Žižek, 2005 — an archival compilation
Talk ·
2005 · 1:09:30 · 8,536 words
with Translator, Archival Clip, Film Clip, Narrator, Broadcaster
psychoanalysisideologycapitalismphilosophy-generalhegel-dialecticssubjectivityeveryday-lifeconsciousness-mind
This archival compilation from 2005 assembles Žižek in several informal and semi-formal settings: a public lecture (with Spanish translation) on utopia, love, and the limits of capitalism; a television interview on CNE Nightbeat discussing The Puppet and the Dwarf; footage in his apartment and at a video store; and Q&A sessions at Columbia and elsewhere. He develops his thesis that love is an act of cosmic violence and imbalance, argues that the true problem of late capitalism is not repression but the superego's injunction to enjoy, defends Lacan against charges of obscurantism, and outlines his forthcoming concept of the 'parallax view.' The compilation provides both substantive philosophical argument and candid glimpses of his daily life and self-presentation.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 18
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “positively charged void”
Drawing on quantum physics, Žižek figures the universe as not mere nothingness but an energized void whose imbalance produces particular things.
as “cosmic imbalance”
Existence itself is a mistake, a disturbance of the positively charged void, and love recapitulates this primordial catastrophe at the human scale.
Love is not universal goodwill but a violent act of cosmic imbalance, picking one thing above all else and thereby disturbing the equilibrium of the void.
Žižek redefines utopia not as free imaginative fantasy but as what you are forced to invent when the situation admits no resolution within existing coordinates.
The perverse sense of utopia specific to capitalism: the endless incitement to realize new and ever more transgressive desires.
Following Pfaller, Žižek argues that deconstructionism in its compulsive rhetorical distanciation (quotation marks, 'risk the hypothesis') is itself the ultimate form of disavowed belief.
For Žižek ideology's central idea is the belief that behind the public image there is a warm human being; the truly subversive act is to fully identify with the ideological image.
as “tolerant post-modern father”
The figure of the contemporary permissive parent who frames an obligation as a free choice ('only visit grandma if you really want to'), thereby issuing a stronger and more insidious command than the old authoritarian father.
as “hedonism combining pleasure with constraint”
Late-capitalist hedonism is not a balance of pleasure and limit but their immediate coincidence: the very thing that damages you is already its own antidote (e.g., chocolate laxative).
The paradox of contemporary consumption in which the harmful item is already packaged as the remedy, action and reaction coincide.
as “Unbehagen in der Kultur”
Freud's 'uneasiness in culture' read by Žižek as meaning that culture as such, not just individual pathology, involves constitutive distortions; there is no normal culture.
as “fantasy (Lacanian)”
The psychoanalytic structure that screens the Real and which Žižek uses to illuminate commodity fetishism and ideological functioning.
Marx's concept which Žižek argues can only be fully grasped through the Lacanian notion of fantasy.
as “surplus enjoyment (plus de jouir)”
Lacanian excess enjoyment that Žižek deploys to understand contemporary permissive capitalism and fundamentalist racism beyond what Freudian repression theory can account for.
as “superego as injunction to enjoy”
The ruling ideological command is not prohibition but the obscene imperative to enjoy, so that the pathology is now inability to escape the compulsion to enjoy rather than inability to enjoy.
as “revolution without a revolution”
Attributed to Robespierre, used by Žižek to characterize the bad-faith wish of most academic leftists: they want radical change while leaving their comfortable lives undisturbed.
as “parallax view”
The irreducible gap between two perspectives on the same object, as when a shift in the observer's position appears as movement in the object, which Žižek uses to name antinomies that cannot be synthesized (subject/object, brain/mind).
Invoked in the context of a riff on regulated suicide, the idea that society subjects even the decision to die to medical-psychiatric advisory committees.
Stories he reaches for 5
When applauded, a fascist leader accepts it passively (message: I'm your tool, we serve history); a Stalinist applauds back (message: I return the credit to the collective). Žižek uses this to analyse the structure of symbolic authority.
“A fascist leader, when he is applauded, he just accepts it. The message being, it's not that me, I'm just your tool, we are all just serving history.”
The old-fashioned authoritarian father says 'you must visit grandmother'; the tolerant post-modern father says 'only go if you really want to', which secretly contains the stronger command 'you must go AND you must want to go'.
“You know how much your grandmother loves you, but nonetheless, you should only visit her if you really want to. Now, every child who is not an idiot…know that this apparent free choice secretly contains an even more stronger, much stronger, order.”
The different designs of Anglo-Saxon, French, and German toilets (pragmatic flush / revolutionary examination / contemplative inspection) reveal that even the most banal private act is overdetermined by ideological horizons.
“you claim, okay, I'm out of ideology at the conference, post-ideological era. Then you go to the toilet, produce shit, you are up to your seat or how do you put it in ideology?”
Žižek cites a California chocolate laxative as the emblem of late-capitalist hedonism: 'eat more chocolate to cure your constipation', the harmful thing is already its own antidote, pleasure and cure coincide.
“The ultimate example I encountered recently in California…is a chocolate laxative. And there it says, as a propaganda, 'Do you have still constipation? Eat more of this chocolate.'”
Žižek mimics the Butlerian/deconstructionist style, 'if we accept the metaphysical notion of language…may we not risk the hypothesis that this can be said to be a bottle of tea', as an example of belief expressed through compulsive distanciation.
“Nobody almost dares to say today I love you. It has to be, as the poet would have put it, I love you or some kind of a distance.”
Works invoked 12
Vertigo film
Referenced when Žižek points out a 'Hitchcockian shot' from a high interior, alluding to the film's iconic vertiginous perspective.
The Parallax View book
Described as his forthcoming 'mega thing', a sequel to Ticklish Subject, covering philosophy/theology, cognitive science, and politics/obscenity.
Named as one of his key books but self-critically dismissed as 'still too liberal', he is ashamed of endorsing democracy and pluralism there.
Listed among his best three or four books.
The Ticklish Subject book
Described by Žižek as one of his best and most personally enjoyed books, centred on Hegel and Schelling, contrasting with more politically populist works.
Ivan the Terrible film
Eisenstein's film, named as one of the three best films of all time.
Žižek's own book on Christianity through a Lacanian lens, referenced in the CNE Nightbeat interview where the host describes it as the most complicated book he has ever read.
The Fountainhead film
Named by Žižek as the best American movie of all time in a deliberately provocative video-store listing.
Being There film
Peter Sellers film mentioned approvingly in the video store; Žižek calls it 'a wonderful movie'.
Opera's Second Death book
Žižek calls this his most loved book, noting it sold modestly; contrasts its depth with the popularity of his more political writings.
Opfergang film
1944 film by Nazi director Veit Harlan, named as the best German film; the choice is flagged as deliberately shocking.
Mladina journal
Slovenian dissident publication from the mid-1980s for which Žižek wrote; he recalls it as his period of greatest political influence in Slovenia.
People invoked 19
Avital Ronell negative
Named as another Derridean disciple who makes no critical remarks on Derrida.
Jacques Derrida negative
Žižek challenges the loyalty of Derrida's disciples, none makes a critical remark on him, to expose the dogmatism he says Lacanians are accused of while Derrideans practice.
Fountainhead named as the best American movie of all time by Žižek in a deliberately provocative listing.
Jacques Lacan positive
Žižek sharply distinguishes Lacan's style (which he calls 'a total fake') from Lacan's propositions and underlying logic (which he defends as translatable into clear terms and essential for understanding late capitalism). He is a self-declared 'card-carrying Lacanian'.
Robert Pfaller positive
Cited with approval for the argument that deconstructionism is the ultimate form of disavowed belief.
Judith Butler negative
Mocked for her rhetorical distanciations ('if we accept the metaphysical notion of language…may we not risk the hypothesis') as the exemplary form of deconstructionist disavowed belief.
Samuel Weber negative
Named as yet another Derridean who offers no critical distance from Derrida, contrasted to supposedly dogmatic Lacanians.
Mentioned only as one of the rare cases of someone in the Derridean orbit making a critical remark (her brief conflict with Derrida).
Maximilien Robespierre positive
Cited approvingly for the phrase 'revolution without a revolution', used to characterize the bad faith of contemporary academic leftists.
Invoked briefly in the context of 'biopolitics' when riffing on a hypothetical organized suicide scheme regulated by medical committees.
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling positive
Named alongside Hegel as a focus of Ticklish Subject, described as the work he truly loved writing.
The Nazi director of Opfergang (1944) named as maker of what Žižek calls the best German film of all time, the designation is deliberately shocking but offered without further ideological endorsement.
Rodolphe Gasché negative
Named as an example of a Derridean disciple who makes no critical remarks on Derrida.
Referenced when pointing out a 'Hitchcockian shot' in a building, suggests a downward vertiginous view, invoking Vertigo.
Sergei Eisenstein positive
Ivan the Terrible named as one of the three best films ever made.
Karl Marx positive
Žižek uses Marx's commodity fetishism as a key concept, arguing it can only be understood via Lacanian fantasy; self-identifies as a Marxist.
Sigmund Freud positive
Žižek treats Freud's theory as appropriate to standard capitalism with its sexual repression, invoking Unbehagen in der Kultur to argue that culture itself requires psychoanalytic interpretation, not just individual pathology.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Žižek mentions his book on Hegel (Ticklish Subject) as the one he most enjoyed writing; Hegel figures as one of the philosophical cores of his work.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky negative
His maxim 'if God doesn't exist, everything is permitted' is directly reversed by Žižek: without God, everything is prohibited.
What it argues
love as cosmic violence and imbalancethe injunction to enjoy as superego commandutopia as forced invention under impossible conditionsLacan's style vs. Lacan's logicparallax view as irreducible perspectival gapphilosophy as hermeneutic redefinition of problemsideology as the belief that there is a warm human behind the mask
Dialectical moves 9
“Love is evil — love is not 'I love the world' but an act of violent imbalance, I pick out something above everything else.”
Universal love is an ideological cover; true love is the violent privileging of a particular over the universal.
“Things exist by mistake — existence itself is a cosmic catastrophe, not a positive creation.”
Ontological pessimism inverted: the fact that things are 'out there' signals something went terribly wrong, not a beneficent creation.
“The true utopia is not free imagination but what you are forced to imagine as the only way out.”
Utopia is not an excess of freedom but a response to absolute necessity, it is compelled, not voluntary.
“If God doesn't exist, everything is prohibited — not permitted.”
Reversing Dostoevsky: without divine authority, contemporary hedonism multiplies prohibitions (no fat, no coffee) precisely in the name of enjoyment.
“The thing is already its own counteragent — the very thing which causes damage is already the medicine.”
In late capitalist hedonism, pleasure and its cure coincide rather than alternating; the chocolate laxative is the emblem of this logic.
“The problem today is not how to get rid of your inhibitions to enjoy — the problem is how to get rid of the injunction to enjoy.”
The classic psychoanalytic project (liberate enjoyment from repression) is inverted: the pathology is now the compulsory command to enjoy.
“The most horrible anti-ideological act is to fully identify with the ideological image — that is ideology at its purest.”
Ideology works not by total interpellation but by reserving the idea of a 'warm human being behind'; full identification subverts this.
“Apparent tolerance conceals a much stronger order — the post-modern father's 'only visit if you want to' is a stronger command than 'you must go'.”
Permissive choice-language amplifies, not reduces, the underlying imperative.
“I am not a monster pretending to be human — I am a human pretending to be a monster.”
Self-deprecating reversal of the celebrity intellectual's pose of hidden warmth beneath a cold theorist exterior.
Claims 14
asserts
Things exist by mistake — existence is a cosmic catastrophe, a disturbance of the primordial void — and love recapitulates this imbalance.ontology, love, existence
asserts
It is easier to imagine the end of all life on Earth than a modest radical change in capitalism.capitalism, ideology, utopia
reframes
True utopia is not free imaginative play but what you are forced to invent when no solution exists within the existing order.utopia
rejects
We live in an era of more belief, not less; deconstructionism itself is a supreme form of disavowed belief.the thesis that we live in a cynical post-ideological age
reframes
The problem today is not how to overcome inhibitions in order to enjoy, but how to escape the compulsive injunction to enjoy.psychoanalysis, late capitalism, superego
asserts
The central idea of ideology is the belief that behind the public image there is a warm human being; truly full identification with the ideological image is the most subversive act.ideology, subjectivity
asserts
Lacan's style is a fake, but Lacan's propositions and underlying logic are translatable into clear terms and are genuinely important.Lacan, psychoanalytic method
asserts
Philosophy's task is not to solve problems but to redefine them — to show that what appears as a problem is a false problem.the nature of philosophy
asserts
The Lacanian notion of fantasy is the only framework adequate to fully grasp Marx's concept of commodity fetishism.Marx, Lacan, commodity fetishism
asserts
Lacan is perfect for explaining the paradoxes of permissive late capitalism in a way classical Freudian theory — suited to repressive standard capitalism — cannot.psychoanalysis, capitalism, Freud vs. Lacan
asserts
There is no normal culture; culture as such involves constitutive pathological distortions.culture, psychoanalysis, Freud
asserts
Apparent tolerance that conceals a stronger order (the post-modern father) is more oppressive than the old-fashioned authoritarian command.ideology, permissiveness, authority
asserts
Making Žižek popular is itself a form of resistance against taking him seriously.his own reception, academia, public image
rejects
If someone says Lacan is difficult, that is class propaganda by the enemy.charges of Lacanian obscurantism
Quotes 13
“The fact that it's not just nothing, things are out there. It means something went terribly wrong. What we call creation is a kind of a cosmic imbalance, cosmic catastrophe, that things exist by mistake.”Slavoj Žižek · existence as cosmic mistake
“Love for me is an extremely violent act. Love is not I love you all. Love means I pick out something and it's… this structure of imbalance. In this quite formal sense, love is evil.”Slavoj Žižek · love as evil
“It's much easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more modest radical change in capitalism.”Slavoj Žižek · ideology's blockade of capitalist alternatives
“Utopia is not kind of a free imagination. Utopia is a matter of innermost urgency. You are forced to imagine it as the only way out.”Slavoj Žižek · utopia as compelled invention
“I'm not human. I'm a monster, I claim. It's not that I have a mask of a theoretician and beneath I'm a warm human person.”Slavoj Žižek · anti-humanist self-presentation
“The problem today is not how to get rid of your inhibitions and to be able to spontaneously enjoy. The problem is how to get rid of this injunction to enjoy.”Slavoj Žižek · the injunction to enjoy
“If God doesn't exist, everything is prohibited. How? On the one hand. Again. You are allowed to have a full life of happiness and pleasure, but in order precisely to be happy and so on, you should avoid dangerous excesses.”Slavoj Žižek · reversal of Dostoevsky's maxim
“The central idea of ideology for me is not this idea… but the idea is precisely that. Ideological propositions do not determine us totally. We cannot be reduced to our public image. There is a warm human being behind. I think this is ideology at its purest.”Slavoj Žižek · ideology as the belief in the warm human behind
“Philosophy does not solve problems. The duty of philosophy is not to solve problems, but to redefine problems, to show how what we experience as a problem is a false problem.”Slavoj Žižek · philosophy's hermeneutic task
“I read Lacan in a very classical way. What interests me are his propositions. The underlying logic, not his style. His style is a total fake.”Slavoj Žižek · Lacan's style versus Lacan's logic
“Making me popular is resistance against taking me serious.”Slavoj Žižek · the politics of celebrity intellectualism
“As a Marxist, if I may add, if somebody tells that La Con is difficult, this is class propaganda by the enemy.”Slavoj Žižek · defending Lacan's accessibility as political struggle
“My eternal fear is that if for a brief moment I stopped talking, the whole spectacular appearance would disintegrate. People would think there is nobody and nothing there.”Slavoj Žižek · anxiety of subjective void
Transcript 152 turns
Slavoj Žižek
What would be my How shall I call it? Spontaneous attitude towards the universe. It's a very dark one. The first one, the first thesis would have been A kind of total vanity. There is nothing, basically. I mean it quite literally. like Ultimately, Ultimately there are just some fragments, some vanishing things. If you look at the universe, it's one big void. But then how do things emerge? Here. I feel a kind of spontaneous Affinity with… Quantum physics where you know The idea there is that… Universe is a void, but a kind of a positively charged void. And then Particular things appear when the balance of the void is disturbed. And I like this idea spontaneously very much that the fact that it's not just nothing, things are out there. It means something went terribly wrong. that What we call creation is a kind of a cosmic imbalance, cosmic catastrophe, that things exist by mistake. And I'm even ready to go to the end and to claim that the only way to counteract is to Assume the mistake and go to the end. And we have a name for this. It's called love. Isn't love precisely this kind of a cosmic imbalance? I was always disgusted with this notion of I love the world, universal love. I don't like the world. I don't know how I basically am somewhere in between. I hate the world or I'm indifferent towards it. But the whole of reality is just it. It's stupid. It is out there. I don't care about it. Love for me is. an extremely violent act. Love is not I love you all. Love means I pick out something and it's, you know, it's again this structure of imbalance. Even if this something is just a small detail, a fragile individual person, I say, I love you more than anything else. In this quite formal sense, love is evil.
What would be my How shall I call it? Spontaneous attitude towards the universe. It's a very dark one. The first one, the first thesis would have been A kind of total vanity. There is nothing, basically. I mean it quite literally. like Ultimately, Ultimately there are just some fragments, some vanishing things. If you look at the universe, it's one big void. But then how do things emerge? Here. I feel a kind of spontaneous Affinity with… Quantum physics where you know The idea there is that… Universe is a void, but a kind of a positively charged void. And then Particular things appear when the balance of the void is disturbed. And I like this idea spontaneously very much that the fact that it's not just nothing, things are out there. It means something went terribly wrong. that What we call creation is a kind of a cosmic imbalance, cosmic catastrophe, that things exist by mistake. And I'm even ready to go to the end and to claim that the only way to counteract is to Assume the mistake and go to the end. And we have a name for this. It's called love. Isn't love precisely this kind of a cosmic imbalance? I was always disgusted with this notion of I love the world, universal love. I don't like the world. I don't know how I basically am somewhere in between. I hate the world or I'm indifferent towards it. But the whole of reality is just it. It's stupid. It is out there. I don't care about it. Love for me is. an extremely violent act. Love is not I love you all. Love means I pick out something and it's, you know, it's again this structure of imbalance. Even if this something is just a small detail, a fragile individual person, I say, I love you more than anything else. In this quite formal sense, love is evil.
Translator
vamos a cambiar de aula. Oh All right.
vamos a cambiar de aula. Oh All right.
Slavoj Žižek
Thank you. Think about the strangeness of today's situation. 30, 40 years ago, we were still debating about what the future will be, communist, fascist, capitalist, whatever. Today, nobody even debates these issues. We all silently accept global capitalism is here to stay.
Thank you. Think about the strangeness of today's situation. 30, 40 years ago, we were still debating about what the future will be, communist, fascist, capitalist, whatever. Today, nobody even debates these issues. We all silently accept global capitalism is here to stay.
Translator
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Slavoj Žižek
On the other hand, we are obsessed with cosmic catastrophes, the whole life on Earth disintegrating because of some virus, because of an asteroid hitting the Earth, and so on. So the paradox is that it's much easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more modest radical change in capitalism. which means that we should Reinvent There are two false meanings of utopia.
On the other hand, we are obsessed with cosmic catastrophes, the whole life on Earth disintegrating because of some virus, because of an asteroid hitting the Earth, and so on. So the paradox is that it's much easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more modest radical change in capitalism. which means that we should Reinvent There are two false meanings of utopia.
Translator
Hay dos significados falsos del concepto de utopía.
Hay dos significados falsos del concepto de utopía.
Slavoj Žižek
One is this old notion of imagining an ideal society which we know will never be realized. The other is the capitalist utopia in the sense of new and new perverse desires that you are not only allowed but even solicited to realize. The true utopia is when the situation is so without issue, without a way to resolve it within the coordinates of the possible that, out of the pure urge of survival, you have to invent a new space. Utopia is not kind of a free imagination. Utopia is a matter of innermost urgency. You are forced to imagine it as the only way out.
One is this old notion of imagining an ideal society which we know will never be realized. The other is the capitalist utopia in the sense of new and new perverse desires that you are not only allowed but even solicited to realize. The true utopia is when the situation is so without issue, without a way to resolve it within the coordinates of the possible that, out of the pure urge of survival, you have to invent a new space. Utopia is not kind of a free imagination. Utopia is a matter of innermost urgency. You are forced to imagine it as the only way out.
Translator
need today. Entonces, nuevamente, destaco que la utopía es algo que uno se ve obligado a imaginar, uno se esforzado a imaginarla, y no es algo que surja libremente de una fantasía, sino que es un imperativo de la urgencia de la situación.
need today. Entonces, nuevamente, destaco que la utopía es algo que uno se ve obligado a imaginar, uno se esforzado a imaginarla, y no es algo que surja libremente de una fantasía, sino que es un imperativo de la urgencia de la situación.
Slavoj Žižek
I hope I wasn't too long. I thank you very much for your patience.
I hope I wasn't too long. I thank you very much for your patience.
Translator
I'll go back to you in a second.
I'll go back to you in a second.
Slavoj Žižek
Another very short comment if I can make. You know why I applaud that? If you watch old documentary movies, you will see a big difference between a fascist and a Stalinist leader. A fascist leader, when he is applauded, he just accepts it. Un leader fascista, cuando
Another very short comment if I can make. You know why I applaud that? If you watch old documentary movies, you will see a big difference between a fascist and a Stalinist leader. A fascist leader, when he is applauded, he just accepts it. Un leader fascista, cuando
Translator
El aplauso simplemente acepta el aplauso, no lo recibe.
El aplauso simplemente acepta el aplauso, no lo recibe.
Slavoj Žižek
The message being, it's not that me, I'm just your tool, we are all just serving history.
The message being, it's not that me, I'm just your tool, we are all just serving history.
Archival Clip
Ja, das ist nicht so.
Ja, das ist nicht so.
Slavoj Žižek
So we are on. Okay. The worst thing is to play this. We are all humans, game. that some intellectuals like to play. You project a certain intellectual persona, cold thinker, whatever, but then you signal through small details, you know, but nonetheless, I'm basically like you. I like small pleasures of life. I'm human, like you. I'm not human. I'm a monster, I claim. It's not that I have a mask of a theoretician and beneath I'm a warm human person. I like chocolate cakes, I like this, I like that, and so on, which makes me human. I rather prefer myself as somebody who, not to offend others, Pretends plays that he is human.
So we are on. Okay. The worst thing is to play this. We are all humans, game. that some intellectuals like to play. You project a certain intellectual persona, cold thinker, whatever, but then you signal through small details, you know, but nonetheless, I'm basically like you. I like small pleasures of life. I'm human, like you. I'm not human. I'm a monster, I claim. It's not that I have a mask of a theoretician and beneath I'm a warm human person. I like chocolate cakes, I like this, I like that, and so on, which makes me human. I rather prefer myself as somebody who, not to offend others, Pretends plays that he is human.
Archival Clip
Más de un año de trabajo se requiere para que se pueda construir. También se utiliza para la producción de gas natural.
Más de un año de trabajo se requiere para que se pueda construir. También se utiliza para la producción de gas natural.
Slavoj Žižek
You come in? He's just of course ha ha ha ha ha It means Welcome to welfare, to socialist welfare, good honest guy. I put everything here. I love this so that I mean by everything I mean look even here it is. You see. Isn't it a crazy combination? You have this and then you have a. The clothes are here, but it's not only clothes, it's more. It's also, how do you call it, covers. Uh, sheets for the… No, no, everything is here. Look, everything is here. Ah, here, ha, ha, isn't it nice, close to the kitchen? Get in it. Socks, underwear, &c. This is all my stuff and basically this is all my stuff newspapers, journals, These are my books in foreign languages, two copies of each one. So this is strictly prohibited.
You come in? He's just of course ha ha ha ha ha It means Welcome to welfare, to socialist welfare, good honest guy. I put everything here. I love this so that I mean by everything I mean look even here it is. You see. Isn't it a crazy combination? You have this and then you have a. The clothes are here, but it's not only clothes, it's more. It's also, how do you call it, covers. Uh, sheets for the… No, no, everything is here. Look, everything is here. Ah, here, ha, ha, isn't it nice, close to the kitchen? Get in it. Socks, underwear, &c. This is all my stuff and basically this is all my stuff newspapers, journals, These are my books in foreign languages, two copies of each one. So this is strictly prohibited.
Translator
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.
Slavoj Žižek
I think lower than Because this is mostly New Stuff Do you speak English? I am a narcissist here. Yes, I keep everything. So what is this doing here? This should go elsewhere. I'm sorry, I want order. So this is there. It's not me. Okay. If you need the Mladina stuff Oh yes, there are some of them here. Let's see what's here, because these are the big formal thing. These are some really early Mladina.
I think lower than Because this is mostly New Stuff Do you speak English? I am a narcissist here. Yes, I keep everything. So what is this doing here? This should go elsewhere. I'm sorry, I want order. So this is there. It's not me. Okay. If you need the Mladina stuff Oh yes, there are some of them here. Let's see what's here, because these are the big formal thing. These are some really early Mladina.
Translator
Ah, this is from the dissident time.
Ah, this is from the dissident time.
Slavoj Žižek
Yes, mid-80s I started to write from time to time for two years. Some people even claim that I was the most influential. But then new political divisions start and I was too combative, attacking everyone and so on.
Yes, mid-80s I started to write from time to time for two years. Some people even claim that I was the most influential. But then new political divisions start and I was too combative, attacking everyone and so on.
Translator
This was me. This was my Fame.
This was me. This was my Fame.
Slavoj Žižek
I worked like crazy at that time because I remember at that time I was writing in English my first books. I never wanted to endanger not even minimally the theory. which is why I was never, never, never interested. in any kind of political career, because it simply できたい Wir müssen den Mauerblock der Volker Gottesdienstdela Ich bitte den Kollegen, sich nicht zu verirren. Señora presidenta, señor comisario, queridos colegas, la situación en la región del Sahara occidental es un caso de apartheid. Thank you very much. Liberalism must be the foundation of our policy. two days before the election. There was a big round table with all the candidates. 20 of them, I don't know how much. A right-wing naive good guy, but basically an idiot. made a fatal mistake, which everybody remembered. Not even a mistake, a kindness. Namely, as usual, as you can imagine, I talked quite a lot, too much. And then this guy wanted to censor me friendly and turn to me, this was all live, big debate, Central TV, blah, blah.
I worked like crazy at that time because I remember at that time I was writing in English my first books. I never wanted to endanger not even minimally the theory. which is why I was never, never, never interested. in any kind of political career, because it simply できたい Wir müssen den Mauerblock der Volker Gottesdienstdela Ich bitte den Kollegen, sich nicht zu verirren. Señora presidenta, señor comisario, queridos colegas, la situación en la región del Sahara occidental es un caso de apartheid. Thank you very much. Liberalism must be the foundation of our policy. two days before the election. There was a big round table with all the candidates. 20 of them, I don't know how much. A right-wing naive good guy, but basically an idiot. made a fatal mistake, which everybody remembered. Not even a mistake, a kindness. Namely, as usual, as you can imagine, I talked quite a lot, too much. And then this guy wanted to censor me friendly and turn to me, this was all live, big debate, Central TV, blah, blah.
Archival Clip
Thank you very much. Colleague. Ziegeslosigkeit Gutot, Maron, Nave, Intelligence, Quotient. To metnami, otamis in preparation. Vendariya Paon Tolk danzgo vorokut poluvitote naashimizet, no toyo vot. Listen! We all know that.
Thank you very much. Colleague. Ziegeslosigkeit Gutot, Maron, Nave, Intelligence, Quotient. To metnami, otamis in preparation. Vendariya Paon Tolk danzgo vorokut poluvitote naashimizet, no toyo vot. Listen! We all know that.
Slavoj Žižek
Your IQ is twice as all of us others combined. But nonetheless, could you let us a little bit to talk? But everybody remembered that, you know. You see, even they admit that he is the bright guy and so on. I remember then, you know, after it was over when the lights went off, no, the cameras went off. All other candidates started to shout to this guy like, are you idiot, are you crazy? Because then I jumped up immediately and almost got elected. When I first visited the states, I was shocked by your toilets here. Scheiße! Romanticism onwards. There was the idea of so-called European trinity. Anglo-Saxon economy, French politics, German metaphysics, poetry, philosophy, as the basic The spiritual stances of Europe. Sorry, that's it. French politics, revolutionary shit should disappear as soon as possible. Anglo-Saxon, American, let's be pragmatic, blah, blah, blah. German metaphysic poetry inspection, you inspect, you reflect on your shit. So isn't it totally crazy that in a vulgar, common phenomenon like that, you find certain differences which you cannot truly account in any functional terms, but you have to evoke all this. I mean, you claim, okay, I'm out of ideology at the conference, post-ideological era. Then you go to the toilet, produce shit, you are Up to your seat or how do you put it in ideology? Who believes what today? Oh, I think this is an interesting question, much more complex than it may appear. than it may appear. The first myth to be abandoned, I think, is the idea that we live in a cynical era where nobody believes, no values, and so on, and that there was sometimes, there were sometimes more traditional where people still believed, relied on some substantial notion of belief, and so on and so on. I think it's today that we believe more than ever, and as Pfaller develops it in a nice ironic way, The ultimate form of belief for him is deconstructionism. Why? Again, I'm going back to that question of quote Marx, now, like, look how it functions, deconstructionism, in its standard version already of the texture of style, like you cannot find one. Text of Derrida without A, all of the quotation marks and B, all of these rhetorical distanciations. like I don't know Take an ironic example. If somebody like Judith Butler were to be asked, "What is this?" she would never have said, "This is a bottle of tea. He would have said something like if we accept the metaphysical notion of language identifying clearly objects and taking all this into account, then may we not, he likes to put it in this rhetorically, risk the hypothesis that in the conditions of our language game, this can be said to be a bottle of tea and so on and so on. So it's always this need to differentiate. It goes even for love. Like nobody almost dares to say today I love you. It has to be, as the poet would have put it, I love you or some kind of a distance. But what's the problem here? The problem is that Uh. Why this fear? Because I claim that when the ancients directly said, "I love you." They meant exactly the same. All these distantiations were included. So it's we today who are afraid that If we were to put it directly, I love you, that it would mean too much. We believe in it. You know what I learned in the high school?
Your IQ is twice as all of us others combined. But nonetheless, could you let us a little bit to talk? But everybody remembered that, you know. You see, even they admit that he is the bright guy and so on. I remember then, you know, after it was over when the lights went off, no, the cameras went off. All other candidates started to shout to this guy like, are you idiot, are you crazy? Because then I jumped up immediately and almost got elected. When I first visited the states, I was shocked by your toilets here. Scheiße! Romanticism onwards. There was the idea of so-called European trinity. Anglo-Saxon economy, French politics, German metaphysics, poetry, philosophy, as the basic The spiritual stances of Europe. Sorry, that's it. French politics, revolutionary shit should disappear as soon as possible. Anglo-Saxon, American, let's be pragmatic, blah, blah, blah. German metaphysic poetry inspection, you inspect, you reflect on your shit. So isn't it totally crazy that in a vulgar, common phenomenon like that, you find certain differences which you cannot truly account in any functional terms, but you have to evoke all this. I mean, you claim, okay, I'm out of ideology at the conference, post-ideological era. Then you go to the toilet, produce shit, you are Up to your seat or how do you put it in ideology? Who believes what today? Oh, I think this is an interesting question, much more complex than it may appear. than it may appear. The first myth to be abandoned, I think, is the idea that we live in a cynical era where nobody believes, no values, and so on, and that there was sometimes, there were sometimes more traditional where people still believed, relied on some substantial notion of belief, and so on and so on. I think it's today that we believe more than ever, and as Pfaller develops it in a nice ironic way, The ultimate form of belief for him is deconstructionism. Why? Again, I'm going back to that question of quote Marx, now, like, look how it functions, deconstructionism, in its standard version already of the texture of style, like you cannot find one. Text of Derrida without A, all of the quotation marks and B, all of these rhetorical distanciations. like I don't know Take an ironic example. If somebody like Judith Butler were to be asked, "What is this?" she would never have said, "This is a bottle of tea. He would have said something like if we accept the metaphysical notion of language identifying clearly objects and taking all this into account, then may we not, he likes to put it in this rhetorically, risk the hypothesis that in the conditions of our language game, this can be said to be a bottle of tea and so on and so on. So it's always this need to differentiate. It goes even for love. Like nobody almost dares to say today I love you. It has to be, as the poet would have put it, I love you or some kind of a distance. But what's the problem here? The problem is that Uh. Why this fear? Because I claim that when the ancients directly said, "I love you." They meant exactly the same. All these distantiations were included. So it's we today who are afraid that If we were to put it directly, I love you, that it would mean too much. We believe in it. You know what I learned in the high school?
Archival Clip
But…
But…
Slavoj Žižek
English and Russian. You know why Russian?
English and Russian. You know why Russian?
Archival Clip
One.
One.
Slavoj Žižek
It's so disgusting the reasoning behind it because all my friends most of my friends took either French or German as a second language. Okay, my idea was, you know, there was a Cold War to superpowers. We need to play it safe. Whoever will speak their language, there were three levels of dissidence. The first in theory, I mean, if you dealt with theory or whatever or writings, the first level was where you allowed to teach. This was the first level of exclusion. The second level were, are you allowed to publish books? The third level was, are you allowed to get a job at all in your domain? And the fourth level, if I score you are arrested or whatever. No, I was between the second and third. My God, I was unemployed. It was humiliating. I had to. My parents, I was 27 and my parents supported me, my God. Then for two years it was that humiliating job at the Central Committee. They knew that I am not an idiot and that I will probably succeed. So they were afraid that I would simply move abroad and succeed there. This would then be bad for another victim who wasn't allowed to make a career in Slovenia. So they want me to vegetate on the margin, but they're in Slovenia. It was in a way an intelligent move, but they didn't know it that the way they did it, they make it even easier for me to move abroad.
It's so disgusting the reasoning behind it because all my friends most of my friends took either French or German as a second language. Okay, my idea was, you know, there was a Cold War to superpowers. We need to play it safe. Whoever will speak their language, there were three levels of dissidence. The first in theory, I mean, if you dealt with theory or whatever or writings, the first level was where you allowed to teach. This was the first level of exclusion. The second level were, are you allowed to publish books? The third level was, are you allowed to get a job at all in your domain? And the fourth level, if I score you are arrested or whatever. No, I was between the second and third. My God, I was unemployed. It was humiliating. I had to. My parents, I was 27 and my parents supported me, my God. Then for two years it was that humiliating job at the Central Committee. They knew that I am not an idiot and that I will probably succeed. So they were afraid that I would simply move abroad and succeed there. This would then be bad for another victim who wasn't allowed to make a career in Slovenia. So they want me to vegetate on the margin, but they're in Slovenia. It was in a way an intelligent move, but they didn't know it that the way they did it, they make it even easier for me to move abroad.
Archival Clip
Thank you.
Thank you.
Slavoj Žižek
Okay okay but you don't have no
Okay okay but you don't have no
Archival Clip
I am Mr.
I am Mr.
Slavoj Žižek
Give him seven it's okay oh sorry Okay. Okay. Okay. This is Disney. Oh my God, I thought this would be some kind of old building, you know, with Peron and not Peron with Borges and so on. Oh my God! Oh my god, I didn't like the way that guy looks at me, you know. It's really an idiot coming there. I hate this. Let's move there. I really hate this.
Give him seven it's okay oh sorry Okay. Okay. Okay. This is Disney. Oh my God, I thought this would be some kind of old building, you know, with Peron and not Peron with Borges and so on. Oh my God! Oh my god, I didn't like the way that guy looks at me, you know. It's really an idiot coming there. I hate this. Let's move there. I really hate this.
Archival Clip
What do you think?
What do you think?
Slavoj Žižek
I hate when I think that idiot friendly prep person recognize me and I hate this because then they They're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're
I hate when I think that idiot friendly prep person recognize me and I hate this because then they They're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're
Archival Clip
Money.
Money.
Slavoj Žižek
Oh my God, it's okay to be you. To whom do I put it?
Oh my God, it's okay to be you. To whom do I put it?
Archival Clip
そうだね。
そうだね。
Slavoj Žižek
Thank you.
Thank you.
Archival Clip
Thank you.
Thank you.
Archival Clip
I never expect this to have all these fans.
I never expect this to have all these fans.
Slavoj Žižek
But that's what I I really hate this. I mean, I cannot tell you how much I hate this.
But that's what I I really hate this. I mean, I cannot tell you how much I hate this.
Film Clip
You don't love it just a little bit?
You don't love it just a little bit?
Slavoj Žižek
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I think people are easy. Oh, Oh, it will be a nightmare. You see all these cribs, all these cribs here. This is horrible. Who is that hysterical woman? Yeah.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I think people are easy. Oh, Oh, it will be a nightmare. You see all these cribs, all these cribs here. This is horrible. Who is that hysterical woman? Yeah.
Narrator
It's not like
It's not like
Slavoj Žižek
Yeah, but I mean, what is she doing here? She should go up there and wait in line. I mean, not annoy me.
Yeah, but I mean, what is she doing here? She should go up there and wait in line. I mean, not annoy me.
Film Clip
Je dis Toozoo! La vérité. Part two. Parce que toutes la dir Onyarif. No. la dire toute C'est impossible. matériellement. Solly moo! Key moment. "Same man?" Parc, c'est impossible. que la vérité
Je dis Toozoo! La vérité. Part two. Parce que toutes la dir Onyarif. No. la dire toute C'est impossible. matériellement. Solly moo! Key moment. "Same man?" Parc, c'est impossible. que la vérité
Slavoj Žižek
or higher. Is she? on dit la télée. It was simply made as a documentary supposed to present Lakainian theory to a white man. Public, I think, for the second channel of the French state TV. She's supposed
or higher. Is she? on dit la télée. It was simply made as a documentary supposed to present Lakainian theory to a white man. Public, I think, for the second channel of the French state TV. She's supposed
Film Clip
Analf. L’inconscient, quel drôle de mot !
Analf. L’inconscient, quel drôle de mot !
Slavoj Žižek
Quel drôle de mot. Oui, je suis d'accord, oui. What I appreciate is this. Inversion, reversal of the role between public image and private.
Quel drôle de mot. Oui, je suis d'accord, oui. What I appreciate is this. Inversion, reversal of the role between public image and private.
Film Clip
It's different.
It's different.
Slavoj Žižek
that this total denigration disappearance of this one human person. This for me is the idea of ideology. The central idea of ideology for me is not This idea is determining you are a Christian, you are a Marxist or whatever today, liberal, I don't know, but the idea is Precisely that. Ideological propositions do not determine us totally. We cannot be reduced to our public image. There is a warm human being behind. I think this is ideology at its purest. The most horrible anti-ideological act for me, and really horrible, terrifying, is to to fully identify with the ideological image. The ultimate act is what we think is our true self, that there is the true acting, and that usually Our truth, too.
that this total denigration disappearance of this one human person. This for me is the idea of ideology. The central idea of ideology for me is not This idea is determining you are a Christian, you are a Marxist or whatever today, liberal, I don't know, but the idea is Precisely that. Ideological propositions do not determine us totally. We cannot be reduced to our public image. There is a warm human being behind. I think this is ideology at its purest. The most horrible anti-ideological act for me, and really horrible, terrifying, is to to fully identify with the ideological image. The ultimate act is what we think is our true self, that there is the true acting, and that usually Our truth, too.
Film Clip
Here.
Here.
Slavoj Žižek
that to which we are really committed existentially is in our acts more than what is supposed to be behind the act. So again, my point is that I'm I like philosophy as an anonymous job. Not…
that to which we are really committed existentially is in our acts more than what is supposed to be behind the act. So again, my point is that I'm I like philosophy as an anonymous job. Not…
Film Clip
It's
It's
Slavoj Žižek
He's kind of look the way he moves now and so on his gestures. I find this ridiculous. He emphasizes, "One cannot say. All the truth. It's impossible. materially, _materiallement_, this ridiculous emphasis. I think it's a pure fake, an empty gesture, as if he makes a deep point there.
He's kind of look the way he moves now and so on his gestures. I find this ridiculous. He emphasizes, "One cannot say. All the truth. It's impossible. materially, _materiallement_, this ridiculous emphasis. I think it's a pure fake, an empty gesture, as if he makes a deep point there.
Broadcaster
mm-hmm
mm-hmm
Slavoj Žižek
He does not. Mon ami, Von Uexküll. I read Lacan in a very classical way. What interests me are his propositions. The underlying logic, not his style. His style is a total fake.
He does not. Mon ami, Von Uexküll. I read Lacan in a very classical way. What interests me are his propositions. The underlying logic, not his style. His style is a total fake.
Film Clip
I think
I think
Slavoj Žižek
I try to forget it. I try to repress it. Maybe it works as a strategy at a certain point. Why not? First, you have to seduce people with obscure statements. But I hate this kind of approach. I'm a total enlightenment person. I believe in clear statements and so on. And I'm for La Con because, again, I think to make it very clear that it's not that La Con is just bluffing. in the sense that there is nothing behind this obscurity. The whole The point of my work is that you can translate La Conque into clear terms. Well, I just had enough of this.
I try to forget it. I try to repress it. Maybe it works as a strategy at a certain point. Why not? First, you have to seduce people with obscure statements. But I hate this kind of approach. I'm a total enlightenment person. I believe in clear statements and so on. And I'm for La Con because, again, I think to make it very clear that it's not that La Con is just bluffing. in the sense that there is nothing behind this obscurity. The whole The point of my work is that you can translate La Conque into clear terms. Well, I just had enough of this.
Broadcaster
Now live from the CNE studios this is CNE Nightbeat with Barry Nolan.
Now live from the CNE studios this is CNE Nightbeat with Barry Nolan.
Narrator
Jacques Lacan was a French psychoanalyst. He makes Freud sound like a simple valley girl. Lacan's theory of how the self works is so complicated it makes my teeth hurt to think about it. Zlavaj Jezek is a philosopher at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. I think I said this fairly close to the way it's pronounced. Who has written a book called The Puppet and the Dwarf? The book takes a look at modern Christianity from the. viewpoint of Lacanian psychoanalysis, or at least that's what I think it's about. Welcome, Mr. Jazik. Did I say that?
Jacques Lacan was a French psychoanalyst. He makes Freud sound like a simple valley girl. Lacan's theory of how the self works is so complicated it makes my teeth hurt to think about it. Zlavaj Jezek is a philosopher at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. I think I said this fairly close to the way it's pronounced. Who has written a book called The Puppet and the Dwarf? The book takes a look at modern Christianity from the. viewpoint of Lacanian psychoanalysis, or at least that's what I think it's about. Welcome, Mr. Jazik. Did I say that?
Slavoj Žižek
Tell me the right way. But again, I prefer it the wrong way. It makes me paranoid if I hear it.
Tell me the right way. But again, I prefer it the wrong way. It makes me paranoid if I hear it.
Narrator
This is the most complicated book I have ever tried to read.
This is the most complicated book I have ever tried to read.
Slavoj Žižek
the goal of the book is on the contrary to like make Lacon back into someone whom even your grandma could understand let's say you have a good old-fashioned father it's Sunday afternoon you have to visit grandma the father good old-fashioned authoritarian father will tell you listen I don't care how you feel if you're a small kid of course I don't care how you feel you have to go you're going grandmother behave there properly. That's good. You can resist. No, nothing is broken. But let's say you have this so-called tolerant post-modern father. What he will tell you is the following. You know how much your grandmother loves you, but nonetheless, you should only visit her if you really want to. Now, every child who is not an idiot, and they are not idiots, know that this apparent free choice secretly contains an even more stronger, much stronger, order. It's not only you have to visit your grandmother, but you have to like it. and in the light of this book all the more. That's one example of how apparent tolerance, choice and so on can conceal a much stronger order.
the goal of the book is on the contrary to like make Lacon back into someone whom even your grandma could understand let's say you have a good old-fashioned father it's Sunday afternoon you have to visit grandma the father good old-fashioned authoritarian father will tell you listen I don't care how you feel if you're a small kid of course I don't care how you feel you have to go you're going grandmother behave there properly. That's good. You can resist. No, nothing is broken. But let's say you have this so-called tolerant post-modern father. What he will tell you is the following. You know how much your grandmother loves you, but nonetheless, you should only visit her if you really want to. Now, every child who is not an idiot, and they are not idiots, know that this apparent free choice secretly contains an even more stronger, much stronger, order. It's not only you have to visit your grandmother, but you have to like it. and in the light of this book all the more. That's one example of how apparent tolerance, choice and so on can conceal a much stronger order.
Narrator
So we should go back to more like the dad that just says, 'Cause I said so.
So we should go back to more like the dad that just says, 'Cause I said so.
Slavoj Žižek
Absolutely. It's more honest.
Absolutely. It's more honest.
Narrator
We went to the McDonald's.
We went to the McDonald's.
Slavoj Žižek
Breakfast. This is not so ridiculous. Look what you get. Look, you can look what you get. Look, look, look. Look, look what you get. Look what you get. You know, you get this with happy meal.
Breakfast. This is not so ridiculous. Look what you get. Look, you can look what you get. Look, look, look. Look, look what you get. Look what you get. You know, you get this with happy meal.
Film Clip
Yeah, to make you happy.
Yeah, to make you happy.
Slavoj Žižek
Yeah, but this is for the kids. I go there to make him happy. He pretends to be happy. They are not to disappoint me. But what the hell, the game functions. This means that, again, you know. I love him, but my perspective is time, you know.
Yeah, but this is for the kids. I go there to make him happy. He pretends to be happy. They are not to disappoint me. But what the hell, the game functions. This means that, again, you know. I love him, but my perspective is time, you know.
Broadcaster
Uh.
Uh.
Slavoj Žižek
We go there up and down one hour passage.
We go there up and down one hour passage.
Broadcaster
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
Slavoj Žižek
No, no, it's pure desperate strategy of survival.
No, no, it's pure desperate strategy of survival.
Broadcaster
Right.
Right.
Slavoj Žižek
How to pass the time without getting too nervous without. And this is easy because he eats and shuts up for 20 minutes.
How to pass the time without getting too nervous without. And this is easy because he eats and shuts up for 20 minutes.
Narrator
What does he get nervous about?
What does he get nervous about?
Slavoj Žižek
I don't know.
I don't know.
Narrator
Thank you.
Thank you.
Broadcaster
Okay.
Okay.
Slavoj Žižek
We go.
We go.
Broadcaster
That's it.
That's it.
Slavoj Žižek
He's perplexed, as you can see. Debajo de la cúpula hay un gran techo.
He's perplexed, as you can see. Debajo de la cúpula hay un gran techo.
Film Clip
Penny, you're right.
Penny, you're right.
Slavoj Žižek
No, he... Narcissistically amused. just to keep him calm in a non-demanding state so it's eating it's this it's whatever or at least negotiating. Like yesterday he was building some Lego castles. He wasn't satisfied with them, but then he gave me the role of just collecting a certain type of these small plastic cubes. I start to shoot at the animals. Then I love this one, American Army. You know this one? I bought it. I don't know where, but it's beautiful. You can open it. You see? And put soldiers in. So that then He attacks me from there. This was he destroyed this castle that I had here. This was his original, but the structure is very precise. It's incredible how you think it's chaotic. But he's the big wise guy, he observes. Here he's very pro-feminine. He wanted to have A woman is the boss, the queen. Then he said, but she would be alone. Why not have two girls? This is the two girls talking. You see lesbian progressives politically correct and so on. Two lesbians and but I like this one isn't this a beautiful one I bought it in Greece They're kind of a nice old Roman. La ciudad fue nombrada en honor a la ciudad de San Juan.
No, he... Narcissistically amused. just to keep him calm in a non-demanding state so it's eating it's this it's whatever or at least negotiating. Like yesterday he was building some Lego castles. He wasn't satisfied with them, but then he gave me the role of just collecting a certain type of these small plastic cubes. I start to shoot at the animals. Then I love this one, American Army. You know this one? I bought it. I don't know where, but it's beautiful. You can open it. You see? And put soldiers in. So that then He attacks me from there. This was he destroyed this castle that I had here. This was his original, but the structure is very precise. It's incredible how you think it's chaotic. But he's the big wise guy, he observes. Here he's very pro-feminine. He wanted to have A woman is the boss, the queen. Then he said, but she would be alone. Why not have two girls? This is the two girls talking. You see lesbian progressives politically correct and so on. Two lesbians and but I like this one isn't this a beautiful one I bought it in Greece They're kind of a nice old Roman. La ciudad fue nombrada en honor a la ciudad de San Juan.
Audience Member
Okay.
Okay.
Archival Clip
Philosophy.
Philosophy.
Slavoj Žižek
Ooh, no. I can do it at least traditionally in two lines, you know. Philosophy does not solve problems. The duty of philosophy is not to solve problems, but to redefine problems, to show how what we experience as a problem is a false problem. If… What we experience as a problem is a true problem, then you don't need philosophy. For example, let's say that now there would be a deadly virus. coming from outer space, so not in any way mediated through our human history, and it would threaten all of us. We don't need basically philosophy there. We simply need good science desperately to find, we would desperately need good science to find a solution to stop this virus. We don't need philosophy there because the threat is a real threat directly. You cannot play philosophical tricks and say, no, this is not the truth. You know what I mean? It's simply our life would be, or, okay, the more vulgar, even simpler. Science fiction scenario. It's kind of Armageddon or whatever. No deep impact. A big comet threatening to hit Earth. You don't need philosophy here. You need, I don't know, to be a little bit naive. I don't know. Strong atomic bombs to explode maybe. Maybe. I think it's maybe too utopian. But you know what I mean. I mean, the threat is there. You see it. In such a situation, you don't need philosophy. I don't think that philosophers ever. provided answers, but I think this was the greatness of philosophy. No, not in this common sense that the philosophers just ask us questions and so on. I mean, what is philosophy? Philosophy is not what some people think, some crazy exercise in absolute truth. And then you can adopt this skeptical attitude. We, true scientists, are dealing with actual, measurable, solvable problems. Philosophers just ask stupid metaphysical questions and so on, play with absolute truth, which we all know is inaccessible. I think philosophy is a very modest discipline. Philosophy asks a different question, the true philosophy. How does a philosopher approach the problem of freedom? It's not, are we free or not, is there God or not? It asks a simple question, which would be called A hermeneutic question. What does it mean to be free? So this is what philosophy basically does it just asks when we use certain notions. When we do certain acts and so on and so on. What is the implicit horizon of understanding? It doesn't ask these stupid ideal questions, is there truth? No, the question is, what do you mean when you say this is true? So you can see it's a very modest thing, philosophy. Philosophers are not the madmen who search for some eternal truth and so on and so on.
Ooh, no. I can do it at least traditionally in two lines, you know. Philosophy does not solve problems. The duty of philosophy is not to solve problems, but to redefine problems, to show how what we experience as a problem is a false problem. If… What we experience as a problem is a true problem, then you don't need philosophy. For example, let's say that now there would be a deadly virus. coming from outer space, so not in any way mediated through our human history, and it would threaten all of us. We don't need basically philosophy there. We simply need good science desperately to find, we would desperately need good science to find a solution to stop this virus. We don't need philosophy there because the threat is a real threat directly. You cannot play philosophical tricks and say, no, this is not the truth. You know what I mean? It's simply our life would be, or, okay, the more vulgar, even simpler. Science fiction scenario. It's kind of Armageddon or whatever. No deep impact. A big comet threatening to hit Earth. You don't need philosophy here. You need, I don't know, to be a little bit naive. I don't know. Strong atomic bombs to explode maybe. Maybe. I think it's maybe too utopian. But you know what I mean. I mean, the threat is there. You see it. In such a situation, you don't need philosophy. I don't think that philosophers ever. provided answers, but I think this was the greatness of philosophy. No, not in this common sense that the philosophers just ask us questions and so on. I mean, what is philosophy? Philosophy is not what some people think, some crazy exercise in absolute truth. And then you can adopt this skeptical attitude. We, true scientists, are dealing with actual, measurable, solvable problems. Philosophers just ask stupid metaphysical questions and so on, play with absolute truth, which we all know is inaccessible. I think philosophy is a very modest discipline. Philosophy asks a different question, the true philosophy. How does a philosopher approach the problem of freedom? It's not, are we free or not, is there God or not? It asks a simple question, which would be called A hermeneutic question. What does it mean to be free? So this is what philosophy basically does it just asks when we use certain notions. When we do certain acts and so on and so on. What is the implicit horizon of understanding? It doesn't ask these stupid ideal questions, is there truth? No, the question is, what do you mean when you say this is true? So you can see it's a very modest thing, philosophy. Philosophers are not the madmen who search for some eternal truth and so on and so on.
Audience Member
You don't get into the spirit of the thing. It's all part of being a member.
You don't get into the spirit of the thing. It's all part of being a member.
Slavoj Žižek
What we encounter here, I think, is Precisely Lacan's reversal of the famous Dostoevsky motto, if God doesn't exist, everything is permitted. If God doesn't exist, everything is. prohibited. How? On the one hand. Again. You are allowed to have a full life of happiness and pleasure, but in order precisely to be happy and so on, you should avoid dangerous excesses. So at the end, everything is prohibited. I mean, you cannot eat fat, you cannot have coffee, you cannot have nothing, precisely in order to enjoy it. So today's hedonism combines pleasure with constraint. It is no longer the old notion of the right measure between pleasure and constraint. Like sex, yes, but not too much, proper measure. No, it's something much more paradoxical. It's a kind of immediate coincidence of the two extremes. like It's as if action and reaction coincide. The very thing which causes damage should already be The counteragent, the medicine. The ultimate example I encountered recently in California, I don't know if you can buy it also here in New York, is a chocolate laxative. And there it says, as a propaganda, "Do you have still constipation? Eat more of this chocolate." No, the thing is already its own counteragent. And the negative proof of the hegemony of this stance, I think, is the fact that today The true unconstrained consumption in all its main forms, drugs, free sex, smoking, is emerging as the main danger. The traditional notion of psychoanalysis is that because of some inner obstacles, you internalized, identified excessively with paternal or other social prohibitions, you cannot. Set yourself free to enjoy, to Pleasure is not accessible for you. It is accessible to you only in pathological forms of feeling guilty and so on. So then the idea is psychoanalysis allows you to suspend, overcome these internalized prohibitions so that it. enables you to enjoy. The problem today is that The commandment of the ruling ideologies enjoy in different ways. It can be sexual enjoyment, consumption, commodity enjoyment, up to spiritual enjoyment, realize yourself, whatever. And I think that the problem today is not how to get rid of your inhibitions and to be able to spontaneously enjoy. The problem is how to get rid of this injunction to enjoy.
What we encounter here, I think, is Precisely Lacan's reversal of the famous Dostoevsky motto, if God doesn't exist, everything is permitted. If God doesn't exist, everything is. prohibited. How? On the one hand. Again. You are allowed to have a full life of happiness and pleasure, but in order precisely to be happy and so on, you should avoid dangerous excesses. So at the end, everything is prohibited. I mean, you cannot eat fat, you cannot have coffee, you cannot have nothing, precisely in order to enjoy it. So today's hedonism combines pleasure with constraint. It is no longer the old notion of the right measure between pleasure and constraint. Like sex, yes, but not too much, proper measure. No, it's something much more paradoxical. It's a kind of immediate coincidence of the two extremes. like It's as if action and reaction coincide. The very thing which causes damage should already be The counteragent, the medicine. The ultimate example I encountered recently in California, I don't know if you can buy it also here in New York, is a chocolate laxative. And there it says, as a propaganda, "Do you have still constipation? Eat more of this chocolate." No, the thing is already its own counteragent. And the negative proof of the hegemony of this stance, I think, is the fact that today The true unconstrained consumption in all its main forms, drugs, free sex, smoking, is emerging as the main danger. The traditional notion of psychoanalysis is that because of some inner obstacles, you internalized, identified excessively with paternal or other social prohibitions, you cannot. Set yourself free to enjoy, to Pleasure is not accessible for you. It is accessible to you only in pathological forms of feeling guilty and so on. So then the idea is psychoanalysis allows you to suspend, overcome these internalized prohibitions so that it. enables you to enjoy. The problem today is that The commandment of the ruling ideologies enjoy in different ways. It can be sexual enjoyment, consumption, commodity enjoyment, up to spiritual enjoyment, realize yourself, whatever. And I think that the problem today is not how to get rid of your inhibitions and to be able to spontaneously enjoy. The problem is how to get rid of this injunction to enjoy.
Archival Clip
organizations such as the New York Psychoanalytic Institute have helped gain general acceptance for theories considered radical when first advanced some 50 years ago by Dr. Sigmund Freud. The relationship between childhood frustrations and disturbed adult behavior has been clearly traced by such authorities as Dr. Rene Spitz of New York. distressing experience. In childhood, the. May set up patterns. which in later life will produce mental conflict. Such conflicts Lee. to the same feeling of insecurity which was felt as a child. We're in such conflict. Parola! the individual. preventing him. From acting freely. He is said to have a neurosis. Let us see. How And you also see That's it.
organizations such as the New York Psychoanalytic Institute have helped gain general acceptance for theories considered radical when first advanced some 50 years ago by Dr. Sigmund Freud. The relationship between childhood frustrations and disturbed adult behavior has been clearly traced by such authorities as Dr. Rene Spitz of New York. distressing experience. In childhood, the. May set up patterns. which in later life will produce mental conflict. Such conflicts Lee. to the same feeling of insecurity which was felt as a child. We're in such conflict. Parola! the individual. preventing him. From acting freely. He is said to have a neurosis. Let us see. How And you also see That's it.
Slavoj Žižek
My eternal fear is that if for a brief moment I stopped talking, You know The whole spectacular appearance would disintegrate. People would think there is nobody and nothing there. This is my fear, as if I am Nothing who pretends all the time to be somebody and has to be hyperactive all the time. Just two. Just to fascinate people enough. so that they don't notice that there is nothing. When… Okay, you also, you also. One of the bigger approaches to psychoanalysis is that it's only a theory of individual pathological disturbances and that applying psychoanalysis to other cultural or social phenomena is theoretically illegitimate. It asks in what way you as an individual have to relate to social field, not just in the sense of other people, but in the sense of the anonymous social as such. to exist as a person. You are. under quotation marks, normal individual person, only being able to relate to some anonymous social field. What is to be interpreted and what not is that Everything is to be interpreted. That is to say, when Freud says unbehagen in der Kultur, civilization in its discontent, more literally the uneasiness in culture. He means that it's not just that most of us as normal, we socialize ourselves normally, some idiots didn't make it, they fall out, or they have to be normalized. Not culture as such in order to. establish itself as normal. What… What appears as no. Normal involves a whole series of pathological cuts, distortions, and so on and so on. There is, again, a kind of a. Unbehagen, uneasiness. We are out of joint, not at home, in culture as such. which means again that There is no normal culture. Culture as such has to be interpreted. When people ask me why do I combine Lacan with Marx, well my first answer is Lacan already did it. I think, for example, that it's only through the strict psychoanalytic Lacanian notion of fantasy that we can really grasp what Marx was aiming at with his notion of commodity fetishism. It's, I think, precisely the use of Lacanian notions like, again, Fantasy in the strict Lakanian sense, or excess plus de jouir, excess enjoyment. and so on and so on, the real, not to mention the real, that we can understand today's phenomena like new fundamentalist forms of racism like the way our so-called permissive societies are functioning. Again, here, The Plagiotonic notion especially the way it was conceptualized by Lacan, the psycholitic notion of superego as injunction to enjoy. as an obscene category, not as a properly ethical category, is of great help. So again, I think that... If Freud In his Freudian theory in its traditional sense. Configuration was appropriate to explain the standard capitalism which relied to some kind of a More traditional ethic of sexual control, repression, and so on, then Lacon is perfect to explain the paradoxes of. Permissive late capitalism. When did you have the last meal? Breakfast or down there
My eternal fear is that if for a brief moment I stopped talking, You know The whole spectacular appearance would disintegrate. People would think there is nobody and nothing there. This is my fear, as if I am Nothing who pretends all the time to be somebody and has to be hyperactive all the time. Just two. Just to fascinate people enough. so that they don't notice that there is nothing. When… Okay, you also, you also. One of the bigger approaches to psychoanalysis is that it's only a theory of individual pathological disturbances and that applying psychoanalysis to other cultural or social phenomena is theoretically illegitimate. It asks in what way you as an individual have to relate to social field, not just in the sense of other people, but in the sense of the anonymous social as such. to exist as a person. You are. under quotation marks, normal individual person, only being able to relate to some anonymous social field. What is to be interpreted and what not is that Everything is to be interpreted. That is to say, when Freud says unbehagen in der Kultur, civilization in its discontent, more literally the uneasiness in culture. He means that it's not just that most of us as normal, we socialize ourselves normally, some idiots didn't make it, they fall out, or they have to be normalized. Not culture as such in order to. establish itself as normal. What… What appears as no. Normal involves a whole series of pathological cuts, distortions, and so on and so on. There is, again, a kind of a. Unbehagen, uneasiness. We are out of joint, not at home, in culture as such. which means again that There is no normal culture. Culture as such has to be interpreted. When people ask me why do I combine Lacan with Marx, well my first answer is Lacan already did it. I think, for example, that it's only through the strict psychoanalytic Lacanian notion of fantasy that we can really grasp what Marx was aiming at with his notion of commodity fetishism. It's, I think, precisely the use of Lacanian notions like, again, Fantasy in the strict Lakanian sense, or excess plus de jouir, excess enjoyment. and so on and so on, the real, not to mention the real, that we can understand today's phenomena like new fundamentalist forms of racism like the way our so-called permissive societies are functioning. Again, here, The Plagiotonic notion especially the way it was conceptualized by Lacan, the psycholitic notion of superego as injunction to enjoy. as an obscene category, not as a properly ethical category, is of great help. So again, I think that... If Freud In his Freudian theory in its traditional sense. Configuration was appropriate to explain the standard capitalism which relied to some kind of a More traditional ethic of sexual control, repression, and so on, then Lacon is perfect to explain the paradoxes of. Permissive late capitalism. When did you have the last meal? Breakfast or down there
Audience Member
No, no, no. We should stop.
No, no, no. We should stop.
Slavoj Žižek
No, no, no. I mean, one, two hours later, we should maybe go down there and, uh, or do you know any, I mean, you know, at the place where you had your coffee? They do have good menus, you know. Very nice ones like a simple steak or whatever. They're not bad, I mean. Sorry. Degenerate degenerate you will turn into monkeys There is a table free here if you want to be absolutely opportunist.
No, no, no. I mean, one, two hours later, we should maybe go down there and, uh, or do you know any, I mean, you know, at the place where you had your coffee? They do have good menus, you know. Very nice ones like a simple steak or whatever. They're not bad, I mean. Sorry. Degenerate degenerate you will turn into monkeys There is a table free here if you want to be absolutely opportunist.
Audience Member
Oh, my God!
Oh, my God!
Slavoj Žižek
あくまでコンガス Why shouldn't I? Could he put it there? No, no, sure. I mean, where to put it?
あくまでコンガス Why shouldn't I? Could he put it there? No, no, sure. I mean, where to put it?
Audience Member
I don't know what to do. Why do you want to uh why did you say it was a fundamental misunderstanding that for so many people came
I don't know what to do. Why do you want to uh why did you say it was a fundamental misunderstanding that for so many people came
Slavoj Žižek
no, in the simple sense that I have this terrible feeling that they expect something which they will not get and I wonder what. Many leftists expect the formula, you know. I will teach them what to do. What do I know? I mean, some people expect.
no, in the simple sense that I have this terrible feeling that they expect something which they will not get and I wonder what. Many leftists expect the formula, you know. I will teach them what to do. What do I know? I mean, some people expect.
Audience Member
I feel like that's what that audience was looking for specifically.
I feel like that's what that audience was looking for specifically.
Slavoj Žižek
No, it's a simple common sense insight. Wait a minute, 2,000 people, although I think they exaggerated, whatever, 1,000 people. You cannot all have the same interest in La Cong as I do. No? You know, can I ask you a simple question? If you were to have a daughter. Would you allow this guy to take your daughter to cinema? Be honest, the answer is no. I hate the way I appear in some documents. It's even worse. It's really as a kind of a criminal that I appear, you know.
No, it's a simple common sense insight. Wait a minute, 2,000 people, although I think they exaggerated, whatever, 1,000 people. You cannot all have the same interest in La Cong as I do. No? You know, can I ask you a simple question? If you were to have a daughter. Would you allow this guy to take your daughter to cinema? Be honest, the answer is no. I hate the way I appear in some documents. It's even worse. It's really as a kind of a criminal that I appear, you know.
Audience Member
Do you think they were expecting just the sort of political advice or some sort of
Do you think they were expecting just the sort of political advice or some sort of
Slavoj Žižek
No, the problem is that whenever I talk about politics, I feel it as if it's a fake. No, not in the sense that I'm faking, that I never mean it, but... My heart is not in it. The book that I really enjoyed writing was the one on Hegel, Ticklish, sorry, on Schelling, Ticklish Subject, and so on. And that part of the message doesn't get through. You can immediately see also in the way, for example, of my last books, the one that I really loved, the Opera's Second Death. That one is doing very modestly nothing, you know. But that's what I love. No, we didn't get, no. I'll tell you, wait a minute.
No, the problem is that whenever I talk about politics, I feel it as if it's a fake. No, not in the sense that I'm faking, that I never mean it, but... My heart is not in it. The book that I really enjoyed writing was the one on Hegel, Ticklish, sorry, on Schelling, Ticklish Subject, and so on. And that part of the message doesn't get through. You can immediately see also in the way, for example, of my last books, the one that I really loved, the Opera's Second Death. That one is doing very modestly nothing, you know. But that's what I love. No, we didn't get, no. I'll tell you, wait a minute.
Audience Member
Drinks
Drinks
Slavoj Žižek
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. First, you should look here the menus. You have talarines, fillet milanese, ensalada, cesar. This is just for people who come to be shocked and hopefully to get out.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. First, you should look here the menus. You have talarines, fillet milanese, ensalada, cesar. This is just for people who come to be shocked and hopefully to get out.
Audience Member
So that is why you have it. You have it so that when people open the door they go, oh, you got it.
So that is why you have it. You have it so that when people open the door they go, oh, you got it.
Slavoj Žižek
Yeah, yeah, there is a small hope that I will get rid of them. That's the only fun.
Yeah, yeah, there is a small hope that I will get rid of them. That's the only fun.
Audience Member
Has it ever worked?
Has it ever worked?
Slavoj Žižek
Yeah.
Yeah.
Audience Member
Really?
Really?
Slavoj Žižek
But as a matter of fact, yeah, some people were actually offended. My big worry is not to be ignored but to be accepted. When I appear to be sarcastic and so on. The point is not to take seriously. What is not to be taken seriously is the very form of sarcasm. It's the form of the joke which masks the fact that I'm serious. But people still have this idea that this guy did some big crimes and so on and others. Ah, of course, it's not as simple as that. I mean, that I'm simply a Stalinist that would be crazy, tasteless, and so on. Obviously. There is something in it that it's not simply a joke. When I say the only chance is that the left appropriates fascism and so on and so on, it's not a cheap joke. The point is to avoid The trap of the standard liberal opposition's freedom versus totalitarian order discipline and so on and so on. to rehabilitate notions of discipline, collective order, subordination, sacrifice, all that. I don't think this is inherently fascist. Often friends tell me, but Why do you provoke people unnecessarily? Why don't you simply say what you mean, that of course you are against fascism, but blah, blah, blah? I tell them, yes, this is good as an abstract. Theoretical, not even theoretical, intellectual, whatever statement, but it doesn't work like that. For example, concerning Stalinism. My God! I've probably written more about Stalinism, about its most horrible aspects, than most of the people who reproach me with Stalinism. And that's my wager here, that's the only way to get the message. If you say, of course I'm against fascism, there are just some attitudes which were traditional even more to the left, but fascism appropriated them, blah, blah, blah. I think it doesn't have the desired precise political effect. It enables the liberal consensus to reappropriate it. You must say it with this excess.
But as a matter of fact, yeah, some people were actually offended. My big worry is not to be ignored but to be accepted. When I appear to be sarcastic and so on. The point is not to take seriously. What is not to be taken seriously is the very form of sarcasm. It's the form of the joke which masks the fact that I'm serious. But people still have this idea that this guy did some big crimes and so on and others. Ah, of course, it's not as simple as that. I mean, that I'm simply a Stalinist that would be crazy, tasteless, and so on. Obviously. There is something in it that it's not simply a joke. When I say the only chance is that the left appropriates fascism and so on and so on, it's not a cheap joke. The point is to avoid The trap of the standard liberal opposition's freedom versus totalitarian order discipline and so on and so on. to rehabilitate notions of discipline, collective order, subordination, sacrifice, all that. I don't think this is inherently fascist. Often friends tell me, but Why do you provoke people unnecessarily? Why don't you simply say what you mean, that of course you are against fascism, but blah, blah, blah? I tell them, yes, this is good as an abstract. Theoretical, not even theoretical, intellectual, whatever statement, but it doesn't work like that. For example, concerning Stalinism. My God! I've probably written more about Stalinism, about its most horrible aspects, than most of the people who reproach me with Stalinism. And that's my wager here, that's the only way to get the message. If you say, of course I'm against fascism, there are just some attitudes which were traditional even more to the left, but fascism appropriated them, blah, blah, blah. I think it doesn't have the desired precise political effect. It enables the liberal consensus to reappropriate it. You must say it with this excess.
Audience Member
The party. Seine Frau, die er heiratete, starb.
The party. Seine Frau, die er heiratete, starb.
Slavoj Žižek
Thank you. Thank you very much. And I will be in that for you in the morning. Thank you. What if I told you tomorrow afternoon, etc. that period. establish all the conditions and so on. But where do you want to do it? It's hard to score against a game like that. I showed them two of them today. I went to wash my hair and then I was reading a magazine and then the woman hairdresser noticed it and told me, why don't they give you a massage with some oil? I enjoyed it, but I felt so obscene, as if I paid for masturbation. Mister Bean, you're sure of things. New York City by the time But it was relaxing you know it is nice very good but Oh, my God, where are you? This reminds me of socialism, carrying water and lefting the boat. Seis Thank you. Yeah, because they were waiting for us. But I don't care. But they wait for us, you see, it's not that. Yeah, they didn't start without you. Oh, my God. Thank you. It's okay. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, that's good. Let's start as soon as possible. トゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥト� I don't know Yes, yes. The majority of academics who are obsessed with this idea, the left needs a new answer, isn't it basically? We want a radical revolution, but at the same time we want our relatively prosperous lives to go on undisturbed. Like precisely as already Robespierre said, we want revolution without a revolution. There is, I notice, a fundamental difference between the standard plurality of struggles in which progressive liberals. What does it mean? Isn't it in a way false even to expect such a clear political formula in the sense of all we need is a bright intellectual to tell us the formula what to do and then capitalism will be over, we'll have socialism and so on and so on. I don't understand. I'm sorry. Thank you very much. In a way, I have to accept this. Again, almost Lakanian disinterment of subjectivity, which is that I stand for something, but I don't really master dominate what I stand for. People see things in me. They have some expectations. There may be political expectations that I will provide the formula, the big question that everybody is expecting today from a leftist intellectual, what should we do, or some kind of spiritual guidance to help them psychological or theoretical amusement in the sense of many dirty jokes or examples from movies. And I honestly accept that. I think that my reaction to this should be not so much, oh, it's all a big misunderstanding, they're missing my deep point. but my duty is Basically to try and occupy the position of the analyst, which is basically to play in a way of transference with these expectations and to undermine, frustrate them, to make it clear to them that the question is not what I can give them, but are these expectations legitimate, what this expectation should tell them about themselves. It was usually that big. Preparado The aggressive act was like It was Nick's. No, no, no, no, no. to do it with I'm trying to Thank you so much. This paradox, it was in France that was the goal. not so Socialism. got out of Algeria Azeria, yes. No, no. Inde- But
Thank you. Thank you very much. And I will be in that for you in the morning. Thank you. What if I told you tomorrow afternoon, etc. that period. establish all the conditions and so on. But where do you want to do it? It's hard to score against a game like that. I showed them two of them today. I went to wash my hair and then I was reading a magazine and then the woman hairdresser noticed it and told me, why don't they give you a massage with some oil? I enjoyed it, but I felt so obscene, as if I paid for masturbation. Mister Bean, you're sure of things. New York City by the time But it was relaxing you know it is nice very good but Oh, my God, where are you? This reminds me of socialism, carrying water and lefting the boat. Seis Thank you. Yeah, because they were waiting for us. But I don't care. But they wait for us, you see, it's not that. Yeah, they didn't start without you. Oh, my God. Thank you. It's okay. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, that's good. Let's start as soon as possible. トゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥトゥト� I don't know Yes, yes. The majority of academics who are obsessed with this idea, the left needs a new answer, isn't it basically? We want a radical revolution, but at the same time we want our relatively prosperous lives to go on undisturbed. Like precisely as already Robespierre said, we want revolution without a revolution. There is, I notice, a fundamental difference between the standard plurality of struggles in which progressive liberals. What does it mean? Isn't it in a way false even to expect such a clear political formula in the sense of all we need is a bright intellectual to tell us the formula what to do and then capitalism will be over, we'll have socialism and so on and so on. I don't understand. I'm sorry. Thank you very much. In a way, I have to accept this. Again, almost Lakanian disinterment of subjectivity, which is that I stand for something, but I don't really master dominate what I stand for. People see things in me. They have some expectations. There may be political expectations that I will provide the formula, the big question that everybody is expecting today from a leftist intellectual, what should we do, or some kind of spiritual guidance to help them psychological or theoretical amusement in the sense of many dirty jokes or examples from movies. And I honestly accept that. I think that my reaction to this should be not so much, oh, it's all a big misunderstanding, they're missing my deep point. but my duty is Basically to try and occupy the position of the analyst, which is basically to play in a way of transference with these expectations and to undermine, frustrate them, to make it clear to them that the question is not what I can give them, but are these expectations legitimate, what this expectation should tell them about themselves. It was usually that big. Preparado The aggressive act was like It was Nick's. No, no, no, no, no. to do it with I'm trying to Thank you so much. This paradox, it was in France that was the goal. not so Socialism. got out of Algeria Azeria, yes. No, no. Inde- But
Audience Member
Thank you.
Thank you.
Slavoj Žižek
You really are.
You really are.
Audience Member
I'm so sorry, Mr.
I'm so sorry, Mr.
Slavoj Žižek
So I had to cut it. Oh, yes, sorry, sorry. I'm from the press. I'm from the press. Oh, from the press. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you may know it. I brought you a coffee, which is perfect. Thank you. Rushing. Be serious. It's a shower
So I had to cut it. Oh, yes, sorry, sorry. I'm from the press. I'm from the press. Oh, from the press. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you may know it. I brought you a coffee, which is perfect. Thank you. Rushing. Be serious. It's a shower
Audience Member
It was over there.
It was over there.
Slavoj Žižek
I don't know what it was. Who knows here? The guy knows. I'm sorry, you know things here. You know. You know the guy who did the hero? The hero, the Chinese guy. Double indemnity is not on the market now, I think. No, it's not out yet. Being there also, I think it looks bad. being there, you know, Peter Sellers. It should be All of us be… Now this is too intelligent for me. You know, the ape will not get the banana. But fuck it, I don't get it here. Ah, U.S. 70s being there. Ha, ha, ha. What is it? Being there, it's a wonderful movie and look, my anal character, the price is okay, so definitely. Definitely, what more do I need? Fountainhead is the best American movie of all times. Then the best German movie would be Opfergang. This is the sacrificial path. Of course, from '44 by Veit Harlan, the Nazi director, no? So we have Ayn Rand, Nazi, and then... Unfortunately, okay, this is a more standard one. No, it is Ivan the Terrible. Eisenstein, I would say these three are the best movies of all times for me. This one I wanted, yes, definitely. So we have these two. That will be it, I think.
I don't know what it was. Who knows here? The guy knows. I'm sorry, you know things here. You know. You know the guy who did the hero? The hero, the Chinese guy. Double indemnity is not on the market now, I think. No, it's not out yet. Being there also, I think it looks bad. being there, you know, Peter Sellers. It should be All of us be… Now this is too intelligent for me. You know, the ape will not get the banana. But fuck it, I don't get it here. Ah, U.S. 70s being there. Ha, ha, ha. What is it? Being there, it's a wonderful movie and look, my anal character, the price is okay, so definitely. Definitely, what more do I need? Fountainhead is the best American movie of all times. Then the best German movie would be Opfergang. This is the sacrificial path. Of course, from '44 by Veit Harlan, the Nazi director, no? So we have Ayn Rand, Nazi, and then... Unfortunately, okay, this is a more standard one. No, it is Ivan the Terrible. Eisenstein, I would say these three are the best movies of all times for me. This one I wanted, yes, definitely. So we have these two. That will be it, I think.
Audience Member
How about if I buy them for you?
How about if I buy them for you?
Slavoj Žižek
Sorry? No, wait a minute. Poor American girl, working class. Who pays for that? Are you sure you are reimbursed? Okay, with pleasure. Now let it be the eternal secret of my desire.
Sorry? No, wait a minute. Poor American girl, working class. Who pays for that? Are you sure you are reimbursed? Okay, with pleasure. Now let it be the eternal secret of my desire.
Audience Member
All right.
All right.
Slavoj Žižek
Did I suspect this in advance or not? You know, like if you were not to make this offer, I would in the last minute say, oh, maybe not now. I have too many things to care.
Did I suspect this in advance or not? You know, like if you were not to make this offer, I would in the last minute say, oh, maybe not now. I have too many things to care.
Audience Member
This one is a little expensive actually. $32.
This one is a little expensive actually. $32.
Slavoj Žižek
Shut up, or you will get three more. I'm so sad that ah wait a minute wait a minute what is this because I would love to have so that you will not Let me buy this.
Shut up, or you will get three more. I'm so sad that ah wait a minute wait a minute what is this because I would love to have so that you will not Let me buy this.
Audience Member
Special booklet.
Special booklet.
Slavoj Žižek
Well, which one? Soy, ¿cani buy this one also? Oh, sorry, ha, ha, ha. Fuck off, you close.
Well, which one? Soy, ¿cani buy this one also? Oh, sorry, ha, ha, ha. Fuck off, you close.
Audience Member
What are you working on now, Solving? What's the new book?
What are you working on now, Solving? What's the new book?
Slavoj Žižek
The mega basically ticklish subject part two. Big, big, mega thing.
The mega basically ticklish subject part two. Big, big, mega thing.
Audience Member
How far along are you?
How far along are you?
Slavoj Žižek
Um Pretty close to the end. One part philosophy, theology. One part, cognitivism. I'm now deep in brain sciences. And one part… Politics, obscenity, and so on.
Um Pretty close to the end. One part philosophy, theology. One part, cognitivism. I'm now deep in brain sciences. And one part… Politics, obscenity, and so on.
Audience Member
What's it going to be called?
What's it going to be called?
Slavoj Žižek
I don't yet know maybe the parallax view but I must check it on Amazon.com simply like If there are already 20 books named The parallel view, I must look into that aspect. The act.
I don't yet know maybe the parallax view but I must check it on Amazon.com simply like If there are already 20 books named The parallel view, I must look into that aspect. The act.
Audience Member
That we mean.
That we mean.
Slavoj Žižek
No, no, it means something very simple, which comes as close as possible to what my position is. You know that. It's very simple. It's that when you mistake an apparent move you look at an object it appears that the object itself moves or changes but in reality it's just that because your perspective shifts. Like lunar stellar stellar. Um, whatever solar parallax, the idea is, is… Your shift in your subjective position is reified. You perceive it as move in the object. But of course, then I add another twist that what It is in the object in a way, no? Because object-subject can mediate it and so on and so on. So what interest me is precisely this radical cut, like You move from one to another perspective, there is no way to overcome this. This antinomy, no? And then I… develop this systematically in philosophy, cognitive science, like in cognitive sciences the parallels would have been Either you look at your inner experience or you open the skull, you see the stupid flesh, their brains. You really cannot make the jump. And you really cannot, even if scientifically you can explain it, you cannot really accept it that stupid piece of meat that you see, that's thought.
No, no, it means something very simple, which comes as close as possible to what my position is. You know that. It's very simple. It's that when you mistake an apparent move you look at an object it appears that the object itself moves or changes but in reality it's just that because your perspective shifts. Like lunar stellar stellar. Um, whatever solar parallax, the idea is, is… Your shift in your subjective position is reified. You perceive it as move in the object. But of course, then I add another twist that what It is in the object in a way, no? Because object-subject can mediate it and so on and so on. So what interest me is precisely this radical cut, like You move from one to another perspective, there is no way to overcome this. This antinomy, no? And then I… develop this systematically in philosophy, cognitive science, like in cognitive sciences the parallels would have been Either you look at your inner experience or you open the skull, you see the stupid flesh, their brains. You really cannot make the jump. And you really cannot, even if scientifically you can explain it, you cannot really accept it that stupid piece of meat that you see, that's thought.
Audience Member
So if we distilled your canon into like three books, what would they be?
So if we distilled your canon into like three books, what would they be?
Slavoj Žižek
Three of my best books are unfortunately four, I would say. Sublime Object, Tarrying with the Negative, Ticklish Subject, and now the new one. Yes, this is the serious work I've done, with little pieces here and there. But this is what I would do. Although I'm more and more self-critical of the first one, it's still too liberal. I'm for democracy there. I'm ashamed. I'm very sorry to say. I think that there was a thing called totalitarianism which was bad. And I think that there should be pluralism in society. My God, what am I talking there? You know that Marx Brothers joke, I would never be a member of a club that, like, you know, if I were not myself, I would arrest myself.
Three of my best books are unfortunately four, I would say. Sublime Object, Tarrying with the Negative, Ticklish Subject, and now the new one. Yes, this is the serious work I've done, with little pieces here and there. But this is what I would do. Although I'm more and more self-critical of the first one, it's still too liberal. I'm for democracy there. I'm ashamed. I'm very sorry to say. I think that there was a thing called totalitarianism which was bad. And I think that there should be pluralism in society. My God, what am I talking there? You know that Marx Brothers joke, I would never be a member of a club that, like, you know, if I were not myself, I would arrest myself.
Audience Member
Okay.
Okay.
Slavoj Žižek
I hear about it. very complicated ritual about writing. It's psychologically impossible for me to sit down, so I have to trick myself. I elaborate a very simple strategy which at least with me it works. I put down ideas. But I put them down usually already in a relatively elaborate way, like the line of thought already written full sentences and so on. So up to a certain point, I'm telling myself, no, I'm not yet writing the book. I'm just putting down ideas. Then at a certain point, I tell myself, everything is already there. Now I just have to edit it. So that's the idea, to split it into two. I put down notes, I edit it. Writing disappears.
I hear about it. very complicated ritual about writing. It's psychologically impossible for me to sit down, so I have to trick myself. I elaborate a very simple strategy which at least with me it works. I put down ideas. But I put them down usually already in a relatively elaborate way, like the line of thought already written full sentences and so on. So up to a certain point, I'm telling myself, no, I'm not yet writing the book. I'm just putting down ideas. Then at a certain point, I tell myself, everything is already there. Now I just have to edit it. So that's the idea, to split it into two. I put down notes, I edit it. Writing disappears.
Narrator
Oh, sorry, machines. We love you, Mrs.
Oh, sorry, machines. We love you, Mrs.
Audience Member
Thank you.
Thank you.
Slavoj Žižek
Good question, but not in the sense that now I will say, oh, I'm modest, so nice. No, it's much more serious phenomenon. Let's be quite frank. At a certain superficial level, I'm relatively popular. But me and my friends, I don't think you can, maybe you can. Even imagine how non-influential are we within the academia, which is why it pisses me off how many. whoever they are. The enemies portray us Lakanians as some kind of a phallocentric power discourse. It's very fashionable to paint us as kind of a dogmatic power discourse. For example, yesterday, when I delivered a differently improvised version of the same talk at Columbia in New York, a lady kindly towards the end asked me, but why, her problem was, why am I so dogmatically Lakanian?
Good question, but not in the sense that now I will say, oh, I'm modest, so nice. No, it's much more serious phenomenon. Let's be quite frank. At a certain superficial level, I'm relatively popular. But me and my friends, I don't think you can, maybe you can. Even imagine how non-influential are we within the academia, which is why it pisses me off how many. whoever they are. The enemies portray us Lakanians as some kind of a phallocentric power discourse. It's very fashionable to paint us as kind of a dogmatic power discourse. For example, yesterday, when I delivered a differently improvised version of the same talk at Columbia in New York, a lady kindly towards the end asked me, but why, her problem was, why am I so dogmatically Lakanian?
Questioner
misreading that you are doing when data is concerned, I think this is an issue of your work. And I wonder whether this is Also another form of where there is certain sort of belief
misreading that you are doing when data is concerned, I think this is an issue of your work. And I wonder whether this is Also another form of where there is certain sort of belief
Slavoj Žižek
Which belief?
Which belief?
Questioner
Thank you.
Thank you.
Slavoj Žižek
Perfect. Perfect. Yeah. Perfect question. Okay. I defy you with a very simple, empirical, in the best Anglo-Saxon tradition question. Apart from this brief conflict between Gayatri Spivak and Derrida, could you name me one Derridean who made a small critical remark on Derrida? Rodolphe Gasché, Avital Ronell, name me. Sam Weber, name me one. Why are we dogmatic? Why are they not? Name me one point where Sam Weber makes an ironic, critical remark on Derrida. Name me one point where Avital Ronell does it. Name me one point where Rodolphe Gasché does it. So why is my, that's why am I dogmatically attached to Lacan? And it's not, why did you think this is disavowed belief? I am a Lakanian. I mean, you are knocking on the open door.
Perfect. Perfect. Yeah. Perfect question. Okay. I defy you with a very simple, empirical, in the best Anglo-Saxon tradition question. Apart from this brief conflict between Gayatri Spivak and Derrida, could you name me one Derridean who made a small critical remark on Derrida? Rodolphe Gasché, Avital Ronell, name me. Sam Weber, name me one. Why are we dogmatic? Why are they not? Name me one point where Sam Weber makes an ironic, critical remark on Derrida. Name me one point where Avital Ronell does it. Name me one point where Rodolphe Gasché does it. So why is my, that's why am I dogmatically attached to Lacan? And it's not, why did you think this is disavowed belief? I am a Lakanian. I mean, you are knocking on the open door.
Questioner
Here.
Here.
Slavoj Žižek
I mean, you know, you don't have to prove through some deconstructive analysis, oh, but he's a Lakanian. I am a card-carrying Lakanian. Something is going on here and I just wanted to draw the attention to this cow, all this popularity. And I think so, to give you now the true answer, I think that I admit it. There is a clownish aspect to me, like they put it in New York Times, Marx Brother or whatever. All that, I maybe flirt with it, but nonetheless, I'm getting tired of it because I noticed that there is, as it were, when there are some stupid reports or reactions to me, a kind of a terrible urge, compulsion to make me appear as a kind of a funny man and so on and so on. And the true question would be, where does this urge come from? Why is there this necessity to portray me as somebody who can only thrive through jokes and so on and so on and so on? And even my publishers buy it. You know that my Lenin book, introduction of Lenin, was almost turned down by Verso. Why? First, they always at Verso gave hints at me, oh, you are just making jokes and so on and so on. Then I told them, okay, now you have a book, Lenin's text, which you're not. The reproach was, wait a minute, where are the jokes? Nobody will buy the book and so on and so on. So, you know, much more than it may appear is going on here. It's a quite a complex phenomenon. It's a quite a complex phenomenon. I'm almost tempted to say that making me popular is resistance against taking me serious, how should I put it? And I think it's my duty for this reason to do a kind of a public suicide of myself as a popular comedian or whatever. Let's hope we can enter here. I don't know how this functions now. This is it. Okay, but you see here you should do your Hitchcockian shot like from Vertigo. I saw two, three times that I came here because when it was still open you took there the elevator to the top and often I saw here some policemen or cordoned off and an object here covered because you will immediately see why if you Take The shot… Up from up there it was practical to jump down, you know. Go up, you jump down, and it's kind of a nice, modest, ethical suicide. You know, it's not this spectacle that on the street you embarrass other people. You go here and you jump down. Of course, my idea was to organize this. You want to kill yourself, we organize it. We prevent so that we guarantee that no small, five dollars, no small children will be here. I even have the idea that, you know, the way they do it in this society of biopolitics, as Foucault would have put it, Where they ask you In order to get married, you know, if you don't have age, you are mentally stable and so on, obviously it doesn't work because if it were to work, I would never be allowed to.
I mean, you know, you don't have to prove through some deconstructive analysis, oh, but he's a Lakanian. I am a card-carrying Lakanian. Something is going on here and I just wanted to draw the attention to this cow, all this popularity. And I think so, to give you now the true answer, I think that I admit it. There is a clownish aspect to me, like they put it in New York Times, Marx Brother or whatever. All that, I maybe flirt with it, but nonetheless, I'm getting tired of it because I noticed that there is, as it were, when there are some stupid reports or reactions to me, a kind of a terrible urge, compulsion to make me appear as a kind of a funny man and so on and so on. And the true question would be, where does this urge come from? Why is there this necessity to portray me as somebody who can only thrive through jokes and so on and so on and so on? And even my publishers buy it. You know that my Lenin book, introduction of Lenin, was almost turned down by Verso. Why? First, they always at Verso gave hints at me, oh, you are just making jokes and so on and so on. Then I told them, okay, now you have a book, Lenin's text, which you're not. The reproach was, wait a minute, where are the jokes? Nobody will buy the book and so on and so on. So, you know, much more than it may appear is going on here. It's a quite a complex phenomenon. It's a quite a complex phenomenon. I'm almost tempted to say that making me popular is resistance against taking me serious, how should I put it? And I think it's my duty for this reason to do a kind of a public suicide of myself as a popular comedian or whatever. Let's hope we can enter here. I don't know how this functions now. This is it. Okay, but you see here you should do your Hitchcockian shot like from Vertigo. I saw two, three times that I came here because when it was still open you took there the elevator to the top and often I saw here some policemen or cordoned off and an object here covered because you will immediately see why if you Take The shot… Up from up there it was practical to jump down, you know. Go up, you jump down, and it's kind of a nice, modest, ethical suicide. You know, it's not this spectacle that on the street you embarrass other people. You go here and you jump down. Of course, my idea was to organize this. You want to kill yourself, we organize it. We prevent so that we guarantee that no small, five dollars, no small children will be here. I even have the idea that, you know, the way they do it in this society of biopolitics, as Foucault would have put it, Where they ask you In order to get married, you know, if you don't have age, you are mentally stable and so on, obviously it doesn't work because if it were to work, I would never be allowed to.
Narrator
Yes, Mr.
Yes, Mr.
Slavoj Žižek
But what I'll say, that they should do it the same, like if you want to kill yourself, no. I was thinking about it. I think that only people some medical or psychiatric advisory committee team should decide is it a case of a true metaphysical suicide or just a short crisis like you were dropped by your girlfriend or boyfriend and there is reasonable hope there that it's a momentary depression that in two, three weeks will be over. So it can be medical crisis, it can be this kind of psychological crisis or pure metaphysical. Suicide. As a Marxist, if I may add, if somebody tells that La Con is difficult, this is class propaganda by the enemy.
But what I'll say, that they should do it the same, like if you want to kill yourself, no. I was thinking about it. I think that only people some medical or psychiatric advisory committee team should decide is it a case of a true metaphysical suicide or just a short crisis like you were dropped by your girlfriend or boyfriend and there is reasonable hope there that it's a momentary depression that in two, three weeks will be over. So it can be medical crisis, it can be this kind of psychological crisis or pure metaphysical. Suicide. As a Marxist, if I may add, if somebody tells that La Con is difficult, this is class propaganda by the enemy.
Audience Member
Okay.
Okay.
Narrator
I never thought I'd have this much fun talking about this. Have a great weekend. Take care.
I never thought I'd have this much fun talking about this. Have a great weekend. Take care.