What Does It Mean to Be a Great Thinker Today?
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2015-05-05 · 1:42:03 · 13,718 words
communism-socialismideologyhegel-dialecticspsychoanalysisfascism-populismliberalism-political-correctnessdemocracycapitalismreligion-theologyhistorygeopolitics-wareconomicssubjectivityethicsrevolution-violencerace-antisemitism
Žižek delivers a wide-ranging lecture touching on Stalinism versus fascism as two distinct products of Enlightenment modernity, the Frankfurt School's failure to adequately theorize Stalinism, and the politicization of religion as a symptom of depoliticization in late capitalism. He develops analyses of freedom under capitalism as increasingly formal while the underlying social frame grows opaque and non-transparent, examines debt as a mechanism of political control through the Greek crisis and Syriza, and explores how contemporary power functions through permissive pseudo-egalitarianism and inherent transgression rather than overt command. The talk concludes with reflections on democracy as fetish, the need for alienation and politeness as social lubricant, and authentic universality grounded in shared struggle rather than multicultural understanding.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 16
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “dialectic der Aufklärung”
The Frankfurt School thesis that the horrors of the 20th century (Gulag, Holocaust) were immanent potentials of modernity and Enlightenment reason itself, not regressions to barbarism.
as “public confession (Stalinist show trials)”
The show-trial ritual where the condemned participates in universal reason by confessing their crimes, impossible in Nazism, which marks Stalinism paradoxically as still part of the Enlightenment tradition.
Religion today does not merely invade politics but literally replaces politics as authentic political struggle disappears, with fundamentalism functioning as a displaced return of the repressed political.
as “self-entrepreneur”
The postmodern ideological figure of the worker who is presented as a small capitalist freely managing his credit and choices, masking the coercive structure that limits those choices.
as “precarious work as new freedom”
The ideological trick whereby the anxious insecurity of precarious labour is repackaged by postmodern theorists as entrepreneurial self-management and freedom of choice.
The distinction between the personal freedoms of consumption and lifestyle (which expand) and the collective political freedom to alter the very socio-economic framework determining those choices (which disappears).
Referenced implicitly in the logic of superego guilt and in the obscene enjoyment of inherent transgression within institutional life.
Freud's obscene ethical agency whose paradox is that the more you obey it the guiltier you feel; used here to explain how Greek debt-repayment is structured to produce permanent guilt, not actual repayment.
Lazzarato's concept that in contemporary capitalism debt replaces direct domination (Herrschaft) as the primary mechanism for controlling individuals and states, keeping them permanently guilty and compliant.
Direct command-based domination, contrasted with contemporary softer forms of control through debt and permissive pseudo-egalitarianism that make domination unspeakable.
The fetishistic logic by which one subordinates oneself to a symbolic authority-bearer even knowing he is personally an idiot, because power speaks through the insignia rather than the person.
as “je sais bien, mais quand même”
Octave Mannoni's formula for fetishistic disavowal, 'I know very well, but nonetheless', used by Žižek to describe how traditional symbolic authority worked even when the authority-bearer was personally known to be an idiot.
The obscene, unofficial violations of explicit rules (dirty jokes, homosocial innuendo in the army) that appear subversive but are actually structurally necessary for reproducing the official power order.
Democracy functions as a Freudian fetish, the last object one fixates on before acknowledging the social antagonism (castration); it lets us tolerate systemic contradictions by saying 'yes, but we have democracy'.
Politeness is the highest form of alienation: a sincere lie that signals basic benevolence without requiring authentic emotional transparency, providing necessary social breathing space.
as “authentic universality through struggle”
True universality is not achieved by cultural understanding or multicultural empathy but by discovering that one's own particular struggle is part of the same global antagonism as others'.
Stories he reaches for 11
Hitler acknowledged applause as its recipient; Stalin always joined the applause himself, because the Stalinist symbolic position is not leader but perfect servant of historical necessity.
“when you have a stalinist leadership after stalin's speech, people applaud. always the leader joins the applause”
Even in the harshest Gulag years, all prisoners had to sign telegrams wishing Stalin a happy birthday, a gesture utterly unimaginable in Nazi Germany where gathering Auschwitz inmates to send Hitler birthday wishes would have been meaningless in the Nazi symbolic universe.
“every year on stalin's birthday all prisoners in a gulag camp were gathered and had to sign each of them a telegram to comrade stalin wishing him all the best”
A traditional authoritarian father simply orders you to visit grandmother; the postmodern permissive father says 'you're free to go or not' while guilt-tripping you about how much she loves you, ordering you not just to go but to want to go, which is the true ideological terror.
“he's subtly not just ordering you to go, but he's ordering you to go voluntarily, to freely go. this is the true terror”
When a rich host invites a poor guest and everyone knows in advance the host will pay, courtesy requires the guest to insist on paying, a 'sincere lie' that illustrates how ideology operates through polite performance rather than raw deception.
“although we all know in advance that you will pay... i have to insist a little bit, no, no, no, let me pay”
The 1804 Haitian constitution, wanting both a black republic and to recognise the loyal Polish soldiers, declared: 'Haiti is a black republic; all citizens of Haiti, independently of the color of their skin, are black.'
“haiti is a black republic. all citizens of haiti, independently of the color of their skin are black”
The Yugoslav army was officially brutally homophobic (gay soldiers were beaten nightly) yet everyday life was saturated with homosexual innuendo, e.g. soldiers greeting each other with a euphemism for fellatio, showing that inherent transgression is necessary for, not subversive of, institutional reproduction.
“officially, publicly, the army was extremely brutally homophobic... at the same time the entire army life was penetrated by homosexual innuendos”
Žižek's student journal, instead of openly denouncing rigged communist elections, simply reported them as if they were real, publishing breaking results like 'communists will remain in power', which infuriated party officials who couldn't object without admitting the elections were fake.
“we said, they are claiming that these are real democratic elections. so let's just treat them like that”
Tahrir Square in Egypt briefly embodied authentic universality: it didn't matter if participants were Muslim, what they believed, there was instant solidarity in shared struggle, not in cultural understanding.
“all of a sudden, it wasn't important. are they muslims? do we mean the same things? it was an instant universal solidarity”
These ostensibly critical Hollywood films showing total state corruption actually make viewers feel reassured: 'two ordinary journalists could overthrow the most powerful man in the world, isn't this a great democracy?' thereby functioning as ideological comfort.
“two ordinary guys, journalists, can overthrow the mightiest man in the world. isn't this a great country? this is democracy as a fetish”
The film's opening scene of police torture of a poor quiz contestant reflects actual Indian police practice against non-wealthy citizens; Indian democrats even petitioned for police to torture only for political reasons, not for cheating at game shows.
“if you are not very rich police is simply torturing people there”
When Argentina (with Chavez's help) actually repaid its IMF debt, the official IMF reaction was horror, confirming that the creditors' secret goal is permanent indebtedness and control, not repayment.
“they perceived as catastrophic news that argentina returned, covered up the debt from them”
Works invoked 12
Used as the framework for discussing Stalinism and modernity but criticized for focusing almost exclusively on fascism while ignoring Stalinism as a clearer case of instrumental reason.
Roots tv
Referenced as an example of the ideology of 'return to roots' that limited earlier slave rebellions, a return-to-origins narrative contrasted with Haiti's revolutionary universalism.
The Pelican Brief film
Like 'All the President's Men', a Hollywood 'left' film that actually reassures rather than challenges by showing systemic corruption resolved through democratic process.
Appears critical of American state corruption but actually functions as ideology: makes viewers feel reassured that democracy works because two journalists could bring down a president, democracy as fetish.
Lazzarato's account of debt as the primary mechanism of contemporary domination replacing direct Herrschaft; Žižek endorses it as a 'wonderful simple but true theory'.
Slumdog Millionaire film
Žižek calls it a 'shitty movie' with 'a moment of truth': the police torture scene accurately reflects Indian reality, police routinely torture non-wealthy suspects.
Soviet Marxism book
Marcuse's analysis is deemed too limited, just a specific reading of Khrushchev's 20th Congress speech, not a systematic theory of actually existing socialism.
One-Dimensional Man book
Žižek rejects it: Marcuse wrongly accepts capitalism's success as a fact and misses its internal antagonisms; the chapter attacking ordinary language philosophy is a wrong model of pseudo-Marxist criticism.
Popper's anti-Platonic argument is rejected; Žižek defends Plato as more progressive than Aristotle on slaves and women.
Described as 'totally worthless', its Freudo-Marxist idea that sexual freedom dissolves social divisions failed to anticipate how the 1960s libidinal revolution was absorbed into capitalism.
The one Marcuse book Žižek praises, written before World War II, and considered his genuinely good work.
Cited as an example of Stalinist sacred text that simultaneously degrades the accused as vermin and insists on their participation in universal reason through confession.
People invoked 26
Alka Zantič positive
Lacanian colleague in Slovenia whose work on authority Žižek refers to when discussing the shift from fetishistic symbolic authority to the egalitarian-performance model of contemporary power.
Characterized as a genius of manipulation who resuscitated nationalism to legitimize the rule of old communist nomenclatura and caused the Yugoslav wars.
Theodor W. Adorno positive
Cited as co-author of Dialectic of Enlightenment; Žižek uses the Frankfurt School project as a foil but does not personally attack Adorno, noting he was a conventional anti-communist.
The moderator cites his 'Main Currents of Marxism' as tracing totalitarianism's roots in Enlightenment from a dissident Marxist perspective; Žižek does not engage in depth.
Cited as an example of a Stalinist show trial defendant who confessed under pressure, illustrating the paradox of participation in universal reason even in condemnation.
Arundhati Roy positive
Indian writer and friend who shared the observation about class bias in rape coverage in India, which Žižek uses to illustrate the limits of bourgeois media freedom.
Judith Butler positive
Despite many polemics, Žižek agrees with her point that the most dangerous oppression of women is when de facto domination is masked by superficial egalitarian rhetoric, and her proposal that women should demand men act as master to expose hidden domination.
Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens negative
The 'happily half forgotten' postmodern social theorist who reframed precarious labour as new forms of freedom and self-management, a prime example of ideological repackaging of unfreedom.
Franco Berardi positive
Cited alongside Lazzarato as post-Negri Italian thinker developing the theory of debt and control.
Anne Applebaum positive
Her book on the Gulag is cited as the empirical source for the detail about Gulag prisoners signing birthday telegrams to Stalin.
Antonio Negri negative
The 'multitude / local self-organization' thesis associated with Negri is rejected as insufficient to face contemporary global problems and as requiring a strong state to function anyway.
Alexis Tsipras positive
Personal acquaintance; Žižek expresses admiration and sympathy for how Syriza is treated by European institutions.
Yanis Varoufakis positive
Personal friend; Žižek defends his extremely modest proposals to Brussels as rational and centrist by 40-year-old social democratic standards, contrasting the medialized image of him as eccentric provocateur.
Peter Sloterdijk positive
Described as a right-winger but an intelligent one; Žižek cites his argument that the problem today is insufficient alienation, not too much.
Sent the army (including Polish soldiers) to crush the Haitian revolution and planned ethnic cleansing of Black Haitians, end of the revolutionary Jacobin spirit.
Herbert Marcuse negative
His 'Soviet Marxism' is too limited (just an analysis of Khrushchev's speech); 'One-Dimensional Man' misreads capitalism by ignoring its antagonisms; 'Eros and Civilization' is 'totally worthless' Freudo-Marxism; only 'Reason and Revolution' is praised.
Ernst Nolte negative
The historian who argued fascism was a reaction to communism and that collaboration with Nazis could be the lesser of two evils, a step in the dangerous rehabilitation of fascism.
Jürgen Habermas negative
Žižek argues Habermas's immanent critique operates as if only West Germany exists, remaining blind to the communist experience and thus unable to theorize Stalinism.
Max Horkheimer negative
In the early 1950s so anti-communist he thought even social democrats shouldn't hold power in West Germany; exemplifies the Frankfurt School's failure to theorize Stalinism.
Otto Weininger negative
His formula 'socialism is Aryan, communism is Jewish' is quoted only to be inverted: Žižek takes it as a reason to identify with communism.
Karl Popper negative
Žižek radically disagrees with Popper's anti-Platonic premise, arguing Plato is more progressive than Aristotle on slaves and women.
Mentioned as having provided financial support to Argentina enabling it to repay its IMF debt.
Plato positive
Žižek defends Plato against proto-totalitarian accusations: the Republic has no slaves and explicitly grants women equality, more progressive than Aristotle.
Aristotle negative
The 'good liberal Aristotle' defines slaves as talking tools and ontologizes sexual difference as form/matter; less progressive than Plato.
Boris Buden positive
Croatian friend whose book on the politicization of religion, arguing that religion replaces rather than invades politics, Žižek deeply agrees with.
Maurizio Lazzarato positive
His 'Rise of the Indebted Man' provides the theoretical framework for debt as the primary mechanism of contemporary control, which Žižek endorses.
What it argues
Stalinism vs. fascism as divergent products of Enlightenment rationalityFrankfurt School's blind spot on StalinismDebt as mechanism of political control and subjugationFreedom of choice vs. freedom to change the social frame itselfPower through permissiveness and pseudo-egalitarian bossesInherent transgression as reproduction of powerDemocracy as ideological fetish masking antagonismAlienation and politeness as necessary social formAuthentic universality through solidarity in struggle
Dialectical moves 10
“The most dangerous of the three threats today — ISIS, geopolitical rivalry, and the radical Left — is the last one, Syriza and so on.”
Inverts the common-sense hierarchy of threats: the truly dangerous thing is not the spectacular external enemy but the modest internal reformism that might actually work.
“It is not simply that ideology works even if you don't take it seriously — it has to be taken NOT seriously to work.”
Cynical distance is not a critique of ideology but its very operational mode; performative disbelief sustains the system.
“The permissive postmodern father is worse than the traditional authoritarian father — he doesn't just order you to act, he orders you to want to act.”
Permissiveness is a more total form of domination than explicit command because it colonises desire itself.
“It was not only prohibited to criticize Stalin — it was even more prohibited to publicly announce this prohibition.”
The deepest layer of Stalinist power was the unspeakability of domination itself; articulating the rule was more dangerous than breaking it.
“Stalinism is paradoxically part of the Enlightenment tradition — the very features that make it monstrous (show trials, confessions, universal address to Stalin) are what distinguish it from fascism.”
What looks like the worst of Stalinism, its pretension to universal reason even in extermination, is precisely what marks it as Enlightenment rather than anti-Enlightenment.
“We are free — but the frame of our freedom is more and more non-transparent and the freedom to change that frame is disappearing.”
Personal freedoms expand while collective political freedom contracts; the ideology of freedom masks the unfreedom of the structural conditions.
“We don't have enough alienation — we need more, not less.”
Against communitarian and multicultural calls for authentic encounter, Žižek defends alienation and politeness as the forms that make coexistence bearable.
“Socialism is acceptable to everyone — that is precisely why I am for communism.”
Socialism's universal acceptability signals its ideological neutralization; only communism retains the disruptive antagonism of genuine emancipation.
“When you finished watching 'All the President's Men' you felt so good — because this is democracy as fetish.”
Hollywood's apparently critical depiction of corruption actually reassures the viewer that democracy is working, neutralising the critical charge.
“If you want to be truly radical, insist on a tiny small point which appears nothing, but if you press on that point, you trigger a process.”
Revolutionary politics today works through specific, modest but strategically placed demands rather than comprehensive utopian programmes.
Claims 21
asserts
Stalinism, unlike fascism, remains part of the Enlightenment tradition because it preserved the logic of universal reason — show trials, confessions, telegrams to Stalin from Gulag prisoners — which are unimaginable within the Nazi universe.Stalinism vs. fascism as products of modernity
rejects
The Frankfurt School inexplicably focused its critique of dialectic der Aufklärung almost exclusively on fascism when Stalinism would have been a far clearer example of instrumental reason run amok.Frankfurt School's theoretical programme
asserts
Fascism was not an Aufklärung phenomenon but a conservative modernization — capitalism without class struggle, requiring an external Jewish enemy as substitute.the nature of fascism
rejects
Habermas operates as if only West Germany exists, making his immanent critique of modernity systematically blind to the communist half of the European experience.Habermas's critical theory
asserts
We are free at the personal level of choice while the social frame determining what choices are available grows ever more non-transparent and immune to collective transformation.freedom under contemporary capitalism
asserts
The politicization of religion is strictly correlative to the disappearance of authentic political struggle from our societies — religion replaces, rather than invades, politics.religious fundamentalism and depoliticization
asserts
The real purpose of debt is not repayment but permanent control; the IMF's panic at Argentina paying off its debt confirms that creditors prefer debtors to remain indebted.debt as political mechanism
asserts
Traditional power operated fetishistically through insignia and symbolic castration; contemporary power operates by the boss performing equality and weakness, making domination unspeakable and therefore stronger.the structure of contemporary authority
asserts
Inherent transgression — the obscene jokes and violations that pervade institutions — is not subversive but is structurally necessary for reproducing official power.transgression and institutional reproduction
asserts
You are given the freedom of choice on one condition: that you make the right choice — the freely given pledge that must be given freely is the fundamental mechanism of ideology.the ideological structure of consent
asserts
Permissive authority — the postmodern father who says 'you are free to go or not to grandmother's' — is worse oppression than explicit command because it orders you not just to act but to want the right thing.permissive authority and ideological control
asserts
Democracy today functions as an ideological fetish that allows us to acknowledge systemic antagonisms while remaining comforted that we have democratic recourse, thereby neutralizing genuine political challenge.democracy as ideology
asserts
We do not need more mutual cultural understanding but more alienation; politeness — not empathy — is the form of social relation that provides genuine breathing space.alienation, politeness, multiculturalism
asserts
Authentic universality is achieved not through multicultural understanding but through solidarity in struggle — recognising that one's local antagonism is part of the same global fight.universality and political solidarity
asserts
The art of radical politics today is not big revolutionary demands but precise, apparently modest demands that, in their specific context, trigger traumatic processes — as Obama's healthcare did in America.political strategy for the left
asserts
Syriza's proposals to Brussels were, by Western European standards of forty years ago, extremely moderate centrist social democracy; the hysteria they provoked reveals how far the political horizon has shifted rightward.Syriza and European austerity politics
asserts
Marxism's central lesson is that form matters: formal freedoms must be taken seriously because they are a starting point to be expanded, not dismissed as mere appearance.Marxist theory of formal freedom
rejects
The sexual liberation of the 1960s was fully integrated into the ruling capitalist system, meaning today hard work and discipline — not hedonism — should be the Left's motto.Marcuse's Eros and Civilization / 1960s liberationism
rejects
Plato's Republic is less proto-totalitarian than commonly alleged: it excludes slaves and grants women equality — positions more progressive than Aristotle, who naturalizes both slavery and sexual difference.Popper's anti-Platonic critique
asserts
Iraq under the US-backed post-Saddam order is worse for women than under Saddam's secular dictatorship, illustrating how Western interventions regularly produce outcomes worse than the regimes they remove.Western military intervention in the Middle East
asserts
Ideology functions today not through sincere belief but through performative cynicism: it works precisely because people don't take it seriously, as Yugoslav self-management officials who actually believed were fired.cynicism and ideology
Quotes 15
“it's not only prohibited to criticize stalin, it was even more prohibited to publicly announce the prohibition”Slavoj Žižek · domination as unspeakable — the meta-prohibition
“we are free, but the social texture frame which underlies our freedom which determines what are our choices is more and more non-transparent”Slavoj Žižek · freedom of choice vs. freedom to change the frame
“your very form of unfreedom is presented to you as a new freedom”Slavoj Žižek · ideology repackaging unfreedom as freedom
“you are given the freedom of choice on one condition, that you make the right choice”Slavoj Žižek · the fundamental ideological structure of consented coercion
“he's ordering you to go voluntarily, to freely go. this is the true terror, not just you have to do it. but you have to want to do it”Slavoj Žižek · permissive authority orders desire itself
“ideology has to be taken not seriously to work”Slavoj Žižek · cynicism as the operational mode of ideology
“democracy is our fetish... it's the last object you see before you see that woman has no penis”Slavoj Žižek · democracy as Freudian fetish covering social antagonism
“socialism is aryan, communism is jewish. yes, i'm for communism”Slavoj Žižek · Žižek's provocative self-identification with communism over socialism
“i want to live in a well-organized society where some anonymous power does things and i can sit and watch movies and write my stupid books”Slavoj Žižek · defence of alienation over participatory democracy
“politeness is i meet you on the street... we have to say, hello, nice to see you, how are you? it's in a way a sincere lie”Slavoj Žižek · alienation as the form of basic social benevolence
“the only practical understanding that works is struggle. not with the enemy, but solidarity in struggle”Slavoj Žižek · authentic universality through shared antagonism not cultural empathy
“if you want to see horror, go to mumbai and visit brothels there... nobody writes about this. we are talking about thousands of cases”Slavoj Žižek · class bias in media attention to violence
“the moment there is the fight, that guy was arrested, oppression here, there — you have universality”Slavoj Žižek · struggle as the site of authentic universal solidarity
“every institution has something like this — no power structure can reproduce without what i call inherent transgression”Slavoj Žižek · inherent transgression as universal feature of institutional reproduction
“what is more and more disappearing... is the freedom to collectively decide how to change this framework itself”Slavoj Žižek · erosion of collective political freedom under contemporary capitalism
Transcript 73 turns
Slavoj Žižek
so first let me also express my gratitude and how honoured i feel to be here. uh... and i especially feel at home. this is my old socialist training. look what's there, marx engels werke, you know, from my youth. but to avoid a misunderstanding here with all these jokes about palace of culture and so on. not only am i not, as some stupid people accuse me, a kind of a secret closet stalinist or whatever, on the contrary, this is, i think, still the big trauma. i don't think we have a proper theory. what went wrong, in what way? how was something like stalinism even possible, imaginable? and this is one of the reasons of my eternal tension. with some followers of frankfurter schule or habermassians. look, one great argument against habermas for me is this one. if you were to read all of habermas, i doubt if you, let's say all about you knew about germany in the last 50 years, you would have learned it from reading habermas's books. would you even have guessed that there are two germanies? i don't think. haberman strictly behaves as if he lives in west germany, it's an immanent critique and so on. and that's what always, already when i was a student, that's what shocked me about frankfurter schule. on the one hand, what is their basic project? dialectic their aufklärung, which means, to simplify it, the horrible things that happened in the 20th century, gula, holocaust and so on, are not simply some regression into pre-modern logic like barbarism r and no they were something which was there as an immanent. potential of the project of modernity itself okay. but then why did they focus in their analysis only almost exclusively on fascism? i mean, it should be done, no doubt here. it intrigued me that isn't stalinism a much clearer example case of diaic der aufklärung? because fascism was not aufklärung. it was, as we all know, a conservative modernization, like this impossible dream. how? to have capitalism without capitalism without class struggle for this, you need an external enemy, the u, and so on and so on. but incidentally i've written about it. it's so nice in what way you can account for this basic difference, which doesn't make stalinism any better, between stalinism and fascism, even at the level of these apparently totally superficial rituals and so on. to give you one example, do you know i read this in anne applebaum's book on gul luck that even in the harshest. times, mid 30s and then till 50. every year on stalin's birthday all prisoners in a gulag camp were gathered and had to sign each of them a telegram to comrade stalin wishing him all the best and so on and so on. now, of course i'm not an idiot. not'm not claiming they really meant it. what i'm claiming is this, and here you can see one aspect of the difference. can you even imagine something like this in nazi germany? it would have been totally meaningless in the nazi universe. i don't know, gather once a year all auschwitz inmates and make them shine. telegram telegram for wishing all the best to hitler and so on. another thing which accounts for this difference. precisely these so-called show trials monstrous. tr. you have something which is specific to stalinism there, this public confession. you know how it looks like bukharin and all of them. you were, let's forget in what way. it wasn't even primarily physical torture, it was more pressure like, if you don't confess, we arrest also your children, whatever. okay, but the mystery is why the need for this public confession? and you discover something very strange. how... although... the one who was at these show trials, condemned and so on and confessed, although he was treated as the lowest of the lowest, you know, it's very interesting to read sacred texts of stalinism like short. history of the communist party, the sacred text. with regard to expressions they use, like it piece of shit, vermin, insect, and so on. so at the same time, you are the lowest of the lowest, but at the same time, it is as if you still participate in universal human mind, that you can account for yourself. for example, i remember reading in the czech trial, slansky, i think it was, no, rudolf slansky. how at the beginning, the prosecutor asked him, how did you become a traitor? and he says, i come from a bourgeois family. already when i was a young boy, my parents taught me to hate workers and so on and so on. what's so interesting is that you see, you are shit, skam of shitam. but at the same time, you participate in universal reason and can tell the truth about yourself. this is unimaginable in nazism. that's why, not because they were better. you cannot, it would have been the easiest thing in the world for the nazis to organize a big trial where through torture and so on, they would have made some jewish leaders, whatever, to confess the plot against germany it never happened. my point is that precisely in these perverse details, every prisoner still sending a telegram to stalin or this confession, this is what makes stalinism. part of enlightenment movement that we all participate in it. and again, this is what shocked me. why don't you find a theory of it in frankfurter schule? now, i did my homework. i know. you have herbert marcuse, soviet marxism, but this is, i read it decades ago. but this is just a very specific analysis of khrushchev, his speech on the 20th congress. it's not more, than you have a couple of texts here, there, but no systematic approach to it. and i'm not accusing them, frankfurt schule, of being secretly communist. no, they were quite normal anti-communists, believe me. i read in this big biography of adorno that, for example, in the early 50s, horkheimer was so anti-communist that he even thought that social democrats shouldn't be allowed to take power. social democrats in west germany. so he was much closer to that first generation, theodor heuss and so on, liberal politicians. so you see, here i think, that's why i'm so practically obsessed by stalinism. why? there is i'm not... right-wing revisionist, definitely not i'm not playing the game which is a very dangerous game going on today of subtly rehabilitating fascism. you know how. the first in my country also slovenia it's happening. the first step is to say all sides were doing horrible things to just apparently equalize them. no? like you know this is an old story like okay okay germans did horrible things but western allies bombed dresden and so on all that, all that. then you go a step further and you say very interesting that uh. you follow this who is the historian, nolte? yeah, who wrote a book on heidegger also, then you say that nonetheless, fascism was a reaction to communism, that it took all bad features from communism, like already in soviet union before hitler, they had concentration camps and so on and so on. then you just have to go one step further and say those who collaborated with danach? they were just confronted with a desperate choice and they have tragically chosen the lesser of two evils. and in a way, we should. understand them maybe even support them and so on and so on and i think this is a very. tric. notendency not that i have again any sympathy for stalin. but still, i think. not that i think stalinism was better. you know, it is for me one argument for stalinism. that it had dissidents. dissidents also in the sense of inner party dissidents. stalin all the time had to fight from trotsky to others who reproached him for you betrayed the true greatness of communist project and so on and so on. in nazism you don't find this. okay, we can play the game if gregor strasser or those early nazis were, but afterwards, once hitler established himself, sorry, i'm not aware of any tendency in nazi germany reproaching hitler for betraying the true fascist legacy or whatever. and i think precisely this radical inner tension. in stalinism. ich. a perverted effect. of the fact that there was an authentic core at the beginning. i think that whatever you say and we can play this game. i'm ready to play it. i'm not saying i'm not a crazy trotskyist who claims, oh, if you know the trotsky's dream. if only lenin were to survived three, four years more and made a pact with trotsky, there would be no stalin. we would have what? a kind of a happy social democracy or what? no, i think the tragedy was authentic. i really don't think der boss ! a possibility of another way to be taken. but nonetheless, it was an authentic tragedy in the sense of it did begin as an incredible emancipatory explosion. it turned into a nightmare. and i don't think we have yet a good theory about it. either we go too far into blaming i don't know. entire history of humanity. like, are we aware? that's why i like it, how crazy is thelectic daraufklärung, the book. it traces manipulative reason, so-called instrumentelle vernunft, begins which culminates in 20th century horrors.
so first let me also express my gratitude and how honoured i feel to be here. uh... and i especially feel at home. this is my old socialist training. look what's there, marx engels werke, you know, from my youth. but to avoid a misunderstanding here with all these jokes about palace of culture and so on. not only am i not, as some stupid people accuse me, a kind of a secret closet stalinist or whatever, on the contrary, this is, i think, still the big trauma. i don't think we have a proper theory. what went wrong, in what way? how was something like stalinism even possible, imaginable? and this is one of the reasons of my eternal tension. with some followers of frankfurter schule or habermassians. look, one great argument against habermas for me is this one. if you were to read all of habermas, i doubt if you, let's say all about you knew about germany in the last 50 years, you would have learned it from reading habermas's books. would you even have guessed that there are two germanies? i don't think. haberman strictly behaves as if he lives in west germany, it's an immanent critique and so on. and that's what always, already when i was a student, that's what shocked me about frankfurter schule. on the one hand, what is their basic project? dialectic their aufklärung, which means, to simplify it, the horrible things that happened in the 20th century, gula, holocaust and so on, are not simply some regression into pre-modern logic like barbarism r and no they were something which was there as an immanent. potential of the project of modernity itself okay. but then why did they focus in their analysis only almost exclusively on fascism? i mean, it should be done, no doubt here. it intrigued me that isn't stalinism a much clearer example case of diaic der aufklärung? because fascism was not aufklärung. it was, as we all know, a conservative modernization, like this impossible dream. how? to have capitalism without capitalism without class struggle for this, you need an external enemy, the u, and so on and so on. but incidentally i've written about it. it's so nice in what way you can account for this basic difference, which doesn't make stalinism any better, between stalinism and fascism, even at the level of these apparently totally superficial rituals and so on. to give you one example, do you know i read this in anne applebaum's book on gul luck that even in the harshest. times, mid 30s and then till 50. every year on stalin's birthday all prisoners in a gulag camp were gathered and had to sign each of them a telegram to comrade stalin wishing him all the best and so on and so on. now, of course i'm not an idiot. not'm not claiming they really meant it. what i'm claiming is this, and here you can see one aspect of the difference. can you even imagine something like this in nazi germany? it would have been totally meaningless in the nazi universe. i don't know, gather once a year all auschwitz inmates and make them shine. telegram telegram for wishing all the best to hitler and so on. another thing which accounts for this difference. precisely these so-called show trials monstrous. tr. you have something which is specific to stalinism there, this public confession. you know how it looks like bukharin and all of them. you were, let's forget in what way. it wasn't even primarily physical torture, it was more pressure like, if you don't confess, we arrest also your children, whatever. okay, but the mystery is why the need for this public confession? and you discover something very strange. how... although... the one who was at these show trials, condemned and so on and confessed, although he was treated as the lowest of the lowest, you know, it's very interesting to read sacred texts of stalinism like short. history of the communist party, the sacred text. with regard to expressions they use, like it piece of shit, vermin, insect, and so on. so at the same time, you are the lowest of the lowest, but at the same time, it is as if you still participate in universal human mind, that you can account for yourself. for example, i remember reading in the czech trial, slansky, i think it was, no, rudolf slansky. how at the beginning, the prosecutor asked him, how did you become a traitor? and he says, i come from a bourgeois family. already when i was a young boy, my parents taught me to hate workers and so on and so on. what's so interesting is that you see, you are shit, skam of shitam. but at the same time, you participate in universal reason and can tell the truth about yourself. this is unimaginable in nazism. that's why, not because they were better. you cannot, it would have been the easiest thing in the world for the nazis to organize a big trial where through torture and so on, they would have made some jewish leaders, whatever, to confess the plot against germany it never happened. my point is that precisely in these perverse details, every prisoner still sending a telegram to stalin or this confession, this is what makes stalinism. part of enlightenment movement that we all participate in it. and again, this is what shocked me. why don't you find a theory of it in frankfurter schule? now, i did my homework. i know. you have herbert marcuse, soviet marxism, but this is, i read it decades ago. but this is just a very specific analysis of khrushchev, his speech on the 20th congress. it's not more, than you have a couple of texts here, there, but no systematic approach to it. and i'm not accusing them, frankfurt schule, of being secretly communist. no, they were quite normal anti-communists, believe me. i read in this big biography of adorno that, for example, in the early 50s, horkheimer was so anti-communist that he even thought that social democrats shouldn't be allowed to take power. social democrats in west germany. so he was much closer to that first generation, theodor heuss and so on, liberal politicians. so you see, here i think, that's why i'm so practically obsessed by stalinism. why? there is i'm not... right-wing revisionist, definitely not i'm not playing the game which is a very dangerous game going on today of subtly rehabilitating fascism. you know how. the first in my country also slovenia it's happening. the first step is to say all sides were doing horrible things to just apparently equalize them. no? like you know this is an old story like okay okay germans did horrible things but western allies bombed dresden and so on all that, all that. then you go a step further and you say very interesting that uh. you follow this who is the historian, nolte? yeah, who wrote a book on heidegger also, then you say that nonetheless, fascism was a reaction to communism, that it took all bad features from communism, like already in soviet union before hitler, they had concentration camps and so on and so on. then you just have to go one step further and say those who collaborated with danach? they were just confronted with a desperate choice and they have tragically chosen the lesser of two evils. and in a way, we should. understand them maybe even support them and so on and so on and i think this is a very. tric. notendency not that i have again any sympathy for stalin. but still, i think. not that i think stalinism was better. you know, it is for me one argument for stalinism. that it had dissidents. dissidents also in the sense of inner party dissidents. stalin all the time had to fight from trotsky to others who reproached him for you betrayed the true greatness of communist project and so on and so on. in nazism you don't find this. okay, we can play the game if gregor strasser or those early nazis were, but afterwards, once hitler established himself, sorry, i'm not aware of any tendency in nazi germany reproaching hitler for betraying the true fascist legacy or whatever. and i think precisely this radical inner tension. in stalinism. ich. a perverted effect. of the fact that there was an authentic core at the beginning. i think that whatever you say and we can play this game. i'm ready to play it. i'm not saying i'm not a crazy trotskyist who claims, oh, if you know the trotsky's dream. if only lenin were to survived three, four years more and made a pact with trotsky, there would be no stalin. we would have what? a kind of a happy social democracy or what? no, i think the tragedy was authentic. i really don't think der boss ! a possibility of another way to be taken. but nonetheless, it was an authentic tragedy in the sense of it did begin as an incredible emancipatory explosion. it turned into a nightmare. and i don't think we have yet a good theory about it. either we go too far into blaming i don't know. entire history of humanity. like, are we aware? that's why i like it, how crazy is thelectic daraufklärung, the book. it traces manipulative reason, so-called instrumentelle vernunft, begins which culminates in 20th century horrors.
Moderator
he traces it basically to the very beginning.
he traces it basically to the very beginning.
Slavoj Žižek
of humanity, the first magic thinking which is already manipulation so basically that is is there is. that stalinism in an ironic sense is the peak, the climax of the entire history of humanity, in the sense of what began with the first magic primitive so-called manipulations. culminated in stalinism. so this for me doesn't do the work i don. i don't believe in this. at the same time, i don't believe in these simple delimitations. but you know what? i am now getting caught into my own trap. off. two, three times it did happen to me that i gave a talk and all of the talk consisted of preliminary improvisations, you know.
of humanity, the first magic thinking which is already manipulation so basically that is is there is. that stalinism in an ironic sense is the peak, the climax of the entire history of humanity, in the sense of what began with the first magic primitive so-called manipulations. culminated in stalinism. so this for me doesn't do the work i don. i don't believe in this. at the same time, i don't believe in these simple delimitations. but you know what? i am now getting caught into my own trap. off. two, three times it did happen to me that i gave a talk and all of the talk consisted of preliminary improvisations, you know.
Moderator
actually, let me only tell you that... two things. one is that actually it was also stalin himself who's supposed to send letters to himself as he was also like differently than hitler was putting his hands together after his own speeches.
actually, let me only tell you that... two things. one is that actually it was also stalin himself who's supposed to send letters to himself as he was also like differently than hitler was putting his hands together after his own speeches.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah, i remember this is one of my big jokes and you can check it empirically if you don't believe me that. hitler gives a speech, people applaud. he just stands and recognizes himself as the addressee. when you have a stalinist leadership. after stalin's speech, people applaud. always the leader joins the applause. it may appear nonsense like does he applaud himself no, because the logic is totally different stalin's position is not symbolically, that of a leader, but that of a perfect servant of the people. that's the basic dogma of stalinism. we are just instruments of historical necessity or whatever and so on and so on.
yeah, i remember this is one of my big jokes and you can check it empirically if you don't believe me that. hitler gives a speech, people applaud. he just stands and recognizes himself as the addressee. when you have a stalinist leadership. after stalin's speech, people applaud. always the leader joins the applause. it may appear nonsense like does he applaud himself no, because the logic is totally different stalin's position is not symbolically, that of a leader, but that of a perfect servant of the people. that's the basic dogma of stalinism. we are just instruments of historical necessity or whatever and so on and so on.
Moderator
but actually you have the theories on the explanations tracing the emergence of totalitarianism in enlightenment, but in the... like marxist revisionist behind the iron curtain, kolakowski book, the first volume of main currents of marxism is exactly about this. but actually you have many other like popper is also the same
but actually you have the theories on the explanations tracing the emergence of totalitarianism in enlightenment, but in the... like marxist revisionist behind the iron curtain, kolakowski book, the first volume of main currents of marxism is exactly about this. but actually you have many other like popper is also the same
Slavoj Žižek
but okay for reasons into which we cannot go now..
but okay for reasons into which we cannot go now..
Moderator
the reason is probably because they are coming from enlightenment tradition differently than the frankfurter.
the reason is probably because they are coming from enlightenment tradition differently than the frankfurter.
Slavoj Žižek
yes, but what i don't... for example, let's take popper. you know. for reasons we don't have time now i'm afraid it will really be just some introductory remarks
yes, but what i don't... for example, let's take popper. you know. for reasons we don't have time now i'm afraid it will really be just some introductory remarks
Moderator
mm-hmm
mm-hmm
Slavoj Žižek
exchange between the two of us. you know for me i. radically disagree with popper's basic anti-platonic premise that you know pl yes, there are, of course, ominous things in plato, but my god, if i were to choose between plato and aristotle. plato, absolutely. first, let's not forget this. f! of course, i hope this is a rhetorical question. did you read plato's? politea or what? republic, whatever you translate it state. did you notice two things there which are extremely important, eh? there are no slaves there. pl plato's vision. ex slaves while the good liberal aristotle, you know his definition, slaves are talking tools or whatever and so on. second thing, maybe even more important. i'm sorry to inform you of this, but plato explicitly says. in my ideal state. women are equal to men. all posts are accessible to women also. he explicitly says the fact that women today are not. in that position, it's a historical contingency should be abolished. while aristotle, on the contrary, he naturalizes, ontologizes even sexual difference. you know, basically, male versus female is forum versus morphe versus hile, forum versus matter, and so on and so on. no, i think that, you know, when we... accuse some past thinkers of proto-totalitarianism. we should be. very very careful the same for. robespierre and company jacobins, jacob, jacob, jacob, my gop! i mean, uh... one thing, there is one reason for which i will forever love them, their relationship to haiti revolution. you know, haiti revolution was something for me, one of the greatest events in the history of humanity. why? because till then, you know, black slaves rebelled in haiti around the time of french revolution. de debt point all slave rebellions were let's return home. back to our roots, to whatever. no and this ruling ideology easily finds sheep. you remember if you are old enough, i am unfortunately am some 30, 40 years ago there was a hollywood hit mini-series precisely the root of how an american black guy finally establish succeed in retracing to the beginning want. no, the shock of haiti revolution was that black slaves rebelled there. but not on this program returning to our roots. but we want to do the same as french are doing, french revolution. and here, not that i'm flattering to you, this is one of the most glorious moments for me of polish history. because first all glory goes here to jacobins. when haiti delegation they won first visited paris assemblée nationale. they got a triumphant reception in assemblée nationale, immediately recognized as equals and so on. then napoleon took over. end. not only he sent the army to haiti to crush the rebellion, but he even wrote that this precedent is so dangerous, blacks, that all should be killed. women, children and new slaves brought there. and he sent there the army where a strong contingent was of polish soldiers. and i must tell you, i hope you know it, it's one of the most beautiful stories that i know. french army was approaching the black army of liberated slaves. and they heard some ching. they thought, oh, some stupid tribal songs probably. when they come closer, they heard what the black slaves were singing. la marseillaise, of course, and all the glory to paul.
exchange between the two of us. you know for me i. radically disagree with popper's basic anti-platonic premise that you know pl yes, there are, of course, ominous things in plato, but my god, if i were to choose between plato and aristotle. plato, absolutely. first, let's not forget this. f! of course, i hope this is a rhetorical question. did you read plato's? politea or what? republic, whatever you translate it state. did you notice two things there which are extremely important, eh? there are no slaves there. pl plato's vision. ex slaves while the good liberal aristotle, you know his definition, slaves are talking tools or whatever and so on. second thing, maybe even more important. i'm sorry to inform you of this, but plato explicitly says. in my ideal state. women are equal to men. all posts are accessible to women also. he explicitly says the fact that women today are not. in that position, it's a historical contingency should be abolished. while aristotle, on the contrary, he naturalizes, ontologizes even sexual difference. you know, basically, male versus female is forum versus morphe versus hile, forum versus matter, and so on and so on. no, i think that, you know, when we... accuse some past thinkers of proto-totalitarianism. we should be. very very careful the same for. robespierre and company jacobins, jacob, jacob, jacob, my gop! i mean, uh... one thing, there is one reason for which i will forever love them, their relationship to haiti revolution. you know, haiti revolution was something for me, one of the greatest events in the history of humanity. why? because till then, you know, black slaves rebelled in haiti around the time of french revolution. de debt point all slave rebellions were let's return home. back to our roots, to whatever. no and this ruling ideology easily finds sheep. you remember if you are old enough, i am unfortunately am some 30, 40 years ago there was a hollywood hit mini-series precisely the root of how an american black guy finally establish succeed in retracing to the beginning want. no, the shock of haiti revolution was that black slaves rebelled there. but not on this program returning to our roots. but we want to do the same as french are doing, french revolution. and here, not that i'm flattering to you, this is one of the most glorious moments for me of polish history. because first all glory goes here to jacobins. when haiti delegation they won first visited paris assemblée nationale. they got a triumphant reception in assemblée nationale, immediately recognized as equals and so on. then napoleon took over. end. not only he sent the army to haiti to crush the rebellion, but he even wrote that this precedent is so dangerous, blacks, that all should be killed. women, children and new slaves brought there. and he sent there the army where a strong contingent was of polish soldiers. and i must tell you, i hope you know it, it's one of the most beautiful stories that i know. french army was approaching the black army of liberated slaves. and they heard some ching. they thought, oh, some stupid tribal songs probably. when they come closer, they heard what the black slaves were singing. la marseillaise, of course, and all the glory to paul.
Moderator
but the most cynical in this napoleon's move was that he sent not just soldiers, but the polish army.
but the most cynical in this napoleon's move was that he sent not just soldiers, but the polish army.
Slavoj Žižek
against partition. so the people who actually were fighting for freedom and but that's the beauty. you know what they did then? the polish regiment. they simply, i simplify the story, realized, my god, we are fighting on the wrong side. and they changed sides. this is why, even when there was the darkest temptation, around 18045 to kill the white people, just black republic. they always exempted the pose. and i love this as a nonsensical manipulation but which works so nicely. you know, in haiti constitution 180004. they wanted to have a black republic. but they at the same time wanted to... recognize the polls. so you know what? the article 4, i think, of this constitution, you know what it says? it says haiti is a black republic. all citizens of haiti, independently of the color of their skin are black. i think it's an absolutely ingenious solution. no, but you see what i'm saying. to go back to the point, yes, horrible things did happen in french revolution. although, you know, for me it's all a matter of statistics in the sense of like read any precise history and you will see that there were much more liquidation killings by state before jacobin and after. in the thermidor. it's very simple. jacobins didn't just kill ordinary poor people, you know. they dared also to kill some notable people, you know. it's like my friend the indian writer arundati roy, you know. she wrote to me, you remember two years no two, three years ago, there were some public rape in india and we were all protesting like five people raped a girl in a bus. i agree to avoid it's horrible. but she wrote me, you know why this exploded? so widely as news because the girl was in both cases, there were two, three cases, middle class and the rapist were poor. she wrote to me, if you want to see horror, go to bombay or, as you say now politically correct, go to mumbai and visit brothels there. you discover absolute nightmares. these middlemen are buying from nepal and poor parts of india girls from the age of four and five and simply then you can have her, buy her relatively cheaply as a sex slave permanently or i mean, it's nightmare and it's not a secret. everybody knows where this happens. you see, nobody writes about this. and we are talking about thousands of cases like this. here i have i im returning to my old fashioned paranoiac attitude of our freedom is bourgeois freedom and so on. yes, we are free, but to what extent? what do we learn in our media? for example, back to india. you read so little bit about this in our media. you know that now in india there is a big maoist rebellion, so-called nqalit, going on. probably around 800,000, maybe one million rebels fighting for their survival in the jungle, those poor tribal areas armies now decimating them to develop mining there and so on. it's not... it's incredibly worse than all the top hits of our news, west bank, palestine and so on. no, india is supposed to be. the biggest democracy good, so you don't mention this. did you see the movie, which is a shitty movie, i admit, but it has a moment of truth. did you see slamduck millionaire? you remember what happens there at the very beginning. the guy who is just accused of cheating a little bit at some tv quiz. is's taken to a police station and there tortured with electricity and so on. and i asked my indian friend, is this happening? yes, they told me. if you are not very rich police is simply torturing people there and i was told this is a wonderful detail that. some indian democratic intellectuals even organised a protest a petition wonderfully ironic petition where they claimed they demanded from the police to at least raise at the level of chinese police in tibet. because they are torturing there in tibet, but not if you cheat at the tv quiz, you know. there you are tortured, of course, we know when, if there is a suspicion of contacts with dalai lama political. no? so their demand was, please, just follow the chinese there. torture us only if there is a political suspicion or what. don't torture everybody and so on. so- how much do we know but i'm losing time. after this short introduction, we have... oh my god, we have... no, okay, i will try to. can we go? a little bit over like it's not that after 40 minutes i have to stop. go with your flow. i hope okay. sorry? yeah, but you know that i always find this metaphysical notion of linear time. this is how i concretely fight it. no, no, okay, sorry. now i want what i wanted to do, let me do some serious theory at least. if my i will report on what i wanted to do my starting point was was the three levels of what we confront as problems today and how they are structured on the one hand it is the absolute external enemy. isis islamic state, boko haram, this totally brutal, irrational other. then we have the mid-level, let's call it new geopolitical tensions, united states, china or putin russia and so on. and then we have the renewed a little bit more radical left. in our europe itself syiza maybe podemos and so on and so on. my point of course is that. the most dangerous is the last one. siza and so on. that easy, ich... i even so. it's so non-transparent to know, i have good connections with israel, i'm informed, what is going on there, who is supporting whom. there are some good reasons that americans and israelis are not totally in russian there. what is now confirmed it was published in our press, you just have to look at it, you know, these are the small news. for example, do you know that in south lebanon the most of the border is controlled by hezbollah. and then you have one part of the border. eastern part which is controlled by al-qaeda because al-qaeda is sunni and fights heeshzbollah israel is systematically with arms, food and medical help supporting al-qaeda there. and it's not a crazy story, it's documented. i mean, they admit it and so on. so who knows what game people are playing there? the reason i like, not like, i find interesting. this islamic fundamentalism is we are not surprised enough of the strangeness of what is going on there for example isn't it strange that we have boko haram a bigak social movement which wants to restructure entire society and its main programmatic point is women at their own place. that is to say, no western education for women, which means no education and so on and so on. isn't this something so weird? how could this have happened? that all of a sudden we are back to the 60s when we were saying sexuality is political, but not exactly in the same sense, you know. and it's also interesting to what extent it's easy to make fun of boko haram, you know. but they are just the extreme point. there is more and more. this is, i think, what is also. behind this fear of gay rights or even you remember you were part of it here two three years ago when that crazy. conitaurst one eurovision, the russian reaction was very interesting. it was almost one step towards boko haram reaction, you like putin said, i read in the bible there are two kinds of people, men and women. what is going on now here and so on, you know my favorite statement was made by zinovsky, the nationalist, who says in europe there are now no longer men and women, there is only it you know. kind'm kind of stephen king. monster, but still... dkey. be. the so-called fundamentalism. what what i find... strange here ich. are a couple of things the first thing is that. and here we should become more self-critical why is this happening why this also in our country with fundamentalists, this politicization of religion? don't blame just islam. you know that these are official data. fbi in the united states, they have under observation 2 million americans, christian fundamentalists as potential threat. wait a minute. this is almost the same percentage, 1%2 as in. in muslim countries. so, of course we should fight fundamentalism, but we should also raise the question, what is it in the process of global capitalism which generates fundamentalism because fundamentalism is not simply a reminder of the past you know which example i always quote here afghanistan if some of you are old enough i am unfortunately. i remember 40 years ago, 50, afghanistan was maybe the most secular of the middle east islam countries. they had a pro-western king, kind of a technocrat, had kind they had a very... sorry. they have even a strong local communist party. and so on. then, you know what happened? communists made coup d'etat. when it failed, soviet union intervened to support them. then americans mobilized their allies like osama bin laden and so on. so you see what is the tragedy? the most, one of the most tolerant. countries! it became fundamentalist as part of being caught in global process. show. we shouldn't play innocent here and mock them. there are fundamentalists in arab countries. there are also fundamentalists in united states themselves. or which country probably apart from isis, the most fundamentalist? saudi arabia. but are we aware what strange country saudi arabia is? it's nothing. it's something that survives strictly from american and other countries. money. it's something which has no substance. they are getting billions from oil. it's western capitalism or capital organized. it state there. so. again, this would be my first point. second point, why this politicization? maybe did he even visit you here? my croat friend, boris buden. yeah, he wrote a wonderful book on this phenomena where he developed something which i deeply agree. that up. d... politicization of religion today. that we are witnessing. each not simply religion invading politics. but literally. religion! replacing politics itself. it's what we all know is happening. we are approaching an era where our societies are more and more depoliticized, depoliticized in the sense that we have all our private freedoms but then experts run economy and all politics that remains is mostly cultural politics. so. it's as if politics, which is disappearing, losing its substance, authentic politics, political struggle, is returning in the guise of religion. i think that this politicization of religion is strictly correlative to the disappearance of politics from our. from our societies now, okay, i will improvise a little bit, then you cut me short whenever you want. next thing i would like to develop here is what does this mean, i've written about it, for our notion of freedom. are we free or not in the west? maybe some of you know this line of thought of mine, but i would like to repeat it. of course we are free, and i'm not a stupid marxist who i'm not trying to sell you this shit, you know, oh it's just formal freedom and so on. no, the abc lesson of marx is forum matters. so an authentic marxist will never tell you oh this is just a formal freedom. things begin as a forum. look at human rights. we all know. that at the beginning, 18th century, human rights were basically rights of white people of property and so on. there was a subtle network of exclusions. but instead of saying, okay, these were just formal rights, people did something differently. they simply expanded these rights. first women said, why not also us? then blacks in haiti said so form matters. so but let me go on. nonetheless, let's say i ask you are you free? you would say yes. i also ask myself, i'm not treating you as idiot or if i am, i'm. also part of the group of idiots. okay uh. then i ask you, in what sense are you free? i claim that most you would have told me is something like freedom of personal choices. you would have told me, i am free because i can read whatever i want, i can do whatever i want in sexuality, i can travel whatever i want. i can, up to a point. here things get complex. i can say publicly whatever i want. i can take a job. whichever i want now again i would add if you get it and so on. but okay, this freedom of choice. it's a nice thing. but is this enough? my thesis is, and this is the lesson of what was disclosed by wikileaks and now everyone is talking about it. this is the lesson of this all famous secret likeisa secret trade agreements, that we are free, but the social texture frame. weak underlies our freedom which determines what are our choices is more and more non-transparent things are. that's the horror of tisha agreement. trade and flow of information agreement which as we all know if accepted will determine in detail coordinates of financial life and other which will seriously restrain governments of what they can do and so on. and uh there was no debate. in the original plan of this agreement it even said that it should remain secret for five years after it is. so. this is what fascinated me, how we are free at the personal level, maybe even more and more free. but the very frame of our freedom, you know, you are free in a certain context to choose this or that, that frame is more and more impenetrable. and here ideology enters, i claim. in what sense? ideology. uh in the sense that the trick is that your very form of unfreedom is presented to you as a new freedom. you can see this appearance in the mode of work, precarious work, which is getting more and more important. it's in a way horrible. you are all the time in anxiety, will my contract be prolonged and so on. your health insurance is not covered, retirement, you have to do it yourself, and so on and so on. but here come postmodern social theorists like anthony giddens, who is now happily half forgottenotten, who tell you, but these are new forms of freedom. look, state no longer prescribes to you how to be what health insurance you are free to choose it or you know like or they say basically, the wonderful trick is to treat each of us as a small capitalist. the official postmodern theory is this one. we are all self-entrepreneurs. let's say i'm a poor worker, i get a credit for 10,000 euros. and then i'm free to choose. will i go take my family to a big holiday? will i put money aside for studies of my children? will i invest in health or whatever? it's true! you have the... choice. but! at the same time this the constellation of this cho! causeless. incredible anxiety effectively limits your freedom and so on and so on. so i think that again, this is our paradox. what is more and more disappearing from our societies is freedom which should be part of our western freedoms and not. communist, but even ordinary democratic freedoms. the freedom, not just the freedom of choice within the existing social framework, but the freedom to collectively decide how to change this framework itself. and this is i claim more and more becoming. becoming almost unimaginable. i mean, this is why, and i don't have any naive hopes for them, this is why i admire syriza. my heart is breaking about how they are treated because i know them personally. i met a couple of times tsipras, varoufakis, my god, we are friends and so on. i can tell you this. forget about this medialized varoufakis, a crazy eccentric guy who walks around without a... die and makes provocations and so on and so on. read, try to get hold of what varufakish basically proposes to. brussels to european union it's something if you look at all his proposals it's something so modest. death. literally. what he is demanding from brussels is fort,50 years ago, this would have been an extremely centrist, modest social democracy. much less than sweden was doing at that point. now this is the first thing you should think about. where are we when something that was part of the totally acceptable normal social mainstream social democracy. to do this today, you appear as a crazy lunatic, radical leftist. no then there is another interesting thing, the topic of superego. name the... i know. since i'm here also to speak in freudhaus, we know ibich, supergo. superego is something very interesting, you know, superere ego, freudian, is not simply an ethical agency, but it's an obscene ethical agency. freud described it nicely how the paradox of supererego, ibich, is that. the more you follow it, the more you are guilty. you know, you are like your failure is part of the game in advance. and it's incredible to what extent this is confirmed. uh look if you look at the statements by varouakis and others, they are not claiming, no, we greeks don't want to pay the debt. no, they, my god, read them. their language is extremely rational. they say, yes, we screwed it up. yes, their only criticism, or a couple of criticisms, are very rational. they claim first, listen. it's not greeks as such. which government is most responsible for the greek debt? new democracy government. okay, we had elections. whom did western europe support? new democracy. sorry, isn't this a little bit strange? that you have a, it's like, you know, fighting criminal and then supporting the main criminal. second thing. not only the conditions how this depth was acquired, but second thing, it's clear that and here i would like to make you reap. they are now popular, some of these post-negri thinkers, italian, like franco berardi or maurizio lazzarato. lazzarato wrote a wonderful book called the rise of the indebteded men. where he has a wonderful simple but i think true theory of how. in today's society where you no longer can afford direct command herrschaft domination depth is the main way to control individuals and states because if you are in depth at you are controlled, you have to work for the debt and so on to repay it and so on. and so the basic dialectic here is that it's absolutely clear that the question is not shoot the greek return the debt or not. i think that the secret idea of those banks and countries who give debts is precisely that the debt should not be returned. that you have to be permanently in this controlled position, feeling guilty and so on. you know where i tested this empirically some 10 years ago with the help from chavez, who still had money at that point, i mean in venezuela, argentina surprisingly returned its debt to imf. and i remember the official first reaction from imf, which was, oh my god, what does it mean now? they will behave irresibly. you, they were literally shocked. they perceived as catastrophic news that argentina returned, covered up the debt from them. so this is the next thing. what is so annoying for the west in g is that they admit their debt. this is even their reason. verf reasoning is, l. in 2008 we had 120 billion of debt. now, after seven years of your austerity polit, the country is almost ruined economically but our debt is up to as we all know 180 185 billions so obviously your solution doesn't work, not even for you. it's not that they are destroying greece to get the debt at least repaid. they are not getting it. they are still throwing money. so varoufakis, extremely modestly is proposing them, let's make an arrangement like give us a little break here so that productivity raises, so that we can at least pay you some debt back and i think... irrationality is on the side of europe here. you know how you can detect this that even for example when varufak visit. sorry, i'm sorry. cameron. and osborne. the two conservative central figures of british government. they had great sympathy for girah. you know where i heard great sympathy for syriza when i was in the united states recently? i listened, i always like right-wing tv, i listened to fox news. the was roundtable there practically pro syriza. so you should always be aware that what is happening now here, it's not at all about rational europe encountering a crazy country who just wants to spend and so on and so on. no. it's a lesson of control. it's an ideological phenomenon and so on and so on and so on and so on. my next point, so let's go further. and then maybe i can stop so that we don't go too far or just one point i would love to make namely the, the point about sorry, the point about structure of power. uh how is power how this is, i think, an extremely interesting phenomenon, namely how? does authority function today? because i think this is part of this democratic game of you know. we are all self-entrepreneurs and so on. here i refer to the work of alka zantich and some other of my lakian colleagues in slovenia. traditional power works in a fetishist way in the sense of you may know personally that that guy. who embodies power is an idiot like you, but if he has the proper insignia. then when he speaks power, the law speaks through him. it's this fetishistic logic of what in psychoanalysis we call... we call symbolic castration. like, for example, socrates, when he was condemned to death, his point is basically, i know those judges who condemned me are idiots, but nonetheless, they are legal power. law speaks through. them so ils disent, je sais bien, mais quand même. i know very well, but i know very well you are an idiot, like me, but. nonetheless. through you a higher. authority. act. so, okay. what i claim is that. today, and this is maybe the big result of 68 60s rebellion and how this rebellion was re-appropriated in a triumphant way by ruling ideology today. costumes mask this insignia of power. are no longer no longer. necessary today power uh. but okay, i'll put it in this way. how does a typical, typical, not all of them of course, boss act today? it's no longer insisting on this dignity and so on. it's more like, listen, i'm the same guy like you, let's be equal. you know, a typical boss today, i don't know, you come on monday to the job, he kicks you, did you have a good sex, a nice or you know, like, we are the colleagues. displaying the same weaknesses as you but the paradox is all this not only in no way undermines his or her power it makes it even stronger. the paradox is that the boss, the leader, authority, whatever, is allowed, as we say in psychanalytic jargon, to display his castration, make fun of himself, ridiculous guy, weak, and so on and so on. and this in no way limits his power but makes it in a way even more absolute. in what sense? because i claim that when you have this egalitarian boss the oppression is even worse because it's not so much that there is no herrschaft, domination. but that domination itself becomes unspeakable. what do i mean by this? once i had a debate with. judith butler. who i think was here a couple of times in vienna, you know her and i have many i had many polemics with her but at one point i agree with her where she said that the most dangerous oppression, i simplify her argument, on women is not when they are directly oppressed, but when they are de facto oppressed, but this is masked by a superficial oh, but we are the same, you know, like. false spirit of fraternal equality and so on and so on. so she had a wonderful proposal. she said that in such a situation, the most subversive gesture of a woman is to demand men to act as a master, like you are de facto master, so don't give me this bullshit that we are all equal. give me orders and this is. the way to... maybe to undermine domination in what way let me return to the beginning to our beloved stalinism an example that i always like to use, a fictional example. let's say we are in moscow 1935. let's say, to be modest, you are central committee, i am stalin. somebody has to be. i give a big speech, you applaud, you know, you applaud, i applaud, and so on. then we have a debate. one of you attack me. eh. next day, probably the big. debate will be who has seen that guy alive the last night. but ah now that's not all. let's say then that another of you stands up and starts to shout at this first guy who attacked me. are you crazy? we don't do this here. we don't attack comrade stalin. i claim the second guy would disappear even faster. you see the point? it wasn't only prohibited to criticize stalin, it was even more prohibited to publicly announce. dispro. it's not only that stalin was a master but if you say this, you were. well, you disappeared or whatever. so this paradox i find so fascinating. and here we learn so much about how ideology works, about how... okay, we have relations of domination, but precisely the worst domination is a domination which. in which you, if you are the dominated one, you have to pretend as live, act as if. there is no domination. i could go on here. there are many paradoxes here. which are not abstract theoretical paradoxes but determine our daily life like one of the basic ideological mechanisms, and this tells a lot about the freedom of choice is that to put it brutally, you are given the freedom of choice on one condition, that you make the right choice. you know. and now you will say, this is crazy. no, i think this is maybe even the fundamental feature of our symbolic universe, in a way. look, don't you have these rituals? i repeat now some of my old topics. don't you have these rituals? for example, let's say you are rich, i am poor. you invite me to dinner. and although we all know in advance that you will pay. but there is, at least in my country, i think, a ritual that i have when the bill arrives, i have to insist a little bit, no, no, no, let me pay, and then we play this game for. i mean, if you really hate me, you should say, okay, pay. then. but see, but it's too easy to say that this is a hypocrisy. this is how politeness works. and add level ideology at its most elementary enters. i hope you don't know there is a story which was told to me by a friend of mine. when he served military service when he did his military service decades ago in old yugoslavia. i don't know how it is in your army, but now you don't know when you still had conscript army with yugoslavia it was like this, probably most of the armies. once you are there, in the army, for some two weeks you have elementary training and there're the big moment. arise where all of you are gathered there you repeat the pledge, i am read blah blah, and then you sign your name in some book and you are a soldier now. okay. what a friend of a friend of mine, this friend of mine was just there. so this deed is something ingenious. after the ceremony, when he had to sign the book, he approached. the officer and said, i don't want to sign it. and the officer told him, are you crazy? you will be arrested. then the friend of my friend told him, but wait a minute. are you ordering me to sign it or is this a free pledge? the officer told him, of course it's free. free decision. the guy said, but if it's free, why should i sign it then and so on. so they got engaged in a paradox and at the end, the friend of my friend got a paper, i have a photocopy, where this officer gave him a written statement claiming that he, the officer, is ordering him, the soldier, is ordering him to freely sign the oath. i think, again. you have this mechanism at the very beginning and i think we should do all these studies today. if you want to get at how we are controlled today, for example, another story that i repeated ten20 times of how this permissivity can be even worse oppression. imagine that. you are a small boy, it's sunday afternoon, your father wants you to visit your grandmother. and you hate it, of course. you would prefer to play with friends. if you have a traditional patriarchal father, everything is okay. the father will simply tell you, listen, i don't care how you feel. it's your duty to do it, do it and behave properly. if this happens, everything is okay. you will rebel, you will become a normal. young guy but now enters the monster called post-mod permissive f. what does he do? he does something like this. i know because i. experience this. he tells you. you are free to go or not. but please be aware of how much your grandmother loves you and misses you and so on. so you know what he is really telling you. he's subtly not just ordering you to go, but he's ordering you to go voluntarily, to freely go. you know, this is the true terror, not just you have to do it. but you have to want to do it. and i think, again, mechanisms like that are absolutely crucial today. this is what i'm sorry, we don't have more time to go into this because this is, i think, so fundamental. that's why, if there is an era that i remember as a pure paradise, it was my military service. no, i'm not crazy. no, precisely i was shocked, disappointed. in my psychological structure, i'm kind of a fascist probably. i like discipline and order. and what shocked me in the army was how it's not really like that, at least yugoslav army. beneath the discipline and order, there is an obscure domain of obscene jokes, perversions and so on, and it took me a long time to guess how. there is nothing subversive in these jokes. they are absolutely crucial for the military discipline to reproduce itself. you know, and then more and more i'm convinced that every institution has something like this. for example, in united states, the top colleges, you know, you have all these fraternities, sororities with their obscene rituals and so on. in yugoslav military, ah, another thing fascinated me. this is what my gay friends don't like to hear. officially! officially, publicly, the army was extremely brutally homophobic. and it really meant it. if a soldier was discovered to be gay, he was every night, nobody there to talk to him. he was usually every night beaten, you know, the standard ritual. somebody puts a pillow on your head and others beat you with their belts and so on. okay, you will say, okay, ah, it's not so simple. because at the same time... the entire army life was penetrated by homosexual innuendos and so on. i remember, for example, in my unit when you met your friend in the morning, you didn't say good morning, you say smoke mine. this was an euphemism for fellatio, you know. like it was every i could give you dozens of it. so you know what fascinates me so much that no power structure can reproduce you need what i call inherent transgression, apparent dirty transgressions, which may appear even subversive, but they are part of the game. they are crucial for the reproduction of power structure. so why is this so important today? because i think that today uh. d official public structure is more and more egalitarian. yes but relations of dimin survive at this implicit, obscene, unspoken level. you know this like when do you really admit something? when do you really belong to a community from the nation to a family. it's not enough just to follow the explicit. r? it's also to know how and when to violate these rules. i think communities is never defined any communal body just by the explicit rules. you only this is why people who, to learn manners go, but nobody cares about it today. you know, when i was still young, you had these people who taught you good manners so that you know how to behave in high-class society. and it always fails. why? because they taught you the rules, but they didn't teach you how to violate the rules. you are really a member of a community if you know all these implicit rules, of which rules are you to take seriously, which rules you have to violate how? for example, there are rules which are meant to be. transgressed. especially in sexuality. when, for example, in traditional patriarchal sexuality, when father tells you not to mix with girls, it's really a call do it discreetly and so on and so on. there are many rules like this, which just, you know, this is the st. paul paul bible dimension of you need prohibition to generate your desire and so on. but much more interesting for me is the opposite example. not when something is prohibited but the message of the law is to do it, but when something you are permitted, even solicited to do it. you know that you are given a freedom on condition that you don't use it. so i may conclude with a story from my youth. i wasn't a big dissident. i was kind of a half dissident. and i remember when i was young, i was in a student journal and we were... there were elections. now, in ex-yugoslavia, elections were not as bad as in soviet union. the party didn't get 99.7. they had enough about 80, 85%. but we knew it, no? how it? so we at the journal ask ourselves, what should we do? ch! radical idiots proposed, why don't we simply openly do a heroic gesture. let's publish an issue of this journal where we claim these were not free elections, these were a fake and so on. okay. we said, but everybody knows this. what would be the point? we would just appear idiots, you know. so then one of us, not me, had an ingenious idea which worked. we said, they are claiming that these are real democratic elections. so let's just treat them like that. and on the evening of elections, we published an extraordinary issue of the journal with big titles. latest election results, it looks that communists will remain in power, you know like and it was such a wonderful act because they were so furious at us, at the central committee, not really, we didn't risk being. and they called us there and said, boys, don't do this. you provoke us. then we just naively said, listen, these were free elections and... we felt the duty to inform people of the result.. and it was so tragic, this party bureaucrat, because he couldn't have told us, no, they were not free elections. he just said, boys, don't fuck with me. you know very well what i mean. we asked him, but what do you mean? don't mess with me. you know like, i almost felt the sympathy for that guy. you know. and now to really finish, because you once, when we had the last debate, asked me, where am i? revolution, social democracy, whatever. ah, i combined the two. no, not in some stupid synthetic way. that's why i like syiza. that's why i like up to a point, it's so fashionable today to be against president obama. he did chump. good thing. why? take obama and universal healthcare. it's nothing revolutionary, my god. most of the western liberal states have still some kind of universal health care. but in america, in united states, it's a traumatic point. you know what happened to obama? he was dragged up to the supreme court and so on. so i think the art of politics today. ich tue. formulate a specific demand which is a very modest one. nobody can accuse you you want stalinism or whatever. like obama healthcare, it's something that canada held but in that concrete constellation it is extremely traumatic. you trigger a whole process. so not big demands, big demands can often be meaningless, you know. i mean, i remember this from my communist youth in communist yugoslavia in the last years, when they allowed dissidents up to a point, dissidents become a profession. these were wonderful times, you know. communist party financed like there was a dissident congress, anti-communist in paris and the government, okay, you can go there, blah, blah, we finance you the trip. the catch was just what? don't be too concrete, you know, like communism is worse than fascism. they didn't care about that. but don't say repeal that law here in our country, you know. like that's my lesson from those times that the art is often not to make big radical demands. for example, take greece today. they have a communist party. which is still pretty strong one. usually it gets between 5 and 10%. now they lost. and it's the last big, as far as i know, stalinist communist party. by stalinist, i really mean stalinist. they still reprint the collected works of stalin. which is their sacred literature and even for example their enemy is not gorbachev their enemy is khrushchev who betrayed it by and they said, no sy is a social democratic no, let's wait we want authentic revolution. to be cynical, all right-wingers love them. because they know that it's totally meaningless. they don't threaten anyone. nothing changes. it's just a very comfortable position of sitting there in the back with your radical demands and so on and so on. you know, that's the tragedy. if you say we want communist revolution, it means nothing. if you just say like varoufakis, let's renegotiate debts a little bit, everyone is in a panic. and that's what we should learn. and here we should be very specific to specific countries. for example, in united states, universal healthcare triggers a process which you never know where it will end. in our countries, multiculturalism is a manipulated phrase. in turkey, it means something with armenians, kurds and so on and so on. here i see an option, you know, because what i'm... i love movies so. bravo. but we are very prominent members of this community. we broke all the disciplines. rules and everything especially beginning with the time rule
against partition. so the people who actually were fighting for freedom and but that's the beauty. you know what they did then? the polish regiment. they simply, i simplify the story, realized, my god, we are fighting on the wrong side. and they changed sides. this is why, even when there was the darkest temptation, around 18045 to kill the white people, just black republic. they always exempted the pose. and i love this as a nonsensical manipulation but which works so nicely. you know, in haiti constitution 180004. they wanted to have a black republic. but they at the same time wanted to... recognize the polls. so you know what? the article 4, i think, of this constitution, you know what it says? it says haiti is a black republic. all citizens of haiti, independently of the color of their skin are black. i think it's an absolutely ingenious solution. no, but you see what i'm saying. to go back to the point, yes, horrible things did happen in french revolution. although, you know, for me it's all a matter of statistics in the sense of like read any precise history and you will see that there were much more liquidation killings by state before jacobin and after. in the thermidor. it's very simple. jacobins didn't just kill ordinary poor people, you know. they dared also to kill some notable people, you know. it's like my friend the indian writer arundati roy, you know. she wrote to me, you remember two years no two, three years ago, there were some public rape in india and we were all protesting like five people raped a girl in a bus. i agree to avoid it's horrible. but she wrote me, you know why this exploded? so widely as news because the girl was in both cases, there were two, three cases, middle class and the rapist were poor. she wrote to me, if you want to see horror, go to bombay or, as you say now politically correct, go to mumbai and visit brothels there. you discover absolute nightmares. these middlemen are buying from nepal and poor parts of india girls from the age of four and five and simply then you can have her, buy her relatively cheaply as a sex slave permanently or i mean, it's nightmare and it's not a secret. everybody knows where this happens. you see, nobody writes about this. and we are talking about thousands of cases like this. here i have i im returning to my old fashioned paranoiac attitude of our freedom is bourgeois freedom and so on. yes, we are free, but to what extent? what do we learn in our media? for example, back to india. you read so little bit about this in our media. you know that now in india there is a big maoist rebellion, so-called nqalit, going on. probably around 800,000, maybe one million rebels fighting for their survival in the jungle, those poor tribal areas armies now decimating them to develop mining there and so on. it's not... it's incredibly worse than all the top hits of our news, west bank, palestine and so on. no, india is supposed to be. the biggest democracy good, so you don't mention this. did you see the movie, which is a shitty movie, i admit, but it has a moment of truth. did you see slamduck millionaire? you remember what happens there at the very beginning. the guy who is just accused of cheating a little bit at some tv quiz. is's taken to a police station and there tortured with electricity and so on. and i asked my indian friend, is this happening? yes, they told me. if you are not very rich police is simply torturing people there and i was told this is a wonderful detail that. some indian democratic intellectuals even organised a protest a petition wonderfully ironic petition where they claimed they demanded from the police to at least raise at the level of chinese police in tibet. because they are torturing there in tibet, but not if you cheat at the tv quiz, you know. there you are tortured, of course, we know when, if there is a suspicion of contacts with dalai lama political. no? so their demand was, please, just follow the chinese there. torture us only if there is a political suspicion or what. don't torture everybody and so on. so- how much do we know but i'm losing time. after this short introduction, we have... oh my god, we have... no, okay, i will try to. can we go? a little bit over like it's not that after 40 minutes i have to stop. go with your flow. i hope okay. sorry? yeah, but you know that i always find this metaphysical notion of linear time. this is how i concretely fight it. no, no, okay, sorry. now i want what i wanted to do, let me do some serious theory at least. if my i will report on what i wanted to do my starting point was was the three levels of what we confront as problems today and how they are structured on the one hand it is the absolute external enemy. isis islamic state, boko haram, this totally brutal, irrational other. then we have the mid-level, let's call it new geopolitical tensions, united states, china or putin russia and so on. and then we have the renewed a little bit more radical left. in our europe itself syiza maybe podemos and so on and so on. my point of course is that. the most dangerous is the last one. siza and so on. that easy, ich... i even so. it's so non-transparent to know, i have good connections with israel, i'm informed, what is going on there, who is supporting whom. there are some good reasons that americans and israelis are not totally in russian there. what is now confirmed it was published in our press, you just have to look at it, you know, these are the small news. for example, do you know that in south lebanon the most of the border is controlled by hezbollah. and then you have one part of the border. eastern part which is controlled by al-qaeda because al-qaeda is sunni and fights heeshzbollah israel is systematically with arms, food and medical help supporting al-qaeda there. and it's not a crazy story, it's documented. i mean, they admit it and so on. so who knows what game people are playing there? the reason i like, not like, i find interesting. this islamic fundamentalism is we are not surprised enough of the strangeness of what is going on there for example isn't it strange that we have boko haram a bigak social movement which wants to restructure entire society and its main programmatic point is women at their own place. that is to say, no western education for women, which means no education and so on and so on. isn't this something so weird? how could this have happened? that all of a sudden we are back to the 60s when we were saying sexuality is political, but not exactly in the same sense, you know. and it's also interesting to what extent it's easy to make fun of boko haram, you know. but they are just the extreme point. there is more and more. this is, i think, what is also. behind this fear of gay rights or even you remember you were part of it here two three years ago when that crazy. conitaurst one eurovision, the russian reaction was very interesting. it was almost one step towards boko haram reaction, you like putin said, i read in the bible there are two kinds of people, men and women. what is going on now here and so on, you know my favorite statement was made by zinovsky, the nationalist, who says in europe there are now no longer men and women, there is only it you know. kind'm kind of stephen king. monster, but still... dkey. be. the so-called fundamentalism. what what i find... strange here ich. are a couple of things the first thing is that. and here we should become more self-critical why is this happening why this also in our country with fundamentalists, this politicization of religion? don't blame just islam. you know that these are official data. fbi in the united states, they have under observation 2 million americans, christian fundamentalists as potential threat. wait a minute. this is almost the same percentage, 1%2 as in. in muslim countries. so, of course we should fight fundamentalism, but we should also raise the question, what is it in the process of global capitalism which generates fundamentalism because fundamentalism is not simply a reminder of the past you know which example i always quote here afghanistan if some of you are old enough i am unfortunately. i remember 40 years ago, 50, afghanistan was maybe the most secular of the middle east islam countries. they had a pro-western king, kind of a technocrat, had kind they had a very... sorry. they have even a strong local communist party. and so on. then, you know what happened? communists made coup d'etat. when it failed, soviet union intervened to support them. then americans mobilized their allies like osama bin laden and so on. so you see what is the tragedy? the most, one of the most tolerant. countries! it became fundamentalist as part of being caught in global process. show. we shouldn't play innocent here and mock them. there are fundamentalists in arab countries. there are also fundamentalists in united states themselves. or which country probably apart from isis, the most fundamentalist? saudi arabia. but are we aware what strange country saudi arabia is? it's nothing. it's something that survives strictly from american and other countries. money. it's something which has no substance. they are getting billions from oil. it's western capitalism or capital organized. it state there. so. again, this would be my first point. second point, why this politicization? maybe did he even visit you here? my croat friend, boris buden. yeah, he wrote a wonderful book on this phenomena where he developed something which i deeply agree. that up. d... politicization of religion today. that we are witnessing. each not simply religion invading politics. but literally. religion! replacing politics itself. it's what we all know is happening. we are approaching an era where our societies are more and more depoliticized, depoliticized in the sense that we have all our private freedoms but then experts run economy and all politics that remains is mostly cultural politics. so. it's as if politics, which is disappearing, losing its substance, authentic politics, political struggle, is returning in the guise of religion. i think that this politicization of religion is strictly correlative to the disappearance of politics from our. from our societies now, okay, i will improvise a little bit, then you cut me short whenever you want. next thing i would like to develop here is what does this mean, i've written about it, for our notion of freedom. are we free or not in the west? maybe some of you know this line of thought of mine, but i would like to repeat it. of course we are free, and i'm not a stupid marxist who i'm not trying to sell you this shit, you know, oh it's just formal freedom and so on. no, the abc lesson of marx is forum matters. so an authentic marxist will never tell you oh this is just a formal freedom. things begin as a forum. look at human rights. we all know. that at the beginning, 18th century, human rights were basically rights of white people of property and so on. there was a subtle network of exclusions. but instead of saying, okay, these were just formal rights, people did something differently. they simply expanded these rights. first women said, why not also us? then blacks in haiti said so form matters. so but let me go on. nonetheless, let's say i ask you are you free? you would say yes. i also ask myself, i'm not treating you as idiot or if i am, i'm. also part of the group of idiots. okay uh. then i ask you, in what sense are you free? i claim that most you would have told me is something like freedom of personal choices. you would have told me, i am free because i can read whatever i want, i can do whatever i want in sexuality, i can travel whatever i want. i can, up to a point. here things get complex. i can say publicly whatever i want. i can take a job. whichever i want now again i would add if you get it and so on. but okay, this freedom of choice. it's a nice thing. but is this enough? my thesis is, and this is the lesson of what was disclosed by wikileaks and now everyone is talking about it. this is the lesson of this all famous secret likeisa secret trade agreements, that we are free, but the social texture frame. weak underlies our freedom which determines what are our choices is more and more non-transparent things are. that's the horror of tisha agreement. trade and flow of information agreement which as we all know if accepted will determine in detail coordinates of financial life and other which will seriously restrain governments of what they can do and so on. and uh there was no debate. in the original plan of this agreement it even said that it should remain secret for five years after it is. so. this is what fascinated me, how we are free at the personal level, maybe even more and more free. but the very frame of our freedom, you know, you are free in a certain context to choose this or that, that frame is more and more impenetrable. and here ideology enters, i claim. in what sense? ideology. uh in the sense that the trick is that your very form of unfreedom is presented to you as a new freedom. you can see this appearance in the mode of work, precarious work, which is getting more and more important. it's in a way horrible. you are all the time in anxiety, will my contract be prolonged and so on. your health insurance is not covered, retirement, you have to do it yourself, and so on and so on. but here come postmodern social theorists like anthony giddens, who is now happily half forgottenotten, who tell you, but these are new forms of freedom. look, state no longer prescribes to you how to be what health insurance you are free to choose it or you know like or they say basically, the wonderful trick is to treat each of us as a small capitalist. the official postmodern theory is this one. we are all self-entrepreneurs. let's say i'm a poor worker, i get a credit for 10,000 euros. and then i'm free to choose. will i go take my family to a big holiday? will i put money aside for studies of my children? will i invest in health or whatever? it's true! you have the... choice. but! at the same time this the constellation of this cho! causeless. incredible anxiety effectively limits your freedom and so on and so on. so i think that again, this is our paradox. what is more and more disappearing from our societies is freedom which should be part of our western freedoms and not. communist, but even ordinary democratic freedoms. the freedom, not just the freedom of choice within the existing social framework, but the freedom to collectively decide how to change this framework itself. and this is i claim more and more becoming. becoming almost unimaginable. i mean, this is why, and i don't have any naive hopes for them, this is why i admire syriza. my heart is breaking about how they are treated because i know them personally. i met a couple of times tsipras, varoufakis, my god, we are friends and so on. i can tell you this. forget about this medialized varoufakis, a crazy eccentric guy who walks around without a... die and makes provocations and so on and so on. read, try to get hold of what varufakish basically proposes to. brussels to european union it's something if you look at all his proposals it's something so modest. death. literally. what he is demanding from brussels is fort,50 years ago, this would have been an extremely centrist, modest social democracy. much less than sweden was doing at that point. now this is the first thing you should think about. where are we when something that was part of the totally acceptable normal social mainstream social democracy. to do this today, you appear as a crazy lunatic, radical leftist. no then there is another interesting thing, the topic of superego. name the... i know. since i'm here also to speak in freudhaus, we know ibich, supergo. superego is something very interesting, you know, superere ego, freudian, is not simply an ethical agency, but it's an obscene ethical agency. freud described it nicely how the paradox of supererego, ibich, is that. the more you follow it, the more you are guilty. you know, you are like your failure is part of the game in advance. and it's incredible to what extent this is confirmed. uh look if you look at the statements by varouakis and others, they are not claiming, no, we greeks don't want to pay the debt. no, they, my god, read them. their language is extremely rational. they say, yes, we screwed it up. yes, their only criticism, or a couple of criticisms, are very rational. they claim first, listen. it's not greeks as such. which government is most responsible for the greek debt? new democracy government. okay, we had elections. whom did western europe support? new democracy. sorry, isn't this a little bit strange? that you have a, it's like, you know, fighting criminal and then supporting the main criminal. second thing. not only the conditions how this depth was acquired, but second thing, it's clear that and here i would like to make you reap. they are now popular, some of these post-negri thinkers, italian, like franco berardi or maurizio lazzarato. lazzarato wrote a wonderful book called the rise of the indebteded men. where he has a wonderful simple but i think true theory of how. in today's society where you no longer can afford direct command herrschaft domination depth is the main way to control individuals and states because if you are in depth at you are controlled, you have to work for the debt and so on to repay it and so on. and so the basic dialectic here is that it's absolutely clear that the question is not shoot the greek return the debt or not. i think that the secret idea of those banks and countries who give debts is precisely that the debt should not be returned. that you have to be permanently in this controlled position, feeling guilty and so on. you know where i tested this empirically some 10 years ago with the help from chavez, who still had money at that point, i mean in venezuela, argentina surprisingly returned its debt to imf. and i remember the official first reaction from imf, which was, oh my god, what does it mean now? they will behave irresibly. you, they were literally shocked. they perceived as catastrophic news that argentina returned, covered up the debt from them. so this is the next thing. what is so annoying for the west in g is that they admit their debt. this is even their reason. verf reasoning is, l. in 2008 we had 120 billion of debt. now, after seven years of your austerity polit, the country is almost ruined economically but our debt is up to as we all know 180 185 billions so obviously your solution doesn't work, not even for you. it's not that they are destroying greece to get the debt at least repaid. they are not getting it. they are still throwing money. so varoufakis, extremely modestly is proposing them, let's make an arrangement like give us a little break here so that productivity raises, so that we can at least pay you some debt back and i think... irrationality is on the side of europe here. you know how you can detect this that even for example when varufak visit. sorry, i'm sorry. cameron. and osborne. the two conservative central figures of british government. they had great sympathy for girah. you know where i heard great sympathy for syriza when i was in the united states recently? i listened, i always like right-wing tv, i listened to fox news. the was roundtable there practically pro syriza. so you should always be aware that what is happening now here, it's not at all about rational europe encountering a crazy country who just wants to spend and so on and so on. no. it's a lesson of control. it's an ideological phenomenon and so on and so on and so on and so on. my next point, so let's go further. and then maybe i can stop so that we don't go too far or just one point i would love to make namely the, the point about sorry, the point about structure of power. uh how is power how this is, i think, an extremely interesting phenomenon, namely how? does authority function today? because i think this is part of this democratic game of you know. we are all self-entrepreneurs and so on. here i refer to the work of alka zantich and some other of my lakian colleagues in slovenia. traditional power works in a fetishist way in the sense of you may know personally that that guy. who embodies power is an idiot like you, but if he has the proper insignia. then when he speaks power, the law speaks through him. it's this fetishistic logic of what in psychoanalysis we call... we call symbolic castration. like, for example, socrates, when he was condemned to death, his point is basically, i know those judges who condemned me are idiots, but nonetheless, they are legal power. law speaks through. them so ils disent, je sais bien, mais quand même. i know very well, but i know very well you are an idiot, like me, but. nonetheless. through you a higher. authority. act. so, okay. what i claim is that. today, and this is maybe the big result of 68 60s rebellion and how this rebellion was re-appropriated in a triumphant way by ruling ideology today. costumes mask this insignia of power. are no longer no longer. necessary today power uh. but okay, i'll put it in this way. how does a typical, typical, not all of them of course, boss act today? it's no longer insisting on this dignity and so on. it's more like, listen, i'm the same guy like you, let's be equal. you know, a typical boss today, i don't know, you come on monday to the job, he kicks you, did you have a good sex, a nice or you know, like, we are the colleagues. displaying the same weaknesses as you but the paradox is all this not only in no way undermines his or her power it makes it even stronger. the paradox is that the boss, the leader, authority, whatever, is allowed, as we say in psychanalytic jargon, to display his castration, make fun of himself, ridiculous guy, weak, and so on and so on. and this in no way limits his power but makes it in a way even more absolute. in what sense? because i claim that when you have this egalitarian boss the oppression is even worse because it's not so much that there is no herrschaft, domination. but that domination itself becomes unspeakable. what do i mean by this? once i had a debate with. judith butler. who i think was here a couple of times in vienna, you know her and i have many i had many polemics with her but at one point i agree with her where she said that the most dangerous oppression, i simplify her argument, on women is not when they are directly oppressed, but when they are de facto oppressed, but this is masked by a superficial oh, but we are the same, you know, like. false spirit of fraternal equality and so on and so on. so she had a wonderful proposal. she said that in such a situation, the most subversive gesture of a woman is to demand men to act as a master, like you are de facto master, so don't give me this bullshit that we are all equal. give me orders and this is. the way to... maybe to undermine domination in what way let me return to the beginning to our beloved stalinism an example that i always like to use, a fictional example. let's say we are in moscow 1935. let's say, to be modest, you are central committee, i am stalin. somebody has to be. i give a big speech, you applaud, you know, you applaud, i applaud, and so on. then we have a debate. one of you attack me. eh. next day, probably the big. debate will be who has seen that guy alive the last night. but ah now that's not all. let's say then that another of you stands up and starts to shout at this first guy who attacked me. are you crazy? we don't do this here. we don't attack comrade stalin. i claim the second guy would disappear even faster. you see the point? it wasn't only prohibited to criticize stalin, it was even more prohibited to publicly announce. dispro. it's not only that stalin was a master but if you say this, you were. well, you disappeared or whatever. so this paradox i find so fascinating. and here we learn so much about how ideology works, about how... okay, we have relations of domination, but precisely the worst domination is a domination which. in which you, if you are the dominated one, you have to pretend as live, act as if. there is no domination. i could go on here. there are many paradoxes here. which are not abstract theoretical paradoxes but determine our daily life like one of the basic ideological mechanisms, and this tells a lot about the freedom of choice is that to put it brutally, you are given the freedom of choice on one condition, that you make the right choice. you know. and now you will say, this is crazy. no, i think this is maybe even the fundamental feature of our symbolic universe, in a way. look, don't you have these rituals? i repeat now some of my old topics. don't you have these rituals? for example, let's say you are rich, i am poor. you invite me to dinner. and although we all know in advance that you will pay. but there is, at least in my country, i think, a ritual that i have when the bill arrives, i have to insist a little bit, no, no, no, let me pay, and then we play this game for. i mean, if you really hate me, you should say, okay, pay. then. but see, but it's too easy to say that this is a hypocrisy. this is how politeness works. and add level ideology at its most elementary enters. i hope you don't know there is a story which was told to me by a friend of mine. when he served military service when he did his military service decades ago in old yugoslavia. i don't know how it is in your army, but now you don't know when you still had conscript army with yugoslavia it was like this, probably most of the armies. once you are there, in the army, for some two weeks you have elementary training and there're the big moment. arise where all of you are gathered there you repeat the pledge, i am read blah blah, and then you sign your name in some book and you are a soldier now. okay. what a friend of a friend of mine, this friend of mine was just there. so this deed is something ingenious. after the ceremony, when he had to sign the book, he approached. the officer and said, i don't want to sign it. and the officer told him, are you crazy? you will be arrested. then the friend of my friend told him, but wait a minute. are you ordering me to sign it or is this a free pledge? the officer told him, of course it's free. free decision. the guy said, but if it's free, why should i sign it then and so on. so they got engaged in a paradox and at the end, the friend of my friend got a paper, i have a photocopy, where this officer gave him a written statement claiming that he, the officer, is ordering him, the soldier, is ordering him to freely sign the oath. i think, again. you have this mechanism at the very beginning and i think we should do all these studies today. if you want to get at how we are controlled today, for example, another story that i repeated ten20 times of how this permissivity can be even worse oppression. imagine that. you are a small boy, it's sunday afternoon, your father wants you to visit your grandmother. and you hate it, of course. you would prefer to play with friends. if you have a traditional patriarchal father, everything is okay. the father will simply tell you, listen, i don't care how you feel. it's your duty to do it, do it and behave properly. if this happens, everything is okay. you will rebel, you will become a normal. young guy but now enters the monster called post-mod permissive f. what does he do? he does something like this. i know because i. experience this. he tells you. you are free to go or not. but please be aware of how much your grandmother loves you and misses you and so on. so you know what he is really telling you. he's subtly not just ordering you to go, but he's ordering you to go voluntarily, to freely go. you know, this is the true terror, not just you have to do it. but you have to want to do it. and i think, again, mechanisms like that are absolutely crucial today. this is what i'm sorry, we don't have more time to go into this because this is, i think, so fundamental. that's why, if there is an era that i remember as a pure paradise, it was my military service. no, i'm not crazy. no, precisely i was shocked, disappointed. in my psychological structure, i'm kind of a fascist probably. i like discipline and order. and what shocked me in the army was how it's not really like that, at least yugoslav army. beneath the discipline and order, there is an obscure domain of obscene jokes, perversions and so on, and it took me a long time to guess how. there is nothing subversive in these jokes. they are absolutely crucial for the military discipline to reproduce itself. you know, and then more and more i'm convinced that every institution has something like this. for example, in united states, the top colleges, you know, you have all these fraternities, sororities with their obscene rituals and so on. in yugoslav military, ah, another thing fascinated me. this is what my gay friends don't like to hear. officially! officially, publicly, the army was extremely brutally homophobic. and it really meant it. if a soldier was discovered to be gay, he was every night, nobody there to talk to him. he was usually every night beaten, you know, the standard ritual. somebody puts a pillow on your head and others beat you with their belts and so on. okay, you will say, okay, ah, it's not so simple. because at the same time... the entire army life was penetrated by homosexual innuendos and so on. i remember, for example, in my unit when you met your friend in the morning, you didn't say good morning, you say smoke mine. this was an euphemism for fellatio, you know. like it was every i could give you dozens of it. so you know what fascinates me so much that no power structure can reproduce you need what i call inherent transgression, apparent dirty transgressions, which may appear even subversive, but they are part of the game. they are crucial for the reproduction of power structure. so why is this so important today? because i think that today uh. d official public structure is more and more egalitarian. yes but relations of dimin survive at this implicit, obscene, unspoken level. you know this like when do you really admit something? when do you really belong to a community from the nation to a family. it's not enough just to follow the explicit. r? it's also to know how and when to violate these rules. i think communities is never defined any communal body just by the explicit rules. you only this is why people who, to learn manners go, but nobody cares about it today. you know, when i was still young, you had these people who taught you good manners so that you know how to behave in high-class society. and it always fails. why? because they taught you the rules, but they didn't teach you how to violate the rules. you are really a member of a community if you know all these implicit rules, of which rules are you to take seriously, which rules you have to violate how? for example, there are rules which are meant to be. transgressed. especially in sexuality. when, for example, in traditional patriarchal sexuality, when father tells you not to mix with girls, it's really a call do it discreetly and so on and so on. there are many rules like this, which just, you know, this is the st. paul paul bible dimension of you need prohibition to generate your desire and so on. but much more interesting for me is the opposite example. not when something is prohibited but the message of the law is to do it, but when something you are permitted, even solicited to do it. you know that you are given a freedom on condition that you don't use it. so i may conclude with a story from my youth. i wasn't a big dissident. i was kind of a half dissident. and i remember when i was young, i was in a student journal and we were... there were elections. now, in ex-yugoslavia, elections were not as bad as in soviet union. the party didn't get 99.7. they had enough about 80, 85%. but we knew it, no? how it? so we at the journal ask ourselves, what should we do? ch! radical idiots proposed, why don't we simply openly do a heroic gesture. let's publish an issue of this journal where we claim these were not free elections, these were a fake and so on. okay. we said, but everybody knows this. what would be the point? we would just appear idiots, you know. so then one of us, not me, had an ingenious idea which worked. we said, they are claiming that these are real democratic elections. so let's just treat them like that. and on the evening of elections, we published an extraordinary issue of the journal with big titles. latest election results, it looks that communists will remain in power, you know like and it was such a wonderful act because they were so furious at us, at the central committee, not really, we didn't risk being. and they called us there and said, boys, don't do this. you provoke us. then we just naively said, listen, these were free elections and... we felt the duty to inform people of the result.. and it was so tragic, this party bureaucrat, because he couldn't have told us, no, they were not free elections. he just said, boys, don't fuck with me. you know very well what i mean. we asked him, but what do you mean? don't mess with me. you know like, i almost felt the sympathy for that guy. you know. and now to really finish, because you once, when we had the last debate, asked me, where am i? revolution, social democracy, whatever. ah, i combined the two. no, not in some stupid synthetic way. that's why i like syiza. that's why i like up to a point, it's so fashionable today to be against president obama. he did chump. good thing. why? take obama and universal healthcare. it's nothing revolutionary, my god. most of the western liberal states have still some kind of universal health care. but in america, in united states, it's a traumatic point. you know what happened to obama? he was dragged up to the supreme court and so on. so i think the art of politics today. ich tue. formulate a specific demand which is a very modest one. nobody can accuse you you want stalinism or whatever. like obama healthcare, it's something that canada held but in that concrete constellation it is extremely traumatic. you trigger a whole process. so not big demands, big demands can often be meaningless, you know. i mean, i remember this from my communist youth in communist yugoslavia in the last years, when they allowed dissidents up to a point, dissidents become a profession. these were wonderful times, you know. communist party financed like there was a dissident congress, anti-communist in paris and the government, okay, you can go there, blah, blah, we finance you the trip. the catch was just what? don't be too concrete, you know, like communism is worse than fascism. they didn't care about that. but don't say repeal that law here in our country, you know. like that's my lesson from those times that the art is often not to make big radical demands. for example, take greece today. they have a communist party. which is still pretty strong one. usually it gets between 5 and 10%. now they lost. and it's the last big, as far as i know, stalinist communist party. by stalinist, i really mean stalinist. they still reprint the collected works of stalin. which is their sacred literature and even for example their enemy is not gorbachev their enemy is khrushchev who betrayed it by and they said, no sy is a social democratic no, let's wait we want authentic revolution. to be cynical, all right-wingers love them. because they know that it's totally meaningless. they don't threaten anyone. nothing changes. it's just a very comfortable position of sitting there in the back with your radical demands and so on and so on. you know, that's the tragedy. if you say we want communist revolution, it means nothing. if you just say like varoufakis, let's renegotiate debts a little bit, everyone is in a panic. and that's what we should learn. and here we should be very specific to specific countries. for example, in united states, universal healthcare triggers a process which you never know where it will end. in our countries, multiculturalism is a manipulated phrase. in turkey, it means something with armenians, kurds and so on and so on. here i see an option, you know, because what i'm... i love movies so. bravo. but we are very prominent members of this community. we broke all the disciplines. rules and everything especially beginning with the time rule
Moderator
um.
um.
Slavoj Žižek
now i understand how i was in poland. you're like jaruzelski now. of course., i stopped.
now i understand how i was in poland. you're like jaruzelski now. of course., i stopped.
Moderator
as for jaruzelski, this was this part of the communist regime that already started to look in certain dimension as what you hate. and capitalism which is the cynical cynical. i didn't have time. i totally agree. no, i will not talk against
as for jaruzelski, this was this part of the communist regime that already started to look in certain dimension as what you hate. and capitalism which is the cynical cynical. i didn't have time. i totally agree. no, i will not talk against
Slavoj Žižek
but let's me, that's crucial, how cynicism works today. i claim it's not only that ideology works even if you don't take it seriously. i'm ready to go a step further. it has to be taken not seriously to work. we have this, and again, i know this from my youth in yugoslavia. i know two friends who worked at the central committee in the 70s. they lost their job. one of them is ivan hvala, the other is my friendot. why? because they took self-management system seriously. they really believed in the system and for nomenclatura this was a horror this was the first step towards this..
but let's me, that's crucial, how cynicism works today. i claim it's not only that ideology works even if you don't take it seriously. i'm ready to go a step further. it has to be taken not seriously to work. we have this, and again, i know this from my youth in yugoslavia. i know two friends who worked at the central committee in the 70s. they lost their job. one of them is ivan hvala, the other is my friendot. why? because they took self-management system seriously. they really believed in the system and for nomenclatura this was a horror this was the first step towards this..
Moderator
that'sactly my point. the biggest fear for the late communists were the people who really believe still in marxism. and immediately they expelledel them from party or like at least they are
that'sactly my point. the biggest fear for the late communists were the people who really believe still in marxism. and immediately they expelledel them from party or like at least they are
Slavoj Žižek
yeah
yeah
Moderator
them somehow. actually, you know, there were so many questions asked to you, but i realized that maybe one it... or never really, i don't believe that there is any question not already asked, but one cannot...
them somehow. actually, you know, there were so many questions asked to you, but i realized that maybe one it... or never really, i don't believe that there is any question not already asked, but one cannot...
Slavoj Žižek
and not already answered.
and not already answered.
Moderator
but actually i collected all the examples of those paradoxes that you invented, that you mentioned, like the one with syriza, the one with fox news that actually is like a big fan.
but actually i collected all the examples of those paradoxes that you invented, that you mentioned, like the one with syriza, the one with fox news that actually is like a big fan.
Slavoj Žižek
i couldn't believe it but i think if you would like sorry, can i just very briefly explain to you and you will immediately understand me. very reasonably, the point was what really made them afraid, fox, right-wingers, was, but in this way we are pushing greeks to putin. no, actually...
i couldn't believe it but i think if you would like sorry, can i just very briefly explain to you and you will immediately understand me. very reasonably, the point was what really made them afraid, fox, right-wingers, was, but in this way we are pushing greeks to putin. no, actually...
Moderator
this is the problem is that actually you can explain all those paradoxes pretty easily giving the small answers which and the only disadvantage of the small answers is that they are not really spectacular.
this is the problem is that actually you can explain all those paradoxes pretty easily giving the small answers which and the only disadvantage of the small answers is that they are not really spectacular.
Slavoj Žižek
like.
like.
Moderator
i can actually answer to almost all of your paradoxes. like why do western powers prefer new democracy so that people who are responsible then sy? because they think that syriza is an even bigger danger.
i can actually answer to almost all of your paradoxes. like why do western powers prefer new democracy so that people who are responsible then sy? because they think that syriza is an even bigger danger.
Slavoj Žižek
why.
why.
Moderator
they arrive okay, but this is another discussion if they
they arrive okay, but this is another discussion if they
Slavoj Žižek
why not. it is an extremely moderate social democracy for you, but not for the people. why? why? okay, i'm telling you what... no, it's not for me. it's not for me. it's by western european standards of 40 years ago. it's extremely moderate social democracy. really modest. like they even now, to give you the last proof, the latest news i have, they are not a priori against privatization.
why not. it is an extremely moderate social democracy for you, but not for the people. why? why? okay, i'm telling you what... no, it's not for me. it's not for me. it's by western european standards of 40 years ago. it's extremely moderate social democracy. really modest. like they even now, to give you the last proof, the latest news i have, they are not a priori against privatization.
Moderator
i'm not it's the discussion about cisa and agenda. thisiza is one thing, but there is nothing paradoxical actually in the behavior of western powers if in the ranking of the dangers, syiza is in a higher position than the previous powers responsible. so actually i i also don't see anything really paradoxical in why fox news is like a big fan of the left wing or even putin. actually, because behind this stays very coherent and exactly the same reason that they are anti-americanists themselves. so anybody who actually puts any pressure on the united states or can harm in any sense the western alliance or whatever will be appreciated because enemy of my enemy is my friend, which is like very coherent logic i mean at least from the pragmatic point of view so and also you said something which a lot of those paradoxes are based on the very foucaultian point that like this you know discipline and punishment. so you said that... like about this, like the behavior in the capitalist countries or like the debt man. i totally agree this is exactly what happens. all my friends that are indebted, they will be a hostage of the mainstream. they will always vote for the ruling party and even if they totally know that they are doing the thing against themselves. actually, this is something new in this late capitalism. the fact that we know that we are doing something bad to us or more generally and we do it still. this is i mean, solving this question, how to overcome it would be probably the solving the question
i'm not it's the discussion about cisa and agenda. thisiza is one thing, but there is nothing paradoxical actually in the behavior of western powers if in the ranking of the dangers, syiza is in a higher position than the previous powers responsible. so actually i i also don't see anything really paradoxical in why fox news is like a big fan of the left wing or even putin. actually, because behind this stays very coherent and exactly the same reason that they are anti-americanists themselves. so anybody who actually puts any pressure on the united states or can harm in any sense the western alliance or whatever will be appreciated because enemy of my enemy is my friend, which is like very coherent logic i mean at least from the pragmatic point of view so and also you said something which a lot of those paradoxes are based on the very foucaultian point that like this you know discipline and punishment. so you said that... like about this, like the behavior in the capitalist countries or like the debt man. i totally agree this is exactly what happens. all my friends that are indebted, they will be a hostage of the mainstream. they will always vote for the ruling party and even if they totally know that they are doing the thing against themselves. actually, this is something new in this late capitalism. the fact that we know that we are doing something bad to us or more generally and we do it still. this is i mean, solving this question, how to overcome it would be probably the solving the question
Slavoj Žižek
but still you didn't convince me, but let's go back. okay,
but still you didn't convince me, but let's go back. okay,
Moderator
be just i will answer you with a question. if you really prefer the previous solution, the control or the discipline, it's like to asking foucault what he really prefers, torture of the state with the king or control which is the advanced model of economy, society, or whatever. are you really sure that you're going to choose the previous version of it? without the control of capar's country, without the cynicism, without all those
be just i will answer you with a question. if you really prefer the previous solution, the control or the discipline, it's like to asking foucault what he really prefers, torture of the state with the king or control which is the advanced model of economy, society, or whatever. are you really sure that you're going to choose the previous version of it? without the control of capar's country, without the cynicism, without all those
Slavoj Žižek
okay. this is a complex question because i am one of the few madmen whom i know who will still for death penalty. but this is another topic. no, i think that now you are too abstract in opposing first when you say torture no my god it's today that torture is re-legalized. you don't have to look into some dark past. this is another point of ethical regression that i want. are you afraid that the way even those who oppose torture the way we in the liberal west are talking about torture today is something that if you were to talk like this30 years ago you would be considered a totalitarian madman you know what i mean that. even those who reject torture already accept as a topic of debate and argumentation, like they say, but it's not really efficient. you cannot rely on. no, i'm here for total dogmatism. i think we should rehabilitate dogma. progress of humanity is the more good dogmas you have, all the better. so that you will not think that i'm crazy. let me give you another example. rape. sorry, i wouldn't like to live in a society where you would have to argue all the time. you know, women really don't like to be raped or whatever. i would like to live in a society where you don't argue about this. where if somebody starts with this bullshit, you know, that women really secretly enjoy it, he simply appears as a miserable idiot. you know, again, it's easy to agree with this on rape. i would say the claim about torture but actually it's like.
okay. this is a complex question because i am one of the few madmen whom i know who will still for death penalty. but this is another topic. no, i think that now you are too abstract in opposing first when you say torture no my god it's today that torture is re-legalized. you don't have to look into some dark past. this is another point of ethical regression that i want. are you afraid that the way even those who oppose torture the way we in the liberal west are talking about torture today is something that if you were to talk like this30 years ago you would be considered a totalitarian madman you know what i mean that. even those who reject torture already accept as a topic of debate and argumentation, like they say, but it's not really efficient. you cannot rely on. no, i'm here for total dogmatism. i think we should rehabilitate dogma. progress of humanity is the more good dogmas you have, all the better. so that you will not think that i'm crazy. let me give you another example. rape. sorry, i wouldn't like to live in a society where you would have to argue all the time. you know, women really don't like to be raped or whatever. i would like to live in a society where you don't argue about this. where if somebody starts with this bullshit, you know, that women really secretly enjoy it, he simply appears as a miserable idiot. you know, again, it's easy to agree with this on rape. i would say the claim about torture but actually it's like.
Moderator
with the difference between one step of feminism and the second one? first you have to show the difference then to like overcome it and to forget it in an active way. this is why you have to open the question of rape exactly to close it and then to put it as a part of consensus which is behind the discussion. but again, i don't see anything paradoxical. actually, i also don't see anything paradoxical in this saudi arabia example. saudi arabia is supported by the western powers because this is one of the very, not too many solutions to control the region. like libya, for example, is something which might be a big problem for your line of thought. libya actually is a country that was defeated, like a dictatorship. it created a much more horrible problem exactly for the people
with the difference between one step of feminism and the second one? first you have to show the difference then to like overcome it and to forget it in an active way. this is why you have to open the question of rape exactly to close it and then to put it as a part of consensus which is behind the discussion. but again, i don't see anything paradoxical. actually, i also don't see anything paradoxical in this saudi arabia example. saudi arabia is supported by the western powers because this is one of the very, not too many solutions to control the region. like libya, for example, is something which might be a big problem for your line of thought. libya actually is a country that was defeated, like a dictatorship. it created a much more horrible problem exactly for the people
Slavoj Žižek
if it's not only...
if it's not only...
Moderator
af afghan change the same
af afghan change the same
Slavoj Žižek
exactly i seriously claim that with regard to the position of women iraq now. is worse than under saddam and i have no sympathy for saddam. but whatever you say about saddam, his regime was basically a secular regime with pretty important posts for women, education of women in his good years before he and that's the problem with dictator before he went crazy
exactly i seriously claim that with regard to the position of women iraq now. is worse than under saddam and i have no sympathy for saddam. but whatever you say about saddam, his regime was basically a secular regime with pretty important posts for women, education of women in his good years before he and that's the problem with dictator before he went crazy
Moderator
these are not easy questions. would you really like to i don't know, invade saudi arabia or cut saudi arabia from any cooperation with western powers? and what you get is for 80% the total mess the internal war, which as any civil war in islam countries, is totally bloody. the biggest victim of islamism
these are not easy questions. would you really like to i don't know, invade saudi arabia or cut saudi arabia from any cooperation with western powers? and what you get is for 80% the total mess the internal war, which as any civil war in islam countries, is totally bloody. the biggest victim of islamism
Slavoj Žižek
isllam. no, i see your point and i'm here very pragmatic. i'm not a naive idiot who claims, you know, just give them democratic freedom and so on and so on. i'm just saying that, and this is not even a very original point. if you already return to this, the original scene is the end of world war i. when you had lawrence of arabia and all that bullshit, let's not idealize. but you have a kind of a genuine movement among arabs and then i think that not even united states, it was mostly england and france when they cut it with this. all states that we have now there are totally artificial. afghanistan is artificial state, pakistan is artificial state, and so on and so on. so all i'm saying is that the first thing to, i'm not proposing any easy solution. but if you ask me these two cases, saddam and gaddafi. please, they were disgusting, and i know horz, my friend, told me who were there as journalists, but i think it would have been much wiser. now i will be cyn and i will say, especially from the western interest. not to overthrow saddam and not to overthrow saddam and gaddafi. look at saddam. listen, that's why united states practically supported saddam i think, if you ask me a step further, the original sin of the west
isllam. no, i see your point and i'm here very pragmatic. i'm not a naive idiot who claims, you know, just give them democratic freedom and so on and so on. i'm just saying that, and this is not even a very original point. if you already return to this, the original scene is the end of world war i. when you had lawrence of arabia and all that bullshit, let's not idealize. but you have a kind of a genuine movement among arabs and then i think that not even united states, it was mostly england and france when they cut it with this. all states that we have now there are totally artificial. afghanistan is artificial state, pakistan is artificial state, and so on and so on. so all i'm saying is that the first thing to, i'm not proposing any easy solution. but if you ask me these two cases, saddam and gaddafi. please, they were disgusting, and i know horz, my friend, told me who were there as journalists, but i think it would have been much wiser. now i will be cyn and i will say, especially from the western interest. not to overthrow saddam and not to overthrow saddam and gaddafi. look at saddam. listen, that's why united states practically supported saddam i think, if you ask me a step further, the original sin of the west
Moderator
then slavo j or someone else would challenge this or like actually would say why west doesn't invade iraq or saudi arabia if there is like and so on. so actually no i agree this is
then slavo j or someone else would challenge this or like actually would say why west doesn't invade iraq or saudi arabia if there is like and so on. so actually no i agree this is
Slavoj Žižek
very topic, i agree. i agree there are no easy solutions
very topic, i agree. i agree there are no easy solutions
Moderator
okay, so i understand that we should absolutely, absolutely.
okay, so i understand that we should absolutely, absolutely.
Slavoj Žižek
but what i'm saying is that, okay, let me put it like this, sorry, they are making the wrong invasions. okay. you know what i mean? they as if they have an incredible instinct to make... well, look, the big fear of united states is iran. they invaded iraq. what's the result of this? that the main political force in today's iraq is iran, who controls the shia and so on and so on. it's just breathtaking. but sorry, to make another... no, precisely, if you ask me, i'm pretty much a pessimist here. i think we live in a complex world where whatever you do is in a way wrong. but my counterargument to what you said about greece and so on. i'm not talking about justice here. i think that what western europe is doing now with greece will be in the long term catastrophe for the european union itself. that's my very simple prediction. it will cut europe into two. who knows what will happen. i think, or put it in this way as an old dogmatic marxist you know, people say, oh, we think we are in democracy, but there is some secret ruling class. i hope there would be, there is not. europe! european political elite is more and more losing its ability to govern and it.
but what i'm saying is that, okay, let me put it like this, sorry, they are making the wrong invasions. okay. you know what i mean? they as if they have an incredible instinct to make... well, look, the big fear of united states is iran. they invaded iraq. what's the result of this? that the main political force in today's iraq is iran, who controls the shia and so on and so on. it's just breathtaking. but sorry, to make another... no, precisely, if you ask me, i'm pretty much a pessimist here. i think we live in a complex world where whatever you do is in a way wrong. but my counterargument to what you said about greece and so on. i'm not talking about justice here. i think that what western europe is doing now with greece will be in the long term catastrophe for the european union itself. that's my very simple prediction. it will cut europe into two. who knows what will happen. i think, or put it in this way as an old dogmatic marxist you know, people say, oh, we think we are in democracy, but there is some secret ruling class. i hope there would be, there is not. europe! european political elite is more and more losing its ability to govern and it.
Moderator
now even if i don't have, i should say klaus saved you from more of my questions and let me collect how many i can negotiate with the organizers too..
now even if i don't have, i should say klaus saved you from more of my questions and let me collect how many i can negotiate with the organizers too..
Slavoj Žižek
i for yourselves yeah.
i for yourselves yeah.
Moderator
three three questions are okay so we have one and uh and okay, so let's go one after.
three three questions are okay so we have one and uh and okay, so let's go one after.
Slavoj Žižek
but we will do in the hegelian way, one divides into two and then you have synthesis okay
but we will do in the hegelian way, one divides into two and then you have synthesis okay
Audience Member
yes, ja, can sprechen, but also i can speak in english because i think there's a few people who maybe not understand german. first of all, slavo, thank you very much for giving us such an insight and vivid inside view in the boiling mind of an international reputed philosophical pop star. and let me please only add because what you did is was such a row and such a machine gun fire of arguments, of memories, of memories of what you read, of acquaintances, of people you told us you know and you met or whatever. so let me just add. politely.
yes, ja, can sprechen, but also i can speak in english because i think there's a few people who maybe not understand german. first of all, slavo, thank you very much for giving us such an insight and vivid inside view in the boiling mind of an international reputed philosophical pop star. and let me please only add because what you did is was such a row and such a machine gun fire of arguments, of memories, of memories of what you read, of acquaintances, of people you told us you know and you met or whatever. so let me just add. politely.
Moderator
two okay. uh things.
two okay. uh things.
Audience Member
first of all, when you you i come to the question, first of all... when you talked about boko haram and isis you could also have mentioned opus dei or maybe even the vatican. no problem no problem of course. secondly this was such a cocktail, such a wonderful cocktail.
first of all, when you you i come to the question, first of all... when you talked about boko haram and isis you could also have mentioned opus dei or maybe even the vatican. no problem no problem of course. secondly this was such a cocktail, such a wonderful cocktail.
Slavoj Žižek
bed a cocktail, i got the point.
bed a cocktail, i got the point.
Audience Member
cocktail, cocktail, and let me say it politely, a cocktail of platitudes from my point of view. and this was not easy to stand. it was somehow, i really felt a little bit knocked out. but i want to say you very much and i want to finish in a few words of slovenian: hvala lepa and živeli tito. thank you very much. živeli tito!
cocktail, cocktail, and let me say it politely, a cocktail of platitudes from my point of view. and this was not easy to stand. it was somehow, i really felt a little bit knocked out. but i want to say you very much and i want to finish in a few words of slovenian: hvala lepa and živeli tito. thank you very much. živeli tito!
Slavoj Žižek
actually. come to the point. yes, of course i give you the argument i know what i'm doing. here i disagree. you know we have a big debate in... slovenia from nostalgics and so on. what was the war, the civil war in the early 90s? i think it was not because we betrayed kito. i think all that was wrong, corrupted in tit's yugoslavia exploded there. i think that the war of the early 90s was that the ultimate cause was not even nationalism. it was the very simplified although i'm interested could you elaborate that one? sorry so for me it was the survival of communist nomenclatura. this was the genius of milosevic. he recuscitated nationalism. and in this way he legitimized the rule of old communist nomenclatura. but i wanted to ask you something else. usually people say i have crazy, paradoxical and so on. so let's go through if what i said about let's say what i said about how power functions today and so on and so on. if this is a platitude, in what sense platitude, that everybody knows it, i don't think everybody knows it. this permissivity and so on, i don't think everybody knows it. how is it with democracy
actually. come to the point. yes, of course i give you the argument i know what i'm doing. here i disagree. you know we have a big debate in... slovenia from nostalgics and so on. what was the war, the civil war in the early 90s? i think it was not because we betrayed kito. i think all that was wrong, corrupted in tit's yugoslavia exploded there. i think that the war of the early 90s was that the ultimate cause was not even nationalism. it was the very simplified although i'm interested could you elaborate that one? sorry so for me it was the survival of communist nomenclatura. this was the genius of milosevic. he recuscitated nationalism. and in this way he legitimized the rule of old communist nomenclatura. but i wanted to ask you something else. usually people say i have crazy, paradoxical and so on. so let's go through if what i said about let's say what i said about how power functions today and so on and so on. if this is a platitude, in what sense platitude, that everybody knows it, i don't think everybody knows it. this permissivity and so on, i don't think everybody knows it. how is it with democracy
Audience Member
but
but
Moderator
i do not understand. you are talking
i do not understand. you are talking
Audience Member
freedom and everything. but and you mentioned marcuse but please, please politely let me recommend to you before you again speak on freedom, reread only one book and this is marcuse's one-dimensional man. a book
freedom and everything. but and you mentioned marcuse but please, please politely let me recommend to you before you again speak on freedom, reread only one book and this is marcuse's one-dimensional man. a book
Slavoj Žižek
of of course, totally opposed. because i think it is a totally wrong diagnosis
of of course, totally opposed. because i think it is a totally wrong diagnosis
Audience Member
so you are talking in plitudes about freedom.
so you are talking in plitudes about freedom.
Slavoj Žižek
no!
no!
Audience Member
done.
done.
Slavoj Žižek
sorry, no, no, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. i think that precisely markuse is one-dimensional man. you know where it misses the point? it is, i know the book. this was the book of my youth. it it how should i put it? it accepts as a fact that capitalism will succeed basically as this new one-dimensional society and so on and so on. i think he didn't see antagonisms of capitalism and so on and so on, not to mention the fact. so first, i think that as an analysis, socio-economic is wrong, but especially, and every philosopher will tell you this, for example, the model of cheap wrong marxist, pseudo-marxist criticism, the chapter against ordinary language philosophy, austin and so on. making fun of it, this is how a theory we may be critical about late wittgenstein and so on. but it's nonetheless it was a tremendous revolution in philosophy useful also for critique of ideology maruse there, not to mention, you know what for me, mar le wrong. or take his for example. now i will go even further in my platitude if you want. when i see eros and civilization, i claim, fuck it, maybe goebbels was right, just in the wrong way. maybe we should burn books, but just goebbels had a good principle but didn't burn the right books. this book is so totally worthless, this freud marxist idea, you know, sexual freedom, all the differences disappear. no, hedonism is today. in power, i think precisely topics which that's the horror of the 60s, that all the big messages of the 60s, sexual liberation and so on and so on, were integrated into the ruling system. and i'm ready to go to the end here. today we should make hard work, discipline. that should be our motto today. so again, i find it, you know which i agree mark wrote one good book, vernunft und revolution before world war.
sorry, no, no, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. i think that precisely markuse is one-dimensional man. you know where it misses the point? it is, i know the book. this was the book of my youth. it it how should i put it? it accepts as a fact that capitalism will succeed basically as this new one-dimensional society and so on and so on. i think he didn't see antagonisms of capitalism and so on and so on, not to mention the fact. so first, i think that as an analysis, socio-economic is wrong, but especially, and every philosopher will tell you this, for example, the model of cheap wrong marxist, pseudo-marxist criticism, the chapter against ordinary language philosophy, austin and so on. making fun of it, this is how a theory we may be critical about late wittgenstein and so on. but it's nonetheless it was a tremendous revolution in philosophy useful also for critique of ideology maruse there, not to mention, you know what for me, mar le wrong. or take his for example. now i will go even further in my platitude if you want. when i see eros and civilization, i claim, fuck it, maybe goebbels was right, just in the wrong way. maybe we should burn books, but just goebbels had a good principle but didn't burn the right books. this book is so totally worthless, this freud marxist idea, you know, sexual freedom, all the differences disappear. no, hedonism is today. in power, i think precisely topics which that's the horror of the 60s, that all the big messages of the 60s, sexual liberation and so on and so on, were integrated into the ruling system. and i'm ready to go to the end here. today we should make hard work, discipline. that should be our motto today. so again, i find it, you know which i agree mark wrote one good book, vernunft und revolution before world war.
Moderator
okay, okay, i mean it's easy i think it's easy case to criticize marcuse and a bit waste of time. but is there any other question here on the audience? if not, then i will pose the last question and then we go to the... no, but well actually, something which bothers me is how you, by yourself. uh... of course, considering also some of your arguments, distinguish between the radicalism which is very useful to satirize the left-wing positions and the radicalism which is efficient politically. this huh? show me one.
okay, okay, i mean it's easy i think it's easy case to criticize marcuse and a bit waste of time. but is there any other question here on the audience? if not, then i will pose the last question and then we go to the... no, but well actually, something which bothers me is how you, by yourself. uh... of course, considering also some of your arguments, distinguish between the radicalism which is very useful to satirize the left-wing positions and the radicalism which is efficient politically. this huh? show me one.
Slavoj Žižek
calc.
calc.
Moderator
no am for it but well it actually there are too many examples of left-wing intellectuals. or like circles, movements, whatever, that are very useful for the mainstream to satirize the left at all. because i don't think that do you really need a reason or do you need an example? you mean like how to distinguish between like political radicalism and anti-political radicalism, to put it this way.
no am for it but well it actually there are too many examples of left-wing intellectuals. or like circles, movements, whatever, that are very useful for the mainstream to satirize the left at all. because i don't think that do you really need a reason or do you need an example? you mean like how to distinguish between like political radicalism and anti-political radicalism, to put it this way.
Slavoj Žižek
no, i just cannot locate. the terms here i am for radicalism i'm just saying that sometimes to be truly radical is to. insist on a tiny small point which may appear nothing, but if you press on that point, you trigger a process. but you know what's the problem? maybe i should conclude with this, really. you know, what i... hate, although sometimes we have to use this term. i hate the left which tries to reinvent itself as democratic socialism, like p and so on. i'm neither a democrat nor a socialist. why? first, socialism. i hate the term. why? because it's just it means today just no we are not the bad commun totalitarians and so on. socialism is something that everyone is ready to accept. your compatriot otto weininger. put it nicely and of course i turned it around when he said socialism is aryan, communism is jewish. yes, i'm for communism. in other words, socialism is just a general motto for we shouldn't be too egotist, we should think about everybody can be a socialist. it's meaningless. i'm for communism. of course, not for the 20th century, but whatever. second thing, democracy. i don't it has its mega authenticentic moments. but nonetheless, i think that literally, quite literally, democracy is our fetish. fetish in the sense that strict freudian sense, you know, freud says fetish is the last object you see before you'll see that. woman has no penis whatever. so in what sense does this work? this castration woman, no penis would be vaguely a social antagonism. and i think the democracy functions how here. the model are two american films that i really hate and i would put them on that goebbels list to be burned. all the president's men and pelican brief. they appear very critical, hollywood left. oh my god, the whole american state is corrupted, you know, and even the president is corrupted. why then? when you finish watching that film, do you feel so good? because the meshi tr. nonetheless, look. now i'm talking about all the president's men. we live in such a great society that you see, two ordinary guys, journalists, can overthrow the mightiest man in the world. isn't this a great country? you know, this is democracy as a fetish. it's, yeah, yeah, yeah, antagonisms, but we have democracy, we can be calm and so on and so on. no, i think that democracy should be saved of course but it's a problem today. everybody knows who is honest, that. in order to confront what we are facing today, new forms of racism, new forms of apartheid, ecology, biogenetics, whatever. the existing form of democracy is not strong enough that's all i'm saying and i'm here a radical pessimist. i'm definitely not saying back to a leninist party i'm well aware that it was much worse. i'm just saying that well... again, date we don't even have mechanisms to cope with this. just imagine, i recently spoke with a friend of mine from japan who told me it's now becoming public that do you know that in after that fukushima explosion, for two days, but they didn't make it public. japanese government thought that they will have to evacuate the entire tokyo area. then... but... imagine debt. you have to do something like this. who will decide it? how? you know, this is why, incidentally, i am also absolutely opposed to this negritopic multitude, local self-organization of people, local democracy and so on and so on. i'm totally for the rehabilitation of political representation. for me, this idea of, you know, locally people debating everything, deciding, first it's not strong enough to confront our problems. to have an efficient local self-management democracy, you usually need a very efficient state which provides all the background. second thing. second thing. i don't think this is even now, to provoke you even more with another platitude, i don't think i would even like to do it. let me look deep into my heart if i have one, which i sometimes doubt. would you really like
no, i just cannot locate. the terms here i am for radicalism i'm just saying that sometimes to be truly radical is to. insist on a tiny small point which may appear nothing, but if you press on that point, you trigger a process. but you know what's the problem? maybe i should conclude with this, really. you know, what i... hate, although sometimes we have to use this term. i hate the left which tries to reinvent itself as democratic socialism, like p and so on. i'm neither a democrat nor a socialist. why? first, socialism. i hate the term. why? because it's just it means today just no we are not the bad commun totalitarians and so on. socialism is something that everyone is ready to accept. your compatriot otto weininger. put it nicely and of course i turned it around when he said socialism is aryan, communism is jewish. yes, i'm for communism. in other words, socialism is just a general motto for we shouldn't be too egotist, we should think about everybody can be a socialist. it's meaningless. i'm for communism. of course, not for the 20th century, but whatever. second thing, democracy. i don't it has its mega authenticentic moments. but nonetheless, i think that literally, quite literally, democracy is our fetish. fetish in the sense that strict freudian sense, you know, freud says fetish is the last object you see before you'll see that. woman has no penis whatever. so in what sense does this work? this castration woman, no penis would be vaguely a social antagonism. and i think the democracy functions how here. the model are two american films that i really hate and i would put them on that goebbels list to be burned. all the president's men and pelican brief. they appear very critical, hollywood left. oh my god, the whole american state is corrupted, you know, and even the president is corrupted. why then? when you finish watching that film, do you feel so good? because the meshi tr. nonetheless, look. now i'm talking about all the president's men. we live in such a great society that you see, two ordinary guys, journalists, can overthrow the mightiest man in the world. isn't this a great country? you know, this is democracy as a fetish. it's, yeah, yeah, yeah, antagonisms, but we have democracy, we can be calm and so on and so on. no, i think that democracy should be saved of course but it's a problem today. everybody knows who is honest, that. in order to confront what we are facing today, new forms of racism, new forms of apartheid, ecology, biogenetics, whatever. the existing form of democracy is not strong enough that's all i'm saying and i'm here a radical pessimist. i'm definitely not saying back to a leninist party i'm well aware that it was much worse. i'm just saying that well... again, date we don't even have mechanisms to cope with this. just imagine, i recently spoke with a friend of mine from japan who told me it's now becoming public that do you know that in after that fukushima explosion, for two days, but they didn't make it public. japanese government thought that they will have to evacuate the entire tokyo area. then... but... imagine debt. you have to do something like this. who will decide it? how? you know, this is why, incidentally, i am also absolutely opposed to this negritopic multitude, local self-organization of people, local democracy and so on and so on. i'm totally for the rehabilitation of political representation. for me, this idea of, you know, locally people debating everything, deciding, first it's not strong enough to confront our problems. to have an efficient local self-management democracy, you usually need a very efficient state which provides all the background. second thing. second thing. i don't think this is even now, to provoke you even more with another platitude, i don't think i would even like to do it. let me look deep into my heart if i have one, which i sometimes doubt. would you really like
Moderator
thank.
thank.
Slavoj Žižek
live in some shitty local community where you have to be active all the time, debate how we organize. no! i want to live in a well- organized society where some anonymous power does things and i can sit and watch movies and write my stupid books. i don't want to be permanently engaged and so on. i hate the very idea of this you know, people meeting how will i want water in my pipe, i don't care how they distribute. and so on. no, but i'm
live in some shitty local community where you have to be active all the time, debate how we organize. no! i want to live in a well- organized society where some anonymous power does things and i can sit and watch movies and write my stupid books. i don't want to be permanently engaged and so on. i hate the very idea of this you know, people meeting how will i want water in my pipe, i don't care how they distribute. and so on. no, but i'm
Moderator
serious, you know to what this brings us. the world without alienation would be a disaster.
serious, you know to what this brings us. the world without alienation would be a disaster.
Slavoj Žižek
option.
option.
Moderator
absolutely, literally, literally. i think
absolutely, literally, literally. i think
Slavoj Žižek
and here i even agree with my friend, although right winger, but we can learn from conservative, intelligent right-wingers, peter sloterdijk. who said the problem today is we don't have enough alienation. we we should break this politically correct multiculturalist stupidity. we have to understand the other. no, how can we understand the others when they don't understand themselves when we don't understand ourselves? let's say i live in a building where there are some persians, some arabs, some blacks, some latinos, whatever you want, some chinese. i don't want to understand them. i want to live a respectable life where we respect each other, friendly say hello and absolutely not because they are what they are. maybe i can become friendly with some of them. probably more preferable than friendly from my own nation. but what i'm saying is that, you know, this idea of just understanding coming together, i think that quite, you know what is for me the basic, the beauty of alienation? politeness. politeness is all about alienation. what is politeness? sorry to use my old example. politeness is i meet you on the street and this is not real you. but maybe. let's say for what reason i hate you, but i don't. and i meet you and of course before i notice you i start to curse. notice why didn't i notice you three seconds before so that i could cross the... but then when i see you, we have to say, hello, nice to see you, how are you? now, listen to the paradox. we both know that i don't think that it was nice to see you and that i don't give a shit about how are you.
and here i even agree with my friend, although right winger, but we can learn from conservative, intelligent right-wingers, peter sloterdijk. who said the problem today is we don't have enough alienation. we we should break this politically correct multiculturalist stupidity. we have to understand the other. no, how can we understand the others when they don't understand themselves when we don't understand ourselves? let's say i live in a building where there are some persians, some arabs, some blacks, some latinos, whatever you want, some chinese. i don't want to understand them. i want to live a respectable life where we respect each other, friendly say hello and absolutely not because they are what they are. maybe i can become friendly with some of them. probably more preferable than friendly from my own nation. but what i'm saying is that, you know, this idea of just understanding coming together, i think that quite, you know what is for me the basic, the beauty of alienation? politeness. politeness is all about alienation. what is politeness? sorry to use my old example. politeness is i meet you on the street and this is not real you. but maybe. let's say for what reason i hate you, but i don't. and i meet you and of course before i notice you i start to curse. notice why didn't i notice you three seconds before so that i could cross the... but then when i see you, we have to say, hello, nice to see you, how are you? now, listen to the paradox. we both know that i don't think that it was nice to see you and that i don't give a shit about how are you.
Moderator
but nonetheless, it's polite.
but nonetheless, it's polite.
Slavoj Žižek
it's in a way a sincere lie. the message is much more refined. the message is not i am lying, but the message is even if i am now in a bad mood and don't care about you, nonetheless there is a certain fundamental acceptance, benevolence and so on and so on. it would be in other words, politeness in the sense of this basic alienation of language that you don't say what you mean, it gives you the breathing space, my god. and here i think, with the help of freud and laccon, we should correct. m. i think that the whole topic of alienally, we need more alienation. why this hermeneutically imperialist approach? we should understand them, we should understand them. my second dogma here is the only practical understanding that works is struggle. not with the enemy, but solidarity in struggle. i hate another candidate for dead goebbels book burning. you know those, they were popular when i was young, those unesco. books books describing all the world cultures, you know how beautiful for this that culture, that's disgusting. my point is that that we in our culture have our own conflicts antagonisms they have their own conflicts the only authentic universality is the universality of struggle. to discover that our struggle is part of the same struggle as their struggle. that was for me, with all the illusions, for example, the magic moment of, with all the illusions, i know, tahrir square in egypt. all of a sudden, it wasn't important. are they muslims? do we mean the same things? it was an instant universal. solidarity and i don't think it was an illusion. and you see, this is what i believe in india. i immediately connected with them. why? because i hate their post-colonial cultural studies, which is for me just basically half indian racism and so on. but i discovered that the majority of my friends have exactly the same attitude. my friends there are nit mao, guerrillas, my friends are the untouchables and so on. my friends are those who got the point that the only chance for india was accepting english language. that english language precisely because it was, this is what the truly intelligent post-colonialists know there, that english language precisely because it's externally imposed. was able to function as a media for united india and so on and so on. you see, str, it immediately works. i was in japan, i was in china. as long as we do this general exchange of what do we mean by this, that, blah, blah, you can endlessly debate. the moment there is the fight, that guy was arrested, oppression here, there. you have universality.
it's in a way a sincere lie. the message is much more refined. the message is not i am lying, but the message is even if i am now in a bad mood and don't care about you, nonetheless there is a certain fundamental acceptance, benevolence and so on and so on. it would be in other words, politeness in the sense of this basic alienation of language that you don't say what you mean, it gives you the breathing space, my god. and here i think, with the help of freud and laccon, we should correct. m. i think that the whole topic of alienally, we need more alienation. why this hermeneutically imperialist approach? we should understand them, we should understand them. my second dogma here is the only practical understanding that works is struggle. not with the enemy, but solidarity in struggle. i hate another candidate for dead goebbels book burning. you know those, they were popular when i was young, those unesco. books books describing all the world cultures, you know how beautiful for this that culture, that's disgusting. my point is that that we in our culture have our own conflicts antagonisms they have their own conflicts the only authentic universality is the universality of struggle. to discover that our struggle is part of the same struggle as their struggle. that was for me, with all the illusions, for example, the magic moment of, with all the illusions, i know, tahrir square in egypt. all of a sudden, it wasn't important. are they muslims? do we mean the same things? it was an instant universal. solidarity and i don't think it was an illusion. and you see, this is what i believe in india. i immediately connected with them. why? because i hate their post-colonial cultural studies, which is for me just basically half indian racism and so on. but i discovered that the majority of my friends have exactly the same attitude. my friends there are nit mao, guerrillas, my friends are the untouchables and so on. my friends are those who got the point that the only chance for india was accepting english language. that english language precisely because it was, this is what the truly intelligent post-colonialists know there, that english language precisely because it's externally imposed. was able to function as a media for united india and so on and so on. you see, str, it immediately works. i was in japan, i was in china. as long as we do this general exchange of what do we mean by this, that, blah, blah, you can endlessly debate. the moment there is the fight, that guy was arrested, oppression here, there. you have universality.