Zero Squared Podcast #95: Zizek and the Double Blackmail
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2017-01-11 · 1:04:07 · 9,285 words
capitalismcommunism-socialismideologyfascism-populismliberalism-political-correctnessgeopolitics-warsexuality-genderreligion-theologyeconomicspsychoanalysishegel-dialecticsrace-antisemitismdemocracy
Žižek appears on the Zero Books podcast (hosted by Douglas Lain) to discuss his book Against the Double Blackmail and the political controversies it generated. The conversation ranges across Trump and contemporary populism (which Žižek refuses to call fascism), the refugee crisis and its double blackmail structure, the labor theory of value and its limits, and the failures of the liberal left. Žižek argues that Trump is a symptom of the Democratic Party's failure to address working-class concerns and that the only long-term answer is a repoliticized left capable of large-scale coordinated action rather than identity-politics moralizing.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 14
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
The mechanism by which Žižek's public celebrity status is used to dismiss his ideas ('he's a funny guy') rather than engage them, functioning as a form of de-politicization.
Hegel's notion of the unwritten ethical customs and mores of a community, which Žižek invokes to argue that political correctness is a symptom of Sittlichkeit's decay rather than its remedy.
Žižek's tentative label for the new populist right, distinct from classical fascism, which combines anti-immigrant politics with multicultural or even LGBT-friendly rhetoric (e.g. Pim Fortuyn) rather than a conspiratorial Jewish enemy.
Used in the Lacanian-Marxist sense: Trump is a symptom of the structural failure of liberal democracy to address popular discontent, not merely an aberration.
Marx's thesis that labor is the sole source of value, which Žižek argues must be de-substantialized, temporally rethought, and extended to account for the privatization of commons and rent in cognitive capitalism.
as “proletariat”
Žižek argues the classical Marxist category must be radically redefined to include refugees, precarious workers, and the unemployed, since permanent factory employment is now almost a privilege.
Fredric Jameson's concept, invoked by Žižek to name what the contemporary left lacks: a coherent vision of what it wants and how capitalism might be overcome.
as “commons”
Shared social and intellectual resources (cyberspace, knowledge) whose privatization by firms like Microsoft Žižek identifies as the primary mechanism of exploitation in contemporary capitalism, requiring political-state control.
The Butlerian idea that gender/sexual identity is performatively constructed, which Žižek criticizes as a cheap playful reading that misses how harshly binding sexual identity actually is.
The reductive view that only economic struggle ultimately matters, which Žižek explicitly rejects while still maintaining class as the overdetermining factor that can appear masked as race or sex struggle.
as “Holy Spirit as materialist notion”
Žižek reads the Christian Holy Spirit as the community of believers without any divine guarantee, the pure social bond that remains after God's death, making it the ultimate materialist concept.
as “left Fukuyamaism”
Žižek's coinage for the temptation to accept Fukuyama's end-of-history thesis and merely try to humanize liberal capitalism with social-democratic reforms, rather than envisioning a radical alternative.
The twin coercive frames around the refugee crisis: the right-wing blackmail (immigrants threaten civilization) and the left-liberal moral blackmail (any political analysis is inhumane when people are suffering), both of which foreclose genuine political thought.
Against the left's moralization of the refugee crisis as pure humanitarian catastrophe, Žižek demands setting it back in its economic, political, and geopolitical context.
Stories he reaches for 5
Žižek says he would sell his mother into slavery to see a sequel called 'V for Vendetta Part 2' that shows what happens the day after the storming of parliament, his point being the left fetishizes revolutionary events but ignores the hard work of what comes next.
“I'm ready to sell my mother into slavery to see a movie called V for Vendetta Part 2... what happens then the next day? What measures do they take?”
Žižek uses Microsoft's Windows pricing, completely decoupled from production costs, to argue that what is happening is rent extraction from the privatization of intellectual commons, not classical labor exploitation.
“how much they charge you for the latest Windows and so on. It has no relation with production costs.”
Žižek recalls everyone awaiting Syriza's Plan B if the EU refused to deal, and Varoufakis never having one; used to show that left Keynesianism at the nation-state level is structurally impossible under global capitalism.
“you win the referendum, next day you surrender, you make the compromise”
Žižek defends Obamacare not as sufficient but as a trigger that opened a debate and set processes in motion, used to argue that imperfect reforms matter because they start chains of change.
“his Obamacare was a scam, blah blah. But he did trigger something, an extremely important debate”
Žižek cites Dutch anti-immigrant politician Pim Fortuyn, who was gay and multicultural yet built his movement on exclusion of Muslims as a threat to Western openness, illustrating why new right-wing populism cannot be reduced to classical fascism.
“his whole anti-immigrant movement was based on the fact that Muslims should not be allowed to enter because they are a threat precisely to our multicultural openness”
Works invoked 9
Less Than Nothing book
Žižek's own book, mentioned in the host's introduction.
V for Vendetta film
Used to illustrate the left's fetishism of revolutionary rupture without attention to 'the day after', Žižek imagines a sequel showing what happens next.
Elysium film
Cited alongside Hunger Games as a Hollywood dystopian image of the capitalist near-future; Žižek senses something false about these films even while crediting their symptomatic truth.
The Hunger Games film
Part of the Hollywood obsession with near-future dystopia that Žižek reads as symptomatic of ideological inability to imagine capitalism's end.
One of Žižek's own books, mentioned in the host's introduction as a key work.
Žižek's own book, mentioned in the host's introduction.
Žižek invokes Adorno's Kulturindustrie passages while noting that the Hays Code remark he cites may not actually be in the published text.
Žižek's own book, the explicit subject of the interview; he defends it against charges of Islamophobia and uses it to frame the political analysis of the refugee crisis.
Seeing (A Lucidez) book
Saramago's novel cited as the source for Žižek's electoral advice to 'not vote'; explores what happens in the political void after refusal.
People invoked 25
José Saramago positive
Žižek cites Saramago's novel Seeing (Seeing/Ensaio sobre a Lucidez) as the source for his advice to 'not vote', used to explore what happens after political rupture.
Todd McGowan positive
Mentioned alongside Hilary Neroni as one of the few Lacanians with a departmental position, at Burlington near Bernie Sanders.
Mentioned only as the far-right conspiracy figure supposedly orchestrating the Muslim 'invasion' of Europe as a Zionist plot.
Marine Le Pen positive
Used as the example of new right-wing populism that combines social-welfare promises with anti-immigrant politics, not classical fascism but something more dangerous.
Hilary Neroni positive
Mentioned alongside Todd McGowan as a Lacanian cultural studies scholar heading a film and media department at Burlington, held up as a rare institutional foothold for Lacanians.
Theodor W. Adorno positive
Žižek cites Adorno's remark about the Hays Code approvingly as a model for thinking about the difference between spontaneous decency and explicit political correctness.
Jacques Lacan positive
Cited implicitly through concepts (symptom, no sexual relationship); Žižek defends the Lacanian tradition against accusations of being a patriarchal power structure.
Nancy Pelosi negative
Žižek cites her statements as exemplifying the 'renormalization' of Trump, treating him as just another Republican, which he sees as a way of avoiding necessary left self-criticism.
Judith Butler negative
Acknowledged as aware of problems with fluid identity theory; Žižek nonetheless argues that the performative construction of identity misrepresents how harshly binding sexual identity actually is.
Donald Trump positive
Žižek refuses to call him fascist; treats him as a symptom of liberal-left failure and says he may pose ecological but not truly fascist dangers; his rise is useful for diagnosing what the left must change.
Pim Fortuyn positive
The gay Dutch anti-immigrant populist is Žižek's key example of 'liberal fascism', nativism framed in the language of multicultural openness.
Žižek calls him a 'good friend' but criticizes him for evading a direct yes/no on the labor theory of value in their Birkbeck College debate.
Fredric Jameson positive
Cited twice: for the need to redefine the proletariat and for his concept of 'cognitive mapping' as what the left currently lacks.
Bob Avakian negative
A representative of the Revolutionary Communist Party (Maoist) whom Žižek dismisses for claiming the US is already a fascist state; Žižek suggests he try living in a real fascist state.
Bernie Sanders positive
Called a 'miracle', proof that mobilizing popular discontent from the left is possible; Žižek holds him up as the only viable answer to Trump-style populism.
Yanis Varoufakis positive
Žižek credits Varoufakis's argument that Grexit would trigger catastrophic social chaos; uses Syriza's failure to show that fighting global capitalism at the nation-state level is impossible.
Cited for the idea that capitalism is already self-transforming and moving toward post-capitalist forms; Žižek partially agrees something tremendous is happening but rejects the optimistic reading.
Bill Gates positive
Used as an example of rent extraction via intellectual commons privatization rather than classical labor exploitation; his pricing of Windows demonstrates the limits of labor theory of value.
His Law and Justice party in Poland is cited for enacting stronger social transfers than any left-wing government dared, illustrating how the new populist right occupies left economic terrain.
Hillary Clinton negative
Stands for the failed liberal-left mainstream whose inability to address popular discontent created the conditions for Trump.
Moishe Postone positive
Žižek describes him as a 'Chicago Marxist' and cites his point that contemporary populism lacks the conspiratorial enemy-figure of the Jew that defined classical antisemitism; endorses this argument despite reservations about Postone's Israel positions.
Žižek has 'small sympathy' for Obama, critical of Obamacare as a 'scam' but credits him with triggering an important political debate about healthcare.
Hugo Chávez positive
Used in a reductio ad absurdum: a vulgar Marxist would have to say Chavez exploited American workers via oil revenues, Žižek uses this to show the labor theory of value needs de-substantialization.
Noam Chomsky positive
Cited in agreement on Trump posing an enormous ecological threat.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Invoked for his concept of Sittlichkeit (unwritten ethical mores) and for his reading of the Crucifixion as the death of God himself, leaving only the community of the Holy Spirit.
What it argues
Trump as symptom of liberal-left failurethe double blackmail of right-wing nativism and left-wing humanitarian moralismlimits and necessary reformulation of Marx's labor theory of valuenew right-wing populism as distinct from classical fascismprivatization of the commons and rent in cognitive capitalismpolitical correctness and the decay of Sittlichkeitthe need for large-scale political coordination against global capital
Dialectical moves 7
“It is we the leftists who should be the true moral majority standing for simple decency—today vulgarity and obscenity are the stuff of the new populist right.”
The historical inversion: where leftists once used obscenity to provoke stiff authority, today it is power that speaks vulgarly, so the left should reclaim formal decency.
“Trump is not the cause but the symptom—the symptom of the failed democratic liberal left.”
Rather than treating Trump as an external threat, Žižek inverts the causal arrow: Trump reveals the internal failure of the liberal left to address popular discontent.
“Far from being an exploitation of American workers, Venezuela under Chavez—if you take labor theory of value literally—was exploiting them, which shows the theory must be reformulated.”
A reductio ad absurdum inversion to demonstrate that vulgar Marxism produces ideologically perverse conclusions, necessitating a de-substantialized labor theory.
“The greatest utopia today is not to imagine the end of capitalism but to think we can survive without fundamentally changing it.”
The apparent realism of muddling through is exposed as the true utopia; radical change is actually the sober necessity.
“Right-wingers now politicize the refugee crisis while the left naturalizes and moralizes it—exactly the reverse of the traditional roles.”
The customary left/right positions on politicization versus naturalization have been inverted in the refugee debate.
“To be a proletarian in the old Marxist sense—permanently employed in a big factory with benefits—is today almost a privilege.”
The classical figure of exploitation has become a mark of relative security, inverting the traditional topology of proletarian precarity.
“White liberals want to protect poor Arabs from my Islamophobia, but Arabs themselves read my work positively and want to invite me.”
The patronizing protection of the oppressed by Western liberals is inverted: the supposed victims are the actual readers and endorsers of the 'offensive' text.
Claims 14
asserts
Trump is not fascist but a symptom of the liberal left's failure to address working-class discontent, and the only way to defeat him is left self-criticism and a shift toward addressing economic concerns.Trump and contemporary populism
rejects
Contemporary right-wing populism is not classical fascism because it lacks the conspiratorial enemy-figure of the Jew and instead features an 'invasion' narrative; calling it fascism is lazy and obscures what is genuinely new.fascism as a category for new populism
asserts
Political correctness and right-wing vulgarity are two sides of the same coin—both are responses to the decay of Sittlichkeit—and the left should reclaim decency as a moral majority rather than rely on explicit speech codes.political correctness and the new populist right
reframes
Marx's labor theory of value must be de-substantialized and temporally rethought, and the category of the proletariat must be radically redefined to include refugees and precarious workers.Marx's labor theory of value
asserts
The primary form of exploitation in cognitive capitalism is the privatization of the commons (cyberspace, shared knowledge), not traditional extraction of surplus-value from factory workers.contemporary capitalism and the commons
rejects
You cannot fight global capitalism at the level of the nation-state; the left needs large-scale international coordination, not national sovereignty.leftist nationalism and Keynesian nation-state solutions
asserts
The refugee question must be repoliticized—set in economic, geopolitical, and political context—rather than treated as a purely humanitarian catastrophe.the refugee crisis
asserts
It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, and this imaginative failure is characteristic of contemporary ideology.capitalism and political imagination
rejects
Sexual identity, though not biologically determined, is an extremely harsh and traumatic reality—not a free performative choice—and the playful fluid model of identity politics misrepresents this.performative / fluid theory of sexual identity
asserts
The new populist right in Europe (Le Pen, Poland's Law and Justice party) is doing what the moderate left refuses to do: enacting strong social transfers and welfare measures.the new populist right and social policy
asserts
The Holy Spirit is the ultimate materialist notion—it is the community of believers with no divine guarantee remaining after the death of God.Christianity and materialism
asserts
Celebrity status functions to neutralize Žižek's political message by reducing it to entertainment and undermining the academic credibility of those associated with him.celebrity and academic power
reframes
Race struggle can in specific constellations be the primary form that class struggle takes, which means bypassing race to focus only on economics can itself be a way of covering up the most radical dimension of class antagonism.class versus race and identity politics
asserts
Liberal capitalism will not survive its current contradictions—ecology, biogenetics, financial capitalism, refugees—and the future is either a reinvented radical left or dystopian oligarchy.the future of capitalism
Quotes 12
“The greatest utopia today is not to imagine the end of capitalism—the greatest utopia is to think that just with a little bit of austerity, control, don't exaggerate, we will somehow survive it, life will go on the way it does. No, it will not.”Slavoj Žižek · reformism as the true utopia
“It's much easier to imagine the end of the world than even the basic moves of how to overcome capitalism.”Slavoj Žižek · ideological closure of capitalist realism
“I'm ready to sell my mother into slavery to see a movie called V for Vendetta Part 2... what happens then the next day? What measures do they take?”Slavoj Žižek · fetishism of revolutionary events vs. the day after
“White liberals want to protect poor Arabs from my Islamophobia, but Arabs like what I'm doing, my God.”Slavoj Žižek · paternalism of liberal humanitarian protection
“Holy Spirit is for me the ultimate materialist notion.”Slavoj Žižek · Christian materialism / death of God
“Isn't it the supreme irony that today to be a proletarian in the old Marxist sense—permanently employed in a big factory—is almost a privilege?”Slavoj Žižek · redefinition of the proletariat
“It's the right-wing which is politicizing the situation—refugees are part of a dark plot—and it's the left which is moralizing and naturalizing it.”Slavoj Žižek · inversion of left/right roles in the refugee debate
“Today common vulgarity, obscenities are the stuff of the new populist right. It's we the leftists who should speak with—we should be the true moral majority standing for simple decency.”Slavoj Žižek · the left should reclaim decency from the vulgar right
“What dies on the cross is not a messenger of God, it's God himself. All that remains is the Holy Spirit—the spirit of believers without any guarantee in God.”Slavoj Žižek · Hegelian reading of the crucifixion and death of God
“The key to defeating Trump is a little bit of self-criticism, to change our politics to address worries of ordinary working-class people.”Slavoj Žižek · left self-criticism as the answer to populism
“One of the biggest geopolitical tragedies of the last half century is the disappearance of secular left in most of the Arab countries.”Slavoj Žižek · decline of Arab secular left
“Bernie Sanders did what nobody thought was possible. He mobilized the same popular unease that Trump did. And that's the only answer.”Slavoj Žižek · Bernie Sanders as proof of left possibility
Transcript 49 turns
Slavoj Žižek
Hi, it’s me here. Hello, Slavoj. Okay, wait a minute, I will just try to make the voice so that I hear you okay. Do you hear me alright? Do you hear me alright? Oh, you sound great. Okay, okay, no, I don't sound great, I sound, you know, we in Slovenia, we have a wonderful vulgar sounding, vulgar phrase: when somebody looks or sounds back, bad, no? Uh-huh. We say you look as if somebody just pulled you out of a cow’s ass, you know, like, that’s how I feel now.
Hi, it’s me here. Hello, Slavoj. Okay, wait a minute, I will just try to make the voice so that I hear you okay. Do you hear me alright? Do you hear me alright? Oh, you sound great. Okay, okay, no, I don't sound great, I sound, you know, we in Slovenia, we have a wonderful vulgar sounding, vulgar phrase: when somebody looks or sounds back, bad, no? Uh-huh. We say you look as if somebody just pulled you out of a cow’s ass, you know, like, that’s how I feel now.
unknown
The death of God is about the drying up of a horizon of meaning and of a whole form of human life.
The death of God is about the drying up of a horizon of meaning and of a whole form of human life.
unknown
Where do we stand in the illusion it makes?
Where do we stand in the illusion it makes?
unknown
What kind of space are we invited into? The material relations between people becomes social relations between things. When we look at toasters, corn, and TVs,
What kind of space are we invited into? The material relations between people becomes social relations between things. When we look at toasters, corn, and TVs,
unknown
we still to a large extent live in the interregnum between between worlds, if you will, or between paradigms. Not many people in the history of the world have faced that.
we still to a large extent live in the interregnum between between worlds, if you will, or between paradigms. Not many people in the history of the world have faced that.
unknown
Zero Squared is the Zero Books podcast. Slavoj Žižek is the guest this week, and we discuss the flak he’s received for a few of his Lacanian interventions into politics recently, Marx’s labor theory of value, and Žižek’s most current book, Against the Double Blackmail. Longtime listeners will know that Žižek’s ideas have haunted this podcast since the beginning, and his appearing as a guest marks a moment wherein we may have traversed the fantasy. That is, Žižek said hello, I asked him my questions, but in the end I discovered that, surprise, he is not only not the droid I was looking for, but, and forgive me for mixing my metaphors, the cake is always already a lie. It’s Wednesday, January 11th, and I’m Douglas Lain, the publisher of Zero Books and the host of this podcast. Before we begin, I want to thank our Zero Books Club members. Zero Books Club members gain access to the Inside Zero Books podcast and are invited to participate in online workshops in critical theory. Now is always a good time to join. This episode does not feature any sound collages or clips, except for this one right here.
Zero Squared is the Zero Books podcast. Slavoj Žižek is the guest this week, and we discuss the flak he’s received for a few of his Lacanian interventions into politics recently, Marx’s labor theory of value, and Žižek’s most current book, Against the Double Blackmail. Longtime listeners will know that Žižek’s ideas have haunted this podcast since the beginning, and his appearing as a guest marks a moment wherein we may have traversed the fantasy. That is, Žižek said hello, I asked him my questions, but in the end I discovered that, surprise, he is not only not the droid I was looking for, but, and forgive me for mixing my metaphors, the cake is always already a lie. It’s Wednesday, January 11th, and I’m Douglas Lain, the publisher of Zero Books and the host of this podcast. Before we begin, I want to thank our Zero Books Club members. Zero Books Club members gain access to the Inside Zero Books podcast and are invited to participate in online workshops in critical theory. Now is always a good time to join. This episode does not feature any sound collages or clips, except for this one right here.
unknown
Get some fucking fruit juice.
Get some fucking fruit juice.
unknown
The music you’re listening to is called Raggle Taggle by A Hawk and a Hacksaw, and in just a moment, you’ll be listening to Slavoj Žižek and I discuss Against the Double Blackmail.
The music you’re listening to is called Raggle Taggle by A Hawk and a Hacksaw, and in just a moment, you’ll be listening to Slavoj Žižek and I discuss Against the Double Blackmail.
unknown
Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian psychoanalytic philosopher, cultural critic, and Hegelian Marxist. He is a professor at several universities including the University of Ljubljana and NYU. A frequent lecturer and something of a YouTube star, he is the author of many, many books including The Sublime Object of Ideology, In Defense of Lost Causes, Less Than Nothing, and most recently Against the Double Blackmail, which is the book we’ll be discussing today. Slavoj Žižek, thank you for taking the time to be a guest on the Zero Books podcast. The honor is mine, thank you, and if I understand it correctly, you are speaking from Portland. Portland, Oregon, yes. Portland is, yes I know, you know that Portland is my favorite city in the US. Well, it should be. You know why? Because it’s very, maybe even conservative European, but it’s the right size, it has a nice downtown that you can cover up with walking and of course, my God, it has the bookstore, no? I hope it will survive. Powell’s, Powell’s, or what? Powell’s Books, yes, a city of books. And I moved here oh, years ago when I was a younger person than I am now and went to
Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian psychoanalytic philosopher, cultural critic, and Hegelian Marxist. He is a professor at several universities including the University of Ljubljana and NYU. A frequent lecturer and something of a YouTube star, he is the author of many, many books including The Sublime Object of Ideology, In Defense of Lost Causes, Less Than Nothing, and most recently Against the Double Blackmail, which is the book we’ll be discussing today. Slavoj Žižek, thank you for taking the time to be a guest on the Zero Books podcast. The honor is mine, thank you, and if I understand it correctly, you are speaking from Portland. Portland, Oregon, yes. Portland is, yes I know, you know that Portland is my favorite city in the US. Well, it should be. You know why? Because it’s very, maybe even conservative European, but it’s the right size, it has a nice downtown that you can cover up with walking and of course, my God, it has the bookstore, no? I hope it will survive. Powell’s, Powell’s, or what? Powell’s Books, yes, a city of books. And I moved here oh, years ago when I was a younger person than I am now and went to
Slavoj Žižek
Powell’s Books and decided I was going to stay here forever, so. No, but it has everything, I was there just to feel the city a couple of, two three years
Powell’s Books and decided I was going to stay here forever, so. No, but it has everything, I was there just to feel the city a couple of, two three years
unknown
ago
ago
Slavoj Žižek
with my son and we stayed at some stupid luxury hotel, but it was such a nice walk to Powell’s Books and my son was surprised, like, it’s not only the usual stuff, he was looking about some things about mathematics, he loved it, philosophy, they have excellent translations of all possible detective novels and so on, you know. Okay, so let’s not lose time. Right. Just to tell you that Portland is better than, definitely better than Seattle, Seattle is overrated if you ask me.
with my son and we stayed at some stupid luxury hotel, but it was such a nice walk to Powell’s Books and my son was surprised, like, it’s not only the usual stuff, he was looking about some things about mathematics, he loved it, philosophy, they have excellent translations of all possible detective novels and so on, you know. Okay, so let’s not lose time. Right. Just to tell you that Portland is better than, definitely better than Seattle, Seattle is overrated if you ask me.
unknown
As a Portlander, I completely agree. Yes. I just want to start by saying one of my followers and friends on Facebook asked me to let you know that there’s something called the Slavoj Žižek Dank Meme Stash. Now this is a Facebook group that’s dedicated to you and to lovingly mocking you, I guess it’s a way for a particular kind of person to find other people like themselves, I don’t know if it’s a perverse dating site or what, but now I’ve done that, I’ve mentioned it to you, and I guess I want to ask you, how do you cope with being a celebrity philosopher?
As a Portlander, I completely agree. Yes. I just want to start by saying one of my followers and friends on Facebook asked me to let you know that there’s something called the Slavoj Žižek Dank Meme Stash. Now this is a Facebook group that’s dedicated to you and to lovingly mocking you, I guess it’s a way for a particular kind of person to find other people like themselves, I don’t know if it’s a perverse dating site or what, but now I’ve done that, I’ve mentioned it to you, and I guess I want to ask you, how do you cope with being a celebrity philosopher?
Slavoj Žižek
I, I hate it more and more, not out of kind of hypocrisy, I’m not playing that guy, you know, who says oh, I would just like modestly to work and write books, but I am more and more convinced that it is a way to neutralize me, you know, to say he’s a funny guy, blah, blah, but the message is always of this so-called celebrity stuff, not to take me too seriously, especially combined with another thing. You know, people often say, oh, I’m a big, big celebrity, blah, blah, but I’m sorry to tell you this doesn’t involve any, oh, not even minimal power position. You know that for example, I will not name names, I don’t want to embarrass people, but do you know that because of these LGBT attacks on me, two people lost their jobs and three were threatened to lose their jobs? I know of people, again I will not name them, who were applying for a job and my recommendation letter not only didn’t help them but was their ruin, like they almost got the job, I learned afterwards through my spies in that committee whatever that decides, but I was told that somebody then says, oh, it was not that what I wrote was inappropriate, I know how to write in official style and so on, but the idea was just if someone like me supports the guy, there must be something wrong with the guy. No, you know why this annoys me? Because I’m at the same time presented as a kind of a big academic star, blah, blah. Listen, academic power as you probably know better than me is measured today at two three levels: A, can you provide jobs? B, can you provide some funding for, for I don’t know, for some institutes and so on, grants? And three, can you provide publications, in the sense that you write to a publishing house, they will publish the, the guy’s book? I’m completely, okay, I would say completely but very, very powerless in all these three domains. So you know, well like it would be nice to once to begin to measure like who really is in this elementary sense, who stands for power in academia. For example, we Lacanians are often mocked by LGBT or others, feminists, that we are the patriarchal Lacan, name of the father, power and so on and so on. Sorry, but we are so dispersed and alone, I mentioned you know how is the guy called, Hilary Neroni and Todd McGowan, a couple who lives in Burlington with Harry Sen, with sorry Bernie Sanders practically. They have there a small department of cinema and media. Why do I mention them? They are the only department in the entire United States, I think even in the world, where they who are in a way Lacanian cultural studies guys are head and his wife helps him of a department.
I, I hate it more and more, not out of kind of hypocrisy, I’m not playing that guy, you know, who says oh, I would just like modestly to work and write books, but I am more and more convinced that it is a way to neutralize me, you know, to say he’s a funny guy, blah, blah, but the message is always of this so-called celebrity stuff, not to take me too seriously, especially combined with another thing. You know, people often say, oh, I’m a big, big celebrity, blah, blah, but I’m sorry to tell you this doesn’t involve any, oh, not even minimal power position. You know that for example, I will not name names, I don’t want to embarrass people, but do you know that because of these LGBT attacks on me, two people lost their jobs and three were threatened to lose their jobs? I know of people, again I will not name them, who were applying for a job and my recommendation letter not only didn’t help them but was their ruin, like they almost got the job, I learned afterwards through my spies in that committee whatever that decides, but I was told that somebody then says, oh, it was not that what I wrote was inappropriate, I know how to write in official style and so on, but the idea was just if someone like me supports the guy, there must be something wrong with the guy. No, you know why this annoys me? Because I’m at the same time presented as a kind of a big academic star, blah, blah. Listen, academic power as you probably know better than me is measured today at two three levels: A, can you provide jobs? B, can you provide some funding for, for I don’t know, for some institutes and so on, grants? And three, can you provide publications, in the sense that you write to a publishing house, they will publish the, the guy’s book? I’m completely, okay, I would say completely but very, very powerless in all these three domains. So you know, well like it would be nice to once to begin to measure like who really is in this elementary sense, who stands for power in academia. For example, we Lacanians are often mocked by LGBT or others, feminists, that we are the patriarchal Lacan, name of the father, power and so on and so on. Sorry, but we are so dispersed and alone, I mentioned you know how is the guy called, Hilary Neroni and Todd McGowan, a couple who lives in Burlington with Harry Sen, with sorry Bernie Sanders practically. They have there a small department of cinema and media. Why do I mention them? They are the only department in the entire United States, I think even in the world, where they who are in a way Lacanian cultural studies guys are head and his wife helps him of a department.
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You know, you’ve been saying things that are similar to this for a while, but it seems to me that maybe the pressure on you lately is worse.
You know, you’ve been saying things that are similar to this for a while, but it seems to me that maybe the pressure on you lately is worse.
Slavoj Žižek
Yeah but I, I don’t, I don’t bend. Now you, we are I know slowly arriving to your first question. No, I don’t retreat, I’m more and more firm in it. I will not retreat, I stay totally behind what I was saying and especially my point is how people, not in the sense that they were evil or stupid, but willfully misread what I was saying. My point, my God, is a pretty elementary one. First, I always emphasized, I mean I have detailed analysis in past books, in texts that I write now, what’s the danger of Trump, as, and as I emphasized, Trump is not only dangerous at the level of content, you know, but even as I emphasized, at the level of form, in the sense of he stands for this and I think craziest as it may sound, this is more and more important today, this regression, vulgarization of the public discourse. You can say today things that it was not possible to tell them years ago. Not only my standard examples where for example torture is a legitimate topic today and so on, but maybe many others. So of course Trump embodies this vulgarization and I think there is a great irony in this and maybe a chance for us, I don’t like the term but let’s call ourselves progressives. You know why? Because till now or not till now, let’s say when I was young, it was I remember so-called revolution, liberation, it was the official public speech, people, persons in power spoke this official polite language and so on, and it was the standard leftist provocation to throw in a fuck you here, there, some vulgar word to show that we are not the stiff official guy, you know, and so on, no? But today it’s the opposite. It’s those in power who speak more and more in a vulgar way. And I’m totally for making a crazy move, which even it’s not just a rhetorical move, don’t you think there is a grain of truth in it, that today common vulgarity, obscenities are the stuff of the new populist right. It’s we the leftists who should be, who should speak with, and I use here this term without hopefully its conservative connotation, we should be the true moral majority standing for simple decency, don’t humiliate others, you know, all that stuff and so on. Last week I had on a woman named Amber A’Lee Frost, and she is part of what she calls the dirtbag left, and they’re kind of Bernie Sanders supporters and they, their whole aim is to break free from a certain constraint that political correctness or oversensitivity might put on the left and be able to talk frankly, and you know, they use vulgarities, they, they kind of take pride— No, no, no, I am for political correctness, but for me, sorry to interrupt you because this is a crucial theoretical point, it’s central point of my next short political book. I am not accusing here political correctness, I mean, to be frank, although I attack it quite a lot, I am well aware that this is a sincere attempt, I don’t doubt that most of them are sincere and so on and so on. My problem is this one: manners function insofar as they are, and I don’t want to mystify this word but, spontaneous in the sense that you know when you act really politely, you don’t follow explicit rules. Some, you just know that some things shouldn’t be said, done. In this sense, maybe you’ve heard it, to provoke my enemies, I like to, I like to present myself as a great defender of dogmatism. Not dogmatism of course in a stupid religious ideological sense, but dogmatism in the sense that for me a measure of, if I may use
Yeah but I, I don’t, I don’t bend. Now you, we are I know slowly arriving to your first question. No, I don’t retreat, I’m more and more firm in it. I will not retreat, I stay totally behind what I was saying and especially my point is how people, not in the sense that they were evil or stupid, but willfully misread what I was saying. My point, my God, is a pretty elementary one. First, I always emphasized, I mean I have detailed analysis in past books, in texts that I write now, what’s the danger of Trump, as, and as I emphasized, Trump is not only dangerous at the level of content, you know, but even as I emphasized, at the level of form, in the sense of he stands for this and I think craziest as it may sound, this is more and more important today, this regression, vulgarization of the public discourse. You can say today things that it was not possible to tell them years ago. Not only my standard examples where for example torture is a legitimate topic today and so on, but maybe many others. So of course Trump embodies this vulgarization and I think there is a great irony in this and maybe a chance for us, I don’t like the term but let’s call ourselves progressives. You know why? Because till now or not till now, let’s say when I was young, it was I remember so-called revolution, liberation, it was the official public speech, people, persons in power spoke this official polite language and so on, and it was the standard leftist provocation to throw in a fuck you here, there, some vulgar word to show that we are not the stiff official guy, you know, and so on, no? But today it’s the opposite. It’s those in power who speak more and more in a vulgar way. And I’m totally for making a crazy move, which even it’s not just a rhetorical move, don’t you think there is a grain of truth in it, that today common vulgarity, obscenities are the stuff of the new populist right. It’s we the leftists who should be, who should speak with, and I use here this term without hopefully its conservative connotation, we should be the true moral majority standing for simple decency, don’t humiliate others, you know, all that stuff and so on. Last week I had on a woman named Amber A’Lee Frost, and she is part of what she calls the dirtbag left, and they’re kind of Bernie Sanders supporters and they, their whole aim is to break free from a certain constraint that political correctness or oversensitivity might put on the left and be able to talk frankly, and you know, they use vulgarities, they, they kind of take pride— No, no, no, I am for political correctness, but for me, sorry to interrupt you because this is a crucial theoretical point, it’s central point of my next short political book. I am not accusing here political correctness, I mean, to be frank, although I attack it quite a lot, I am well aware that this is a sincere attempt, I don’t doubt that most of them are sincere and so on and so on. My problem is this one: manners function insofar as they are, and I don’t want to mystify this word but, spontaneous in the sense that you know when you act really politely, you don’t follow explicit rules. Some, you just know that some things shouldn’t be said, done. In this sense, maybe you’ve heard it, to provoke my enemies, I like to, I like to present myself as a great defender of dogmatism. Not dogmatism of course in a stupid religious ideological sense, but dogmatism in the sense that for me a measure of, if I may use
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this term which is very problematic I know, moral progress is that some things become self-evident, you don’t have to argue for them. For example, a standard feminist example: I wouldn’t like to live in a society where you have to argue again and again that women shouldn’t be raped. I wouldn’t like to live in a society where when some male person says, you know these old vulgar obscenity, yeah but
this term which is very problematic I know, moral progress is that some things become self-evident, you don’t have to argue for them. For example, a standard feminist example: I wouldn’t like to live in a society where you have to argue again and again that women shouldn’t be raped. I wouldn’t like to live in a society where when some male person says, you know these old vulgar obscenity, yeah but
Slavoj Žižek
you know sometimes you have to be a little bit forceful because women pretend they don’t like it but they really enjoy when you are brutal with them and so on, I would like to live in a society where when somebody says something like this he is simply dismissed and mocked as an idiot, you know. I, and the same goes for torture. I liked it, you remember years ago, it was, it was simply impossible in public space to argue for torture. Now you can and so on. And so back to this, so I, when these implicit standards of what Hegel called Sittlichkeit, not so much personal morality as unwritten rules of public mores, customs and so on, when this is disintegrating, then, and it’s rather a tragic thing, I’m not criticizing it, then political correctness tried to, tries to regulate this decay with explicit rules, you know, don’t say black, say African American and so on and so on. At a certain level of course we should be doing it, but we should at the same time be aware that ultimately this doesn’t work. Doesn’t work in the sense that just take a look at how language actually works. I mean, it’s not the word black guy as such which is automatically racist, it depends in a racist context. African American can work even in a more racist way. You know, it’s you always play because it all depends on context as, okay, I will tell you something which I love, the guy at whose face I am looking now, Adorno, you know. Right, right, yeah. When he criticized Hollywood, he said something wonderful, maybe you know it, I don’t know where, I don’t think it’s in Kulturindustrie passages of Dialectic of Enlightenment. He said that a great film would be somehow a movie which would have obeyed, followed all the Hays Code rules, you know, the Hollywood standard rules prohibiting mention of this on that and so on, but not as a censorship tool, as a kind of a spontaneous self-limitation like as good manners, not as censorship and so on, you know. So again, to return to your point, this is for me the tragedy that the right-wing populist vulgarity and political correctness go hand in hand, I claim, and the big art, and can be done, and here I would probably immediately agree with the lady you mentioned, would have been, you know, the great art is of course to use obscenities and so on. For me, as I always emphasize, I doubt if it’s really possible, at least in the majority of cases, to have an authentic contact with another human being without some exchange of obscenity and so on. But the art is to do it in a non-racist, non-oppressive way. The miracle, everybody who has real contact with other races and so on knows that it’s possible. That’s the true art. Well I agree with you, but shall we return to Trump? So I am well— I want to, you know, I’m noticing it that you’ve, you have confessed in public before that sometimes you speak for a long time in order to avoid questions and I feel like that may be happening today. No, no, no, but here I’m fully ready. Okay, I know, I know, so let me just ask the question though about Trump. Do you, you don’t regret taking that contrarian position about Trump, that he was a less dangerous US presidential candidate? It sounds like you said that already. Yes. I, I feel that he is some sort of dangerous proto-fascist really, that you know if you look at him and then the rest of what’s happening in Europe and what may happen in France with the rise of Le Pen, that he is uniquely dangerous and that we might have been better off with the status quo for a few more years than facing this threat. Yeah and then get an even stronger Trump, because what I think is this, let me, I have at three levels I have a problem with this standard opinion. First, okay I cannot go into it into detail now, but although I was sometimes doing it, namely what is it, using this fascist, proto-fascist term and so on, I think that this is in basically I’m more and more critical towards the use of this term fascism. Why? Because I think it repeats one of the worst habits of the left. Something new and obviously dangerous is emerging, and out of laziness, instead of analyzing what is going on here and now, in a very easy way you use, use the old term, oh it’s proto-fascism, new fascism and so on. I’m not saying it’s less dangerous, but it’s not fascism. Fascism needs, first point, fascism needs an enemy like the Jews, financial capital or whatever. But, and although I am very critical towards the work, you must know that Chicago Marxist Moishe Postone. Yes, I do know him. Yeah, I know his problems with Israel and so on, but he made nonetheless recently one excellent point. He says, even the worst white supremacists do not accuse, for example here in Europe, Muslim immigrants or with you Mexicans that they secretly dominate the world or
you know sometimes you have to be a little bit forceful because women pretend they don’t like it but they really enjoy when you are brutal with them and so on, I would like to live in a society where when somebody says something like this he is simply dismissed and mocked as an idiot, you know. I, and the same goes for torture. I liked it, you remember years ago, it was, it was simply impossible in public space to argue for torture. Now you can and so on. And so back to this, so I, when these implicit standards of what Hegel called Sittlichkeit, not so much personal morality as unwritten rules of public mores, customs and so on, when this is disintegrating, then, and it’s rather a tragic thing, I’m not criticizing it, then political correctness tried to, tries to regulate this decay with explicit rules, you know, don’t say black, say African American and so on and so on. At a certain level of course we should be doing it, but we should at the same time be aware that ultimately this doesn’t work. Doesn’t work in the sense that just take a look at how language actually works. I mean, it’s not the word black guy as such which is automatically racist, it depends in a racist context. African American can work even in a more racist way. You know, it’s you always play because it all depends on context as, okay, I will tell you something which I love, the guy at whose face I am looking now, Adorno, you know. Right, right, yeah. When he criticized Hollywood, he said something wonderful, maybe you know it, I don’t know where, I don’t think it’s in Kulturindustrie passages of Dialectic of Enlightenment. He said that a great film would be somehow a movie which would have obeyed, followed all the Hays Code rules, you know, the Hollywood standard rules prohibiting mention of this on that and so on, but not as a censorship tool, as a kind of a spontaneous self-limitation like as good manners, not as censorship and so on, you know. So again, to return to your point, this is for me the tragedy that the right-wing populist vulgarity and political correctness go hand in hand, I claim, and the big art, and can be done, and here I would probably immediately agree with the lady you mentioned, would have been, you know, the great art is of course to use obscenities and so on. For me, as I always emphasize, I doubt if it’s really possible, at least in the majority of cases, to have an authentic contact with another human being without some exchange of obscenity and so on. But the art is to do it in a non-racist, non-oppressive way. The miracle, everybody who has real contact with other races and so on knows that it’s possible. That’s the true art. Well I agree with you, but shall we return to Trump? So I am well— I want to, you know, I’m noticing it that you’ve, you have confessed in public before that sometimes you speak for a long time in order to avoid questions and I feel like that may be happening today. No, no, no, but here I’m fully ready. Okay, I know, I know, so let me just ask the question though about Trump. Do you, you don’t regret taking that contrarian position about Trump, that he was a less dangerous US presidential candidate? It sounds like you said that already. Yes. I, I feel that he is some sort of dangerous proto-fascist really, that you know if you look at him and then the rest of what’s happening in Europe and what may happen in France with the rise of Le Pen, that he is uniquely dangerous and that we might have been better off with the status quo for a few more years than facing this threat. Yeah and then get an even stronger Trump, because what I think is this, let me, I have at three levels I have a problem with this standard opinion. First, okay I cannot go into it into detail now, but although I was sometimes doing it, namely what is it, using this fascist, proto-fascist term and so on, I think that this is in basically I’m more and more critical towards the use of this term fascism. Why? Because I think it repeats one of the worst habits of the left. Something new and obviously dangerous is emerging, and out of laziness, instead of analyzing what is going on here and now, in a very easy way you use, use the old term, oh it’s proto-fascism, new fascism and so on. I’m not saying it’s less dangerous, but it’s not fascism. Fascism needs, first point, fascism needs an enemy like the Jews, financial capital or whatever. But, and although I am very critical towards the work, you must know that Chicago Marxist Moishe Postone. Yes, I do know him. Yeah, I know his problems with Israel and so on, but he made nonetheless recently one excellent point. He says, even the worst white supremacists do not accuse, for example here in Europe, Muslim immigrants or with you Mexicans that they secretly dominate the world or
unknown
whatever. No, they are chaotic invasion and so on. They are not, contemporary populism does not build as the enemy a figure which even vaguely fits the figure of the Jew. Or let me be more precise. It does up to a point, but then we enter the level of madness. Namely, do you know that I don’t know how is it in United States, but in Europe now, we are getting in my own country Slovenia, in France, in Germany and so on, an extreme right which does something which is so horrible that out of my perverted taste I almost admire it. Namely, they claim that there is really no conflict between Muslims and Jews, that it’s all the same plot. Behind the Muslim invasion of Europe are the Jews, George Soros and so on. They just stage the conflict among themselves to delude us, to make to distract our attention, so so that we don’t notice how the Muslim invasion of Europe is the darkest Zionist
whatever. No, they are chaotic invasion and so on. They are not, contemporary populism does not build as the enemy a figure which even vaguely fits the figure of the Jew. Or let me be more precise. It does up to a point, but then we enter the level of madness. Namely, do you know that I don’t know how is it in United States, but in Europe now, we are getting in my own country Slovenia, in France, in Germany and so on, an extreme right which does something which is so horrible that out of my perverted taste I almost admire it. Namely, they claim that there is really no conflict between Muslims and Jews, that it’s all the same plot. Behind the Muslim invasion of Europe are the Jews, George Soros and so on. They just stage the conflict among themselves to delude us, to make to distract our attention, so so that we don’t notice how the Muslim invasion of Europe is the darkest Zionist
Slavoj Žižek
plot to destroy European Christianity. I mean, you know, it’s a wonderful tasteless horror. And so the, so what I’m saying is that, again the point is not to say it’s it’s not as dangerous as, but it’s a differ— that’s the first thing, the enemy is not the fascist enemy. The second thing is, the problem with you know who is for me a figure, I often mention him, which is for me the ultimate figure of at least in Europe anti-immigrant populism. Maybe you heard about him, I think he was killed some years ago, Pim Fortuyn, the Dutch anti-immigrant populist. Mm-hmm. But you know what was he? He was a gay multiculturalist and so on. And his whole anti-immigrant movement was based on the fact that Muslims should not be allowed to enter because they are a threat precisely to our multicultural openness and so on and so on. And my spies told me, are you aware that there are already the beginnings of conflict between within LGBT+ however you call it movement, do you know in my next book I will quote the data, that there are already some Aryan LGBT groups which base their anti-Islam orientation of the fact that it’s only in our Western Christian culture that we can openly be LGBT and so on. In Muslim countries you cannot do it and so on and so forth. Now I’m not saying, don’t misunderstand me, that LGBT I totally support in its goals LGBT and so on. What I’m, what I’m just saying is that this new populism and anti-immigrant racism is something much more dangerous, it will not be my God the old fascism, it will be more something that I’m tempted to call liberal fascism. Second thing, in spite of all horror at Trump, I, for example in New York I was two months ago at a roundtable and there a guy, one of the representatives of that crazy, how is it called, Bob Avakian Revolutionary Communist Party. Yeah, yeah, the Maoists. Started to shout at me claiming, but you don’t see it’s not only threat of fascism, we already are in a fascist state in the United States. Well I would really like him to live for just for a month or two in a real fascist state, you know. No, what I’m saying is that I, again, I openly admit I may be wrong, but my wager was this one. First, I’m not saying United States is a great democracy, but it’s a relatively complex pluralistic state with with many seats of power, strengths, contradictions and so on. So my wager was this one: A, with all its danger, Trump does not pose a real, he may pose an enormous, I agree here with Chomsky, ecological threat and so on. Who knows what his economy will do, but I don’t think he poses a real fascist threat. But, and that was my point and on this I insist, Trump is a symptom. Symptom in the sense that isn’t it clear that the way his populism exploded, the way he found support with so many so-called ordinary people and so on, was the same dissatisfaction out of which grew Bernie Sanders and so on. So for me, the crucial thing is that Donald Trump is a symptom of the failed democratic liberal left of Hillary Clinton and so on. So that’s my my entire point. If we, if something doesn’t happen with the Democratic Party, if Democratic Party doesn’t move a little bit more in the direction for example of Bernie Sanders, then we will not get rid of Trump, maybe not Trump but another one. And you mentioned Europe, I will give you same examples here. For example, do you know a little bit the situation in Poland where also right-wing nationalist party Justice and I don’t know what Law, that Kaczyński brother is in power. It’s so interesting. You know what they did? They are right-wing populists in power. In the last year of their power, they enacted the strongest social transfers in the history of Poland. No leftist even dares to do it. They lowered the retirement rate, they made high how do you call this maternity contribution, when a woman has a child it gets some money, two childs more money. Mm-hmm. They lowered retirement rate, they made better conditions for health care and so on and so forth. And that’s what Marine Le Pen promises. That’s the horror, that while on the one hand when the liberal moderate left when they take power of course they do all this political correct stuff, gay rights, abortion, blah blah, but in matters of economy it’s usually the moderate left which does the austerity, while in Europe this place is now more and more occupied by the new populist right, and you cannot just accuse them, that’s the horror, at least in the case of Poland, and if you listen carefully to her, Marine Le Pen is doing the same. Yeah. She’s promising great social transfers, help to the workers and so on and so forth. Isn’t this a sad tragic situation, that this is— No, I tell you, Slavoj, the thing is what you’re saying makes perfect sense to me but it actually makes me worry that Trump and Le Pen and others are more fascist than you’re letting on, because my understanding is that fascists tend to be Keynesian, they tend not to be, you know, this kind of neoliberal economic policy. I agree, but then all the more, isn’t it clear where this fascism what opens up the space for this fascism? That the left doesn’t do it. That the left obsessed with this political correct stuff doesn’t do that, and it can do, isn’t Bernie Sanders the living proof that it’s, that’s for me the miracle of Bernie Sanders. He did what nobody thought it’s possible to do. He mobilized the same, okay not quite the same, but he mobilized the same let’s call it popular unease and so on that Trump did. And that’s the only answer. What I think is a catastrophe is this, and I see already these two reactions predominating in the Democratic Party. On the one hand this fear of Trump, Trump the end of the world, blah blah, on the other hand, and I find this quite logical, did you notice, this is for me the true danger, did you notice the last, it was about a couple of weeks ago, statements by Nancy Pelosi. She is renormalizing the situation. Her line was, listen, every from time to time we get a big Republican conservative figure, it was Reagan, it was Bush, now it’s Trump. Don’t worry, they will screw it up, in eight years we are back and so on and so forth. Right. That’s the horror. She is renormalizing Trump. Right. And I find this so typical because this either Trump is the ultimate horror or renormalizing Trump are both ways to avoid this, I’m sorry to use this old Stalinist term, self-criticism. That’s my point, the key to defeating Trump, and okay, I even maybe you noticed it, I said just for a couple of days that stupidity I support Trump. My official party line in an article published in In These Times was don’t vote, you know. Mm-hmm. I quoted that wonderful novel by Saramago on Seeing or whatever, no? But I’m just saying this that in I’m ready to change my mind, but don’t you agree that in the long term, it’s the same in Europe, the way to beat Trump, Le Pen and so on is to do a little bit of self-criticism to change our politics to address worries of ordinary working-class people and so on and so on and so on. Well listen, here’s the thing that I worry about. I am, I’m sort of a wannabe Marxist, which means that I’m like a true believer because I struggle to understand Marx— I’m also basically in my heart, yes. Yeah, like I struggle to understand Marx like a Christian struggles to live like Christ. But we can do it better because no authentic Christian understands Christ, that’s clear. Okay but yeah. So you call yourself a Marxist as well, but I wonder if you’re a Marxist in the way that a true believer in Christianity would be a Christian. In other words, like if you’re a Christian and you’re a true believer, you’re a literal believer, you have to believe that Christ died on the cross
plot to destroy European Christianity. I mean, you know, it’s a wonderful tasteless horror. And so the, so what I’m saying is that, again the point is not to say it’s it’s not as dangerous as, but it’s a differ— that’s the first thing, the enemy is not the fascist enemy. The second thing is, the problem with you know who is for me a figure, I often mention him, which is for me the ultimate figure of at least in Europe anti-immigrant populism. Maybe you heard about him, I think he was killed some years ago, Pim Fortuyn, the Dutch anti-immigrant populist. Mm-hmm. But you know what was he? He was a gay multiculturalist and so on. And his whole anti-immigrant movement was based on the fact that Muslims should not be allowed to enter because they are a threat precisely to our multicultural openness and so on and so on. And my spies told me, are you aware that there are already the beginnings of conflict between within LGBT+ however you call it movement, do you know in my next book I will quote the data, that there are already some Aryan LGBT groups which base their anti-Islam orientation of the fact that it’s only in our Western Christian culture that we can openly be LGBT and so on. In Muslim countries you cannot do it and so on and so forth. Now I’m not saying, don’t misunderstand me, that LGBT I totally support in its goals LGBT and so on. What I’m, what I’m just saying is that this new populism and anti-immigrant racism is something much more dangerous, it will not be my God the old fascism, it will be more something that I’m tempted to call liberal fascism. Second thing, in spite of all horror at Trump, I, for example in New York I was two months ago at a roundtable and there a guy, one of the representatives of that crazy, how is it called, Bob Avakian Revolutionary Communist Party. Yeah, yeah, the Maoists. Started to shout at me claiming, but you don’t see it’s not only threat of fascism, we already are in a fascist state in the United States. Well I would really like him to live for just for a month or two in a real fascist state, you know. No, what I’m saying is that I, again, I openly admit I may be wrong, but my wager was this one. First, I’m not saying United States is a great democracy, but it’s a relatively complex pluralistic state with with many seats of power, strengths, contradictions and so on. So my wager was this one: A, with all its danger, Trump does not pose a real, he may pose an enormous, I agree here with Chomsky, ecological threat and so on. Who knows what his economy will do, but I don’t think he poses a real fascist threat. But, and that was my point and on this I insist, Trump is a symptom. Symptom in the sense that isn’t it clear that the way his populism exploded, the way he found support with so many so-called ordinary people and so on, was the same dissatisfaction out of which grew Bernie Sanders and so on. So for me, the crucial thing is that Donald Trump is a symptom of the failed democratic liberal left of Hillary Clinton and so on. So that’s my my entire point. If we, if something doesn’t happen with the Democratic Party, if Democratic Party doesn’t move a little bit more in the direction for example of Bernie Sanders, then we will not get rid of Trump, maybe not Trump but another one. And you mentioned Europe, I will give you same examples here. For example, do you know a little bit the situation in Poland where also right-wing nationalist party Justice and I don’t know what Law, that Kaczyński brother is in power. It’s so interesting. You know what they did? They are right-wing populists in power. In the last year of their power, they enacted the strongest social transfers in the history of Poland. No leftist even dares to do it. They lowered the retirement rate, they made high how do you call this maternity contribution, when a woman has a child it gets some money, two childs more money. Mm-hmm. They lowered retirement rate, they made better conditions for health care and so on and so forth. And that’s what Marine Le Pen promises. That’s the horror, that while on the one hand when the liberal moderate left when they take power of course they do all this political correct stuff, gay rights, abortion, blah blah, but in matters of economy it’s usually the moderate left which does the austerity, while in Europe this place is now more and more occupied by the new populist right, and you cannot just accuse them, that’s the horror, at least in the case of Poland, and if you listen carefully to her, Marine Le Pen is doing the same. Yeah. She’s promising great social transfers, help to the workers and so on and so forth. Isn’t this a sad tragic situation, that this is— No, I tell you, Slavoj, the thing is what you’re saying makes perfect sense to me but it actually makes me worry that Trump and Le Pen and others are more fascist than you’re letting on, because my understanding is that fascists tend to be Keynesian, they tend not to be, you know, this kind of neoliberal economic policy. I agree, but then all the more, isn’t it clear where this fascism what opens up the space for this fascism? That the left doesn’t do it. That the left obsessed with this political correct stuff doesn’t do that, and it can do, isn’t Bernie Sanders the living proof that it’s, that’s for me the miracle of Bernie Sanders. He did what nobody thought it’s possible to do. He mobilized the same, okay not quite the same, but he mobilized the same let’s call it popular unease and so on that Trump did. And that’s the only answer. What I think is a catastrophe is this, and I see already these two reactions predominating in the Democratic Party. On the one hand this fear of Trump, Trump the end of the world, blah blah, on the other hand, and I find this quite logical, did you notice, this is for me the true danger, did you notice the last, it was about a couple of weeks ago, statements by Nancy Pelosi. She is renormalizing the situation. Her line was, listen, every from time to time we get a big Republican conservative figure, it was Reagan, it was Bush, now it’s Trump. Don’t worry, they will screw it up, in eight years we are back and so on and so forth. Right. That’s the horror. She is renormalizing Trump. Right. And I find this so typical because this either Trump is the ultimate horror or renormalizing Trump are both ways to avoid this, I’m sorry to use this old Stalinist term, self-criticism. That’s my point, the key to defeating Trump, and okay, I even maybe you noticed it, I said just for a couple of days that stupidity I support Trump. My official party line in an article published in In These Times was don’t vote, you know. Mm-hmm. I quoted that wonderful novel by Saramago on Seeing or whatever, no? But I’m just saying this that in I’m ready to change my mind, but don’t you agree that in the long term, it’s the same in Europe, the way to beat Trump, Le Pen and so on is to do a little bit of self-criticism to change our politics to address worries of ordinary working-class people and so on and so on and so on. Well listen, here’s the thing that I worry about. I am, I’m sort of a wannabe Marxist, which means that I’m like a true believer because I struggle to understand Marx— I’m also basically in my heart, yes. Yeah, like I struggle to understand Marx like a Christian struggles to live like Christ. But we can do it better because no authentic Christian understands Christ, that’s clear. Okay but yeah. So you call yourself a Marxist as well, but I wonder if you’re a Marxist in the way that a true believer in Christianity would be a Christian. In other words, like if you’re a Christian and you’re a true believer, you’re a literal believer, you have to believe that Christ died on the cross
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and then rose from the dead. And for a Marxist, you have to believe in the labor theory of value, that that’s true. So I want to ask you, do you hold with Marx’s labor theory of value or try to like a good Christian? This is all the problem and there is a great debate. Moishe Postone did some contributions in the US, some new German Marxist economists did it. You know who even avoided this question, my good
and then rose from the dead. And for a Marxist, you have to believe in the labor theory of value, that that’s true. So I want to ask you, do you hold with Marx’s labor theory of value or try to like a good Christian? This is all the problem and there is a great debate. Moishe Postone did some contributions in the US, some new German Marxist economists did it. You know who even avoided this question, my good
Slavoj Žižek
friend David Harvey. Mm-hmm. I had a debate with him in, where was it, I think in at Birkbeck College, yes. And I asked him okay, labor theory of value, yes or no. And he squeezed out, you know. Right. I think it can be saved, but we have to totally desubstantialize it. Harvey knows this, German new Marxist knows it, you know. It’s it has to be desubstantiated in the sense that it’s not literally that my work individually gives something to a commodity that I’m producing. Labor theory of value relates simply to the universal commodities have value only as commodities within the exchange and so on. And Marx is very clear here, although he is not properly read. Second thing to do where we have to elaborate further labor theory of value is, I think that Marx was too fast in linking it to a certain temporality, you know, you must know if you are a Marxist this notion of how complex labor can be reduced to simple labor, which can be measured by temporality. That I find a little bit problematic. We have to change this and the third point, we have to radically rethink the notion of proletariat, working class and so on. Yeah. Today there are so many new phenomena, unemployed people, people who live outside, refugees and so on, precarious workers and so on. Isn’t it the supreme irony that today to be a proletarian in the old Marxist sense, you are permanently employed in a big factory, okay you get your benefits, retirement, but you are alienated, you work nine hours per day. Isn’t this almost a privilege today? It’s more and more the happy few who can get this. So here I agree with Fred Jameson that we have to redefine the position of proletariat. Next point that I repeat often in my books. If you take labor theory of value in a too dogmatic and immediate way, and I often use, maybe you know it, this example in my talks to provoke people, then you should say, okay, I wrote this years ago, now the confusion is total, that United States were were exploiting Venezuela. Listen, Marx emphasizes that labor is the only source of value and that exploitation is
friend David Harvey. Mm-hmm. I had a debate with him in, where was it, I think in at Birkbeck College, yes. And I asked him okay, labor theory of value, yes or no. And he squeezed out, you know. Right. I think it can be saved, but we have to totally desubstantialize it. Harvey knows this, German new Marxist knows it, you know. It’s it has to be desubstantiated in the sense that it’s not literally that my work individually gives something to a commodity that I’m producing. Labor theory of value relates simply to the universal commodities have value only as commodities within the exchange and so on. And Marx is very clear here, although he is not properly read. Second thing to do where we have to elaborate further labor theory of value is, I think that Marx was too fast in linking it to a certain temporality, you know, you must know if you are a Marxist this notion of how complex labor can be reduced to simple labor, which can be measured by temporality. That I find a little bit problematic. We have to change this and the third point, we have to radically rethink the notion of proletariat, working class and so on. Yeah. Today there are so many new phenomena, unemployed people, people who live outside, refugees and so on, precarious workers and so on. Isn’t it the supreme irony that today to be a proletarian in the old Marxist sense, you are permanently employed in a big factory, okay you get your benefits, retirement, but you are alienated, you work nine hours per day. Isn’t this almost a privilege today? It’s more and more the happy few who can get this. So here I agree with Fred Jameson that we have to redefine the position of proletariat. Next point that I repeat often in my books. If you take labor theory of value in a too dogmatic and immediate way, and I often use, maybe you know it, this example in my talks to provoke people, then you should say, okay, I wrote this years ago, now the confusion is total, that United States were were exploiting Venezuela. Listen, Marx emphasizes that labor is the only source of value and that exploitation is
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ultimately exploitation of labor force. Mm-hmm. And you know which example Marx uses to demonstrate how natural resources as such don’t have, don’t possess value? Oil, of course, of all examples. Mm-hmm. So again, in order to claim that what if I am a vulgar Marxist and claim that Chavez was basically exploiting American or
ultimately exploitation of labor force. Mm-hmm. And you know which example Marx uses to demonstrate how natural resources as such don’t have, don’t possess value? Oil, of course, of all examples. Mm-hmm. So again, in order to claim that what if I am a vulgar Marxist and claim that Chavez was basically exploiting American or
Slavoj Žižek
other workers and simply bribing his own working class with profits from selling oil, profits which are pure result of exploitation and
other workers and simply bribing his own working class with profits from selling oil, profits which are pure result of exploitation and
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so on and so forth. Although, although of course I don’t agree with it. But it’s a complication, it is an authentic complication, and I try to answer this complication with these limits of market logic that we witness today. For example, the example that I always use— Well, let me, let me just jump in real quick, Slavoj, because— I’m
so on and so forth. Although, although of course I don’t agree with it. But it’s a complication, it is an authentic complication, and I try to answer this complication with these limits of market logic that we witness today. For example, the example that I always use— Well, let me, let me just jump in real quick, Slavoj, because— I’m
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sorry. That’s okay.
sorry. That’s okay.
Slavoj Žižek
So the reason I brought up the labor theory of value is because if you hold with that, and you’re a vulgar Marxist like I tend to be, then you’re going to think that Keynesian spending isn’t going to produce a situation of stability, that it will lead to, perhaps could even lead to crisis in this moment where we, where we have a decline in profitability. So like I believe in that the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, I believe in the labor theory of value, you know, I’m a good Christian boy. And so I, so I worry that the populist answers on the left, while being much better than the populist answers on the right when it comes to issues around racism and immigration and that, but are actually too similar to the populist right and will lead to a crisis that we’re not going to be able to handle. And I mean, a good example is what happened to Syriza. The, you know, their Keynesian approach to the economic crisis just blew up in their face. They were not able to even implement it. No, sorry, with Syriza I think the situation is even much more tragic. You know, everyone was waiting for their plan B, like what will they do if European Union would not, will not make a pact with them? And we all eagerly awaited do they have any, did Varoufakis invent any intelligent measure or whatever, you know. Obviously they didn’t have it. So for me Syriza, it’s the supreme their big capitulation, you know, you win the referendum, next day you surrender, you make the compromise. But again, I’m not accusing them for betrayal and so on. When you say Keynesianism, but they even didn’t get a chance to practice Keynesianism. Why not? In this case I don’t believe in Keynesianism. Here Varoufakis convinced me that doing the Grexit, national sovereignty, printing money and so on would immediately trigger an even greater more catastrophic hunger even, social chaos and so on and so forth. So the result of Syriza for me the point is that you cannot find, sorry, you cannot fight global capitalism at the level of nation-state. All this newly discovered leftist nation nation nation-state orientation, you know, we step out and so on, national sovereignty, it doesn’t work. I think the only answer is my hope, maybe I’m too utopian here. Let’s say that somehow as a reaction to Trump there will be stronger in the Democratic Party a little bit of a move to the left, Sanders and so on. Let’s say that maybe a new European left will emerge and I think that when we all protest towards this TTIP, TISA, all these international trade agreements, our answer should be new different agreements. If the left gains enough strength in the developed Western countries, it can, but it must be a larger international scope, it can enforce some measures, financial control and so on, which maybe can lead somewhere. But back to your basic point. Ah yes, but beneath all this I, as a, I am a Christians, I am a, to refer to your metaphor, a Christian but with even greater doubts into existence of God. That is to say, horrible question. But do we have a new model? What do we want? Yeah. What apart from these vague Keynesian ideas, more for health health care, invest blah blah. And I agree with you here, the left lost its vision. We know that that Stalinist state-led left doesn’t work. Although even there things are more complicate, complicate, because as I always like to emphasize, did you notice that the communist in some countries where they are still in power like China and Vietnam, they seem
So the reason I brought up the labor theory of value is because if you hold with that, and you’re a vulgar Marxist like I tend to be, then you’re going to think that Keynesian spending isn’t going to produce a situation of stability, that it will lead to, perhaps could even lead to crisis in this moment where we, where we have a decline in profitability. So like I believe in that the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, I believe in the labor theory of value, you know, I’m a good Christian boy. And so I, so I worry that the populist answers on the left, while being much better than the populist answers on the right when it comes to issues around racism and immigration and that, but are actually too similar to the populist right and will lead to a crisis that we’re not going to be able to handle. And I mean, a good example is what happened to Syriza. The, you know, their Keynesian approach to the economic crisis just blew up in their face. They were not able to even implement it. No, sorry, with Syriza I think the situation is even much more tragic. You know, everyone was waiting for their plan B, like what will they do if European Union would not, will not make a pact with them? And we all eagerly awaited do they have any, did Varoufakis invent any intelligent measure or whatever, you know. Obviously they didn’t have it. So for me Syriza, it’s the supreme their big capitulation, you know, you win the referendum, next day you surrender, you make the compromise. But again, I’m not accusing them for betrayal and so on. When you say Keynesianism, but they even didn’t get a chance to practice Keynesianism. Why not? In this case I don’t believe in Keynesianism. Here Varoufakis convinced me that doing the Grexit, national sovereignty, printing money and so on would immediately trigger an even greater more catastrophic hunger even, social chaos and so on and so forth. So the result of Syriza for me the point is that you cannot find, sorry, you cannot fight global capitalism at the level of nation-state. All this newly discovered leftist nation nation nation-state orientation, you know, we step out and so on, national sovereignty, it doesn’t work. I think the only answer is my hope, maybe I’m too utopian here. Let’s say that somehow as a reaction to Trump there will be stronger in the Democratic Party a little bit of a move to the left, Sanders and so on. Let’s say that maybe a new European left will emerge and I think that when we all protest towards this TTIP, TISA, all these international trade agreements, our answer should be new different agreements. If the left gains enough strength in the developed Western countries, it can, but it must be a larger international scope, it can enforce some measures, financial control and so on, which maybe can lead somewhere. But back to your basic point. Ah yes, but beneath all this I, as a, I am a Christians, I am a, to refer to your metaphor, a Christian but with even greater doubts into existence of God. That is to say, horrible question. But do we have a new model? What do we want? Yeah. What apart from these vague Keynesian ideas, more for health health care, invest blah blah. And I agree with you here, the left lost its vision. We know that that Stalinist state-led left doesn’t work. Although even there things are more complicate, complicate, because as I always like to emphasize, did you notice that the communist in some countries where they are still in power like China and Vietnam, they seem
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to be the best managers of liberal of the wildest brutal liberal capitalism, you know. So that’s another topic. But what I wanted to say is that the left is lacking, I think what Fred Jameson calls cognitive mapping, like what’s the vision? What do we want? Well I think it’s important to figure out whether or not we and figure out if we hold with the labor theory of value and how or what we think of it in order to figure out what we want because— No, but yeah let me add something to labor theory of value. Okay. You know where I see problems? Look at these new rich guys who as I read them became so rich by privatizing some part of our commons. Like look at for example Microsoft. All their Windows programs and so on. He, Bill Gates or the company, I don’t think it’s correct to say that he is exploiting his workers, because it’s clear I read books about Microsoft that how much they charge you for the latest Windows and so on. It has no relation with production
to be the best managers of liberal of the wildest brutal liberal capitalism, you know. So that’s another topic. But what I wanted to say is that the left is lacking, I think what Fred Jameson calls cognitive mapping, like what’s the vision? What do we want? Well I think it’s important to figure out whether or not we and figure out if we hold with the labor theory of value and how or what we think of it in order to figure out what we want because— No, but yeah let me add something to labor theory of value. Okay. You know where I see problems? Look at these new rich guys who as I read them became so rich by privatizing some part of our commons. Like look at for example Microsoft. All their Windows programs and so on. He, Bill Gates or the company, I don’t think it’s correct to say that he is exploiting his workers, because it’s clear I read books about Microsoft that how much they charge you for the latest Windows and so on. It has no relation with production
Slavoj Žižek
costs. He doesn’t think like this, oh it costed me so much and then I add this profit— Yeah, it’s rent, right? I mean that’s what you’re going, it’s rent. But that, that fits within the labor theory of value. Marx wrote, sorry, but that fits within that fits within Marx’s you know critique of political economy, he has you know as you know, he covers rent as a form of capital and it relates to his labor theory of value, it’s not a refutation of it, it fits within his his his book. Yeah but nonetheless for Marx, rent was the first stage. Now I don’t think we have a good Marxist theory of this, some Italians tried it, I’m not totally convinced by them, of this new new return of the rent. And I think that if we still refer here to the labor theory of value, we must do it in a much more general sense. It’s not that I as a worker am exploited by Bill Gates, it’s more that I as a worker participate in certain commons, like the commons of cyberspace, the commons or whatever. And the big threat today, one of the threats is the privatization of these commons. That’s what I see as a danger in all these new phenomena of how do they call them, new forms of capitalism which some people even see in it like people like Jeremy Rifkin, the first signs of post-capitalist universe. I, even some leftists in my country even praise Uber, the taxis, no, claiming this is already some workers’ self-organization and so on and so forth. I think it’s not. And I think that we have to accept, here I’m an old-fashioned harsh line state Marxist, that all this cyberspace, whatever, spaces of commons, need some political state control. I don’t believe that if they are left alone, if we abolish capital, they will happily thrive in their plurality and so on and so on and so on. You don’t get rid of politics and power in such an easy way. That’s what would be my lesson for Marxism today. We need to rethink state power. We don’t need more local self-determination, you know all that happy dream of local communities where people decide their way. No, what we need today, just think about financial capital, think about ecological threats and so on. We need somehow to reinvent mega-large scale coordinated actions, decisions. And— I completely agree with you, Slavoj, you know, what you and I might disagree a bit about how to interpret the labor theory of value, but on this we completely agree. Okay, I cannot go into it now, I also have some more to say that. But can I tell you another thing? Okay well, I just want, can I ask you a question maybe you can work in what you’re about to say. I’m sorry, I’m very sorry. Okay so I just want to say, I want to mention the title of your book again, Against the Double Blackmail, which is the whole justification for this conversation. Um, and I want to say that you know one of your, one of the strengths of that book is that it it tries to open up a space for serious conversation in a in a time when
costs. He doesn’t think like this, oh it costed me so much and then I add this profit— Yeah, it’s rent, right? I mean that’s what you’re going, it’s rent. But that, that fits within the labor theory of value. Marx wrote, sorry, but that fits within that fits within Marx’s you know critique of political economy, he has you know as you know, he covers rent as a form of capital and it relates to his labor theory of value, it’s not a refutation of it, it fits within his his his book. Yeah but nonetheless for Marx, rent was the first stage. Now I don’t think we have a good Marxist theory of this, some Italians tried it, I’m not totally convinced by them, of this new new return of the rent. And I think that if we still refer here to the labor theory of value, we must do it in a much more general sense. It’s not that I as a worker am exploited by Bill Gates, it’s more that I as a worker participate in certain commons, like the commons of cyberspace, the commons or whatever. And the big threat today, one of the threats is the privatization of these commons. That’s what I see as a danger in all these new phenomena of how do they call them, new forms of capitalism which some people even see in it like people like Jeremy Rifkin, the first signs of post-capitalist universe. I, even some leftists in my country even praise Uber, the taxis, no, claiming this is already some workers’ self-organization and so on and so forth. I think it’s not. And I think that we have to accept, here I’m an old-fashioned harsh line state Marxist, that all this cyberspace, whatever, spaces of commons, need some political state control. I don’t believe that if they are left alone, if we abolish capital, they will happily thrive in their plurality and so on and so on and so on. You don’t get rid of politics and power in such an easy way. That’s what would be my lesson for Marxism today. We need to rethink state power. We don’t need more local self-determination, you know all that happy dream of local communities where people decide their way. No, what we need today, just think about financial capital, think about ecological threats and so on. We need somehow to reinvent mega-large scale coordinated actions, decisions. And— I completely agree with you, Slavoj, you know, what you and I might disagree a bit about how to interpret the labor theory of value, but on this we completely agree. Okay, I cannot go into it now, I also have some more to say that. But can I tell you another thing? Okay well, I just want, can I ask you a question maybe you can work in what you’re about to say. I’m sorry, I’m very sorry. Okay so I just want to say, I want to mention the title of your book again, Against the Double Blackmail, which is the whole justification for this conversation. Um, and I want to say that you know one of your, one of the strengths of that book is that it it tries to open up a space for serious conversation in a in a time when
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it seems very difficult to take responsibility politically and to to allow ourselves to to think things through to the end. And I guess
it seems very difficult to take responsibility politically and to to allow ourselves to to think things through to the end. And I guess
Slavoj Žižek
my question is do you have you found that that the reaction to your work is uh I don’t know from the outside it seems like you’re having a rough time and that people are less and less willing to hear what you’re saying. You know what brings me some satisfaction but at the same time it’s pretty sad. Okay of course I will name no names, I don’t want to embarrass people, but do you know how many people leftists privately tell me, look I agree with you, but just I cannot afford to tell it publicly and so on, you know. It’s
my question is do you have you found that that the reaction to your work is uh I don’t know from the outside it seems like you’re having a rough time and that people are less and less willing to hear what you’re saying. You know what brings me some satisfaction but at the same time it’s pretty sad. Okay of course I will name no names, I don’t want to embarrass people, but do you know how many people leftists privately tell me, look I agree with you, but just I cannot afford to tell it publicly and so on, you know. It’s
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quite sad. And you know what people don’t get? Here I was a little bit perplexed. For example, wasn’t it clear with that
quite sad. And you know what people don’t get? Here I was a little bit perplexed. For example, wasn’t it clear with that
Slavoj Žižek
unfortunate LGBT polemics and so
unfortunate LGBT polemics and so
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on, that I am at all the level of practical measures totally for them. I know LGBT people, I deeply sympathize with the horror of their predicament. I just claim that the way, and I even say that they
on, that I am at all the level of practical measures totally for them. I know LGBT people, I deeply sympathize with the horror of their predicament. I just claim that the way, and I even say that they
Slavoj Žižek
are not perverted margins, when Lacan says there is no sexual relationship and so on, they are the privileged site which embodies this truth and so on and so forth. I just claim that the way this topic is inscribed into our identity politics is politically wrong, theoretically wrong and so on and so forth. So not only am I not in any, I am not playing this game we heterosexuals are the true thing and we should tolerate minorities. No, I theoretically ground in what sense in LGBT doubts something comes up which is the oppressed truth if you want it of so-called standard heterosexual normal practices and so on and so forth. Just for example to give you one aspect of this ideology. Often, and I know that Judith Butler is aware of this problem, this theory that gender identity is not biologically determined, you know, is often read in a fake playful way. Oh, this means we can float around today I’m gay, tomorrow I’m heterosexual, blah blah. No, I mean sexual the way you experience your sexual identity is something extremely harsh, traumatic. You don’t have a free choice in this simple sense I will just play with my identity and so on. That’s why LGBT people suffer so much. For them what they experience as their sexual identity although it’s a not biologically determined, it’s so forceful that they are ready to undergo biological operations and so on and so forth. You know what I mean, like it’s it’s not free choice in this cheap sense, oh today I’m gay tomorrow I’m another thing and so on. Sexual identity is something that defines you, defines you, it’s not simply it’s not like today I eat chocolate cake tomorrow I eat strawberry cake
are not perverted margins, when Lacan says there is no sexual relationship and so on, they are the privileged site which embodies this truth and so on and so forth. I just claim that the way this topic is inscribed into our identity politics is politically wrong, theoretically wrong and so on and so forth. So not only am I not in any, I am not playing this game we heterosexuals are the true thing and we should tolerate minorities. No, I theoretically ground in what sense in LGBT doubts something comes up which is the oppressed truth if you want it of so-called standard heterosexual normal practices and so on and so forth. Just for example to give you one aspect of this ideology. Often, and I know that Judith Butler is aware of this problem, this theory that gender identity is not biologically determined, you know, is often read in a fake playful way. Oh, this means we can float around today I’m gay, tomorrow I’m heterosexual, blah blah. No, I mean sexual the way you experience your sexual identity is something extremely harsh, traumatic. You don’t have a free choice in this simple sense I will just play with my identity and so on. That’s why LGBT people suffer so much. For them what they experience as their sexual identity although it’s a not biologically determined, it’s so forceful that they are ready to undergo biological operations and so on and so forth. You know what I mean, like it’s it’s not free choice in this cheap sense, oh today I’m gay tomorrow I’m another thing and so on. Sexual identity is something that defines you, defines you, it’s not simply it’s not like today I eat chocolate cake tomorrow I eat strawberry cake
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and so on. It’s what you are. This is why I don’t like this playful approach, we performatively construct our identities and so on and so forth. That’s my first thing. My second thing
and so on. It’s what you are. This is why I don’t like this playful approach, we performatively construct our identities and so on and so forth. That’s my first thing. My second thing
Slavoj Žižek
is that although I’m often attacked for it by
is that although I’m often attacked for it by
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but it’s not like you know when you have all these differ— like I think that there is something, that’s a theoretical point, but LGBT people with their suffering know that it’s true. You know, the problem with sexual identity is not simply if you have these two big identities, just heterosexual masculine, feminine, then my true identity is oppressed. So if we replace it with a long enough list, gay, butch, whatever, each person will find his, her, their place there and so on. No, the conflict is much more radical. I don’t want to make it easy. And I was a little bit shocked at why people exploded so forcefully.
but it’s not like you know when you have all these differ— like I think that there is something, that’s a theoretical point, but LGBT people with their suffering know that it’s true. You know, the problem with sexual identity is not simply if you have these two big identities, just heterosexual masculine, feminine, then my true identity is oppressed. So if we replace it with a long enough list, gay, butch, whatever, each person will find his, her, their place there and so on. No, the conflict is much more radical. I don’t want to make it easy. And I was a little bit shocked at why people exploded so forcefully.
Slavoj Žižek
Why do you think— why do you think they did that? I mean, it my theory is that people um are reluctant to have any of their progressive ideas criticized because they’re not confident about them, and that they— I also think that, that’s the only explanation. That they themselves must they themselves must know that to put it in very simple terms that it’s not as easy as that. The second point is nonetheless, you know, the another thing that shocked me is that if I just mention working class, economic suffering, I’m immediately accused of of class essentialism. But you know, I think when identity politicians propose this triad: race, sex, class. It sounds nice, but definitely empirically there is very little study of class. If there is a study of class, it’s somehow drowned in in not so much in sex as in race, like black exploited and so on and so forth. I’m not now, you know, now let me specify my position, now I am writing a text on it. Of course I am not a class essentialist in the stupid sense that only economic struggle ultimately matters and so on and so forth. I’m here a good dialectician, where the point is that in the dynamic of class, like we have black exploitation, but sometimes in a specific constellation class struggle appears is masked as race struggle. So in this situation to bypass race and to say no, race is not really important, it’s just economy, is precisely a way to cover up the most radical dimension of class struggle. So I’m not denying that in certain constellations race struggle, sex struggle can be crucial. But the overdetermining factor is for me, let’s call it economic power struggle or whatever. I still, I remain here an, if you ask me, an old-fashioned Marxist. And incidentally returning to your point of a Christian, a Christian believes that Christ will rise again, no? Yeah. Which Christian? Here I’m a radical atheist Protestant. No, Christ already returned in the in the spi— you know, I always quote that famous passage, it’s beautiful in the Bible where after Christ’s death or before, some pupils ask him but how we will know that you return and he says when there is love between two of you I’m there. I take this literal. All that bullshit in in Gospel of of John, I think that one should in the most ruthless Stalinist way erase, you know. All, I mean second coming is here in the Holy Spirit, which is precisely the spirit of believers without any guarantee in God. God is dead. That’s why the greatest Christian legacy is our freedom. Our freedom means precisely you cannot count on God. The only thing we have is Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit is for me the ultimate materialist notion. You know, and that’s what is different in Christianity from other religions when God sends a prophet but then calls him back, maybe he sends another prophet. No, this game is over with Christianity. As Hegel put it, what dies on the cross is not a messenger of God, it’s God himself. All that remains— okay but that’s another story, I’m losing time. Sorry. But you must admit it again how, you know what, how— this, I think that the problem with LGBT ah, okay, oh let me tell you, give you another example. Because of Against the Double Blackmail, I was often accused for for Islamophobia.
Why do you think— why do you think they did that? I mean, it my theory is that people um are reluctant to have any of their progressive ideas criticized because they’re not confident about them, and that they— I also think that, that’s the only explanation. That they themselves must they themselves must know that to put it in very simple terms that it’s not as easy as that. The second point is nonetheless, you know, the another thing that shocked me is that if I just mention working class, economic suffering, I’m immediately accused of of class essentialism. But you know, I think when identity politicians propose this triad: race, sex, class. It sounds nice, but definitely empirically there is very little study of class. If there is a study of class, it’s somehow drowned in in not so much in sex as in race, like black exploited and so on and so forth. I’m not now, you know, now let me specify my position, now I am writing a text on it. Of course I am not a class essentialist in the stupid sense that only economic struggle ultimately matters and so on and so forth. I’m here a good dialectician, where the point is that in the dynamic of class, like we have black exploitation, but sometimes in a specific constellation class struggle appears is masked as race struggle. So in this situation to bypass race and to say no, race is not really important, it’s just economy, is precisely a way to cover up the most radical dimension of class struggle. So I’m not denying that in certain constellations race struggle, sex struggle can be crucial. But the overdetermining factor is for me, let’s call it economic power struggle or whatever. I still, I remain here an, if you ask me, an old-fashioned Marxist. And incidentally returning to your point of a Christian, a Christian believes that Christ will rise again, no? Yeah. Which Christian? Here I’m a radical atheist Protestant. No, Christ already returned in the in the spi— you know, I always quote that famous passage, it’s beautiful in the Bible where after Christ’s death or before, some pupils ask him but how we will know that you return and he says when there is love between two of you I’m there. I take this literal. All that bullshit in in Gospel of of John, I think that one should in the most ruthless Stalinist way erase, you know. All, I mean second coming is here in the Holy Spirit, which is precisely the spirit of believers without any guarantee in God. God is dead. That’s why the greatest Christian legacy is our freedom. Our freedom means precisely you cannot count on God. The only thing we have is Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit is for me the ultimate materialist notion. You know, and that’s what is different in Christianity from other religions when God sends a prophet but then calls him back, maybe he sends another prophet. No, this game is over with Christianity. As Hegel put it, what dies on the cross is not a messenger of God, it’s God himself. All that remains— okay but that’s another story, I’m losing time. Sorry. But you must admit it again how, you know what, how— this, I think that the problem with LGBT ah, okay, oh let me tell you, give you another example. Because of Against the Double Blackmail, I was often accused for for Islamophobia.
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But you know the miracle that I learned now, I will make a tour there. You know that Against the Double Blackmail and four other books were
But you know the miracle that I learned now, I will make a tour there. You know that Against the Double Blackmail and four other books were
Slavoj Žižek
recently illegally, illegally in the sense of without copyright, I don’t care about that, were are now very popular among the new Arab left in Egypt, in Lebanon, in Tunisia and so on. So they definitely don’t experience it as Islamophobic. They want to invite me there and so on. I will make a tour there. So it’s this paradoxical situation where white liberals want to protect poor Arabs for from my Islamophobia, but Arabs like what I’m doing, my God, you know. It’s a totally crazy, it’s a totally crazy situation. So back to your big Trump question. Listen, I don’t have any problem changing my opinion. It was not a big principle opinion. It was maybe a wrong empirical judgment. What I’m only saying, let me give an example that I often use, it should be nice to your public, I like it. You know what’s the the way to encapsulate the tragedy of today’s left? Did you see the movie V for Vendetta? Yeah. Then you must know my joke, which is I’m ready to sell my mother into slavery to see a movie called V for Vendetta Part Part ends with the people storming the parliament. Fuck it, but what happens then the next day? What measures do they take? You know, as I always emphasize, I’m more and more tired of this big revolutionary events in the sense of one million people on Tahrir Square or on Syntagma Square, blah blah. Fuck it, the only thing that interests me is what happens, as they say, the day after. When life returns to normal, what changes do people feel, experience, what changes are enacted at that level. That’s what interests me more and more. I’m tired of big events. I worry that we’re still stuck in this realm of cultural critique and aren’t looking at the economy deeply enough, but— But nonetheless Bernie Sanders happened. Yeah. Yeah I know, he did a miracle here. Right. Literally a miracle, a miracle in the sense that what was considered impossible happened. Nobody thought this could happen. And I also agree that although I always was a little bit suspicious about Occupy Wall Street, but Occupy Wall Street did in some sense lay the foundation for this, you know. Things sometimes, even if they are not immediately a success, in the long term they can contribute to— this is where also I would answer another of your questions when you said but all this redistribution and so on, isn’t it Keynesian limited? No, my hope is here much more cynical manipulative. Yes but you have to begin somewhere. Things have to start to move. You do this and then you will see that you have to do more and more and more. My the big priority today is to get things moving. And here, with all my criticism of Obama, as I like to point out, I even have some small sympathy for Obama. Listen, his Obamacare was a scam, blah blah. But he did trigger something, an extremely important debate which is why as you know Republicans even brought him to Supreme Court or whatever and so on. You know we have to begin, we have to fight for small tasks, okay Obamacare is not a small task, but a precise topic which appear innocent: oh what’s the problem, why not do that? But they trigger a process. And I’m not saying that now you can tell me but what will be the result. Ah, here is my pessimism because people often tell me is all that you are saying it’s true we are in deep shit and so on. Why not simply become, I invented now this term, I love it, a left Fukuyamaist, you know, like we basically endorse Fukuyama vision, liberal capitalism with some health cares, social welfare, is the only thing we have and we just try to make it better. Well my problem is, and I repeat this point again and again in my books, that if you look at the overall picture today with all the problems, ecology, biogenetics, financial capitalism, intellectual property, refugees, it will not work in the long term. I think it will be either some kind of reinvented more radical left, of course not communism in the stupid sense of a new communist regime, but communism in the sense of approaching commons in a new way, or or what, I believe in Hollywood here, or the picture of image of near future depicted again and again in Hunger Games, in Elysium and so on, you know.
recently illegally, illegally in the sense of without copyright, I don’t care about that, were are now very popular among the new Arab left in Egypt, in Lebanon, in Tunisia and so on. So they definitely don’t experience it as Islamophobic. They want to invite me there and so on. I will make a tour there. So it’s this paradoxical situation where white liberals want to protect poor Arabs for from my Islamophobia, but Arabs like what I’m doing, my God, you know. It’s a totally crazy, it’s a totally crazy situation. So back to your big Trump question. Listen, I don’t have any problem changing my opinion. It was not a big principle opinion. It was maybe a wrong empirical judgment. What I’m only saying, let me give an example that I often use, it should be nice to your public, I like it. You know what’s the the way to encapsulate the tragedy of today’s left? Did you see the movie V for Vendetta? Yeah. Then you must know my joke, which is I’m ready to sell my mother into slavery to see a movie called V for Vendetta Part Part ends with the people storming the parliament. Fuck it, but what happens then the next day? What measures do they take? You know, as I always emphasize, I’m more and more tired of this big revolutionary events in the sense of one million people on Tahrir Square or on Syntagma Square, blah blah. Fuck it, the only thing that interests me is what happens, as they say, the day after. When life returns to normal, what changes do people feel, experience, what changes are enacted at that level. That’s what interests me more and more. I’m tired of big events. I worry that we’re still stuck in this realm of cultural critique and aren’t looking at the economy deeply enough, but— But nonetheless Bernie Sanders happened. Yeah. Yeah I know, he did a miracle here. Right. Literally a miracle, a miracle in the sense that what was considered impossible happened. Nobody thought this could happen. And I also agree that although I always was a little bit suspicious about Occupy Wall Street, but Occupy Wall Street did in some sense lay the foundation for this, you know. Things sometimes, even if they are not immediately a success, in the long term they can contribute to— this is where also I would answer another of your questions when you said but all this redistribution and so on, isn’t it Keynesian limited? No, my hope is here much more cynical manipulative. Yes but you have to begin somewhere. Things have to start to move. You do this and then you will see that you have to do more and more and more. My the big priority today is to get things moving. And here, with all my criticism of Obama, as I like to point out, I even have some small sympathy for Obama. Listen, his Obamacare was a scam, blah blah. But he did trigger something, an extremely important debate which is why as you know Republicans even brought him to Supreme Court or whatever and so on. You know we have to begin, we have to fight for small tasks, okay Obamacare is not a small task, but a precise topic which appear innocent: oh what’s the problem, why not do that? But they trigger a process. And I’m not saying that now you can tell me but what will be the result. Ah, here is my pessimism because people often tell me is all that you are saying it’s true we are in deep shit and so on. Why not simply become, I invented now this term, I love it, a left Fukuyamaist, you know, like we basically endorse Fukuyama vision, liberal capitalism with some health cares, social welfare, is the only thing we have and we just try to make it better. Well my problem is, and I repeat this point again and again in my books, that if you look at the overall picture today with all the problems, ecology, biogenetics, financial capitalism, intellectual property, refugees, it will not work in the long term. I think it will be either some kind of reinvented more radical left, of course not communism in the stupid sense of a new communist regime, but communism in the sense of approaching commons in a new way, or or what, I believe in Hollywood here, or the picture of image of near future depicted again and again in Hunger Games, in Elysium and so on, you know.
unknown
One should do a good although I don’t simply celebrate these movies, there is something wrong
One should do a good although I don’t simply celebrate these movies, there is something wrong
Slavoj Žižek
about them, but one should really do something about what does this mean, this almost obsession now with this dystopian near future. Because although it’s in a way right, I still I smell shit there, something is at the same time false in it, you know. Well listen I want to ask you one last question, I really appreciate your time today and I just want to let you know that if you continue to offend everyone on the left you always can come here and talk. I would love to come again to Portland, my God, just to visit after or before my talk, to visit the bookstore. Yeah. Well, yeah. So just your book’s title, it’s called Against the Double Blackmail. Yeah. What is the double blackmail? On the one hand this right-wing blackmail, of course. Right-wing blackmail in the sense of at least in Europe our European civilization is threatened, immigrants are a danger and so on and so on. And the other blackmail is for me this standard leftist liberal humanitarian reaction, this moral blackmail. Refugees are suffering, it’s, you know what is so shocking today? A friend of mine made this wonderful remark. Till now usually right-wingers were naturalizing the situation. Oh it’s just natural to suffer, catastrophes, market is a natural thing. Leftists were politicizing. Europe in Europe now paradoxically it is the right-wing which is politicizing the situation: no, refugees are part of a dark plot, blah blah, and it’s the left which is moralizing and naturalizing it. It’s a big catastrophe, forget about politics. I agree it’s a big catastrophe, but I don’t think that we will approach this catastrophe in a proper way if we treat it just as a humanitarian question. We have to address the causes, our own causes. It’s clear I write about this the book how we with the West with our interventions we created a mess in the Near East. But also, you know, let’s not patronize the Arabs, they are not just innocent passive victims. They have their own visions and that’s the trage— that’s the tragedy, the biggest tragedy, one of the biggest geopolitical tragedies of the last half a century for me is the disappearance of secular left in most of the Arab countries. So what I think is that we have to
about them, but one should really do something about what does this mean, this almost obsession now with this dystopian near future. Because although it’s in a way right, I still I smell shit there, something is at the same time false in it, you know. Well listen I want to ask you one last question, I really appreciate your time today and I just want to let you know that if you continue to offend everyone on the left you always can come here and talk. I would love to come again to Portland, my God, just to visit after or before my talk, to visit the bookstore. Yeah. Well, yeah. So just your book’s title, it’s called Against the Double Blackmail. Yeah. What is the double blackmail? On the one hand this right-wing blackmail, of course. Right-wing blackmail in the sense of at least in Europe our European civilization is threatened, immigrants are a danger and so on and so on. And the other blackmail is for me this standard leftist liberal humanitarian reaction, this moral blackmail. Refugees are suffering, it’s, you know what is so shocking today? A friend of mine made this wonderful remark. Till now usually right-wingers were naturalizing the situation. Oh it’s just natural to suffer, catastrophes, market is a natural thing. Leftists were politicizing. Europe in Europe now paradoxically it is the right-wing which is politicizing the situation: no, refugees are part of a dark plot, blah blah, and it’s the left which is moralizing and naturalizing it. It’s a big catastrophe, forget about politics. I agree it’s a big catastrophe, but I don’t think that we will approach this catastrophe in a proper way if we treat it just as a humanitarian question. We have to address the causes, our own causes. It’s clear I write about this the book how we with the West with our interventions we created a mess in the Near East. But also, you know, let’s not patronize the Arabs, they are not just innocent passive victims. They have their own visions and that’s the trage— that’s the tragedy, the biggest tragedy, one of the biggest geopolitical tragedies of the last half a century for me is the disappearance of secular left in most of the Arab countries. So what I think is that we have to
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radically repoliticize, set it in its economic, political, geopolitical context, the
radically repoliticize, set it in its economic, political, geopolitical context, the
Slavoj Žižek
question of the refugees. What worries me is this
question of the refugees. What worries me is this
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translation into a pure
translation into a pure
Slavoj Žižek
humanitarian problem: millions are coming, are we still humans and so on and so forth. No, the problem is political, economical and so on and so forth. And there nothing is changing. It’s so this I am, if you ask me, I am a moderate pessimist here. I don’t have a great expectations here. What do you find for yourself is more difficult, imagining the end of capitalism or imagining the end of the world? Oh, as all normal bourgeois individuals, no, it’s much easier to imagine the end of the world. One even finds a certain because you know this end of the world it’s almost never a full end of the world. You have at the end this utopian moment on another planet or on a scorched earth how a new authentic community is formed and so on and so forth, you know. It’s much more beautiful to do this than to imagine in all its complexity even the basic moves of how to overcome capitalism. But it will have to be done again because it’s clear, here I agree with all those although not generally but with this like Jeremy Rifkin and so on, something tremendous is happening today in capitalism. It is
humanitarian problem: millions are coming, are we still humans and so on and so forth. No, the problem is political, economical and so on and so forth. And there nothing is changing. It’s so this I am, if you ask me, I am a moderate pessimist here. I don’t have a great expectations here. What do you find for yourself is more difficult, imagining the end of capitalism or imagining the end of the world? Oh, as all normal bourgeois individuals, no, it’s much easier to imagine the end of the world. One even finds a certain because you know this end of the world it’s almost never a full end of the world. You have at the end this utopian moment on another planet or on a scorched earth how a new authentic community is formed and so on and so forth, you know. It’s much more beautiful to do this than to imagine in all its complexity even the basic moves of how to overcome capitalism. But it will have to be done again because it’s clear, here I agree with all those although not generally but with this like Jeremy Rifkin and so on, something tremendous is happening today in capitalism. It is
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already self-overcoming. It’s no longer the old capitalism and so on.
already self-overcoming. It’s no longer the old capitalism and so on.
Slavoj Žižek
So again, unfortunately, I’m almost saying unfortunately because great problems are ahead, you know. The greatest utopia for me is not to imagine the end of capitalism, the greatest utopia is to think that just with a little bit of austerity, control, don’t exaggerate, we will somehow survive it, life will go on the way it does. No, it will not.
So again, unfortunately, I’m almost saying unfortunately because great problems are ahead, you know. The greatest utopia for me is not to imagine the end of capitalism, the greatest utopia is to think that just with a little bit of austerity, control, don’t exaggerate, we will somehow survive it, life will go on the way it does. No, it will not.