. You know my god fuck it you should know it’s your director, you know Kieślowski’s my favorite film *Przypadek*, *Blind Chance*—Yeah yeah okay to speak civilized language *Blind Chance*. You know this idea that at a crucial point it can go in a different direction no? And I rewrote *Antigone* like that. The crucial point is of course the big dialogue Creon and Antigone no? First we have the version the official one no like Creon wins, wins okay brutally imposes his will she is you know the version. Then in my second version Antigone wins in the sense that she convinces Creon, my god you know un-this unwritten laws from eternity blah blah and Creon says, "My god maybe you are right so let—" And you know what happens, you can imagine, catastrophe. Creon was right pragmatically. People cannot tolerate that a traitor to the city get proper burial. At the end all Thebes, the city, is in flame, totally ruined and in the last scene of this part last moments Antigone walks totally desperate, everything is in under in under—in fire burning and she quotes her big hit line, "You know but I was create for love not for war," and then chorus strikes back you know and says like basically, "Fuck you bitch, that’s what you achieved with your stupid act." Then you get the third version which is my favorite one of course. While Antigone and Creon are fighting the chorus steps in, arrests both, and says, "While the people are suffering," you know this Jacobin line, Antigone—chorus becomes a kind of a *Comité de salut public*, you know like, "You with your feudal conflicts are ruining people, you will all both be liquidated." Then each of them tries to defend him or herself like with Antigone’s defense I quote that
know what I did it no I did it in a Brechtian way maybe you know the story no. It’s I really rewrote it all with many ironic historical reference the idea is this one. You know my god fuck it you should know it’s your director, you know Kieślowski’s my favorite film *Przypadek*, *Blind Chance*—Yeah yeah okay to speak civilized language *Blind Chance*. You know this idea that at a crucial point it can go in a different direction no? And I rewrote *Antigone* like that. The crucial point is of course the big dialogue Creon and Antigone no? First we have the version the official one no like Creon wins, wins okay brutally imposes his will she is you know the version. Then in my second version Antigone wins in the sense that she convinces Creon, my god you know un-this unwritten laws from eternity blah blah and Creon says, "My god maybe you are right so let—" And you know what happens, you can imagine, catastrophe. Creon was right pragmatically. People cannot tolerate that a traitor to the city get proper burial. At the end all Thebes, the city, is in flame, totally ruined and in the last scene of this part last moments Antigone walks totally desperate, everything is in under in under—in fire burning and she quotes her big hit line, "You know but I was create for love not for war," and then chorus strikes back you know and says like basically, "Fuck you bitch, that’s what you achieved with your stupid act." Then you get the third version which is my favorite one of course. While Antigone and Creon are fighting the chorus steps in, arrests both, and says, "While the people are suffering," you know this Jacobin line, Antigone—chorus becomes a kind of a *Comité de salut public*, you know like, "You with your feudal conflicts are ruining people, you will all both be liquidated." Then each of them tries to defend him or herself like with Antigone’s defense I quote that
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famous Brecht poem I paraphrase it you know where Antigone says, "But I always kept my word and I never looked at my interests." Chorus says,
famous Brecht poem I paraphrase it you know where Antigone says, "But I always kept my word and I never looked at my interests." Chorus says,
Slavoj Žižek
"Okay so which interests you were looking taking care of?" She said, "I always keep my word." The chorus said, "Okay but whom did you give the word?" So at the end chorus said, "Okay you are our enemy but we see that you are an honest good person. So we will kill you with a good
"Okay so which interests you were looking taking care of?" She said, "I always keep my word." The chorus said, "Okay but whom did you give the word?" So at the end chorus said, "Okay you are our enemy but we see that you are an honest good person. So we will kill you with a good
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sword and bury you in a good earth" and so on. And then at the end this is of course my favorite version my god there has to be some order and so on you know. And it works and it’s meant in a totally non-ironic authentically Brechtian way. You have three options: you have pragmatism, Creon—I always felt that Creon didn’t get a proper chance. If you cut the bullshit, Creon’s decision can be defended pragmatically you know like he basically knows that if you give way to Antigone it can mean the whole city will be will be in ruins and so on. So but back to your point so you see this is the crucial point of me. I know people often take me "Oh I’m the clown" blah blah. But if people get my lesson my message is no, those whom you take seriously they are the true clowns you know. That that now I wonder if it works or not. Maybe it works a little bit. You know what's the
sword and bury you in a good earth" and so on. And then at the end this is of course my favorite version my god there has to be some order and so on you know. And it works and it’s meant in a totally non-ironic authentically Brechtian way. You have three options: you have pragmatism, Creon—I always felt that Creon didn’t get a proper chance. If you cut the bullshit, Creon’s decision can be defended pragmatically you know like he basically knows that if you give way to Antigone it can mean the whole city will be will be in ruins and so on. So but back to your point so you see this is the crucial point of me. I know people often take me "Oh I’m the clown" blah blah. But if people get my lesson my message is no, those whom you take seriously they are the true clowns you know. That that now I wonder if it works or not. Maybe it works a little bit. You know what's the
Slavoj Žižek
sign? Two good signs: A: that I’m often attacked from both sides. Like I’m proud of my book *Welcome to the Desert of the Real* which was translated my only book into Arabic in in Cairo and into into Hebrew in in Tel Aviv. And I loved it, *Jerusalem Post* accused me of the most of the most perfidious antisemitism. *Al-Ahram* accused me of the most refined disgusting Zionist propaganda. Now if both sides attack me like that maybe I’m moving in the right direction. But I will stop now. Before the third question, let me a bit redirect it because the people who are standing maybe you should get the occasion to ask—Finally you noticed the working class, I was afraid. But okay but eventually I did it. So is there any question then we can make an excuse, okay? Is there any? Of course—Okay if not then Aner. Now I will be a New Ager and tell you you know a New Ager would ask you, I hate this New Ager gone, "Don’t how their silence tells more than all the words," you know this New Age bullshit, okay let's go on. Okay um first of all thank you very much. My question is going to somewhat repeat the first question that you were asked. And you've said something to the extent that Marx—you paraphrase Marx saying that it takes a real revolutionary to understand the truth that is hidden in conservatism or something to that extent, right? Yeah. And I think it gives me a sort of a link to ask you about a thinker with whom normally you're not associated with and the reason I’m going—I hope it's not Schopenhauer. No, it's Foucault actually. And the reason that I'm asking—I want to ask you about Foucault is because recently there is a lot of sort of backlash in the literature, I don't know if you read in *Jacobin* or Zamora's book in in France about the question whether Foucault was or was not a neoliberal based on his lectures on biopolitics that he gave in the Collège de France '78-'79. And it seems to me that it relates quite a bit to the question that you were you were just asked: What if perhaps the reason why you're not dubbed as a as a neocon at the end of the day is because there is a certain link that you you hold fast to Marxism even though the content of it is not necessarily quite clear? What if the future of the left rests in a reinvention of maybe the neoliberal position as Foucault was reading it at the time? And so I was I wanted to ask you about that: What is your relation to to first of all Foucault's reading of neoliberalism? Perhaps the way out of this situation is actually working from it instead of resulting to what he would say is a a philosophy more and more adapted to the 19th century rather to the 21st century. Okay no this is again obviously way too complex question. But what I would have said is that the Foucault I’m definitely not ready to follow is the last Foucault. Printed, not lectures, not seminars. You know all that stuff about the care of the self and all that. I don’t see any emancipatory potential. And this is for me problem with many today’s theoreticians who are generally perceived as subversive or whatever. For example and I have personal good relations with her, Judith Butler. The problem for me with her is that what she describes as this subversive model you know, "no rule of law, no fixed identity, we constantly performatively undermine our identities, shifting, experimenting with ourselves." My reaction to this was: "So what? That what she is describing is not a something subversive threat to today’s order. She is simply describing the implicit ideology of today’s developed world." That is to say, I claim that apart from some neocons but who are already a reaction to this, the predominant ideology today in the United States, at least in the educated academics, it’s precisely that. It’s no longer that patriarchal stuff, obey, sacrifice yourself. It’s something like live authentically, experiment with yourself, be creative. You know, something along those lines of what I call enlightened hedonism, you know. And this here I have here I have a problem with Foucault. But if we don’t have time now to go in detail in Foucault, you know which is for me his absolute the best book, but one of the least popular ones my god at this moment, how is that methodological book called—*Archaeology of Knowledge*. Yes, yes. That’s for me his best book. Because he does something wonderful there. The topic of the book are not systems but statements as events. It’s really a—it’s a very Deleuzian book if you want. But when people claim that Foucault and Deleuze are together, what they forget is that at the end they split politically and so on. So again there are many things to be learned from Foucault. But I think first when you said neoliberalism, again the big problem for me is what neoliberalism are you talking about? I don’t think that any state is effectively practicing neoliberalism. United States? Are you kidding? All this conservative is this the basic fact. From Reagan onwards we had all those presidents who were elected criticizing Washington bureaucracy and so on, they ended up even strengthening the state and so on. I claim that the role of state mechanisms today is stronger than ever. No economy can function today without—Okay we have neoliberalism with healthcare and so on all those. But if you look overall at the role of state mechanisms, they are stronger than ever. No wonder that the most successful states today, like Singapore, whatever, China, South Korea, yes they have a market blah blah. But they have an extremely strong state which regulates, collaborates with the market and so on and so on. So that’s—I have again I have—The second thing is that I see—but we don’t have my god time to go into it now. My problem with Foucault is the following one. He and he admitted this, with *Surveiller et punir* which is *Discipline and Punish*, yeah, he approached a certain closed model like every resistance is part of, no. And this I see the deadlock basically. No resistance, and then to get out of this deadlock he turned into this pre-Christian practices whatever. I don’t—I don’t buy that. I think that simply he misses the point of psychoanalysis, to put it like this. But that’s another very complicated debate and so on, you know. No, again but back to neoliberalism. What do we mean by neoliberalism? Because it has so many inconsistent inconsistent features. Like in the United States you know, it’s typical you have neoliberalism and you have what they call liberals. And as you know they are usually totally opposite, no? And I think this inconsistency is necessary. You cannot say, "But this is real liberalism" and so on. So again—Well, I was referring to the ordoliberals, Hayek, Gary Becker, Milton Friedman. Hayek is not a total idiot, I agree. I even quote him positively. You know what I like in Hayek? It’s a big lesson to Marxists. How in what nice way Hayek answers—I’m on Hayek against John Rawls, the true idiot is for me John Rawls. Because and my friend whom I quoted Dupuy makes this argument against Rawls’s theory of justice. That theory of justice, this model of you know you’re allowed to get rich if those lowest on the ladder also profit and so on, it works only if you exclude envy. The moment you have envy, it doesn’t work. Why not? Hayek has a wonderful argumentation answering the reproach that but capitalism is not just, market is irrational, like you are lazy, I work like crazy but because of some market fluctuations you become rich I lose. And Hayek says, "But that’s why capitalism works." His idea is imagine a just capitalist society where you are rich because you are effectively better than me. Envy would have exploded. You know what allows us to survive in capitalism? Let’s say I become rich you not, and you can still claim, "Yes, it’s market luck, I’m an idiot, I was just lucky." I claim and here I
sign? Two good signs: A: that I’m often attacked from both sides. Like I’m proud of my book *Welcome to the Desert of the Real* which was translated my only book into Arabic in in Cairo and into into Hebrew in in Tel Aviv. And I loved it, *Jerusalem Post* accused me of the most of the most perfidious antisemitism. *Al-Ahram* accused me of the most refined disgusting Zionist propaganda. Now if both sides attack me like that maybe I’m moving in the right direction. But I will stop now. Before the third question, let me a bit redirect it because the people who are standing maybe you should get the occasion to ask—Finally you noticed the working class, I was afraid. But okay but eventually I did it. So is there any question then we can make an excuse, okay? Is there any? Of course—Okay if not then Aner. Now I will be a New Ager and tell you you know a New Ager would ask you, I hate this New Ager gone, "Don’t how their silence tells more than all the words," you know this New Age bullshit, okay let's go on. Okay um first of all thank you very much. My question is going to somewhat repeat the first question that you were asked. And you've said something to the extent that Marx—you paraphrase Marx saying that it takes a real revolutionary to understand the truth that is hidden in conservatism or something to that extent, right? Yeah. And I think it gives me a sort of a link to ask you about a thinker with whom normally you're not associated with and the reason I’m going—I hope it's not Schopenhauer. No, it's Foucault actually. And the reason that I'm asking—I want to ask you about Foucault is because recently there is a lot of sort of backlash in the literature, I don't know if you read in *Jacobin* or Zamora's book in in France about the question whether Foucault was or was not a neoliberal based on his lectures on biopolitics that he gave in the Collège de France '78-'79. And it seems to me that it relates quite a bit to the question that you were you were just asked: What if perhaps the reason why you're not dubbed as a as a neocon at the end of the day is because there is a certain link that you you hold fast to Marxism even though the content of it is not necessarily quite clear? What if the future of the left rests in a reinvention of maybe the neoliberal position as Foucault was reading it at the time? And so I was I wanted to ask you about that: What is your relation to to first of all Foucault's reading of neoliberalism? Perhaps the way out of this situation is actually working from it instead of resulting to what he would say is a a philosophy more and more adapted to the 19th century rather to the 21st century. Okay no this is again obviously way too complex question. But what I would have said is that the Foucault I’m definitely not ready to follow is the last Foucault. Printed, not lectures, not seminars. You know all that stuff about the care of the self and all that. I don’t see any emancipatory potential. And this is for me problem with many today’s theoreticians who are generally perceived as subversive or whatever. For example and I have personal good relations with her, Judith Butler. The problem for me with her is that what she describes as this subversive model you know, "no rule of law, no fixed identity, we constantly performatively undermine our identities, shifting, experimenting with ourselves." My reaction to this was: "So what? That what she is describing is not a something subversive threat to today’s order. She is simply describing the implicit ideology of today’s developed world." That is to say, I claim that apart from some neocons but who are already a reaction to this, the predominant ideology today in the United States, at least in the educated academics, it’s precisely that. It’s no longer that patriarchal stuff, obey, sacrifice yourself. It’s something like live authentically, experiment with yourself, be creative. You know, something along those lines of what I call enlightened hedonism, you know. And this here I have here I have a problem with Foucault. But if we don’t have time now to go in detail in Foucault, you know which is for me his absolute the best book, but one of the least popular ones my god at this moment, how is that methodological book called—*Archaeology of Knowledge*. Yes, yes. That’s for me his best book. Because he does something wonderful there. The topic of the book are not systems but statements as events. It’s really a—it’s a very Deleuzian book if you want. But when people claim that Foucault and Deleuze are together, what they forget is that at the end they split politically and so on. So again there are many things to be learned from Foucault. But I think first when you said neoliberalism, again the big problem for me is what neoliberalism are you talking about? I don’t think that any state is effectively practicing neoliberalism. United States? Are you kidding? All this conservative is this the basic fact. From Reagan onwards we had all those presidents who were elected criticizing Washington bureaucracy and so on, they ended up even strengthening the state and so on. I claim that the role of state mechanisms today is stronger than ever. No economy can function today without—Okay we have neoliberalism with healthcare and so on all those. But if you look overall at the role of state mechanisms, they are stronger than ever. No wonder that the most successful states today, like Singapore, whatever, China, South Korea, yes they have a market blah blah. But they have an extremely strong state which regulates, collaborates with the market and so on and so on. So that’s—I have again I have—The second thing is that I see—but we don’t have my god time to go into it now. My problem with Foucault is the following one. He and he admitted this, with *Surveiller et punir* which is *Discipline and Punish*, yeah, he approached a certain closed model like every resistance is part of, no. And this I see the deadlock basically. No resistance, and then to get out of this deadlock he turned into this pre-Christian practices whatever. I don’t—I don’t buy that. I think that simply he misses the point of psychoanalysis, to put it like this. But that’s another very complicated debate and so on, you know. No, again but back to neoliberalism. What do we mean by neoliberalism? Because it has so many inconsistent inconsistent features. Like in the United States you know, it’s typical you have neoliberalism and you have what they call liberals. And as you know they are usually totally opposite, no? And I think this inconsistency is necessary. You cannot say, "But this is real liberalism" and so on. So again—Well, I was referring to the ordoliberals, Hayek, Gary Becker, Milton Friedman. Hayek is not a total idiot, I agree. I even quote him positively. You know what I like in Hayek? It’s a big lesson to Marxists. How in what nice way Hayek answers—I’m on Hayek against John Rawls, the true idiot is for me John Rawls. Because and my friend whom I quoted Dupuy makes this argument against Rawls’s theory of justice. That theory of justice, this model of you know you’re allowed to get rich if those lowest on the ladder also profit and so on, it works only if you exclude envy. The moment you have envy, it doesn’t work. Why not? Hayek has a wonderful argumentation answering the reproach that but capitalism is not just, market is irrational, like you are lazy, I work like crazy but because of some market fluctuations you become rich I lose. And Hayek says, "But that’s why capitalism works." His idea is imagine a just capitalist society where you are rich because you are effectively better than me. Envy would have exploded. You know what allows us to survive in capitalism? Let’s say I become rich you not, and you can still claim, "Yes, it’s market luck, I’m an idiot, I was just lucky." I claim and here I
unknown
take the lesson of psychoanalysis that and even Rousseau knew this when he distinguished *amour de soi* and *amour-propre*
take the lesson of psychoanalysis that and even Rousseau knew this when he distinguished *amour de soi* and *amour-propre*
Slavoj Žižek
that you know envy is the big problem, which
that you know envy is the big problem, which
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is connected with all this Lacanian
is connected with all this Lacanian
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topic desire desire of the
topic desire desire of the
Slavoj Žižek
other, you know. When I want something I—who said this, the writer Gore Vidal? "In capitalism it’s not important that I win, even more important that
other, you know. When I want something I—who said this, the writer Gore Vidal? "In capitalism it’s not important that I win, even more important that
unknown
the other guy loses," you know like you are—I mean I don’t know how you are but as a Slovene I find myself justified talking about this because you know we Slovenes are a nation like that. I don’t know if you have it again, you know we have like this famous saying, you know a fairy tale or some magician appears to a Slovene farmer and tells him, "I will—what do you prefer, that I give you a cow but I give to your neighbors two cows? And I take one cow from you but I take two cows from your neighbor?" Every Slovene would have chosen the second option, okay. Or even worse, God comes or to a Slovene farmer and tells him, "I will do something to you whatever you want but I will do it twice more to your neighbor." You know what the Slovene farmer says? "Take one of my eyes." [Laughter] That the fundamental form and again Rawls doesn’t work here and Dupuy told me he had a shouting match debate with Rawls and Rawls simply couldn’t accept it, just denied: "No, envy is not such a problem" and so on and so on and so on, you know. Slavoj, because I promised to you personally that I don’t that we will
the other guy loses," you know like you are—I mean I don’t know how you are but as a Slovene I find myself justified talking about this because you know we Slovenes are a nation like that. I don’t know if you have it again, you know we have like this famous saying, you know a fairy tale or some magician appears to a Slovene farmer and tells him, "I will—what do you prefer, that I give you a cow but I give to your neighbors two cows? And I take one cow from you but I take two cows from your neighbor?" Every Slovene would have chosen the second option, okay. Or even worse, God comes or to a Slovene farmer and tells him, "I will do something to you whatever you want but I will do it twice more to your neighbor." You know what the Slovene farmer says? "Take one of my eyes." [Laughter] That the fundamental form and again Rawls doesn’t work here and Dupuy told me he had a shouting match debate with Rawls and Rawls simply couldn’t accept it, just denied: "No, envy is not such a problem" and so on and so on and so on, you know. Slavoj, because I promised to you personally that I don’t that we will
Slavoj Žižek
not kill you, so let me keep it short, let me take one more question, one more short answer, and we’re gonna take you there. I’m sorry I cannot take any more, okay? Good. This is friendship you know. I love him because like I also want to get rid of you, but I want to be allowed this hypocrisy that I will be able to tell you then, "Listen I would like to stay here all the night but this bad guy you know like—" This is what friends are for. So exactly I’m sorry this is the last question. In one of your in one of the interviews with you, I read that you don’t like giving lectures because of people asking stupid questions. Well I hope that won’t be one of them. But just a moment ago you stated that you’re for authority if somebody asks you. Um and you said that you’re against Negri’s idea of very localized policies and acting very local, those small communities. But um in your book *First as Tragedy, Then as Farce*—Sorry, which book? *First as Tragedy, Then as Farce*, yeah that’s right. Um you mentioned that true communism must come together with the abolishment of the state. My question is: If not the state and if not small local communities, what will we give instead of it? That’s a good question, but first I would like to have the precise place where I really say this. Because I think this is my eternal ongoing conflict with Alain Badiou, who claims that like state is bad and all authentic politics is outside state. For me this is what Hegel would have called beautiful soul, you know like a comfortable outside position. No. I like that’s why in spite of all the horrors he did, that’s what in the book that you translated my first *Revolution at the Gates* or so no, that’s what I admire in Lenin. Okay he did horrible things but he wasn’t a bullshitter, you know. He saw a chance to take and I claim that’s the tragedy of most of the postmodern left. They even don’t want power. They’re just playing games they want their George Orwell I quote him had a wonderful already in the late thirties vicious attack on radical left and he writes that they talk all the time about necessity of a radical change and revolution but it’s part of a superstitious logic that if we all the time talk about it maybe it will not happen you know like just to make it sure that—This is why, isn't the biggest like isn't it sad that the biggest triumphs of leftist theory whenever you have a revolutionary fiasco, there will always be an excellent Marxist book on why it had to fail and so on? You know, they were all like Trotsky, Russian Revolution and so on and so on. But what you but briefly what you said about this I hate and so on. My god there you know we really live in crazy times. That was obviously I like maybe a bad taste here I am ironic often, not in pure theory but when I make these remarks. I know what I said there in that interview. I said basically that I like universities if they are without students, that students adore you. But you know I’m just testing it how you can—Maybe you are better here because you Poles you have this sense of nice intellectual irony like didn’t your who was it Krzysztof Zanussi do as a—He has a lot of it. He’s full of beautiful Polish irony. I know, but what I like is a title, didn’t he a book about graffiti writings which has this title: "Isn't this your proverb as it were? What is life? A mortal disease transmitted by sex." You know that spirit I like. But just to give you an idea of stupidity today. Recently at an American talk and I thought I need not explain it everyone would know that I’m kidding. I was referring to you know one of the best known statements on of Samuel Beckett after you fail no: "Go on, try again, fail again, fail better." Okay. As a pure bad taste joke, I claimed that I read a new biography of Beckett where it is proven that when he was young and unemployed in his thirties he worked as a social psychologist specialized in sexual distress of young people and that this was originally his advice to a young guy who failed in performing the sexual act. That he told him, "Try again, fail but fail better" and so on. I thought it’s an obvious bad taste okay maybe a bad joke irony. No, someone attacked me, "You didn’t verify it, you are lying, Beckett didn’t say that" and so on. Well in what society are we living I mean you know what I mean like—That’s okay but let’s drop that, let’s go to that authority. Listen, here I’m
not kill you, so let me keep it short, let me take one more question, one more short answer, and we’re gonna take you there. I’m sorry I cannot take any more, okay? Good. This is friendship you know. I love him because like I also want to get rid of you, but I want to be allowed this hypocrisy that I will be able to tell you then, "Listen I would like to stay here all the night but this bad guy you know like—" This is what friends are for. So exactly I’m sorry this is the last question. In one of your in one of the interviews with you, I read that you don’t like giving lectures because of people asking stupid questions. Well I hope that won’t be one of them. But just a moment ago you stated that you’re for authority if somebody asks you. Um and you said that you’re against Negri’s idea of very localized policies and acting very local, those small communities. But um in your book *First as Tragedy, Then as Farce*—Sorry, which book? *First as Tragedy, Then as Farce*, yeah that’s right. Um you mentioned that true communism must come together with the abolishment of the state. My question is: If not the state and if not small local communities, what will we give instead of it? That’s a good question, but first I would like to have the precise place where I really say this. Because I think this is my eternal ongoing conflict with Alain Badiou, who claims that like state is bad and all authentic politics is outside state. For me this is what Hegel would have called beautiful soul, you know like a comfortable outside position. No. I like that’s why in spite of all the horrors he did, that’s what in the book that you translated my first *Revolution at the Gates* or so no, that’s what I admire in Lenin. Okay he did horrible things but he wasn’t a bullshitter, you know. He saw a chance to take and I claim that’s the tragedy of most of the postmodern left. They even don’t want power. They’re just playing games they want their George Orwell I quote him had a wonderful already in the late thirties vicious attack on radical left and he writes that they talk all the time about necessity of a radical change and revolution but it’s part of a superstitious logic that if we all the time talk about it maybe it will not happen you know like just to make it sure that—This is why, isn't the biggest like isn't it sad that the biggest triumphs of leftist theory whenever you have a revolutionary fiasco, there will always be an excellent Marxist book on why it had to fail and so on? You know, they were all like Trotsky, Russian Revolution and so on and so on. But what you but briefly what you said about this I hate and so on. My god there you know we really live in crazy times. That was obviously I like maybe a bad taste here I am ironic often, not in pure theory but when I make these remarks. I know what I said there in that interview. I said basically that I like universities if they are without students, that students adore you. But you know I’m just testing it how you can—Maybe you are better here because you Poles you have this sense of nice intellectual irony like didn’t your who was it Krzysztof Zanussi do as a—He has a lot of it. He’s full of beautiful Polish irony. I know, but what I like is a title, didn’t he a book about graffiti writings which has this title: "Isn't this your proverb as it were? What is life? A mortal disease transmitted by sex." You know that spirit I like. But just to give you an idea of stupidity today. Recently at an American talk and I thought I need not explain it everyone would know that I’m kidding. I was referring to you know one of the best known statements on of Samuel Beckett after you fail no: "Go on, try again, fail again, fail better." Okay. As a pure bad taste joke, I claimed that I read a new biography of Beckett where it is proven that when he was young and unemployed in his thirties he worked as a social psychologist specialized in sexual distress of young people and that this was originally his advice to a young guy who failed in performing the sexual act. That he told him, "Try again, fail but fail better" and so on. I thought it’s an obvious bad taste okay maybe a bad joke irony. No, someone attacked me, "You didn’t verify it, you are lying, Beckett didn’t say that" and so on. Well in what society are we living I mean you know what I mean like—That’s okay but let’s drop that, let’s go to that authority. Listen, here I’m
unknown
serious. In what sense? And I took in my new book *Trouble in Paradise* as an example precisely
serious. In what sense? And I took in my new book *Trouble in Paradise* as an example precisely
Slavoj Žižek
is this his name you know that last Auschwitz survivor who died a couple of years ago, Edelman—no, Marek
is this his name you know that last Auschwitz survivor who died a couple of years ago, Edelman—no, Marek
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Edelman?
Edelman?
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Yeah, yeah. He is one of my heroes because I knew people who even knew him, I read his biography and so on, texts on him. You know he was a miracle, he was a Bundist when he was
Yeah, yeah. He is one of my heroes because I knew people who even knew him, I read his biography and so on, texts on him. You know he was a miracle, he was a Bundist when he was
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young.
young.
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He was in ghetto uprising, Warsaw uprising. He was with Solidarity. And
He was in ghetto uprising, Warsaw uprising. He was with Solidarity. And
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then, that’s why he was totally excluded in Israel, he wrote a letter of support to Palestinians, clearly saying them "not bombing you shouldn’t do this, but I see your struggle." And from my
then, that’s why he was totally excluded in Israel, he wrote a letter of support to Palestinians, clearly saying them "not bombing you shouldn’t do this, but I see your struggle." And from my
Slavoj Žižek
good friend Udi Aloni, who told me his mother Shulamit Aloni was in the Rabin government Minister of Education and she visited with him Poland with Rabin when he was Prime Minister and you know when Rabin saw Edelman he didn’t want to shake his hand. Like "Uh" and then she told me that she put pressure on him telling him, "You know many Poles are antisemites, are you crazy? Probably half of the government there is antisemitic and you refuse to shake the hand to the only authentic Jew?" But you see the person like that is for me a true master. I tried to develop this. In that sense master for me is not the one who gives orders. But didn’t you experience this with a good teacher or whatever? Sometimes you encounter persons which simply made you aware of your your potentials or freedoms. They don’t tell you "Do this, do that," but they make you aware, "My god but I can do that." That’s the function of an authentic master I think. That somehow he restores your freedom to you, he opens up a possibility where you don’t see it. And for reasons which are theoretical one I will not go into them psychoanalytic one I
good friend Udi Aloni, who told me his mother Shulamit Aloni was in the Rabin government Minister of Education and she visited with him Poland with Rabin when he was Prime Minister and you know when Rabin saw Edelman he didn’t want to shake his hand. Like "Uh" and then she told me that she put pressure on him telling him, "You know many Poles are antisemites, are you crazy? Probably half of the government there is antisemitic and you refuse to shake the hand to the only authentic Jew?" But you see the person like that is for me a true master. I tried to develop this. In that sense master for me is not the one who gives orders. But didn’t you experience this with a good teacher or whatever? Sometimes you encounter persons which simply made you aware of your your potentials or freedoms. They don’t tell you "Do this, do that," but they make you aware, "My god but I can do that." That’s the function of an authentic master I think. That somehow he restores your freedom to you, he opens up a possibility where you don’t see it. And for reasons which are theoretical one I will not go into them psychoanalytic one I
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think
think
Slavoj Žižek
in this sense only we need a master. Not I’m not buying that old conservative shit you know "Man is a wild animal needs a master to control," no. We need the paradox is that we need a master to become actually free. You know to like a master’s message today would be you even find some of this in originally in Obama, "Yes we can." That’s the message of the master to put it very simply. Only in this sense I am only in this sense I am for the figure of a master. Thank you, Master. [Applause] Where are we now, what hour is it? It’s not a problem of time but I want to buy my—[Laughter] Okay, everything—
in this sense only we need a master. Not I’m not buying that old conservative shit you know "Man is a wild animal needs a master to control," no. We need the paradox is that we need a master to become actually free. You know to like a master’s message today would be you even find some of this in originally in Obama, "Yes we can." That’s the message of the master to put it very simply. Only in this sense I am only in this sense I am for the figure of a master. Thank you, Master. [Applause] Where are we now, what hour is it? It’s not a problem of time but I want to buy my—[Laughter] Okay, everything—