What is Happening with Sex in our World?
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2018-06-02 · 1:00:42 · 11,038 words
sexuality-genderideologypsychoanalysisliberalism-political-correctnesscapitalismtechnology-ai-cyberspacereligion-theologyrevolution-violencecinema-art-cultureeveryday-life
Žižek delivers a lecture and engages in a moderated Q&A on the state of contemporary sexuality, arguing that political correctness and consent culture represent not a liberation but a managed, contractualized form of sexuality that suppresses sexuality's inherent indirectness and ambiguity. He traces how consumerism has depotentiated enjoyment (Lacan's jouissance) into safe, fat-free, decaffeinated pleasures, and criticizes both the MeToo/transgender discourse and fundamentalist responses as mirror images. The talk also covers the co-optation of 1968's demands by late capitalism, the tension between multiculturalism and Enlightenment values, and the coming threat of brain-computer interfaces erasing the inner/outer distinction.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 17
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Žižek rehabilitates the hysterical stance (questioning one's identity, doubting) against perversion (knowing exactly what one wants), arguing hysteria is genuinely creative and perversion secretly serves power.
as “contractualization of sex”
The politically correct solution of resolving sexual ambiguity through explicit consent rules and contracts, Žižek calls this a perverse solution that misses sexuality's inherent indirectness.
The phantasmatic dimension that mediates all sexuality: you are never alone with a partner because bodily interaction is always traversed by a fantasy scenario.
Referenced via the beer commercial analysis: the woman is reduced to a partial object (bottle of beer) that is the cause of the man's desire.
as “the death drive”
Present in the discussion of drug culture's self-destructive bent on one side, and the inherent violence/masochism woven into sexuality on the other.
Implied in the discussion of enjoyment as a super-ego injunction, the excess that consumerism tries to domesticate into fat-free, diet, safe-sex equivalents.
as “decaffeinated enjoyment”
The paradigm of consumerist pleasure that removes its dangerous excessive dimension: coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol, sex without risk, enjoyment deprived of its substance.
Žižek contrasts Lacanian jouissance (intense, excessive enjoyment) with mere pleasure, arguing consumerism systematically strips enjoyment of its excessive dimension to produce safe, regulated substitutes.
as “the neighbor as threat”
Žižek's reading of the Judeo-Christian 'neighbor' as the figure whose excessive proximity is intolerable, modern tolerance functions by keeping the Other at a safe, regulated distance.
Invoked implicitly through the neighbor-as-threat and harassment discourse, the symbolic order whose rules are now openly violated and admitted as irrelevant.
as “infinite plasticity of self”
The idea, underlying both transgender discourse and late-capitalist consumerism, that identity is infinitely malleable and re-inventable, Žižek sees this as fitting market logic rather than genuine freedom.
as “hedonist Western Buddhism”
Žižek's ironic label for the dominant late-capitalist ideological injunction to float freely, reconstruct the self, avoid attachment, which he sees as perfectly matching consumerist plasticity rather than genuine liberation.
Not noble Christian immortality of the soul but the cartoon/video-game variant where the body is destroyed and reappears undamaged, the form of immortality increasingly structuring digital culture.
as “Stalinist perversion”
Used self-mockingly to describe the paternalist claim to already know what the people need, 'we know better than you what is good for you, so shut up and listen.'
Implied in the analysis of how 1968 demands for sexual liberation, educational reform, and workplace freedom were formally absorbed and neutralized by capitalism while their radical content was lost.
Žižek argues a way of life is not reducible to food and songs but is fundamentally about how relations between sexes and authority are regulated, and always contains a universal claim about how to relate to other ways of life.
as “politically correct white man's burden”
The inversion of colonial paternalism into a masochistic self-blame where Western leftists take guilt for everything that happens globally, which Žižek calls inverted racism.
Stories he reaches for 4
In the film Brassed Off, a man walks a woman home; she asks if he wants coffee; he says he doesn't drink coffee; she says she hasn't got any. The apparently asexual exchange is more sexual than any direct proposition.
“Do you want to come up for coffee? I don't drink coffee. I haven't got any.”
Žižek imagines a politically correct date: both bring their sex toys, place them on the table buzzing together, and have an intellectual conversation while 'the machines are doing it.' The joke exposes enjoyment as a superego obligation now outsourced to gadgets.
“The machines are buzzing, we don't have really to do anything... and that's freedom. Because enjoyment is today a super-ego pressure. You have to enjoy.”
Lenin's famous last testament proposes deposing Stalin not for wrong political line but for rudeness and bad manners, an extraordinary turn Žižek cites as proof that decency, not vulgarity, was Lenin's final concern.
“He doesn't depose Stalin with wrong political line, it's all decency. Comrade Stalin is too rude, he doesn't have good manners enough.”
In a Macedonian hotel, the receptionist says smoking is prohibited but ashtrays are provided, a dissonance openly admitted and therefore treated as nonexistent. The ashtray itself bore a no-smoking symbol.
“Of course it's not permitted, it's prohibited by the law, but you have ashtrays in the room so this is not a problem.”
Works invoked 3
Brassed Off film
Used as the paradigmatic illustration of sexuality's essential indirectness, the 'coffee without coffee' seduction scene is called 'the zero level of sexuality.'
Cited as the clearest everyday example of 'obscene immortality', characters are destroyed and reappear normal, structuring the video-game logic of digital culture.
Justine book
Sade's novel used to illustrate 'obscene immortality', Justine is tortured and appears unscathed in the next scene, like a cartoon character.
People invoked 21
Joan Williams positive
Left-wing feminist whose Guardian text on Roseanne Barr and white working-class media representation Žižek endorses.
Marquis de Sade positive
Cited via the Justine novels as an illustration of 'obscene immortality', the body destroyed and reappearing undamaged.
Named as a signatory of the 1970s French manifesto for sex with children.
Vladimir Lenin positive
Žižek identifies as a Leninist and cites Lenin's testament (criticizing Stalin for rudeness) as an extraordinary turn toward decency.
Jacques Lacan positive
Žižek deploys the pleasure/jouissance distinction to analyze consumerism's management of enjoyment.
Named alongside Guattari as a signatory of the 1970s French manifesto.
Cited as the French president who panicked during May 1968 and consulted the army in Germany, evidence that 1968 was a genuine political threat.
Peter Singer negative
Colleague only in a formal sense; Žižek jokes he would send him to the gulag; used as example of where transspecies logic leads.
Donald Trump negative
Used as example of how the ruling class has become vulgar; also as the figure that will appropriate left motives if the left fails.
Raymond Kurzweil negative
His techno-optimism ('wonderful new world') is dismissed as stupid; Žižek insists something radically new will emerge that has nothing to do with naive dreams of divine immortality.
Cited as example of a big capitalist executive immediately supporting transgender causes, illustrating how the ideology fits late capitalism.
George Orwell positive
Orwell's concept of 'common decency' is endorsed as what the left needs to embrace today.
Named as a signatory of the 1970s French manifesto for sex with children.
Cited alongside Musk and Gates as tech-capitalist executives endorsing transgender causes.
Named as a signatory of the 1970s French manifesto for sex with children; used to illustrate how 1968's liberation opened space for new oppressions.
Mentioned as one of the big executives who supported transgender causes, illustrating ideological compatibility with late capitalism.
Jordan Peterson negative
Dismissed as an idiot for claiming political correctness is the last effect of cultural Marxism.
Named as a signatory of the 1970s French manifesto for sex with children.
Mentioned as one of the writers of the 1970s French manifesto demanding free sex with children.
Joseph Stalin negative
Cited as the paradigm case of rudeness and paternalist perversion ('we know better than you'); the 'Stalinist perversion' of claiming to speak for the people.
Named as a signatory of the 1970s French manifesto for sex with children, cited as evidence of how sexual liberation opened space for new oppressions.
What it argues
sexuality's inherent indirectness and ambiguityconsumerist depotentiation of enjoyment into safe pleasurespolitical correctness as managed, contractualized sexualityco-optation of 1968 revolutionary demands by late capitalismthe neighbor as threat and the fear of over-proximitymulticulturalism and the conflict of ways of lifetranshumanism and the erasure of the inner/outer boundary
Dialectical moves 9
“Political correctness is not too extreme — it is not extreme enough.”
The problem with PC is not its radicalism but its failure to address real class and economic dimensions of oppression.
“In hardcore pornography, the woman is not objectivized but coercively subjectivized — this is far more violent than objectivization.”
The apparent objectification of women in porn conceals a forced performance of subjectivity, reversing the standard feminist critique.
“Every power edifice needs a secret perversion to sustain it; the truly creative stance is the hysterical one.”
What appears liberatory (perversion, knowing exactly what one wants) actually serves power; what appears weak (hysteria, doubt) is genuinely subversive.
“Tolerance coincides here with its opposite, intolerance — my duty to tolerate others means I should not get too close to them.”
Liberal tolerance is structurally identical to keeping the Other at a safe distance, which is a form of intolerance.
“The machines are doing it for us and we can have a nice intellectual conversation — while fucking, in some sense.”
The ultimate politically correct sex (machines replacing bodily contact) reveals enjoyment has become a superego obligation the subject outsources.
“Freedom of choice is the main thing of today's oppression.”
The form of freedom offered by late capitalism, choose your gender, your healthcare plan, your work contract, is the very mechanism of subjection.
“Perverts are comfortable; hysterics ask questions — and that's why analysis works on hysterics and is almost impossible on perverts.”
Stability of identity is a mark of perversion, not health; genuine sexuality involves irreducible instability and not-knowing.
“Our greatest contribution to world peace is to stick to what is best in our own tradition — not to engage in eternal masochism which is just inverted racism.”
Western self-criticism that blames itself for all global violence reproduces the same patronizing structure as colonial racism, only inverted.
“Today with Trump those in power are vulgar enough; maybe we the left should become people of decency.”
The traditional left valorization of vulgarity as subversive is now inverted: vulgarity is the ruling class's style, so decency becomes the truly subversive position.
Claims 15
reframes
Political correctness is not the last remnant of cultural Marxism but is, on the contrary, the last bourgeois ideological defense against a genuinely new revolutionary left.political correctness and cultural Marxism
asserts
Consumerism systematically deprives enjoyment of its excessive dimension, producing a culture of decaffeinated, risk-free pleasures that suppress jouissance.consumerism and jouissance
asserts
Sexuality is never direct; it always requires a detour, a mediating third element or fantasy, so purely contractualized or cybersexual arrangements strip out the essential structure of desire.sexuality and indirectness
reframes
The transgender movement's logic of infinite self-reinvention fits late-capitalist consumerist ideology and is not in itself emancipatory.transgender identity politics
reframes
In hardcore pornography, the woman is not objectivized but coercively subjectivized — forced to perform and exhibit her subjective enjoyment — which is actually more violent than objectivization.pornography and objectification
asserts
Hysteria is genuinely creative and liberating, while perversion secretly sustains every power edifice — the feminist lesson is to rehabilitate the hysterical stance.hysteria, perversion, and feminism
reframes
Freedom of choice as such is not genuine freedom; genuine freedom consists in the concrete space of freedoms one is allowed, not in the multiplicity of options offered by the market.freedom of choice and liberalism
reframes
A sexual identity is never firm and stable; every gender position is inherently questioning and insecure, and the 'plus' in LGBTQ+ should be read philosophically as 'I don't know what I am' rather than as an empirical remainder.gender identity and LGBTQ+ politics
asserts
The sexual liberation of 1968 was largely co-opted by capitalism, which integrated its formal demands while neutralizing their radical political content.May 1968 and capitalist co-optation
asserts
Conflict between different ways of life is real and irresolvable through simple tolerance; a way of life is not just food and songs but involves a universal claim about relations between sexes and authority.multiculturalism and Islam
asserts
Brain-computer interface technology threatens to erase the fundamental human distinction between inner subjectivity and external reality, producing something radically new and unprecedented.transhumanism and brain-computer interfaces
rejects
Explicit consent rules such as 'enthusiastic yes at every step' and 'right to withdraw at any point' open up new spaces of humiliation and violence rather than protecting against them.consent culture and MeToo regulations
asserts
The left today should embrace decency rather than vulgarity, since those in power (Trump, etc.) are now the vulgar ones.left politics and decency
rejects
Anti-Western self-criticism by postcolonial critics is a form of inverted racism — 'politically correct white man's burden' — that still implicitly universalizes Western concepts.Western self-criticism and postcolonialism
reframes
Female sexual liberation is not puritan withdrawal from objectivization but the right to actively play with self-objectivization, including the right to withdraw at will.feminist objectification debates
Quotes 15
“A dissonance is openly admitted and for that reason treated as irrelevant.”Slavoj Žižek · ideology as openly-acknowledged contradiction
“Feminine sexual liberation is not just a puritan withdrawal from being objectivized, but the right to actively play with self-objectivization, offering yourself and withdrawing at will.”Slavoj Žižek · feminist defense of active self-objectivization
“Every power edifice needs a secret perversion to sustain it. And the truly creative stance is the hysterical stance of provoking, asking question, who am I, what am I, why am I, what I want.”Slavoj Žižek · hysteria as subversive vs. perversion as complicit
“This mediated character of sexuality means that I am never alone with my partner. Our direct bodily interaction is always mediated by a fantasy.”Slavoj Žižek · fantasy mediates all sexuality
“Chocolate yes, but fat-free. Coca-Cola yes, but diet. Coffee yes, but without caffeine. Beer yes, but without alcohol. And at the end of course, sex yes, but safe sex.”Slavoj Žižek · decaffeinated enjoyment / consumerist depotentiation of jouissance
“The other is okay in so far as his presence is not too intrusive, in so far as the other is not really other. Tolerance coincides here with its opposite, intolerance.”Slavoj Žižek · liberal tolerance as distance from the Other
“Enjoyment is today a super-ego pressure. You have to enjoy. But the machines are doing it for us.”Slavoj Žižek · enjoyment as superego obligation outsourced to gadgets
“Freedom of choice is the main thing of today's oppression.”Slavoj Žižek · freedom of choice as ideological mechanism of subjection
“Perverts never doubt. They know it. Hysterics ask questions. And I think that there can be a different theory of sexuality where your sexual identity is not defined by firm features.”Slavoj Žižek · sexual identity as inherently unstable / hysteria vs. perversion
“Who is comfortable? I will tell you. Perverts are comfortable.”Slavoj Žižek · perverse certainty about identity vs. hysterical doubt
“I think we should stop with this eternal masochism which is just inverted racism.”Slavoj Žižek · Western self-blame as inverted racism
“Maybe we the left should become people of decency immediately.”Slavoj Žižek · decency as the new left subversive stance
“Sexuality is so ambiguous and intricate that no explicit rules, no contract will really work.”Slavoj Žižek · sexuality's irreducible ambiguity resists contractualization
“A certain deadlock, instability, even immorality in common sense, let's accept it is inherent to sexuality.”Slavoj Žižek · sexuality's constitutive deadlock and immorality
“A way of life is not just, as some benevolent leftists try to convince us, our food, our songs. A way of life is especially how relations between sexes are regulated and relations of authority.”Slavoj Žižek · way of life as sexual and authority relations, not mere customs
Transcript 46 turns
Slavoj Žižek
Before I give him the word, spare your applause. When we communists will take over, you will be obliged to give long applause to the leader. So spare that energy for people's power. Go on.
Before I give him the word, spare your applause. When we communists will take over, you will be obliged to give long applause to the leader. So spare that energy for people's power. Go on.
unknown
Right, uh, welcome all of you. I know it's really hot in here. Uh, just before we kick off, I've actually, and I'm not joking you, I've been asked to ask you a question from the festival committee. How many in here would confess to being frequent users of pornographic material on a regular basis? That's very few. I'm just, I've been asked to ask that question. We got a lot of moralists and very few masturbators. Anyway, let's see if we can change that. Uh, the thing is, uh, before we kick off, Slavoj will do an introducing, introduction which will last what, minutes? minutes? somewhere there. Somewhere there. We have minutes total. Sorry? We have minutes all in all. Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah. And I have one or two questions if I get the chance. Okay, it's Slavoj, it's Slavoj time.
Right, uh, welcome all of you. I know it's really hot in here. Uh, just before we kick off, I've actually, and I'm not joking you, I've been asked to ask you a question from the festival committee. How many in here would confess to being frequent users of pornographic material on a regular basis? That's very few. I'm just, I've been asked to ask that question. We got a lot of moralists and very few masturbators. Anyway, let's see if we can change that. Uh, the thing is, uh, before we kick off, Slavoj will do an introducing, introduction which will last what, minutes? minutes? somewhere there. Somewhere there. We have minutes total. Sorry? We have minutes all in all. Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah. And I have one or two questions if I get the chance. Okay, it's Slavoj, it's Slavoj time.
Slavoj Žižek
Okay, thank you. I am very grateful to be here and I just hope, I hope the microphones work, and I hope that technology will work. That's my true anxiety. Okay, let me begin. Uh, I will try to be as simple and short as possible. In a hotel in Skopje, the capital of the republic of Macedonia where I recently stayed, my companion, my wife, inquired if smoking is permitted in our room. And the answer she got from the receptionist was unique. Of course it's not permitted, it's prohibited by the law, but you have ashtrays in the room so this is not a problem. This contradiction between prohibition and permission was openly assumed and thereby treated as nonexistent. Uh, let's say, the message was, it's prohibited and here it is how you do it. And then, we had got a further surprise. When we entered the room, this is what awaited us in the room. An ashtray with the sign of the prohibition to smoke. Please show the first image. Yes, you see, I'm not lying. Literally. Uh, maybe this incident provides the best metaphor for our ideological predicament. A dissonance is openly admitted and for that reason treated as irrelevant. Recall, for example, the debates on torture in the United States. Was the stance of American authorities not something like exactly the same paradox? Torture is prohibited and here is how you do a waterboarding. One has to avoid a crucial misunderstanding here. It is not that prior to our time, we took the rules and prohibitions seriously while today we violate them. Let's compare the sexual lives of two United States presidents, Kennedy and Trump. As we all know, John Kennedy had numerous affairs, but the press and TV ignored them. While Trump's every old and new step in this direction is followed by the media. Not to mention that Trump also speaks publicly in an obscene way that we cannot even imagine Kennedy doing it. So the gap that separates the dignified public space from its obscene underside is now disappearing, with ambiguous consequences. Inconsistencies and violations of public rules are openly accepted or at least ignored, but simultaneously, we are all becoming openly aware of them, of this inconsistency. Like, you can be inconsistent, nobody cares. How did this shift affect sexuality? We are becoming massively aware of the extent of coercion and exploitation in sexual relationships. MeToo movement and so on. However, we should bear in mind also the no less massive fact that millions of people on a daily basis flirt, play the game of seduction, with the clear aim to get a partner for sex. The result of modern Western culture is that both sexes are expected to play an active role in this game. When women dress provocatively to attract male gaze, when they objectivize themselves to seduce them, they don't do it offering themselves as passive objects. They are active agents of their own objectivization, manipulating men, playing ambiguous games, including the full right, of course, to step out of the game at any moment. This active role of women is their freedom which bothers all kind of fundamentalist. From Muslims who recently prohibited women touching and playing with bananas and other fruit which resembles penis, to our own ordinary male chauvinists who explode in violence against a woman who, so they claim, first provokes them and then rejects their advances. What I want to say here is that feminine sexual liberation is not just a puritan withdrawal from being objectivized, but the right to actively play with self-objectivization, offering yourself and withdrawing at will. So my point is that all this debate about, oh you are objectivizing women, I find it very problematic. What's wrong about a woman, in the sense of trying to be attractive to men, objectivizing herself, if this is done by her own free will, with the right to withdraw and so on and so on. I will try to give you later an extreme example which demonstrates how the true oppression of women precisely prevents them to objectivize themselves. So yes, sex is traversed by power games, violent obscenities and so on. But the difficult thing to admit is that sexuality, power, and violence are much more intimately intertwined than we may expect it. So that also elements of what is considered brutality can be sexualized, libidinally invested. After all, sadism and masochism are forms of sexual activity. Political correctness tries to resolve this deadlock by imposing explicit rules and by contractualizing sex. I think this solution is a perverse solution. So what is missed in perversion? No, no, I don't have time since I am by you brutally limited. But you know, uh, here I try to be a good feminist, namely, I remember, I'm old enough, in the great sixties sexual revolution, it was popular to blame hysterics as ambiguous. A hysteric subject is just provoking a master and doesn't really want to get rid of the master, while perverts go to the end, they enact their freedom. Here, it was the hidden antifeminism of that age. Perverts are as a rule male, hysterics are female. And I think the big liberating lesson from psychoanalysis is that there is nothing liberating in perversion. Every power edifice needs a secret perversion to sustain it. And the truly creative stance is the hysterical stance of provoking, asking question, who am I, what am I, why am I, what I want. So the first rule is, if you want to be truly a feminist, legitimize, rehabilitate hysteria. Let me go on. The indirectness, what perversion misses is the indirectness in the very heart of sexuality. Now I will come slowly to my second example, uh, a short clip, maybe you know it, from the English working-class drama Brassed Off, where the hero walks home a pretty young woman and when they reach the entrance to her flat, this is what happens. The second, the clip please, Brassed Off. Do you want to come up for coffee? I don't drink coffee. I haven't got any. You see, this is, sorry, stop. This is for me the zero level of sexuality. Nothing happened, just apparently a totally asexual exchange. But the message, come up and let's make love, is delivered, not only delivered out of modesty, but this very meaningless exchange sexualizes the debate. Because if she were just to say, come out and come up and fuck my brain out of me whatever, it would be much less sexual than this totally asexual totally asexual exchange. And now comes, now in politically correct times I should add a trigger warning to you here. Now comes my most problematic example. I claim that sexuality is never direct. This indirectness, a necessity of detour, of a third element, reaches all the way down. Recall, let, the, what I try to isolate as the paradigmatic hardcore sexual position and shot in straight heterosexual pornography. It's a shot where a woman is lying on her back with her legs spread wide backwards, the camera is in front, showing man's genitalia, his penis penetrating her vagina, and man's face is as a rule invisible. He is reduced to an instrument. But what we see in the background before her, between sorry her thighs, is her face in the throe of orgasmic enjoyment. For obvious reasons, there will be no clip here, no. Uh, this reflexivity is crucial. If we were just to see the close up of penetration, the scene would soon turn boring, disgusting, medical. One has to add woman's enthralled gaze. Her, of course fake, subjective reaction to what is going on. So, what is happening here? First, it's the man who is really treated as an instrument. You usually don't even see the man's face. His duty is just bam bam to do it. So I claim, I as a viewer of this movie, I don't identify with the man doing it. You get it totally wrong if you think, oh my pleasure comes from me imagining me to be, no. I identify with my gaze searching for a proof of her subjectivity in the throe of enjoyment. That's why it's not only let's see sexual organs, you must see her face with I cannot imitate them all the sounds and so on. Why is this crucial? Because uh, woman is here subjectivized. Man is objectivized in the scene. But woman is subjectivized in a very brutal violent way. It's a fake subjectivization where she has to enact her intense enjoyment and so on and so on. So I think this is much more violent than objectivization. Again, in hardcore pornography, the woman is not objectivized. He is in a coercive humiliating way subjectivized. And if you know a little bit about a little bit about sadism and masochism and so on, a practitioner of sadism does not simply objectivize his victim. What he is looking for is precisely to her, if it's a woman, humiliation, disgust, pain. Her subjective reaction to her terrifying predicament is part of the game. Now this mediated character of sexuality means that I am never alone with my partner. Our direct bodily interaction is always mediated by a fantasy. You are never alone even if you are alone with your partner. Let me give you my last visual example. A couple of decades ago, a British publicity spot for a beer uh was shown and I will describe it so that you will get it. Its first part stages the well-known fairy tale anecdote. A girl walks along a stream, sees a frog, uh takes it gently into her lap, kisses the frog and of course, the ugly frog miraculously changes into a beautiful young man. However, the story in this publicity spot is not over yet. The young man casts a covetous glance at the girl, draws her towards him, kisses her and she turns into a bottle of beer which then, please let's show this last one. Hi! Hello there. Hello sheep. Isn't it a beautiful day? Hello Mr. Frog. I'm big, but if I were to give you a kiss you'd turn into a handsome sheep sheira. Oh yeah! Castlemaine is made with Galton Plus-Draughts. You haven't got a sister, have you? Stop. It's okay. Experience... Now what's the underlying idea? For the woman, the point is that the man, the point is that the frog when kissed uh turns into a beautiful man, although incidentally my women friends are telling me it's rather the opposite in real life. You think you have a beautiful man, you kiss him and you're becoming aware how his mouth smells and so on that you are really kissing a frog. But that's another point. For the man, the goal is to reduce the woman to a partial object which is the cause of his desire. So the message of this publicity is a beautiful one. We have either a woman with a frog or a man with a bottle of beer. What we can never obtain is the true couple which is the truth of the beautiful woman and man. It's of course a frog embracing a bottle of beer. That's the truth. So but let's go on. This phantasmatic dimension is reduced in our drug culture. Are we aware to what extent chemistry in its scientific version is becoming part of our daily lives? Large aspects of our lives are characterized by the management of our emotions by drugs. From everyday use of sleeping pills and
Okay, thank you. I am very grateful to be here and I just hope, I hope the microphones work, and I hope that technology will work. That's my true anxiety. Okay, let me begin. Uh, I will try to be as simple and short as possible. In a hotel in Skopje, the capital of the republic of Macedonia where I recently stayed, my companion, my wife, inquired if smoking is permitted in our room. And the answer she got from the receptionist was unique. Of course it's not permitted, it's prohibited by the law, but you have ashtrays in the room so this is not a problem. This contradiction between prohibition and permission was openly assumed and thereby treated as nonexistent. Uh, let's say, the message was, it's prohibited and here it is how you do it. And then, we had got a further surprise. When we entered the room, this is what awaited us in the room. An ashtray with the sign of the prohibition to smoke. Please show the first image. Yes, you see, I'm not lying. Literally. Uh, maybe this incident provides the best metaphor for our ideological predicament. A dissonance is openly admitted and for that reason treated as irrelevant. Recall, for example, the debates on torture in the United States. Was the stance of American authorities not something like exactly the same paradox? Torture is prohibited and here is how you do a waterboarding. One has to avoid a crucial misunderstanding here. It is not that prior to our time, we took the rules and prohibitions seriously while today we violate them. Let's compare the sexual lives of two United States presidents, Kennedy and Trump. As we all know, John Kennedy had numerous affairs, but the press and TV ignored them. While Trump's every old and new step in this direction is followed by the media. Not to mention that Trump also speaks publicly in an obscene way that we cannot even imagine Kennedy doing it. So the gap that separates the dignified public space from its obscene underside is now disappearing, with ambiguous consequences. Inconsistencies and violations of public rules are openly accepted or at least ignored, but simultaneously, we are all becoming openly aware of them, of this inconsistency. Like, you can be inconsistent, nobody cares. How did this shift affect sexuality? We are becoming massively aware of the extent of coercion and exploitation in sexual relationships. MeToo movement and so on. However, we should bear in mind also the no less massive fact that millions of people on a daily basis flirt, play the game of seduction, with the clear aim to get a partner for sex. The result of modern Western culture is that both sexes are expected to play an active role in this game. When women dress provocatively to attract male gaze, when they objectivize themselves to seduce them, they don't do it offering themselves as passive objects. They are active agents of their own objectivization, manipulating men, playing ambiguous games, including the full right, of course, to step out of the game at any moment. This active role of women is their freedom which bothers all kind of fundamentalist. From Muslims who recently prohibited women touching and playing with bananas and other fruit which resembles penis, to our own ordinary male chauvinists who explode in violence against a woman who, so they claim, first provokes them and then rejects their advances. What I want to say here is that feminine sexual liberation is not just a puritan withdrawal from being objectivized, but the right to actively play with self-objectivization, offering yourself and withdrawing at will. So my point is that all this debate about, oh you are objectivizing women, I find it very problematic. What's wrong about a woman, in the sense of trying to be attractive to men, objectivizing herself, if this is done by her own free will, with the right to withdraw and so on and so on. I will try to give you later an extreme example which demonstrates how the true oppression of women precisely prevents them to objectivize themselves. So yes, sex is traversed by power games, violent obscenities and so on. But the difficult thing to admit is that sexuality, power, and violence are much more intimately intertwined than we may expect it. So that also elements of what is considered brutality can be sexualized, libidinally invested. After all, sadism and masochism are forms of sexual activity. Political correctness tries to resolve this deadlock by imposing explicit rules and by contractualizing sex. I think this solution is a perverse solution. So what is missed in perversion? No, no, I don't have time since I am by you brutally limited. But you know, uh, here I try to be a good feminist, namely, I remember, I'm old enough, in the great sixties sexual revolution, it was popular to blame hysterics as ambiguous. A hysteric subject is just provoking a master and doesn't really want to get rid of the master, while perverts go to the end, they enact their freedom. Here, it was the hidden antifeminism of that age. Perverts are as a rule male, hysterics are female. And I think the big liberating lesson from psychoanalysis is that there is nothing liberating in perversion. Every power edifice needs a secret perversion to sustain it. And the truly creative stance is the hysterical stance of provoking, asking question, who am I, what am I, why am I, what I want. So the first rule is, if you want to be truly a feminist, legitimize, rehabilitate hysteria. Let me go on. The indirectness, what perversion misses is the indirectness in the very heart of sexuality. Now I will come slowly to my second example, uh, a short clip, maybe you know it, from the English working-class drama Brassed Off, where the hero walks home a pretty young woman and when they reach the entrance to her flat, this is what happens. The second, the clip please, Brassed Off. Do you want to come up for coffee? I don't drink coffee. I haven't got any. You see, this is, sorry, stop. This is for me the zero level of sexuality. Nothing happened, just apparently a totally asexual exchange. But the message, come up and let's make love, is delivered, not only delivered out of modesty, but this very meaningless exchange sexualizes the debate. Because if she were just to say, come out and come up and fuck my brain out of me whatever, it would be much less sexual than this totally asexual totally asexual exchange. And now comes, now in politically correct times I should add a trigger warning to you here. Now comes my most problematic example. I claim that sexuality is never direct. This indirectness, a necessity of detour, of a third element, reaches all the way down. Recall, let, the, what I try to isolate as the paradigmatic hardcore sexual position and shot in straight heterosexual pornography. It's a shot where a woman is lying on her back with her legs spread wide backwards, the camera is in front, showing man's genitalia, his penis penetrating her vagina, and man's face is as a rule invisible. He is reduced to an instrument. But what we see in the background before her, between sorry her thighs, is her face in the throe of orgasmic enjoyment. For obvious reasons, there will be no clip here, no. Uh, this reflexivity is crucial. If we were just to see the close up of penetration, the scene would soon turn boring, disgusting, medical. One has to add woman's enthralled gaze. Her, of course fake, subjective reaction to what is going on. So, what is happening here? First, it's the man who is really treated as an instrument. You usually don't even see the man's face. His duty is just bam bam to do it. So I claim, I as a viewer of this movie, I don't identify with the man doing it. You get it totally wrong if you think, oh my pleasure comes from me imagining me to be, no. I identify with my gaze searching for a proof of her subjectivity in the throe of enjoyment. That's why it's not only let's see sexual organs, you must see her face with I cannot imitate them all the sounds and so on. Why is this crucial? Because uh, woman is here subjectivized. Man is objectivized in the scene. But woman is subjectivized in a very brutal violent way. It's a fake subjectivization where she has to enact her intense enjoyment and so on and so on. So I think this is much more violent than objectivization. Again, in hardcore pornography, the woman is not objectivized. He is in a coercive humiliating way subjectivized. And if you know a little bit about a little bit about sadism and masochism and so on, a practitioner of sadism does not simply objectivize his victim. What he is looking for is precisely to her, if it's a woman, humiliation, disgust, pain. Her subjective reaction to her terrifying predicament is part of the game. Now this mediated character of sexuality means that I am never alone with my partner. Our direct bodily interaction is always mediated by a fantasy. You are never alone even if you are alone with your partner. Let me give you my last visual example. A couple of decades ago, a British publicity spot for a beer uh was shown and I will describe it so that you will get it. Its first part stages the well-known fairy tale anecdote. A girl walks along a stream, sees a frog, uh takes it gently into her lap, kisses the frog and of course, the ugly frog miraculously changes into a beautiful young man. However, the story in this publicity spot is not over yet. The young man casts a covetous glance at the girl, draws her towards him, kisses her and she turns into a bottle of beer which then, please let's show this last one. Hi! Hello there. Hello sheep. Isn't it a beautiful day? Hello Mr. Frog. I'm big, but if I were to give you a kiss you'd turn into a handsome sheep sheira. Oh yeah! Castlemaine is made with Galton Plus-Draughts. You haven't got a sister, have you? Stop. It's okay. Experience... Now what's the underlying idea? For the woman, the point is that the man, the point is that the frog when kissed uh turns into a beautiful man, although incidentally my women friends are telling me it's rather the opposite in real life. You think you have a beautiful man, you kiss him and you're becoming aware how his mouth smells and so on that you are really kissing a frog. But that's another point. For the man, the goal is to reduce the woman to a partial object which is the cause of his desire. So the message of this publicity is a beautiful one. We have either a woman with a frog or a man with a bottle of beer. What we can never obtain is the true couple which is the truth of the beautiful woman and man. It's of course a frog embracing a bottle of beer. That's the truth. So but let's go on. This phantasmatic dimension is reduced in our drug culture. Are we aware to what extent chemistry in its scientific version is becoming part of our daily lives? Large aspects of our lives are characterized by the management of our emotions by drugs. From everyday use of sleeping pills and
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antidepressants to hard narcotics. For example, you are tired, you take some pills.
antidepressants to hard narcotics. For example, you are tired, you take some pills.
Slavoj Žižek
You are overexcited, you take another type of pills. You don't have sexual desires, you take pills and so on and so on. Uh, the stakes of these chemical interventions are double and contradictory. Did you notice how we when we are overexcited, we first use drugs to withdraw from too much excitement and then when we are withdrawn out of touch with reality, we again needs need drugs to excite us. The problem here is that the excitement is usually social excitement which drugs help us to exclude, to pacify, but the excitement to which drugs stimulate us is of course private intimate excitement, not political excitement let's say of collective engagement. This paradigm I think defines the coordinates of today's consumerism, which provides a clear case of the distinction elaborated by Jacques Lacan between pleasure, pleasure and jouissance, intense enjoyment. On the one hand, we have the consumerist calculation of pleasures, well protected from all kind of harassment and other threats to our health. On the other hand, we have the drug addicts or smokers or whatever bent of self-destruction. So the basic strategy of our consumerism is to deprive to deprive enjoyment of its excessive dimension. Enjoyment is tolerated, solicited even, but on condition that it is healthy, that it doesn't threaten our psychic or biological stability. Chocolate yes, but fat-free. Coca-Cola yes, but diet. Coffee yes, but without caffeine. Beer yes, but without alcohol. Mayonnaise yes, but without cholesterol and at the end of course, sex yes, but safe sex. So I would like to ask here who is the other who poses the threat to our balanced pleasures? It is I think simply what in our Judeo-Christian tradition we called the neighbor. A neighbor by definition harasses and harassment is another of those words which I think are very ambiguous. At its most elementary, harassment means refers to brutal facts of rape, beating, and other modes of violence, which of course should be ruthlessly fought, condemned. However, in the predominant use of this term today, harassment means also something else. Fear of the overproximity of another real human being. The other is okay in so far as his presence is not too intrusive, in so far as the other is not really other. Tolerance coincides here with its opposite, intolerance. My duty is to be tolerant towards others but what this effectively means is that I should not get too close to them, not to intrude too much into their space. So no wonder one of the big modern inventions is the so-called restraining order, when somebody annoys you, you can go to a court and he is not allowed to approach you I don't know more than yards and so on. Of course I agree with this when the other is really harassing you. But I think this is nonetheless a sad sign of our predicament, where again the other is basically considered as a threat. He shouldn't be allowed to come too close to us. And it's incredible how here the two extremes meet. In male in our politically correct discourse, whatever a man does can be read as potentially a harassment. I speak in a lively, sometimes vulgar way, I was, you can believe me, already accused of verbal rape, visual rape, and so on and so on. So it's this fear of my activity. But isn't this strangely mirrored in what, when they were in power in Afghanistan, Taliban they imposed this rule, they prohibited women in the cities where there is a hard floor of stones whatever, women were prohibited to wear metal heels because they claimed even if a woman is totally covered, these clicks that you as a woman make when you walk can excite men too much. I see here nonetheless how extremes meet. Slavoj, Slavoj, can I interrupt you for a minute? Yes. Because I'm listening very patiently and I'm really observing what you say. But when you talk about the other, as you just did now. About the other, yes. The other, yes. Yeah. Are you thinking specifically about Islam? Is that what you're trying to say? No, the with the with the fundamentalist is the same. That's why I think again, we should show how our fundamentalists also, what they fear is the other who is active, who actively imposes itself and so on and so on. What I'm afraid is of this, this discourse where implicitly the other, usually the feminine other, but in the case of MeToo the male other, is perceived as a potential threat. But give me another five minutes I will finish then you have You have eight minutes. Eight, oh my god, what happened to you that you are so generous? Okay, no let's go quickly on. What I wanted to say is that this is why the ultimate politically correct sex sex is cybersex where precisely you can be sure that nobody is that nobody is harassed. Another solution that we have is, and it's very sad tendency, is that even in our sexuality, real partner is more and more replaced by gadget. Not only dildo, plastic penis for women, but also something they call it's a terrible term, stamina training unit. Is a fat candle-like artificial vagina and I saw it, it's a wonderful instrument. You put on the top different forms of the opening, you can get anus, mouth, or vagina, then you can regulate how much it squeezes you, how fast and so on and so on. And again, you play your game, nobody is harassed, nobody is hurt, and so on and so on. So now, how what to do with romance in this time? I will now repeat an old story of mine because I have a solution. Let's say I'm dating a woman and we want both to be totally politically correct, so we meet, I bring my stamina training unit, she brings her dildo, and how does our date look? We put both of them, let's say you are a woman or me here, we put them on the table, we turn both instruments on, we push her dildo into my stamina training unit and we are doing it out there. The machines are buzzing, we don't have really to do anything, you know, like, and that's freedom. Because enjoyment is today a super-ego pressure. You have to enjoy. But the machines are doing it for us and we can have a nice intellectual conversation. While fucking, in some sense, you know. Let me just, and so again, when people, you see my second tendency here critical, when people claim we live in hedonist times and
You are overexcited, you take another type of pills. You don't have sexual desires, you take pills and so on and so on. Uh, the stakes of these chemical interventions are double and contradictory. Did you notice how we when we are overexcited, we first use drugs to withdraw from too much excitement and then when we are withdrawn out of touch with reality, we again needs need drugs to excite us. The problem here is that the excitement is usually social excitement which drugs help us to exclude, to pacify, but the excitement to which drugs stimulate us is of course private intimate excitement, not political excitement let's say of collective engagement. This paradigm I think defines the coordinates of today's consumerism, which provides a clear case of the distinction elaborated by Jacques Lacan between pleasure, pleasure and jouissance, intense enjoyment. On the one hand, we have the consumerist calculation of pleasures, well protected from all kind of harassment and other threats to our health. On the other hand, we have the drug addicts or smokers or whatever bent of self-destruction. So the basic strategy of our consumerism is to deprive to deprive enjoyment of its excessive dimension. Enjoyment is tolerated, solicited even, but on condition that it is healthy, that it doesn't threaten our psychic or biological stability. Chocolate yes, but fat-free. Coca-Cola yes, but diet. Coffee yes, but without caffeine. Beer yes, but without alcohol. Mayonnaise yes, but without cholesterol and at the end of course, sex yes, but safe sex. So I would like to ask here who is the other who poses the threat to our balanced pleasures? It is I think simply what in our Judeo-Christian tradition we called the neighbor. A neighbor by definition harasses and harassment is another of those words which I think are very ambiguous. At its most elementary, harassment means refers to brutal facts of rape, beating, and other modes of violence, which of course should be ruthlessly fought, condemned. However, in the predominant use of this term today, harassment means also something else. Fear of the overproximity of another real human being. The other is okay in so far as his presence is not too intrusive, in so far as the other is not really other. Tolerance coincides here with its opposite, intolerance. My duty is to be tolerant towards others but what this effectively means is that I should not get too close to them, not to intrude too much into their space. So no wonder one of the big modern inventions is the so-called restraining order, when somebody annoys you, you can go to a court and he is not allowed to approach you I don't know more than yards and so on. Of course I agree with this when the other is really harassing you. But I think this is nonetheless a sad sign of our predicament, where again the other is basically considered as a threat. He shouldn't be allowed to come too close to us. And it's incredible how here the two extremes meet. In male in our politically correct discourse, whatever a man does can be read as potentially a harassment. I speak in a lively, sometimes vulgar way, I was, you can believe me, already accused of verbal rape, visual rape, and so on and so on. So it's this fear of my activity. But isn't this strangely mirrored in what, when they were in power in Afghanistan, Taliban they imposed this rule, they prohibited women in the cities where there is a hard floor of stones whatever, women were prohibited to wear metal heels because they claimed even if a woman is totally covered, these clicks that you as a woman make when you walk can excite men too much. I see here nonetheless how extremes meet. Slavoj, Slavoj, can I interrupt you for a minute? Yes. Because I'm listening very patiently and I'm really observing what you say. But when you talk about the other, as you just did now. About the other, yes. The other, yes. Yeah. Are you thinking specifically about Islam? Is that what you're trying to say? No, the with the with the fundamentalist is the same. That's why I think again, we should show how our fundamentalists also, what they fear is the other who is active, who actively imposes itself and so on and so on. What I'm afraid is of this, this discourse where implicitly the other, usually the feminine other, but in the case of MeToo the male other, is perceived as a potential threat. But give me another five minutes I will finish then you have You have eight minutes. Eight, oh my god, what happened to you that you are so generous? Okay, no let's go quickly on. What I wanted to say is that this is why the ultimate politically correct sex sex is cybersex where precisely you can be sure that nobody is that nobody is harassed. Another solution that we have is, and it's very sad tendency, is that even in our sexuality, real partner is more and more replaced by gadget. Not only dildo, plastic penis for women, but also something they call it's a terrible term, stamina training unit. Is a fat candle-like artificial vagina and I saw it, it's a wonderful instrument. You put on the top different forms of the opening, you can get anus, mouth, or vagina, then you can regulate how much it squeezes you, how fast and so on and so on. And again, you play your game, nobody is harassed, nobody is hurt, and so on and so on. So now, how what to do with romance in this time? I will now repeat an old story of mine because I have a solution. Let's say I'm dating a woman and we want both to be totally politically correct, so we meet, I bring my stamina training unit, she brings her dildo, and how does our date look? We put both of them, let's say you are a woman or me here, we put them on the table, we turn both instruments on, we push her dildo into my stamina training unit and we are doing it out there. The machines are buzzing, we don't have really to do anything, you know, like, and that's freedom. Because enjoyment is today a super-ego pressure. You have to enjoy. But the machines are doing it for us and we can have a nice intellectual conversation. While fucking, in some sense, you know. Let me just, and so again, when people, you see my second tendency here critical, when people claim we live in hedonist times and
unknown
so on. No, we don't. We live in totally controlled hedonism, where we live under the double injunction. On the one hand, yes enjoy, on the other hand, you pay the price for this enjoyment with more and more of oppressive regulations and so on and so on. And simply regulations I think they don't they don't they don't function in sex. So let me now really briefly conclude,
so on. No, we don't. We live in totally controlled hedonism, where we live under the double injunction. On the one hand, yes enjoy, on the other hand, you pay the price for this enjoyment with more and more of oppressive regulations and so on and so on. And simply regulations I think they don't they don't they don't function in sex. So let me now really briefly conclude,
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really briefly, just three final points. The first one that you will not like is that many of those who fight for emancipation of sexuality still portray male patriarchy as the big enemy. I don't think. I think that this is the case. I think that you see
really briefly, just three final points. The first one that you will not like is that many of those who fight for emancipation of sexuality still portray male patriarchy as the big enemy. I don't think. I think that this is the case. I think that you see
Slavoj Žižek
how MeToo and transgender movements, how they explode all and did you notice this, all big American executives of big companies, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates immediately totally supported transgender and so on. I'm not saying that we shouldn't support them. I'm just saying that today, our basic ideological model is no longer that we are solicited to be patriarchal subjects dominating women and then we resist against this. No, today's ideological injunction, typical of late capitalism, is something like be truly is what I ironically call hedonist Western Buddhism. Be true to yourself, don't get too many attached to specific object just freely float, reconstruct yourself all the time and so on and so on. So my I don't simply see an emancipatory dimension of this. Why not? Because I think it perfectly fits late capitalist consumerism. This trans this idea that is behind it, this infinite plasticity, you know, you can reinvent yourself, sex is not natural. Of course it's not natural. I totally But Slavoj, there is a multiplicity of sexual positions, sexual identities. Isn't that the greatest sign of liberation? I mean you're truly emancipated. No. No. Now you brought me to the next point. No, it's not. First, liberation, why liberation? Look, people were never isn't the sign that this doesn't work, that at the same time the price we pay is that never was so much impotence and frigidity as today. And just don't tell me because secretly we are still controlled by patriarchy or what. But Slavoj, Slavoj, sorry. Yeah, please, yeah. But you know, people have freed themselves of this straight straightjacket of binary positions, you know, male, female. They all sort of, you know, transcending genders. There is some sort of liberation in that because I mean it's not like when you and I grew up back in the fifties and sixties, seventies, there were like two positions, two gender positions. Now there's a multiplicity. That's liberty. No. No. Why? No. Why? It is the same in the same sense as if you say capitalist consumerist liberty. Of course it's liberty with regard to binary position and so on. Freedom of choice, you might call it. Oh my god, don't go into this direction because I say that freedom of choice is the main thing of today's of today's oppression. You know how it works? This is the big postmodern formula. How do they justify diminishing healthcare, social security? They say in the old oppressive days it was obligatory, organized by state and so on, healthcare, now you are free to choose. You either pay for healthcare, you you go to a holiday, you are free to choose. And at all levels, in my country and in America, I hope you are more happy here, that's how they justify precarious work. You think it's oppressive, you live all the time in anxiety, I don't know if I have a permanent job or not, but look at it as a liberation, every two months I can I can choose my make a free choice and so on and so on. I of course I am for free choice in the sense of my god I don't want anybody to order me what to do. But the be the true dimension of freedom I think is not free choice as such but the concrete space of freedoms that you are allowed to. And here problems for me in what you mentioned begin. Of course I am for the freedom of choice and so on. But the problem I find, the first one is this one. And I know dozens of examples in my next book there will be a long chapter of this. How this freedom of choice, especially with transgender people, many of them not all of them, some of them are my best friends and they are wonderful theoretically and I will tell you why, concretely, but with majority, how this freedom of choice immediately turns into a new desire for extreme classification. Like do you know that some board of whatever protection of freedoms in the city of New York proposed a list of I think or identities. You have the right to pick up. You know what's for me the illusion here? Uh it's not as simple as this that the traditional sex gender, first I think it's a difference between sex and gender, but that's another thing, are simply transfixed. I think that every, if you look at it closely, and that's the lesson of psychoanalysis, every gender identity is in itself questioning, unsecured and so on and so on. And uh this is where I think this basic insight of some of the transgender people, I cannot find my identity in the simple binary masculine feminine. Okay, I agree. But it's utopian, wrong dangerous illusion to think that if we expand the list enough, then oh my god, I'm a lesbian butch look, that's what I am now I am. You will never be satisfied. That's why, you know where I agree with some very intelligent LGBT people, where many idiots make fun of them. Where, you know when they call their position LGBTQ+. We can read this plus empirically as, okay maybe there are other identities that we didn't yet discover, but I think this is a bad reading. In my reading, it's much more beautiful I say Hegelian philosophical. What if I can be a plus directly? Plus in the sense of I don't know what I am and so on. And this brings me back to feminine hysteria and so on and so on. And I think that there is something hysterical in our basic sexual identity. You never know strictly what you are. I think that a sexual identity is something much more intermediate, ambiguous. Are you not comfortable in your own sexuality? Of course I'm not, that's why I'm sexual being. Maybe stupid animals, you know who is comfortable? I will tell you. Perverts are comfortable. The difference between hysteric character and the pervert is that perverts that's why it's almost impossible to analyze them because to go to psychoanalysis you must have some problems, some doubts. Perverts never doubt. They know it. Hysterics ask questions. And I think that there can be a different theory of sexuality where your sexual identity is not defined by firm features, men do this, women do that, but a different form of doubt, of instability. I don't I'm afraid that we don't have time to go into this now because it would have meant hours of it, but again what I'm trying to say is that this sexual multiplicity, wonderful is not all. What is behind is not some firm identity, male but it's confusion, instability, doubt, and so on. That's the that's the primordial fact of sexuality, that you don't know what you are. Even if you are a man, you can be a man only with appropriating some feminine features and vice versa. But you know Slavoj, I know one of your colleagues, Peter Singer, you
how MeToo and transgender movements, how they explode all and did you notice this, all big American executives of big companies, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates immediately totally supported transgender and so on. I'm not saying that we shouldn't support them. I'm just saying that today, our basic ideological model is no longer that we are solicited to be patriarchal subjects dominating women and then we resist against this. No, today's ideological injunction, typical of late capitalism, is something like be truly is what I ironically call hedonist Western Buddhism. Be true to yourself, don't get too many attached to specific object just freely float, reconstruct yourself all the time and so on and so on. So my I don't simply see an emancipatory dimension of this. Why not? Because I think it perfectly fits late capitalist consumerism. This trans this idea that is behind it, this infinite plasticity, you know, you can reinvent yourself, sex is not natural. Of course it's not natural. I totally But Slavoj, there is a multiplicity of sexual positions, sexual identities. Isn't that the greatest sign of liberation? I mean you're truly emancipated. No. No. Now you brought me to the next point. No, it's not. First, liberation, why liberation? Look, people were never isn't the sign that this doesn't work, that at the same time the price we pay is that never was so much impotence and frigidity as today. And just don't tell me because secretly we are still controlled by patriarchy or what. But Slavoj, Slavoj, sorry. Yeah, please, yeah. But you know, people have freed themselves of this straight straightjacket of binary positions, you know, male, female. They all sort of, you know, transcending genders. There is some sort of liberation in that because I mean it's not like when you and I grew up back in the fifties and sixties, seventies, there were like two positions, two gender positions. Now there's a multiplicity. That's liberty. No. No. Why? No. Why? It is the same in the same sense as if you say capitalist consumerist liberty. Of course it's liberty with regard to binary position and so on. Freedom of choice, you might call it. Oh my god, don't go into this direction because I say that freedom of choice is the main thing of today's of today's oppression. You know how it works? This is the big postmodern formula. How do they justify diminishing healthcare, social security? They say in the old oppressive days it was obligatory, organized by state and so on, healthcare, now you are free to choose. You either pay for healthcare, you you go to a holiday, you are free to choose. And at all levels, in my country and in America, I hope you are more happy here, that's how they justify precarious work. You think it's oppressive, you live all the time in anxiety, I don't know if I have a permanent job or not, but look at it as a liberation, every two months I can I can choose my make a free choice and so on and so on. I of course I am for free choice in the sense of my god I don't want anybody to order me what to do. But the be the true dimension of freedom I think is not free choice as such but the concrete space of freedoms that you are allowed to. And here problems for me in what you mentioned begin. Of course I am for the freedom of choice and so on. But the problem I find, the first one is this one. And I know dozens of examples in my next book there will be a long chapter of this. How this freedom of choice, especially with transgender people, many of them not all of them, some of them are my best friends and they are wonderful theoretically and I will tell you why, concretely, but with majority, how this freedom of choice immediately turns into a new desire for extreme classification. Like do you know that some board of whatever protection of freedoms in the city of New York proposed a list of I think or identities. You have the right to pick up. You know what's for me the illusion here? Uh it's not as simple as this that the traditional sex gender, first I think it's a difference between sex and gender, but that's another thing, are simply transfixed. I think that every, if you look at it closely, and that's the lesson of psychoanalysis, every gender identity is in itself questioning, unsecured and so on and so on. And uh this is where I think this basic insight of some of the transgender people, I cannot find my identity in the simple binary masculine feminine. Okay, I agree. But it's utopian, wrong dangerous illusion to think that if we expand the list enough, then oh my god, I'm a lesbian butch look, that's what I am now I am. You will never be satisfied. That's why, you know where I agree with some very intelligent LGBT people, where many idiots make fun of them. Where, you know when they call their position LGBTQ+. We can read this plus empirically as, okay maybe there are other identities that we didn't yet discover, but I think this is a bad reading. In my reading, it's much more beautiful I say Hegelian philosophical. What if I can be a plus directly? Plus in the sense of I don't know what I am and so on. And this brings me back to feminine hysteria and so on and so on. And I think that there is something hysterical in our basic sexual identity. You never know strictly what you are. I think that a sexual identity is something much more intermediate, ambiguous. Are you not comfortable in your own sexuality? Of course I'm not, that's why I'm sexual being. Maybe stupid animals, you know who is comfortable? I will tell you. Perverts are comfortable. The difference between hysteric character and the pervert is that perverts that's why it's almost impossible to analyze them because to go to psychoanalysis you must have some problems, some doubts. Perverts never doubt. They know it. Hysterics ask questions. And I think that there can be a different theory of sexuality where your sexual identity is not defined by firm features, men do this, women do that, but a different form of doubt, of instability. I don't I'm afraid that we don't have time to go into this now because it would have meant hours of it, but again what I'm trying to say is that this sexual multiplicity, wonderful is not all. What is behind is not some firm identity, male but it's confusion, instability, doubt, and so on. That's the that's the primordial fact of sexuality, that you don't know what you are. Even if you are a man, you can be a man only with appropriating some feminine features and vice versa. But you know Slavoj, I know one of your colleagues, Peter Singer, you
unknown
know, the utilitarian
know, the utilitarian
Slavoj Žižek
philosopher. He's my colleague in a formal sense, you know. Otherwise, when when we people take power, he will get a first-class one-way ticket to gulag also, but let's go on. Okay, okay. Then maybe I then maybe I shouldn't quote him then, but the thing is Peter Singer who's an Australian-American philosopher, you know, he's very much into animal rights. He's saying that in terms of our transgressing our sexuality, we haven't gone far enough because right now we are transgender, transsexual, but we should also be transspecies. So if you have a cat, if you have a dog, why not marry it? I mean that's the development. That's the direction. But you know what happened to me when I pointed out this that the next step will be animality. Yeah. I was accused I was almost physically lynched once in California. I was accused of absurdly attributing bestiality to transgender people and so on. I mean it's okay, why not, but again I think that we should be here much more precise. What is love? What is sex? What does it mean to relate to another being as sexed being and so on and so on. And I I think that I agree with this. Ah, another problem that I see here. Okay, we now enter this tremendous topic and I agree with you it's incredibly important of posthumanism, like aren't we and I think effectively it's not bluff, something new is emerging. And the main threat that I see it's not that Cambridge
philosopher. He's my colleague in a formal sense, you know. Otherwise, when when we people take power, he will get a first-class one-way ticket to gulag also, but let's go on. Okay, okay. Then maybe I then maybe I shouldn't quote him then, but the thing is Peter Singer who's an Australian-American philosopher, you know, he's very much into animal rights. He's saying that in terms of our transgressing our sexuality, we haven't gone far enough because right now we are transgender, transsexual, but we should also be transspecies. So if you have a cat, if you have a dog, why not marry it? I mean that's the development. That's the direction. But you know what happened to me when I pointed out this that the next step will be animality. Yeah. I was accused I was almost physically lynched once in California. I was accused of absurdly attributing bestiality to transgender people and so on. I mean it's okay, why not, but again I think that we should be here much more precise. What is love? What is sex? What does it mean to relate to another being as sexed being and so on and so on. And I I think that I agree with this. Ah, another problem that I see here. Okay, we now enter this tremendous topic and I agree with you it's incredibly important of posthumanism, like aren't we and I think effectively it's not bluff, something new is emerging. And the main threat that I see it's not that Cambridge
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Analytica
Analytica
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bullshit, I mean we are controlled and so on. Machines are stupid, I don't
bullshit, I mean we are controlled and so on. Machines are stupid, I don't
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worry about them. What I worry about is I hope we agree here this direct wiring linking to computers of our brain. On the one hand, we become almost divine. I think about something, computer reads my mind does it. By
worry about them. What I worry about is I hope we agree here this direct wiring linking to computers of our brain. On the one hand, we become almost divine. I think about something, computer reads my mind does it. By
Slavoj Žižek
thinking, I can do things. But it goes also the other way around. I can be steered directly, controlled. We lose what till now was the basic feature of our humanity which is my inner I am here, reality is out there. Now I am not a technophobic, I am not saying we will all turn into robots and so on. I just don't buy this stupid Ray Kurzweil optimism, oh wonderful new world. Something radically new will emerge which will have nothing to do with what we today understand as divine immortality and so on. If you permit me one minute, then I finish. Already with the topic of immortality, something so interesting is happening today. We are more and more discovering what I call the other obscene immortality. It's not this noble Christian immortality, oh I have an eternal soul, it's an Look, where do you find this immortality? Look at Marquis de Sade novels, when Justine is tortured, she is terribly tortured, in the next scene she is there as beautiful as ever. Then look at Tom and Jerry cartoons. You know like in one scene the cat or the mouse is sliced into pieces, run over by a steamroll, in the next scene it is there normal as ever. Isn't this also our universe of video games, where you know, I screw it up I die, no problem, I start again. This kind of obscene immortality that we are entering and nobody knows, I don't know, what this means. But I take it very seriously that something new will emerge. I talked too much because just to tell you what I wanted to do. I just wanted to make two three two three Marxist points. My first point, very briefly, is that political correctness and so on is not as idiots like Jordan Peterson think the last effect of cultural Marxism. Is on the contrary, I cannot explain it now, the last, I on purpose I use this brutal Marxist terms, the last bourgeois defense against new revolutionary left I claim. I think that, I'm not kidding here, the situation, the crisis, ecological and so on, will give a push to some new form of left. If this will not happen, then all the left motives will be appropriated by Donald Trump and so on. That's another point. So my problem with PC is not it's too extreme, it's not extreme enough. Second thing, the only way to really fight for women's rights is not to insist endlessly as if we all men are rapists and so on and so on. It's to see how we men also are not the happy rapists in this situation. Uh, do you know that almost half of our men are impotent and so on and so on? There should have to be an alliance here, in so far as women play just this game, you know, this primordial scene of MeToo. Men want to rape us or enforce sex and so on and so on. It avoids all the crucial problems. First, they focus on this one-night scenes when man is violent man is violent and so on. But my god, what about millions of ordinary women who are married, they are not directly terrorized, but deeply unhappy. This more subtle form of coercions, of course it's not popular to talk about it and so on. I think we and with this I will conclude, we underestimate to what the class dimension. Where do you find it? Today I read in Guardian a wonderful text by I think her name is Joan Williams, left-wing feminist. You know this latest scandal Roseanne Barr, this girl who was thrown out for Well, but you know what was she, nobody mentions this. She was the only talk show which was clearly identified as white working class. And nobody even of course she should have been fired. But this, even blacks found their place in mass media or those stupid very patronizing black comedies and so on. Working class is the one, working-class white, working-class lower, is the one which can be endlessly humiliated. Because if you protest and ask what about my identity you are immediately white supremacist and so on and so on. We will have to change our basic coordinates. Yeah, it's a shock for you, but I stopped. Yeah, yeah. Slavoj, we still have seven minutes. Oh, we still have seven minutes, that's brilliant. Oh, can I have a beer? But ask me other questions, because you know, we as good Stalinists, we decide that that we already speak for the people as good Stalinists. Who are you to ask questions? We know better than you, this is Stalinist perversion. We know better than you what is good for you, so shut up and listen to us. Please, yeah. I don't mind being reduced to an extra, that's perfect. No, Slavoj, uh, we are not extra, they are extra. Yeah. With seven minutes to go, one thing that I'm uh I'm just trying to contemplate, you're critical of LGBT, you're critical of the MeToo movement. But I totally support their goals. Right. That was the thing I was aiming at, because not only their goals but also all the demand, most of their strategy. But but then just give us an overview. This year we are marking the 50th anniversary of the revolution of the rebellion and there there is a lot of celebration. People are saying, oh that was the period, that was the era in which we liberated ourselves sexually. Uh, you can see that's a picture from Denmark, that's something like that. It you know it smells of innocence to some degree. And I think you're saying that the sexual emancipation that we're seeing nowadays
thinking, I can do things. But it goes also the other way around. I can be steered directly, controlled. We lose what till now was the basic feature of our humanity which is my inner I am here, reality is out there. Now I am not a technophobic, I am not saying we will all turn into robots and so on. I just don't buy this stupid Ray Kurzweil optimism, oh wonderful new world. Something radically new will emerge which will have nothing to do with what we today understand as divine immortality and so on. If you permit me one minute, then I finish. Already with the topic of immortality, something so interesting is happening today. We are more and more discovering what I call the other obscene immortality. It's not this noble Christian immortality, oh I have an eternal soul, it's an Look, where do you find this immortality? Look at Marquis de Sade novels, when Justine is tortured, she is terribly tortured, in the next scene she is there as beautiful as ever. Then look at Tom and Jerry cartoons. You know like in one scene the cat or the mouse is sliced into pieces, run over by a steamroll, in the next scene it is there normal as ever. Isn't this also our universe of video games, where you know, I screw it up I die, no problem, I start again. This kind of obscene immortality that we are entering and nobody knows, I don't know, what this means. But I take it very seriously that something new will emerge. I talked too much because just to tell you what I wanted to do. I just wanted to make two three two three Marxist points. My first point, very briefly, is that political correctness and so on is not as idiots like Jordan Peterson think the last effect of cultural Marxism. Is on the contrary, I cannot explain it now, the last, I on purpose I use this brutal Marxist terms, the last bourgeois defense against new revolutionary left I claim. I think that, I'm not kidding here, the situation, the crisis, ecological and so on, will give a push to some new form of left. If this will not happen, then all the left motives will be appropriated by Donald Trump and so on. That's another point. So my problem with PC is not it's too extreme, it's not extreme enough. Second thing, the only way to really fight for women's rights is not to insist endlessly as if we all men are rapists and so on and so on. It's to see how we men also are not the happy rapists in this situation. Uh, do you know that almost half of our men are impotent and so on and so on? There should have to be an alliance here, in so far as women play just this game, you know, this primordial scene of MeToo. Men want to rape us or enforce sex and so on and so on. It avoids all the crucial problems. First, they focus on this one-night scenes when man is violent man is violent and so on. But my god, what about millions of ordinary women who are married, they are not directly terrorized, but deeply unhappy. This more subtle form of coercions, of course it's not popular to talk about it and so on. I think we and with this I will conclude, we underestimate to what the class dimension. Where do you find it? Today I read in Guardian a wonderful text by I think her name is Joan Williams, left-wing feminist. You know this latest scandal Roseanne Barr, this girl who was thrown out for Well, but you know what was she, nobody mentions this. She was the only talk show which was clearly identified as white working class. And nobody even of course she should have been fired. But this, even blacks found their place in mass media or those stupid very patronizing black comedies and so on. Working class is the one, working-class white, working-class lower, is the one which can be endlessly humiliated. Because if you protest and ask what about my identity you are immediately white supremacist and so on and so on. We will have to change our basic coordinates. Yeah, it's a shock for you, but I stopped. Yeah, yeah. Slavoj, we still have seven minutes. Oh, we still have seven minutes, that's brilliant. Oh, can I have a beer? But ask me other questions, because you know, we as good Stalinists, we decide that that we already speak for the people as good Stalinists. Who are you to ask questions? We know better than you, this is Stalinist perversion. We know better than you what is good for you, so shut up and listen to us. Please, yeah. I don't mind being reduced to an extra, that's perfect. No, Slavoj, uh, we are not extra, they are extra. Yeah. With seven minutes to go, one thing that I'm uh I'm just trying to contemplate, you're critical of LGBT, you're critical of the MeToo movement. But I totally support their goals. Right. That was the thing I was aiming at, because not only their goals but also all the demand, most of their strategy. But but then just give us an overview. This year we are marking the 50th anniversary of the revolution of the rebellion and there there is a lot of celebration. People are saying, oh that was the period, that was the era in which we liberated ourselves sexually. Uh, you can see that's a picture from Denmark, that's something like that. It you know it smells of innocence to some degree. And I think you're saying that the sexual emancipation that we're seeing nowadays
unknown
with the LGBTQ movement, with the transgender movement etc., it's gone too far, it's become too No, it doesn't go far enough. Okay, then then I'm confused. Where should it go further? Further of course not further in this extreme
with the LGBTQ movement, with the transgender movement etc., it's gone too far, it's become too No, it doesn't go far enough. Okay, then then I'm confused. Where should it go further? Further of course not further in this extreme
Slavoj Žižek
puritanism and so on. But further first in covering really all forms of feminine suffering and so on and point two, in linking forms of abuse of women etc. to general economic crisis and so on and so on. Let me give you an example. You give this as a model. Okay, try to do a woman to do a woman what is shown on this image. In United States, you will be instantly arrested. That says it all. Another example I give you. I remember when I was young, you know that in the early seventies, French media published a big appeal for sex
puritanism and so on. But further first in covering really all forms of feminine suffering and so on and point two, in linking forms of abuse of women etc. to general economic crisis and so on and so on. Let me give you an example. You give this as a model. Okay, try to do a woman to do a woman what is shown on this image. In United States, you will be instantly arrested. That says it all. Another example I give you. I remember when I was young, you know that in the early seventies, French media published a big appeal for sex
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with young children. And they really meant young children, like five, six years old. Daniel Cohn-Bendit was writing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean not just him. There was a big how do they call, sorry, manifesto signed by practically all: Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Deleuze, Guattari, Michel Foucault, Lévi-Strauss, demanding free sex between adults and children up from five, six and so on, especially parents with their young boys, girls. And try to do something similar today. I'm not saying was right. I'm saying I'm more on the side of MeToo and so on today. Because they in liberated sex, but in
with young children. And they really meant young children, like five, six years old. Daniel Cohn-Bendit was writing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean not just him. There was a big how do they call, sorry, manifesto signed by practically all: Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Deleuze, Guattari, Michel Foucault, Lévi-Strauss, demanding free sex between adults and children up from five, six and so on, especially parents with their young boys, girls. And try to do something similar today. I'm not saying was right. I'm saying I'm more on the side of MeToo and so on today. Because they in liberated sex, but in
Slavoj Žižek
a way which first opened up the space of new oppressions and I can give you later if we have time examples, but point two especially, which fitted perfectly it was maybe bourgeois capitalism, maybe the greatest ideological triumph of modern era is how all the key demands of were integrated into the system. Sexual liberation, yes then you get this. sexual although again there were also great results, I admit it, like after you simply cannot any longer treat women, homosexual in a certain brutal way. That's a mega result I don't underestimate it. But let's go on, education. We were protesting alienated bureaucratic universities. You get now what, this permanent quick education to be more fit for your business and all normal people are craving for all useless bureaucratic universities. In workplace, the big negative model was factory work where you are just one element in the chain. Those who still have a permanent job in a factory are almost the lucky ones today. Today, at least in my country, percent of the people under already work in precarious job, radical uncertainty and so on and so on. So uh in this sense for me was ambiguous. Very good books were written about how the very memory of is falsified. Today we associate with sexual revolution, sorry but these were big demonstrations where at a certain point as you probably know Charles de Gaulle went in panic to Germany to consult the army. Students were joining workers and so on. Of course it was all a utopia. But it was nonetheless also this dimension, which is totally almost obliterated today and people think about just drug culture and so on. I think drug culture and sexual this is more the seventies. In the seventies already immediately afterwards the depoliticization of the depoliticization of the sixties began. But you have more questions, let's squeeze them really. Oh yeah, we have one minute and seconds. But you are popular dictator who can proclaim that we step out of the metaphysical linear time and We'll take we'll take a little more. We'll take a little more time. Uh, I I asked you uh when I interrupted you about Islam. And my reason for asking that and we're straying a bit away from sexuality of course. But when we look at what is happening in Europe, uh in our continent, we do see that given the multiculturalism that we are somehow affected by the uh you could say the presence of Islam. We see that in foods, in moral norms. Do you think looking a bit ahead that the presence of Islam will affect our understanding of sexuality? Not directly but and now I will tell you something because of which many leftists even attack me and so on. I I don't think that all fear of Islam is just a reflection of our Islamophobia or whatever. I believe in that the conflict between different ethnic religious way ways of life is a very serious one and you cannot simply resolve it through, oh we should just tolerate each other. Okay, an exaggerated vulgar example, and I was told that it happened many thousands of time per year in Germany, that a lady from an immigrant Muslim family want to have a German boyfriend, live German secular life and then since her parents don't allow it, she escapes to police and then they have special asylums where you are given Okay, then of course their own her own parents protest, you are thereby violating our way of life. And aren't they in a way totally right? A way of life is not just, as some benevolent leftists try to convince us, our food, our songs. A way of life is especially how relations between sexes are regulated and relations of authority. This is why each way of life is never just its own way of life but in always includes a universal dimension of how do you relate to other ways of life. Exactly. So again at this level, what when people told me no these are all pseudo-problems, I tell them, okay you are a chief of a local police station. A Muslim girl, or our Christian fundamentalist I don't care girls, comes to you that my parents are terrorizing me. What will you do? Exactly. If you protect her, they will say and in a way they have the right to say, sorry you are brutally intervening in our way of life. So I don't believe that a way of life should be the ultimate limit of intolerance. Right, and my reason for asking that question is to is because as we as I said before, as we're marking the 50th anniversary of we're also marking same-sex marriage, uh abortion for instance, and we are confronted, we saw that in Cologne on New Year's Eve we're confronted somehow around uh the continent with people who come with another idea in terms of for instance abortion or same-sex marriage. It is very interesting what you mention because I have so that you will not take me for some anti-Islamist. My god, what more do you want, I support BDS and so on. But my Palestinian friends told me that what we saw in Köln, Cologne is what happens regularly on a market in a Palestinian cities. This is part of their yes, fuck you way of life, that you know men gather in the evening and it's not a rape. It's like to harass softly women and so on and so on. They simply didn't see this as a problem they told me because for them this is part of their way of life. And my answer is I don't have an easy answer, like we should arrest all of them. I'm just saying wouldn't it be the first step that we recognize it as a problem. There is a problem in coexistence of different ways of life which is not just an effect of Western imperialist intolerance or whatever. I think that it's the time when our Western tradition, what is good in it, enlightenment, feminine liberation, is under great threat from our own defenders of Europe right-wing nationalists and so on anti-immigrant to be a little bit proud of what is the best in our Western tradition. My god, are
a way which first opened up the space of new oppressions and I can give you later if we have time examples, but point two especially, which fitted perfectly it was maybe bourgeois capitalism, maybe the greatest ideological triumph of modern era is how all the key demands of were integrated into the system. Sexual liberation, yes then you get this. sexual although again there were also great results, I admit it, like after you simply cannot any longer treat women, homosexual in a certain brutal way. That's a mega result I don't underestimate it. But let's go on, education. We were protesting alienated bureaucratic universities. You get now what, this permanent quick education to be more fit for your business and all normal people are craving for all useless bureaucratic universities. In workplace, the big negative model was factory work where you are just one element in the chain. Those who still have a permanent job in a factory are almost the lucky ones today. Today, at least in my country, percent of the people under already work in precarious job, radical uncertainty and so on and so on. So uh in this sense for me was ambiguous. Very good books were written about how the very memory of is falsified. Today we associate with sexual revolution, sorry but these were big demonstrations where at a certain point as you probably know Charles de Gaulle went in panic to Germany to consult the army. Students were joining workers and so on. Of course it was all a utopia. But it was nonetheless also this dimension, which is totally almost obliterated today and people think about just drug culture and so on. I think drug culture and sexual this is more the seventies. In the seventies already immediately afterwards the depoliticization of the depoliticization of the sixties began. But you have more questions, let's squeeze them really. Oh yeah, we have one minute and seconds. But you are popular dictator who can proclaim that we step out of the metaphysical linear time and We'll take we'll take a little more. We'll take a little more time. Uh, I I asked you uh when I interrupted you about Islam. And my reason for asking that and we're straying a bit away from sexuality of course. But when we look at what is happening in Europe, uh in our continent, we do see that given the multiculturalism that we are somehow affected by the uh you could say the presence of Islam. We see that in foods, in moral norms. Do you think looking a bit ahead that the presence of Islam will affect our understanding of sexuality? Not directly but and now I will tell you something because of which many leftists even attack me and so on. I I don't think that all fear of Islam is just a reflection of our Islamophobia or whatever. I believe in that the conflict between different ethnic religious way ways of life is a very serious one and you cannot simply resolve it through, oh we should just tolerate each other. Okay, an exaggerated vulgar example, and I was told that it happened many thousands of time per year in Germany, that a lady from an immigrant Muslim family want to have a German boyfriend, live German secular life and then since her parents don't allow it, she escapes to police and then they have special asylums where you are given Okay, then of course their own her own parents protest, you are thereby violating our way of life. And aren't they in a way totally right? A way of life is not just, as some benevolent leftists try to convince us, our food, our songs. A way of life is especially how relations between sexes are regulated and relations of authority. This is why each way of life is never just its own way of life but in always includes a universal dimension of how do you relate to other ways of life. Exactly. So again at this level, what when people told me no these are all pseudo-problems, I tell them, okay you are a chief of a local police station. A Muslim girl, or our Christian fundamentalist I don't care girls, comes to you that my parents are terrorizing me. What will you do? Exactly. If you protect her, they will say and in a way they have the right to say, sorry you are brutally intervening in our way of life. So I don't believe that a way of life should be the ultimate limit of intolerance. Right, and my reason for asking that question is to is because as we as I said before, as we're marking the 50th anniversary of we're also marking same-sex marriage, uh abortion for instance, and we are confronted, we saw that in Cologne on New Year's Eve we're confronted somehow around uh the continent with people who come with another idea in terms of for instance abortion or same-sex marriage. It is very interesting what you mention because I have so that you will not take me for some anti-Islamist. My god, what more do you want, I support BDS and so on. But my Palestinian friends told me that what we saw in Köln, Cologne is what happens regularly on a market in a Palestinian cities. This is part of their yes, fuck you way of life, that you know men gather in the evening and it's not a rape. It's like to harass softly women and so on and so on. They simply didn't see this as a problem they told me because for them this is part of their way of life. And my answer is I don't have an easy answer, like we should arrest all of them. I'm just saying wouldn't it be the first step that we recognize it as a problem. There is a problem in coexistence of different ways of life which is not just an effect of Western imperialist intolerance or whatever. I think that it's the time when our Western tradition, what is good in it, enlightenment, feminine liberation, is under great threat from our own defenders of Europe right-wing nationalists and so on anti-immigrant to be a little bit proud of what is the best in our Western tradition. My god, are
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we aware that even those who criticize Europe for being really imperialist, just analyze, read them closely. All the concepts that
we aware that even those who criticize Europe for being really imperialist, just analyze, read them closely. All the concepts that
Slavoj Žižek
they use are still concepts of Western freedoms, enlightenment, and so on and so on. I think we should stop with this eternal masochism which is just inverted racism. You know in the old days they were saying white man's burden, it's our burden to rule others. Now we have the politically
they use are still concepts of Western freedoms, enlightenment, and so on and so on. I think we should stop with this eternal masochism which is just inverted racism. You know in the old days they were saying white man's burden, it's our burden to rule others. Now we have the politically
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correct white man's burden, for everything that happens, if one Arabs kill others it must be neocolonialism, we must be guilty for it and so on and so on. No, our greatest contribution to peace coexistence to world is that we give the world we stick to it what is the best in our tradition. And and this brings me to You see this is called stupid people falling for my demagogy but sorry go on, yeah. In order to do what you're saying Slavoj, we need some sort of as George Orwell called it
correct white man's burden, for everything that happens, if one Arabs kill others it must be neocolonialism, we must be guilty for it and so on and so on. No, our greatest contribution to peace coexistence to world is that we give the world we stick to it what is the best in our tradition. And and this brings me to You see this is called stupid people falling for my demagogy but sorry go on, yeah. In order to do what you're saying Slavoj, we need some sort of as George Orwell called it
Slavoj Žižek
common decency. Yes. Which is extremely important. Extremely! And you know who will be, sorry to interrupt you, but I have a beautiful detail here. I think that today yes, when I was young in leftists decried decency as oh that's how those in power talk you know and we leftists like to let's fuck you whatever be vulgar as provoking power. Today with Trump and so on, those in power are vulgar enough. And maybe we the left should become people of decency immediately. Let me give you just another beautiful example when people ask me are you crazy, why are you still a Leninist. You know Lenin's way immediately the guy wants to ask something allow him. Lenin's, you know Lenin's famous testament when he proposes just before his final stroke to depose Stalin. Read it, it's an incredible document. He doesn't depose Stalin with wrong political line, it's all decency. Comrade Stalin is too rude, he doesn't have good manners enough, it's an extraordinary turn in Lenin. So I deeply agree with you here. But maybe the guy really wants to say something gentleman. In in which case you really have to shout and we are about to close now. Yeah. He doesn't have a microphone? Yeah somehow. Or come up here. You can come up here and talk in my microphone if you like. In Europe we have a in this part of Europe we have a discussion recently about consent. No, you need to talk in the microphone if you want to say something. Please come up here because already I hear you with difficulty and I doubt if they down there are able to hear you at all. Actually we're about to finish, so this will be the last question. I'll just sit next to Slavoj. No no no no. But I'm not gay I warn you. I'm also not. Then we can safely sit. Yeah but for this will be lynched again as homophobic whatever. Anyway. Just just talk into the microphone. Okay. In in this part of okay in this part of Northern Europe we have a discussion about consent these days especially Sweden they have You mean sexual consent or generally between culture? I think these are combined, but they have changed the rules now in the in the parliament. What do you think about this doesn't change the paradigm that we change the burden of evidence. What do you mean by consent? Sorry, I really would like to hear it. The Swedish law says that in the past if there is a rape maybe I don't know you can explain it as a journalist better than I can but you know the background. But if there is a rape situation, sexual rape, the victim has to prove the evidence that it happened. Yeah. Not the guy who did it. Yeah. And I say guy because it Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. But so how do you see that? Does that change the whole paradigm in the future if I can answer very briefly to this one. This is you see one of the examples where when MeToo theorists claim no means no is not enough. Because there still is a coerced yes. A woman can say yes but it may be a coerced doesn't really mean it and so on. And they add usually to it that to make it sure at every step both of the partner should have the right to withdraw. You know Slavoj, maybe I made a mistake before. Because You do but it's too late you're fucked up. Yeah yeah it's too late fuck that. Anyway, no but I will be really short. We are about to close, I was to close like minutes ago. Uh so many questions, moral questions, ethical questions because the headline is called what is happening with sexuality. So do you have any sort of conclusion, what is happening with sexuality in our time? You said we are moving towards transhumanism and to be truly sexual you have to be asexual you said. But I mean is there any sort of conclusion that people can take home? No the first conclusion is that a certain deadlock, instability, even immorality in common sense, let's accept it is inherent to sexuality. The idea that if we both sign contract and we have it perfectly regulated, that will this will work, it will not work. And let me just go the proof will be to answer to that gentleman's question. Look, those two rules that I mentioned. But can you even imagine what new space of violence do they open up? Let's say I am a politically correct guy very shy and a lady, not now I am old, but how many years ago wants to have sex with me. So she gives me signals, I don't react to them. So she what should she do? The rule is I read somewhere no means no so it's not just to say passively yes but to say actively enthusiastically yes. You know how humiliating can this be for a woman? What should she do, jump ahead of me please fuck me yes yes or what? I mean it doesn't work like this. Or the other even worse example, that at any point both partner should have the right to withdraw. Oh my god, I had friends of both sexes, they are no longer my friends, who told me this is wonderful way to humiliate your partner. Imagine you are in bed with a woman or man, you excite your partner to the utmost and then you say sorry I use my right to withdraw with a clear tension this is one of the most humi- humiliating experience. The proof of this is not we should be liberal here, I'm totally for utmost fight every coercion, but I'm saying sexuality is so ambiguous and intricate that no explicit rules, no contract will really work. Slavoj brilliant, that was some sort of conclusion. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Slavoj, we still have seven minutes. Oh we can go have a beer. But ask me other questions, because you know we as good Stalinist we decide that that we already speak for the people as good Stalinist. Who are you to ask questions? We know better than you, this is Stalinist perversion. We know better than you what is good for you, so shut up and listen to us. Please, yeah. I don't mind being reduced to an extra, that's perfect. Now Slavoj, uh we are not extra they are extra. Yeah with seven minutes to go one thing that I'm uh I'm just trying to contemplate you're critical of LGBT you're critical of the MeToo movement. But I totally support their goals. Right. That was the thing I was aiming at because not only their goals but also all the demand most of their strategy. But but then just give us an
common decency. Yes. Which is extremely important. Extremely! And you know who will be, sorry to interrupt you, but I have a beautiful detail here. I think that today yes, when I was young in leftists decried decency as oh that's how those in power talk you know and we leftists like to let's fuck you whatever be vulgar as provoking power. Today with Trump and so on, those in power are vulgar enough. And maybe we the left should become people of decency immediately. Let me give you just another beautiful example when people ask me are you crazy, why are you still a Leninist. You know Lenin's way immediately the guy wants to ask something allow him. Lenin's, you know Lenin's famous testament when he proposes just before his final stroke to depose Stalin. Read it, it's an incredible document. He doesn't depose Stalin with wrong political line, it's all decency. Comrade Stalin is too rude, he doesn't have good manners enough, it's an extraordinary turn in Lenin. So I deeply agree with you here. But maybe the guy really wants to say something gentleman. In in which case you really have to shout and we are about to close now. Yeah. He doesn't have a microphone? Yeah somehow. Or come up here. You can come up here and talk in my microphone if you like. In Europe we have a in this part of Europe we have a discussion recently about consent. No, you need to talk in the microphone if you want to say something. Please come up here because already I hear you with difficulty and I doubt if they down there are able to hear you at all. Actually we're about to finish, so this will be the last question. I'll just sit next to Slavoj. No no no no. But I'm not gay I warn you. I'm also not. Then we can safely sit. Yeah but for this will be lynched again as homophobic whatever. Anyway. Just just talk into the microphone. Okay. In in this part of okay in this part of Northern Europe we have a discussion about consent these days especially Sweden they have You mean sexual consent or generally between culture? I think these are combined, but they have changed the rules now in the in the parliament. What do you think about this doesn't change the paradigm that we change the burden of evidence. What do you mean by consent? Sorry, I really would like to hear it. The Swedish law says that in the past if there is a rape maybe I don't know you can explain it as a journalist better than I can but you know the background. But if there is a rape situation, sexual rape, the victim has to prove the evidence that it happened. Yeah. Not the guy who did it. Yeah. And I say guy because it Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. But so how do you see that? Does that change the whole paradigm in the future if I can answer very briefly to this one. This is you see one of the examples where when MeToo theorists claim no means no is not enough. Because there still is a coerced yes. A woman can say yes but it may be a coerced doesn't really mean it and so on. And they add usually to it that to make it sure at every step both of the partner should have the right to withdraw. You know Slavoj, maybe I made a mistake before. Because You do but it's too late you're fucked up. Yeah yeah it's too late fuck that. Anyway, no but I will be really short. We are about to close, I was to close like minutes ago. Uh so many questions, moral questions, ethical questions because the headline is called what is happening with sexuality. So do you have any sort of conclusion, what is happening with sexuality in our time? You said we are moving towards transhumanism and to be truly sexual you have to be asexual you said. But I mean is there any sort of conclusion that people can take home? No the first conclusion is that a certain deadlock, instability, even immorality in common sense, let's accept it is inherent to sexuality. The idea that if we both sign contract and we have it perfectly regulated, that will this will work, it will not work. And let me just go the proof will be to answer to that gentleman's question. Look, those two rules that I mentioned. But can you even imagine what new space of violence do they open up? Let's say I am a politically correct guy very shy and a lady, not now I am old, but how many years ago wants to have sex with me. So she gives me signals, I don't react to them. So she what should she do? The rule is I read somewhere no means no so it's not just to say passively yes but to say actively enthusiastically yes. You know how humiliating can this be for a woman? What should she do, jump ahead of me please fuck me yes yes or what? I mean it doesn't work like this. Or the other even worse example, that at any point both partner should have the right to withdraw. Oh my god, I had friends of both sexes, they are no longer my friends, who told me this is wonderful way to humiliate your partner. Imagine you are in bed with a woman or man, you excite your partner to the utmost and then you say sorry I use my right to withdraw with a clear tension this is one of the most humi- humiliating experience. The proof of this is not we should be liberal here, I'm totally for utmost fight every coercion, but I'm saying sexuality is so ambiguous and intricate that no explicit rules, no contract will really work. Slavoj brilliant, that was some sort of conclusion. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Slavoj, we still have seven minutes. Oh we can go have a beer. But ask me other questions, because you know we as good Stalinist we decide that that we already speak for the people as good Stalinist. Who are you to ask questions? We know better than you, this is Stalinist perversion. We know better than you what is good for you, so shut up and listen to us. Please, yeah. I don't mind being reduced to an extra, that's perfect. Now Slavoj, uh we are not extra they are extra. Yeah with seven minutes to go one thing that I'm uh I'm just trying to contemplate you're critical of LGBT you're critical of the MeToo movement. But I totally support their goals. Right. That was the thing I was aiming at because not only their goals but also all the demand most of their strategy. But but then just give us an
unknown
overview. This year we are marking the 50th anniversary of the revolution of the rebellion and there there is a lot of celebration. People are saying oh that was the period that was the era in which we liberated ourselves sexually. Uh you can see that's a picture from Denmark that's something like that. It you know it smells of innocence to some degree. And I think you're saying that the sexual emancipation that we're seeing nowadays with the LGBTQ movement, with the transgender movement etc. it's gone too far it's become too No, it doesn't go far enough. Okay, then then I'm confused.
overview. This year we are marking the 50th anniversary of the revolution of the rebellion and there there is a lot of celebration. People are saying oh that was the period that was the era in which we liberated ourselves sexually. Uh you can see that's a picture from Denmark that's something like that. It you know it smells of innocence to some degree. And I think you're saying that the sexual emancipation that we're seeing nowadays with the LGBTQ movement, with the transgender movement etc. it's gone too far it's become too No, it doesn't go far enough. Okay, then then I'm confused.
Slavoj Žižek
Where should it go further? Further of course not further in this extreme puritanism and so on. Right. But further first in covering really all forms of feminine suffering and so on and point two, in linking forms of abuse of women etc. to general economic crisis and so on and so on. Let me give you an example. Hmm. You give this as a model. Okay, try to do a woman to do a woman what is shown on this image. In United States, you will be instantly arrested. That says it all. Another example I give you. I remember when I was young, you know that in the early seventies, French media published a big appeal for sex with young children. And they really meant young children, like five, six years old. Daniel Cohn-Bendit was writing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean not just him. There was a big how do they call, sorry, manifesto signed by practically all: Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Deleuze, Guattari, Michel Foucault, Lévi-Strauss demanding free sex between adults and children up from five, six and so on, especially parents with their young boys, girls. And try to do something similar today. I'm not saying was right. I'm saying I'm more on the side of MeToo and so on today. Right. Because they in liberated sex, but in a way which first opened up the space of new oppressions and I can give you later if we have time examples, but point two especially, which fitted perfectly it was maybe bourgeois capitalism, maybe the greatest ideological triumph of modern era is how all the key demands of were integrated into the system. Sexual liberation, yes then you get this. Although again there were also great results, I admit it, like after you simply cannot any longer treat women, homosexual in a certain brutal way. That's a mega result I don't underestimate it. But let's go on, education. We were protesting alienated bureaucratic universities. You get now what, this permanent quick education to be more fit for your business and all normal people are craving for all useless bureaucratic universities. In workplace, the big negative model was factory work where you are just one element in the chain. Those who still have a permanent job in a factory are almost the lucky ones today. Today at least in my country, percent of the people under already work in precarious job, radical uncertainty and so on and so on. So uh in this sense for me was ambiguous. Very good books were written about how the very memory of is falsified. Today we associate with sexual revolution, sorry but these were big demonstrations where at a certain point as you probably know Charles de Gaulle went in panic to Germany to consult the army. Students were joining workers and so on. Of course it was all a utopia. But it was nonetheless also this dimension, which is totally almost obliterated today and people think about just drug culture and so on. I think drug culture and sexual this is more the seventies. In the seventies already immediately afterwards the depoliticization of the depoliticization of the sixties began. But you have more questions, let's squeeze them really. Oh yeah we have one minute and seconds. But you are popular dictator who can proclaim that we step out of the metaphysical linear time and We'll take we'll take a little more. We'll take a little more time. Uh I I asked you uh when I interrupted you about Islam. And my reason for asking that and we're straying a bit away from sexuality of course. But when we look at what is happening in Europe, uh in our continent, we do see that given the multiculturalism that we are somehow affected by the uh you could say the presence of Islam. We see that in foods, in moral norms. Do you think looking a bit ahead that the presence of Islam will affect our understanding of sexuality? Not directly but and now I will tell you something because of which many leftists even attack me and so on. I I don't think that all fear of Islam is just a reflection of our Islamophobia or whatever. I believe in that the conflict between different ethnic religious way ways of life is a very serious one and you cannot simply resolve it through, oh we should just tolerate each other. Okay, an exaggerated vulgar example, and I was told that it happened many thousands of time per year in Germany, that a lady from an immigrant Muslim family want to have a German boyfriend, live German secular life and then since her parents don't allow it, she escapes to police
Where should it go further? Further of course not further in this extreme puritanism and so on. Right. But further first in covering really all forms of feminine suffering and so on and point two, in linking forms of abuse of women etc. to general economic crisis and so on and so on. Let me give you an example. Hmm. You give this as a model. Okay, try to do a woman to do a woman what is shown on this image. In United States, you will be instantly arrested. That says it all. Another example I give you. I remember when I was young, you know that in the early seventies, French media published a big appeal for sex with young children. And they really meant young children, like five, six years old. Daniel Cohn-Bendit was writing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean not just him. There was a big how do they call, sorry, manifesto signed by practically all: Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Deleuze, Guattari, Michel Foucault, Lévi-Strauss demanding free sex between adults and children up from five, six and so on, especially parents with their young boys, girls. And try to do something similar today. I'm not saying was right. I'm saying I'm more on the side of MeToo and so on today. Right. Because they in liberated sex, but in a way which first opened up the space of new oppressions and I can give you later if we have time examples, but point two especially, which fitted perfectly it was maybe bourgeois capitalism, maybe the greatest ideological triumph of modern era is how all the key demands of were integrated into the system. Sexual liberation, yes then you get this. Although again there were also great results, I admit it, like after you simply cannot any longer treat women, homosexual in a certain brutal way. That's a mega result I don't underestimate it. But let's go on, education. We were protesting alienated bureaucratic universities. You get now what, this permanent quick education to be more fit for your business and all normal people are craving for all useless bureaucratic universities. In workplace, the big negative model was factory work where you are just one element in the chain. Those who still have a permanent job in a factory are almost the lucky ones today. Today at least in my country, percent of the people under already work in precarious job, radical uncertainty and so on and so on. So uh in this sense for me was ambiguous. Very good books were written about how the very memory of is falsified. Today we associate with sexual revolution, sorry but these were big demonstrations where at a certain point as you probably know Charles de Gaulle went in panic to Germany to consult the army. Students were joining workers and so on. Of course it was all a utopia. But it was nonetheless also this dimension, which is totally almost obliterated today and people think about just drug culture and so on. I think drug culture and sexual this is more the seventies. In the seventies already immediately afterwards the depoliticization of the depoliticization of the sixties began. But you have more questions, let's squeeze them really. Oh yeah we have one minute and seconds. But you are popular dictator who can proclaim that we step out of the metaphysical linear time and We'll take we'll take a little more. We'll take a little more time. Uh I I asked you uh when I interrupted you about Islam. And my reason for asking that and we're straying a bit away from sexuality of course. But when we look at what is happening in Europe, uh in our continent, we do see that given the multiculturalism that we are somehow affected by the uh you could say the presence of Islam. We see that in foods, in moral norms. Do you think looking a bit ahead that the presence of Islam will affect our understanding of sexuality? Not directly but and now I will tell you something because of which many leftists even attack me and so on. I I don't think that all fear of Islam is just a reflection of our Islamophobia or whatever. I believe in that the conflict between different ethnic religious way ways of life is a very serious one and you cannot simply resolve it through, oh we should just tolerate each other. Okay, an exaggerated vulgar example, and I was told that it happened many thousands of time per year in Germany, that a lady from an immigrant Muslim family want to have a German boyfriend, live German secular life and then since her parents don't allow it, she escapes to police
unknown
and then they have special asylums
and then they have special asylums
Slavoj Žižek
where you are given Okay, then of course their own her own
where you are given Okay, then of course their own her own
unknown
parents protest, you are thereby violating our way of life. And aren't they in a way totally right? A way of life is not just as some benevolent leftists try to convince us our food, our songs. A way of life is especially how relations between sexes are regulated and relations of authority. This is why each way of life is never just its own way of life but in always includes a universal dimension of how do you relate to other ways of life. Exactly. So again at this level, what when people told me no these are all pseudo-problems, I tell them, okay
parents protest, you are thereby violating our way of life. And aren't they in a way totally right? A way of life is not just as some benevolent leftists try to convince us our food, our songs. A way of life is especially how relations between sexes are regulated and relations of authority. This is why each way of life is never just its own way of life but in always includes a universal dimension of how do you relate to other ways of life. Exactly. So again at this level, what when people told me no these are all pseudo-problems, I tell them, okay
Slavoj Žižek
you are a chief of a local police station. A Muslim girl, or our Christian fundamentalist I don't care girls, comes to you that my parents are terrorizing me. What will you do? Exactly. If you protect her, they will say and in a way they have the right to say, sorry you are brutally intervening in our way of life. So I don't believe that a way of life should be the ultimate limit of intolerance. Right, and my reason for asking that question is to is because as we as I said before, as we're marking the 50th anniversary of we're also marking same-sex marriage, uh abortion for instance, and we are confronted, we saw that in Cologne on New Year's Eve we're confronted somehow around uh the continent with people who come with another idea in terms of for instance abortion or same-sex marriage. It is very interesting what you mention because I have so that you will not take me for some anti-Islamist. My god, what more do you want I support BDS and so on. But my Palestinian friends told me that what we saw in Köln, Cologne is what happens regularly on a market in a Palestinian cities. This is part of their yes, fuck you way of life, that you know men gather in the evening and it's not a rape. It's like to harass softly women and so on and so on. They simply didn't see this as a problem they told me because for them this is part of their way of life. And my answer is I don't have an easy answer, like we should arrest all of them. I'm just saying wouldn't it be the first step that we recognize it as a problem. There is a problem in coexistence of different ways of life which is not just an effect of Western imperialist intolerance or whatever. I think that it's the time when our Western tradition, what is good in it, enlightenment, feminine liberation, is under great threat from our own defenders of Europe right-wing nationalists and so on anti-immigrant to be a
you are a chief of a local police station. A Muslim girl, or our Christian fundamentalist I don't care girls, comes to you that my parents are terrorizing me. What will you do? Exactly. If you protect her, they will say and in a way they have the right to say, sorry you are brutally intervening in our way of life. So I don't believe that a way of life should be the ultimate limit of intolerance. Right, and my reason for asking that question is to is because as we as I said before, as we're marking the 50th anniversary of we're also marking same-sex marriage, uh abortion for instance, and we are confronted, we saw that in Cologne on New Year's Eve we're confronted somehow around uh the continent with people who come with another idea in terms of for instance abortion or same-sex marriage. It is very interesting what you mention because I have so that you will not take me for some anti-Islamist. My god, what more do you want I support BDS and so on. But my Palestinian friends told me that what we saw in Köln, Cologne is what happens regularly on a market in a Palestinian cities. This is part of their yes, fuck you way of life, that you know men gather in the evening and it's not a rape. It's like to harass softly women and so on and so on. They simply didn't see this as a problem they told me because for them this is part of their way of life. And my answer is I don't have an easy answer, like we should arrest all of them. I'm just saying wouldn't it be the first step that we recognize it as a problem. There is a problem in coexistence of different ways of life which is not just an effect of Western imperialist intolerance or whatever. I think that it's the time when our Western tradition, what is good in it, enlightenment, feminine liberation, is under great threat from our own defenders of Europe right-wing nationalists and so on anti-immigrant to be a
unknown
little bit proud of what is the best in our Western tradition. My god, are we aware that even those who criticize Europe for being really imperialist, just analyze, read them closely. All the concepts that they use are still concepts of Western freedoms, enlightenment, and so on and so on. I think we should stop with this eternal masochism which is just inverted
little bit proud of what is the best in our Western tradition. My god, are we aware that even those who criticize Europe for being really imperialist, just analyze, read them closely. All the concepts that they use are still concepts of Western freedoms, enlightenment, and so on and so on. I think we should stop with this eternal masochism which is just inverted
Slavoj Žižek
racism. You know in the old days they were saying white man's burden, it's our burden to rule others. Now we have the politically correct white man's burden for everything that happens, if one Arabs kill others it must be neocolonialism, we must be guilty for it and so on and so on. No, our greatest contribution to peace coexistence to world is that we give the world we stick to it what is the best in our tradition. And and this brings me to You see this is called stupid people falling for my demagogy but sorry go on, yeah. In order to do what you're saying Slavoj, we need some sort of as George Orwell called it common decency. Yes. Extremely! And you know who will be, sorry to interrupt you, but I have a beautiful detail here. I think that today yes, when I was young in leftists decried decency as oh that's how those in power talk you know and we leftists like to let's fuck you whatever be vulgar as provoking power. Today with Trump and so on, those in power are vulgar enough. And maybe we the left should become people of decency immediately. Let me give you just another beautiful example when people ask me are you crazy, why are you still a Leninist. You know Lenin's way immediately the guy wants to ask something allow him. Lenin's, you know Lenin's famous testament when he proposes just before his final stroke to depose Stalin. Read it, it's an incredible document. He doesn't depose Stalin with wrong political line, it's all decency. Comrade Stalin is too rude, he doesn't have good manners enough, it's an extraordinary turn in Lenin. So I deeply agree with you here. But maybe the guy really wants to say something gentleman. In which case you really have to shout and we are about to close now. Yeah. He doesn't have a microphone? Yeah somehow. Or come up here. You can come up here and talk in my microphone if you like. In Europe we have a in this part of Europe we have a discussion recently about consent. No, you need to talk in the microphone if you want to say something. Please come up here because already I hear you with difficulty and I doubt if they down
racism. You know in the old days they were saying white man's burden, it's our burden to rule others. Now we have the politically correct white man's burden for everything that happens, if one Arabs kill others it must be neocolonialism, we must be guilty for it and so on and so on. No, our greatest contribution to peace coexistence to world is that we give the world we stick to it what is the best in our tradition. And and this brings me to You see this is called stupid people falling for my demagogy but sorry go on, yeah. In order to do what you're saying Slavoj, we need some sort of as George Orwell called it common decency. Yes. Extremely! And you know who will be, sorry to interrupt you, but I have a beautiful detail here. I think that today yes, when I was young in leftists decried decency as oh that's how those in power talk you know and we leftists like to let's fuck you whatever be vulgar as provoking power. Today with Trump and so on, those in power are vulgar enough. And maybe we the left should become people of decency immediately. Let me give you just another beautiful example when people ask me are you crazy, why are you still a Leninist. You know Lenin's way immediately the guy wants to ask something allow him. Lenin's, you know Lenin's famous testament when he proposes just before his final stroke to depose Stalin. Read it, it's an incredible document. He doesn't depose Stalin with wrong political line, it's all decency. Comrade Stalin is too rude, he doesn't have good manners enough, it's an extraordinary turn in Lenin. So I deeply agree with you here. But maybe the guy really wants to say something gentleman. In which case you really have to shout and we are about to close now. Yeah. He doesn't have a microphone? Yeah somehow. Or come up here. You can come up here and talk in my microphone if you like. In Europe we have a in this part of Europe we have a discussion recently about consent. No, you need to talk in the microphone if you want to say something. Please come up here because already I hear you with difficulty and I doubt if they down
unknown
there are able to hear you at all. Actually we're about to finish, so this will be the last question. I'll just sit next to Slavoj. But I'm not gay
there are able to hear you at all. Actually we're about to finish, so this will be the last question. I'll just sit next to Slavoj. But I'm not gay
Slavoj Žižek
I warn you. I'm also not. Then we can safely sit. Yeah but for this will be lynched again as homophobic whatever. Anyway. Just talk into the microphone. Okay. In okay in this part of okay in this part of Northern Europe we have a discussion about consent these days especially Sweden they have You mean sexual consent or generally between culture? I think these are combined, but they have changed the rules now in the in the parliament. What do you think about this doesn't change the paradigm that we change the burden of evidence. What do you mean by consent? Sorry, I really would like to hear it. The Swedish law says that in the past if there is a rape maybe I don't know you can explain it as a journalist better than I can but you know the background. But if there is a rape situation, sexual rape, the victim has to prove the evidence that it happened. Yeah. Not the guy who did it. Yeah. And I say guy because it Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. But so how do you see that? Does that change the whole
I warn you. I'm also not. Then we can safely sit. Yeah but for this will be lynched again as homophobic whatever. Anyway. Just talk into the microphone. Okay. In okay in this part of okay in this part of Northern Europe we have a discussion about consent these days especially Sweden they have You mean sexual consent or generally between culture? I think these are combined, but they have changed the rules now in the in the parliament. What do you think about this doesn't change the paradigm that we change the burden of evidence. What do you mean by consent? Sorry, I really would like to hear it. The Swedish law says that in the past if there is a rape maybe I don't know you can explain it as a journalist better than I can but you know the background. But if there is a rape situation, sexual rape, the victim has to prove the evidence that it happened. Yeah. Not the guy who did it. Yeah. And I say guy because it Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. But so how do you see that? Does that change the whole
unknown
paradigm in the future if I can answer very briefly to this one.
paradigm in the future if I can answer very briefly to this one.
Slavoj Žižek
This is you
This is you
unknown
see one of the examples where when MeToo theorists claim no means no is not enough. Because there still is a coerced yes. A woman can say
see one of the examples where when MeToo theorists claim no means no is not enough. Because there still is a coerced yes. A woman can say
Slavoj Žižek
yes but it may be a coerced doesn't really mean it and so on. And they add usually to it that to make it sure at every step both of the partner should
yes but it may be a coerced doesn't really mean it and so on. And they add usually to it that to make it sure at every step both of the partner should
unknown
have the right to withdraw. You know Slavoj, maybe I made a mistake
have the right to withdraw. You know Slavoj, maybe I made a mistake
Slavoj Žižek
before. Uh because You do but it's too late you're fucked up. Yeah yeah it's too late fuck that. Anyway, no but I will be really short. We are about to close, I was to close like minutes ago. Uh so
before. Uh because You do but it's too late you're fucked up. Yeah yeah it's too late fuck that. Anyway, no but I will be really short. We are about to close, I was to close like minutes ago. Uh so
unknown
many questions, moral questions, ethical questions because the headline is called what is
many questions, moral questions, ethical questions because the headline is called what is
Slavoj Žižek
happening with sexuality. So do you have any sort of conclusion,
happening with sexuality. So do you have any sort of conclusion,
unknown
what is happening with sexuality in our time? You said we are moving towards transhumanism and to be truly sexual you have to be asexual you said. But I mean is there any sort of conclusion that people can
what is happening with sexuality in our time? You said we are moving towards transhumanism and to be truly sexual you have to be asexual you said. But I mean is there any sort of conclusion that people can
Slavoj Žižek
take home? No the first conclusion is that
take home? No the first conclusion is that
unknown
a certain deadlock, instability, even immorality in common sense, let's accept it is inherent to sexuality. The idea that if we both sign contract and we have it perfectly regulated, that will this will work, it will not work. And let me just go the proof will be to
a certain deadlock, instability, even immorality in common sense, let's accept it is inherent to sexuality. The idea that if we both sign contract and we have it perfectly regulated, that will this will work, it will not work. And let me just go the proof will be to
Slavoj Žižek
answer to that gentleman's question. Look, those two rules that I mentioned. But can you even imagine what new space of violence do they open up? Let's say I am a politically correct guy very shy and a lady, not now I am old, but how many years ago wants to have sex with me. So she gives me signals, I
answer to that gentleman's question. Look, those two rules that I mentioned. But can you even imagine what new space of violence do they open up? Let's say I am a politically correct guy very shy and a lady, not now I am old, but how many years ago wants to have sex with me. So she gives me signals, I
unknown
don't react to them. So she what should she do? The rule is I read somewhere no means no so it's not just to say passively yes but to say actively enthusiastically yes. You know how humiliating can this be for a woman? What should she do, jump ahead of me please fuck me yes yes or what? I mean it doesn't work like this. Or the other even worse example, that at any point both partner should have the right
don't react to them. So she what should she do? The rule is I read somewhere no means no so it's not just to say passively yes but to say actively enthusiastically yes. You know how humiliating can this be for a woman? What should she do, jump ahead of me please fuck me yes yes or what? I mean it doesn't work like this. Or the other even worse example, that at any point both partner should have the right
Slavoj Žižek
to withdraw. Oh my god, I had friends of both sexes, they are no longer my friends, who told me this is wonderful way to humiliate your partner. Imagine you are in bed with a woman or man, you excite your partner to the utmost and then you say sorry I use my right to withdraw with a clear tension this is one of the most humi- humiliating experience. The proof of this is not we should be liberal here, I'm totally for utmost fight every coercion, but I'm saying sexuality is so ambiguous and intricate that no explicit rules, no contract will really work. Slavoj brilliant, that was some sort of conclusion. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
to withdraw. Oh my god, I had friends of both sexes, they are no longer my friends, who told me this is wonderful way to humiliate your partner. Imagine you are in bed with a woman or man, you excite your partner to the utmost and then you say sorry I use my right to withdraw with a clear tension this is one of the most humi- humiliating experience. The proof of this is not we should be liberal here, I'm totally for utmost fight every coercion, but I'm saying sexuality is so ambiguous and intricate that no explicit rules, no contract will really work. Slavoj brilliant, that was some sort of conclusion. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.