Žižek and Friends - Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and the Spaces Between (Nov. 2017)
Debate · Ippolit Belinski ·
2017-11-14 · 1:03:09 · 8,632 words
psychoanalysissexuality-genderideologycapitalismcommunism-socialismliberalism-political-correctnesshegel-dialecticsphilosophy-generalreligion-theologyhistory
A panel discussion at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge featuring Slavoj Žižek, Alenka Zupančič, and Mladen Dolar, organized around the launch of two books in the MIT Press Short Circuits series. Žižek develops the logic of surplus enjoyment across sexuality, theology, and capitalism, arguing that a constitutive 'plus' element (the gaze, the other's suffering) is always required for enjoyment to function. Zupančič argues that sexuality is at its core a philosophical problem about being and negativity, not a domain of liberated meaning. The panel also addresses political topics, Trump, political correctness, the October Revolution, with Žižek arguing that Stalinism was a genuine tragedy distinct from fascism and that today a revolutionary act is needed to restore basic moral dignity to public discourse.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 19
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
As used by Zupančič: distinct from being proper, the Real is a negativity that belongs to and affects being without being reducible to it, not simply non-being but something that inscribes itself into what appears.
Zupančič's gloss on the Lacanian unconscious: not a container of repressed content but a precise formal structure of knowledge that can never be of the immediate, transparent kind.
Zupančič's term for the point where the unconscious, as a formal structure of knowing, not mere ignorance, collapses the distinction between the order of being and the order of knowledge.
The full, unmediated enjoyment that is always deferred and supplemented, in Žižek's use here it is never immediate but always requires the fantasy plus, the gaze, the third element.
as “there is no sexual relationship”
Lacan's formula redeployed to mean that the difference internal to sex is not between the sexes but is a structural gap always requiring something additional, the viewer, the fantasy, to be filled in.
as “the third element in sexuality”
Sex is never simply two people; there is always a fantasy element or imagined gaze that must be added for sexuality to function at all, not a perversion of proper sexuality but its structural condition.
as “LGBTQ+ plus as constitutive excess”
The 'plus' in LGBTQ+ is not a humble admission that the list is incomplete but signals that excess as such can directly exist as a term, one can be the plus, not merely be covered by it.
The Lacanian formula of sexuation rendered as M + a: woman is not less than man but more, carrying the surplus element (objet petit a) as constitutive of her position, she is the more, not the minus.
In pornography and in sexuality generally, the viewer's pure gaze functions as the constitutive 'plus' added to the couple, making the scene possible as scene, not merely an observer but a necessary ontological third element.
as “victimhood as political currency”
The tendency in contemporary left politics where credibility and authority derive from proclaiming oneself a victim, Žižek warns the women's awakening risks degenerating into this depoliticized form.
The hidden enjoyment that ideological structures use to bribe subjects into complicity, the Lacanian method of ideological critique always asks where and how this edifice gives you secret pleasure.
Lacan's analogy between Marx's surplus value and the plus-de-jouir, invoked here to link the political economy triad in Žižek's book to the underlying logic of enjoyment excess.
as “surplus enjoyment without enjoyment”
A limit-case in which the ritual structure of desire persists and yields pleasure even after the object is entirely relinquished, as when impoverished middle-class families complete the shopping ritual but leave the full trolley behind.
Capitalism is historically unique in using destabilizing excess as its basic machinery rather than trying to contain it as all previous ontological and social systems attempted.
The traditional structure in which prohibition generates a surplus enjoyment in transgression, Žižek argues this economy is collapsing under contemporary permissiveness, leaving only the ashtray with the no-smoking image.
Žižek's characterization of Trump's presidency: not merely a political problem but a violation of the basic categories of what should be possible, an affront to ontology itself.
as “obscene leadership”
The new global norm in capitalism where leaders openly use racist, vulgar, or degrading language as part of their appeal rather than concealing it behind dignity, Trump and Kaczyński as prime instances.
as “authentic tragedy (vs. fascism)”
Žižek distinguishes Stalinism as an authentic tragedy, good intentions gone catastrophically wrong, from fascism, which was not a tragedy because bad people promised bad things and delivered them.
Hitler is a figure of voice, charismatic vocalic presence that the crowd receives, while Stalin is a figure of writing, interpreter of sacred texts, enlightened messenger who joins the applause as one of the people.
Stories he reaches for 6
When a fascist leader finishes speaking the crowd applauds and he simply accepts it. In Stalinism the leader joins in the applause himself. Žižek (drawing on Dolar's work) reads this as the difference between the fascist structure of voice, charismatic reception, and the Stalinist structure of writing, the enlightened messenger who is 'one of us.'
“in Stalinism the leader simply joins the applause why because it's still this lecture message of enlightenment I'm ultimately one of you”
Every year on Stalin's birthday, Gulag inmates were required to sign a telegram wishing him well. Žižek contrasts this with the unthinkability of Nazi guards collecting Jews in Auschwitz to sign birthday greetings for Hitler, illustrating that the two systems operated through entirely different discursive structures.
“every year in Gulag in the worst years on Stalin's birthday all the inmates were collected and each had to sign a telegram to Stalin wishing him happy”
Aquinas argues the blessed in heaven must be able to see suffering in hell because they will be all-knowing. When pressed on whether this is obscene, he rationalizes that they enjoy not the suffering but divine justice, which Žižek reads as transparent ideological cover for surplus enjoyment at its purest.
“if you want to learn about perversities of enjoyment turn to theology they are full of it”
At the Lushan conference called for self-criticism after the Great Leap Forward's millions of deaths, Mao admitted guilt, then concluded with: 'If you need to shit, shit, you will feel better; if you need to fart, do it, it will make you feel better, that is how we should do self-criticism.' Žižek reads the obscene ending as political-rhetorical deflection from the enormity of the crimes.
“if you feel the need to shit shit you will feel better if you feel the need to fart do it it will make feel you better that's how we should do our self-criticism”
Polish ruler Jarosław Kaczyński, asked by a journalist what his party's program was after winning power, answered 'Teraz, kurwa, my', 'Now, whore, it's our turn', a crude military brothel metaphor. When confronted on TV he repeatedly stuck to it. Žižek uses this as evidence that obscenity is the truth of neoconservatism.
“Teraz, kurwa, my which means now it's our turn to fuck the whore”
Žižek describes the standard pornographic close-up where the woman's face breaks the fourth wall, addressing the viewer directly. He argues this structurally inserts the viewer's pure gaze as the necessary third element, not voyeurism but a Cartesian surplus confirming that jouissance exists.
“she is addressing you or me or the spectator trying to demonstrate yes I'm really enjoying of this”
Works invoked 6
What is Sex? book
Alenka Zupančič's book in the Short Circuits series; argues sexuality is at its core the philosophical problem of being, one, and negativity; Žižek treats it as a major theoretical contribution and his own book responds to it.
Mladen Dolar's book; praised for establishing the fascism/Stalinism distinction between Hitler as figure of voice and Stalin as figure of writing, a distinction Žižek deploys extensively.
Anne Applebaum's Gulag history, cited as the source for the birthday telegram anecdote used to illustrate the difference between Stalinist and Nazi discursive structures.
The series co-edited by Žižek, Zupančič, and Dolar; its aim is to produce theoretical short circuits by confronting classic texts with their hidden presuppositions to reveal their disavowed truth.
Published around the centenary of the October Revolution; focuses on Lenin's late writings and his despair as Stalin consolidated power; audience is told to read it for the argument about the Revolution as authentic tragedy.
Žižek's newly published book structured around the triad of ontology (universal), sexuation (particular), and political economy/critique (singular); the Thomas Aquinas and imagined-hell examples are cited as his favorite pages.
People invoked 32
Alenka Zupančič positive
Co-editor of Short Circuits series and one of Žižek's two best friends and long-term theoretical collaborators; her book What IS Sex? is discussed at length and treated as a major contribution to which Žižek's own book responds.
Cited by Dolar as the first philosopher to posit 'being is one', the oldest philosophical thesis that Zupančič's book connects to the question of sexuality.
The MIT Press editor who instigated the Short Circuits series and invited the three panelists to co-edit it; Dolar expresses special gratitude.
Vladimir Lenin positive
Late Lenin's despair at what went wrong with Stalin gaining power and his 'testament' criticizing Stalin for bad manners rather than wrong political line is praised as a profound ethical-political insight; Žižek has a book on Lenin's late writings published the same year.
Described as 'almost neo-fascist' but cited for his surprising support of raising taxes on the rich to 44%, used to illustrate the total ideological confusion of the current political moment.
Jacques Lacan positive
Central theoretical reference throughout; his concepts of plus-de-jouir, sexual difference, there is no sexual relationship, the Real, formulas of sexuation, and the four discourses are the main theoretical apparatus invoked by Žižek, Zupančič, and Dolar alike.
John Oliver negative
Named alongside Jon Stewart as producing satire that is enjoyable but politically ineffective as a left-liberal response to Trump.
Jon Stewart negative
Named alongside John Oliver as producing wonderful anti-Trump jokes that make people die of laughter while Trump keeps winning, illustrative of the insufficient left-liberal cultural-satirical response.
Donald Trump positive
Described as 'an abomination' and 'ontological scandal' personally; but intellectually analyzed as the symptom and truth of neoconservatism and a specimen of capitalism's new obscene leadership mode. Žižek says he endorsed Trump in two interviews hoping his election would force the left to confront its real deadlock.
Anne Applebaum positive
Her book on the Gulag is the source for the anecdote about inmates signing birthday telegrams to Stalin, used to illustrate the difference between Stalinist and Nazi discursive structures.
Held up as 'much worse' than Trump to argue against impeachment, Žižek is sorry to tell the audience this.
Jeremy Corbyn positive
His success is cited as an example of the strategy of reclaiming simple moral dignity and decency for the left, the 'true moral majority' move.
Mentioned as one who accused Stalin of betraying the revolution, Žižek notes there is no equivalent in Nazi Germany of someone accusing Hitler of betrayal, illustrating the internal dialectic unique to Stalinism.
Adolf Hitler negative
The counter-case to Stalin/Stalinism: fascism was not a tragedy because bad people promised bad things and delivered them; Hitler is the figure of voice as opposed to Stalin's figure of writing.
Bernie Sanders positive
The real question the Democratic Party avoided is 'what to do with the Bernie Sanders revolution'; he is already doing the work of reclaiming simple moral dignity and decency for the left.
Samuel Beckett positive
The phrase 'try again, fail again, fail better' is applied to the communist project; Zupančič notes the title of Žižek's book also comes from Beckett.
Mladen Dolar positive
The moderator of this event, one of Žižek's two best friends since undergraduate days; his book A Voice and Nothing More is praised for establishing the fascism/Stalinism distinction between Hitler as figure of voice and Stalin as figure of writing.
Zupančič briefly invokes a 'Foucauldian point' about sexuality being constrained through the very injunction to liberate it, which she then counteracts from a psychoanalytic angle.
Martin Heidegger positive
Mentioned by Zupančič as offering a related but different story: for Heidegger, philosophy is a forgetting of being; for Lacan it is a forgetting of something in being that is not fully being.
Jarosław Kaczyński negative
The de facto ruler of Poland whose 'Teraz, kurwa, my' response to journalists exemplifies the obscene truth of neoconservatism; his claim to moral majority while using brothel metaphors is treated as a key symptom of obscene leadership.
Mao Zedong negative
His Lushan speech concluding with toilet and fart metaphors amid discussion of Great Leap Forward deaths is used to illustrate how obscene vulgarity functions as political-rhetorical deflection from the enormity of crimes.
Søren Kierkegaard positive
Referenced by Dolar alongside Aristotle as a philosophical source for Lacan's concept of repetition.
Used by Dolar as the modernist stylistic comparison for Žižek's work: exuberant, additive, spreading in all directions (Joyce) vs. Zupančič's reductive Beckettian style.
Žižek says he attacks Putin ferociously, but grants him one moment of sympathy when Putin observed that the US finances NGOs to undermine his government, mirroring US behavior abroad.
Analyzed as figure of writing (vs. Hitler's voice); Lenin's condemnation of his rudeness is endorsed; Stalinism is called a nightmare but also a genuine tragedy from which there is something to learn.
Plato positive
The Symposium is cited by Dolar as Lacan's philosophical reference for the concept of transference (Socrates as figure of the one supposed to know).
Aristotle positive
Referenced by Dolar as the source for Lacan's concept of repetition and for the logical quadrangle underlying the formulas of sexuation.
Karl Marx positive
Surplus value is invoked as the economic analogue to Lacan's plus-de-jouir; Žižek says Marx admired capitalism as the first system to use excess as its basic machinery.
René Descartes positive
The cogito is invoked as the subject of the unconscious (Lacan's reading); Žižek identifies himself as a viewer with the 'pure Cartesian gaze' in the pornography analysis.
Sigmund Freud positive
Invoked on the point that Freud discovered not sexuality as the ultimate answer behind all meanings but as the ultimate question, where the flow of meaning is cut.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Referenced by Dolar as the philosophical basis for Lacan's four discourses (master-slave dialectic) and as a key philosophical reference underlying the work of all three panelists.
Thomas Aquinas positive
Used as a source of the example about the blessed seeing hell; Žižek says 'turn to theology to learn about perversities of enjoyment' and deploys Aquinas's rationalization as a specimen of ideological surplus enjoyment.
What it argues
intersection of psychoanalysis and philosophysurplus enjoyment and the logic of constitutive excesssexuality as ontological problem rather than domain of liberated meaningpolitical correctness and the left's failure to address real economic grievancesTrump as symptom of capitalism's shift toward openly obscene leadershipOctober Revolution as authentic tragedy distinct from fascismfascism versus Stalinism as different discursive structures (voice vs. writing)
Dialectical moves 13
“the standard critical notion that hardcore pornography objectivizes instrumentalizes the woman—it's exactly the contrary”
Inversion of the standard feminist critique: pornography reduces the man to a functional tool while the woman retains a semblance of subjective address.
“I don't identify certainly not with that poor anonymous guy who is doing the hard work—I identify with my pure gaze, I'm really kind of almost Cartesian subject”
The male pornography viewer is not an animal appetite but a disembodied Cartesian observer confirming that jouissance exists, the surplus gaze, not identification with the performer.
“plus is not just this plus is a—you can be also a plus directly”
The excess in LGBTQ+ is not modesty about incomplete enumeration but indicates that excess as such can be a positive identity position.
“woman is plus which incidentally doesn't mean she is less than man but on the contrary that she is more”
The Lacanian formula of sexuation inverted: woman's relation to the objet a makes her more, not less, than man.
“they are not really enjoying suffering in hell they are really enjoying the greatness of divine justice—and of course we should claim no”
Aquinas's rationalization of heavenly voyeurism is ideological cover for surplus enjoyment at its purest; the perverse kernel must be acknowledged rather than sublimated.
“Trump is an abomination an ontological scandal... but beware that he is not an abomination he is part of the global change in capitalism”
Trump is not an exception to normal capitalism but its symptom and truth, what capitalism is becoming globally.
“not that Freud discovered sexuality as the ultimate answer beyond all these meanings but as the ultimate question—precisely where you cut this fluent circulation of meaning”
Freud's discovery is not that everything means sex but that sex is where meaning halts, a point of impossibility, not a master signifier.
“today in contrast to our youth when the radical left were saying those in power are pseudo-dignified let's use the F-word... now the neocons are getting more and more obscene”
Historical reversal: transgressive vulgarity was once the language of the left challenging power; now it is the currency of the right, requiring the left to champion dignity.
“we have to do the revolution in order to reintroduce the very notion of manners and dignity in public discourse—it's a revolutionary revolutionary act”
Paradox of the contemporary moment: revolutionary politics now requires fighting for the restoration of elementary decency rather than transgressing it.
“the lesson with Stalinism is try again, fail again, fail better—while this is definitely not the lesson what we should do with Hitler”
Stalinism as authentic tragedy licenses a Beckettian orientation of renewed attempt; fascism as evil-as-promised admits no such redemption.
“there is no inner dialectic of this tragic turn in fascism—no one in Germany accused Hitler of betraying the revolution the way Trotsky accused Stalin”
The category of betrayal is internal to Stalinism and absent from fascism, marking the difference between a tragic project and a project that delivered what it promised.
“Lacan je m'insurge contre la philosophie yet hardly any session passed without him centrally referring to philosophical references—this paradox is the key”
Lacan opposed philosophy as a totalizing field precisely to free himself to engage it at singular productive intersection points rather than subordinate psychoanalysis to it.
“this subjectivization is a fake which is in a way even much more brutal and humiliating for the woman than for the man”
The apparent promotion of the woman to subject in pornography is its own deeper degradation, apparent subjectivization as intensified objectification.
Claims 21
rejects
Hardcore pornography does not objectify women but instrumentalizes men: the man is an anonymous functional tool while the woman is the sole subject who directly addresses the viewer.standard feminist critique of pornography as objectification of women
asserts
The apparent subjectivization of the woman in pornography is a fake that is more brutal and humiliating than male objectification.the structure of pornographic subjectivity
rejects
Pornography is not a masturbatory device; the male viewer identifies not with the performer but with a pure disembodied gaze—almost a Cartesian subject confirming that jouissance exists.the standard account of pornography's function for male viewers
asserts
In sexual experience there is always a third element—a gaze, a fantasy supplement—and this is not a perversion of proper sexuality but its structural condition.the ontological structure of sexuality
reframes
Fantasy in psychoanalysis is not a substitute for unavailable reality but a supplement to actual sex: the real question is what one must fantasize about during the act itself.the psychoanalytic concept of fantasy
reframes
The 'plus' in LGBTQ+ is not an empiricist admission of incompleteness but signals that excess as such can exist as a direct position—one can be the plus.the meaning of the LGBTQ+ plus sign
asserts
Woman is not defined by lack relative to man but by surplus: she is M plus a, making her more rather than less.Lacanian formulas of sexuation
asserts
Political correctness is responsible for Trump's election because the left fought wrong battles—nominal recognition rights—while abandoning fundamental economic grievances.the causes of Trump's electoral victory · unknown
rejects
Trump's election was not caused primarily by Russian interference; that obsession serves to avoid confronting the real deadlock—what to do with the Bernie Sanders revolution.the Russian hacking narrative as explanation for 2016
asserts
Trump should not be impeached because Mike Pence is much worse; Trump's value is that he is systematically ruining the Republican Party.the Trump presidency and left strategy
reframes
Trump is not a unique Republican abomination but the truth of neoconservatism and part of a global capitalist shift toward openly obscene leadership.Trump's political significance
asserts
The women's awakening movement risks degenerating into a politics of victimhood where proclaiming victim status replaces active political organization.the feminist awakening and MeToo movement
asserts
Any ideological edifice bribes its subjects through hidden surplus enjoyment; Lacanian critique must always locate where and how this secret pleasure operates.the Lacanian method of ideological critique
asserts
The October Revolution was an authentic event and explosion, not merely a Bolshevik coup, though it was simultaneously an authentic tragedy.the historical character of the 1917 revolution
asserts
Stalinism was a genuine tragedy in which good intentions went catastrophically wrong—fundamentally different from fascism, which was bad people promising and delivering bad things.the distinction between Stalinism and fascism
asserts
Lenin's late testament criticizing Stalin for bad manners rather than wrong political line is a profound insight: rudeness always serves a function, and Lenin was rightly demanding simple ethical decency.Lenin's legacy and the politics of manners
reframes
Today a revolutionary act is needed to reintroduce basic manners and dignity into public discourse—paradoxically, the revolution aims to recover what it used to oppose.the task of the contemporary left
asserts
Capitalism is historically unique in directly using excess and instability as its basic machinery rather than trying to prevent surplus and maintain balance.capitalism's distinctive ontological structure compared to prior systems
asserts
The economy of transgression is collapsing under contemporary permissiveness, where prohibition and its violation coexist without generating tension.the contemporary collapse of the prohibition-transgression structure
reframes
Freud discovered not sexuality as the ultimate answer behind all meanings but sexuality as the ultimate question—the point where the flow of meaning is cut.Freud's discovery and the function of sexuality in psychoanalysis · unknown
asserts
Philosophy cannot simply pretend psychoanalysis did not happen; it constituted a genuine conceptual event that transforms the conditions of philosophical inquiry.the relationship between philosophy and psychoanalysis · unknown
Quotes 17
“jouissance is there and so it's never just MF”Slavoj Žižek · sexuality's constitutive third element—the viewer as surplus
“plus is not just this plus is a you can be also a plus directly”Slavoj Žižek · LGBTQ+ plus as constitutive ontological excess, not empiricist modesty
“woman is plus which incidentally doesn't mean she is less than man but on the contrary that she is more and that's the mystery”Slavoj Žižek · woman as M + a, the more not the less
“when we deal with ideology it's always even if it's the most ascetic sacrificing move look for hidden enjoyment for surplus enjoyment”Slavoj Žižek · Lacanian method of ideological critique: always locate the hidden enjoyment
“if you want to learn about perversities of enjoyment turn to theology they are full of it”Slavoj Žižek · theology as archive of surplus enjoyment
“it's not only that I should win it's that the other guy should lose”Slavoj Žižek · capitalist competition requires the other's loss as surplus enjoyment
“even if you have all you want all the honey or whatever you need the surplus of seeing others suffering to enjoy fully heaven”Slavoj Žižek · surplus enjoyment requires the other's suffering even in paradise
“capitalism is something tremendous Marx admired it it's the first system which directly used as its basic machinery something that all previous systems experienced as a threat”Slavoj Žižek · capitalism's unique relationship to excess and instability
“Trump is an abomination an ontological scandal ontological even”Slavoj Žižek · Trump as ontological scandal
“I wonder if up to some point Donald Trump doesn't function as that ashtray”Slavoj Žižek · Trump as emblem of collapsed economy of transgression
“this obsession with did Russians hack the election is here just precisely to avoid confronting the true deadlock”Slavoj Žižek · Russian hacking narrative as ideological displacement of real political question
“we are the true moral majority if this term has any meaning we are for simple decency”Slavoj Žižek · the left reclaiming moral majority against obscene right
“in Stalinism the leader simply joins the applause why because it's still this lecture message of enlightenment I'm ultimately one of you”Slavoj Žižek · Stalin as figure of writing vs. Hitler as figure of voice
“the lesson with Stalinism is try again, fail again, fail better while this is definitely not the lesson what we should do with Hitler”Slavoj Žižek · Stalinism as tragedy licenses Beckettian renewed attempt; fascism does not
“it's a revolutionary revolutionary act is needed to get back to this very basic thing”Slavoj Žižek · revolution to restore dignity, not overcome it—paradox of contemporary left
“you see what they are promising you no fun in sex just good manners”Slavoj Žižek · self-deprecating summary of the Žižek-Zupančič theoretical project
“it's not only that I should win it's that the other guy should lose you know and me enjoying in that”Slavoj Žižek · capitalism's competitive surplus enjoyment: winning is not enough without the other's loss
Transcript 32 turns
unknown
So once again thank you for joining us here at the Brattle Theatre and welcome to our online audience as well and now I'm pleased to introduce tonight's speakers Slavoj Žižek is a philosopher cultural critic and psychoanalyst who has published over books he is a professor at the European Graduate School and at New York University he is the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at University of London and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology and Philosophy at University of Ljubljana Alenka Zupančič is a widely published philosopher psychoanalyst and social theorist a professor at the European Graduate School and at the University of Nova Gorica and a research advisor and professor at the Institute of Philosophy at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts Mladen Dolar is a philosopher cultural and music theorist film critic and the author of a number of books including A Voice and Nothing More he is a senior research fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana and a professor at the European Graduate School before turning things over to our panel I'd like to give a special thanks to the MIT Press press director Amy Brand and want to highlight the Short Circuits series which is edited by all three of our speakers tonight Short Circuits intends to revive a practice of reading which confronts a classic text author or notion with its own hidden presuppositions and thus reveal its disavowed truth the basic criterion for the texts in this series is that they effectuate such a theoretical short circuit after reading a book in this series the reader should not simply have learned something new the point is rather to make the reader aware of another side of something that they knew all the time we are so pleased to host this event at the Brattle Theatre tonight please join me in welcoming Slavoj Žižek Alenka Zupančič and Mladen Dolar
So once again thank you for joining us here at the Brattle Theatre and welcome to our online audience as well and now I'm pleased to introduce tonight's speakers Slavoj Žižek is a philosopher cultural critic and psychoanalyst who has published over books he is a professor at the European Graduate School and at New York University he is the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at University of London and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology and Philosophy at University of Ljubljana Alenka Zupančič is a widely published philosopher psychoanalyst and social theorist a professor at the European Graduate School and at the University of Nova Gorica and a research advisor and professor at the Institute of Philosophy at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts Mladen Dolar is a philosopher cultural and music theorist film critic and the author of a number of books including A Voice and Nothing More he is a senior research fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana and a professor at the European Graduate School before turning things over to our panel I'd like to give a special thanks to the MIT Press press director Amy Brand and want to highlight the Short Circuits series which is edited by all three of our speakers tonight Short Circuits intends to revive a practice of reading which confronts a classic text author or notion with its own hidden presuppositions and thus reveal its disavowed truth the basic criterion for the texts in this series is that they effectuate such a theoretical short circuit after reading a book in this series the reader should not simply have learned something new the point is rather to make the reader aware of another side of something that they knew all the time we are so pleased to host this event at the Brattle Theatre tonight please join me in welcoming Slavoj Žižek Alenka Zupančič and Mladen Dolar
unknown
okay I'm supposed to be moderating this event first I would like to express my thanks to the organizers the Harvard Bookstore Brattle Theatre the MIT and my special gratitude our special gratitude I think I speak in the name of the three of us to Roger Conover who was the instigator of this Short Circuits series and invited us to be the co-editors of this series now being the moderator is very strange for me a strange position to occupy in this event because the moderator is supposed to be in some sort of meta-position in relation to the interlocutors or to the subject matter and if this is the case then I'm the last person who should be moderating this event I have no meta-position no distance to this first to the subject matter the two books being published I'm also the co-editor of this series I'm highly biased I'm proud of the books being published in this series and as regarding my two interlocutors they are my two best friends we have been collaborating for decades now both in doing together theoretical work and being close friends and there are actually no boundaries between the two and I think it's quite unique and rare that actually three people like us friends and close theoretical collaborators are given the opportunity to co-edit a series at a prestigious publisher like MIT and we feel very privileged to be in that position now to say something about what connects what there is a common plot there is a common narrative that we all work on and the simplest way to describe this common plot at the bottom is to say that we work on the juncture the interstices between philosophy and psychoanalysis and this juncture is paradoxical because most philosophers the bulk of people who work in philosophy
okay I'm supposed to be moderating this event first I would like to express my thanks to the organizers the Harvard Bookstore Brattle Theatre the MIT and my special gratitude our special gratitude I think I speak in the name of the three of us to Roger Conover who was the instigator of this Short Circuits series and invited us to be the co-editors of this series now being the moderator is very strange for me a strange position to occupy in this event because the moderator is supposed to be in some sort of meta-position in relation to the interlocutors or to the subject matter and if this is the case then I'm the last person who should be moderating this event I have no meta-position no distance to this first to the subject matter the two books being published I'm also the co-editor of this series I'm highly biased I'm proud of the books being published in this series and as regarding my two interlocutors they are my two best friends we have been collaborating for decades now both in doing together theoretical work and being close friends and there are actually no boundaries between the two and I think it's quite unique and rare that actually three people like us friends and close theoretical collaborators are given the opportunity to co-edit a series at a prestigious publisher like MIT and we feel very privileged to be in that position now to say something about what connects what there is a common plot there is a common narrative that we all work on and the simplest way to describe this common plot at the bottom is to say that we work on the juncture the interstices between philosophy and psychoanalysis and this juncture is paradoxical because most philosophers the bulk of people who work in philosophy
unknown
would see psychoanalysis as a suspicious kind of domain marginal to philosophy not proper philosophy some would take well some inspiration from psychoanalysis or some would try to turn psychoanalysis into another philosophical current which is not what we are trying to do this is a way of neutralizing the sting of psychoanalysis and on the other hand most of the people who work who are psychoanalysts who work in psychoanalysis have a certain hostility and distance to philosophy and this started already with Freud who was absolutely wanted to keep away from philosophy saw it even as a danger for psychoanalysis this connection with philosophy and Lacan was even more adamant in one of his famous pronouncements he says je m'insurge contre la philosophie I raise up against philosophy one thing is certain this is a finished thing like one couldn't be more clear but then there's a paradox if you look at Lacan's work and both his written work and the seminars he has been giving for twenty-seven years there's hardly any session that passed by without him referring very centrally referring giving very specific philosophical references and his key concepts the key concepts of psychoanalysis are always underpinned by a philosophical reference you take the concept of the unconscious there is Descartes and cogito and he even claimed that cogito was the subject of the unconscious you take the concept of repetition there are his references to Aristotle and Kierkegaard you take the concept of transference he always refers you to Socrates to Plato's Symposium the theory of four discourses you cannot make sense of it without referring to Hegel's dialectic of master and slave formulas of sexuation refer back to Aristotle's logical quadrangle and well the question of jouissance of enjoyment surplus enjoyment is referred is put into analogy with Marx's notion of surplus value so philosophical references abound there is no Lacan without philosophical references and of course there is a paradox and I think that Lacan on the one hand opposed philosophy as a unitary field or as a totality of philosophical discourse but by opposing this unitary field or totality this gave him a freedom to address philosophy at singular points and singular points which very precisely point to certain intersections with psychoanalysis and which make that philosophical tradition is seen in a completely different way and also psychoanalysis by this reference to philosophy suddenly becomes something something very different so we work at this particular juncture all three of us we see it as extremely productive now the two authors whose books are presented here today although they have a common plot and address questions same questions as it were they couldn't be a bigger difference in style this is Alenka's I think fourth book in English and each of those books are very precisely focused on a certain topic and they're rather thin books the first one on Kantian ethics the second one on Nietzsche the third one on comedy and this instigated or gave a big push to comedy studies and this is a field which is being a lot of a lot of good work is being done on this field today and all the people working in this field take Alenka's book as being absolutely seminal for this and then the fourth book which Alenka's proposal for the title was Sexuality and Ontology Roger thought this was rather dull so he rather proposed the change of title to this sexier sexier title which is What IS Sex? what could be sexier title than What IS Sex? and if you look closely at the title then IS is italicized so it's not What is sex? but What IS sex? so there is a certain
would see psychoanalysis as a suspicious kind of domain marginal to philosophy not proper philosophy some would take well some inspiration from psychoanalysis or some would try to turn psychoanalysis into another philosophical current which is not what we are trying to do this is a way of neutralizing the sting of psychoanalysis and on the other hand most of the people who work who are psychoanalysts who work in psychoanalysis have a certain hostility and distance to philosophy and this started already with Freud who was absolutely wanted to keep away from philosophy saw it even as a danger for psychoanalysis this connection with philosophy and Lacan was even more adamant in one of his famous pronouncements he says je m'insurge contre la philosophie I raise up against philosophy one thing is certain this is a finished thing like one couldn't be more clear but then there's a paradox if you look at Lacan's work and both his written work and the seminars he has been giving for twenty-seven years there's hardly any session that passed by without him referring very centrally referring giving very specific philosophical references and his key concepts the key concepts of psychoanalysis are always underpinned by a philosophical reference you take the concept of the unconscious there is Descartes and cogito and he even claimed that cogito was the subject of the unconscious you take the concept of repetition there are his references to Aristotle and Kierkegaard you take the concept of transference he always refers you to Socrates to Plato's Symposium the theory of four discourses you cannot make sense of it without referring to Hegel's dialectic of master and slave formulas of sexuation refer back to Aristotle's logical quadrangle and well the question of jouissance of enjoyment surplus enjoyment is referred is put into analogy with Marx's notion of surplus value so philosophical references abound there is no Lacan without philosophical references and of course there is a paradox and I think that Lacan on the one hand opposed philosophy as a unitary field or as a totality of philosophical discourse but by opposing this unitary field or totality this gave him a freedom to address philosophy at singular points and singular points which very precisely point to certain intersections with psychoanalysis and which make that philosophical tradition is seen in a completely different way and also psychoanalysis by this reference to philosophy suddenly becomes something something very different so we work at this particular juncture all three of us we see it as extremely productive now the two authors whose books are presented here today although they have a common plot and address questions same questions as it were they couldn't be a bigger difference in style this is Alenka's I think fourth book in English and each of those books are very precisely focused on a certain topic and they're rather thin books the first one on Kantian ethics the second one on Nietzsche the third one on comedy and this instigated or gave a big push to comedy studies and this is a field which is being a lot of a lot of good work is being done on this field today and all the people working in this field take Alenka's book as being absolutely seminal for this and then the fourth book which Alenka's proposal for the title was Sexuality and Ontology Roger thought this was rather dull so he rather proposed the change of title to this sexier sexier title which is What IS Sex? what could be sexier title than What IS Sex? and if you look closely at the title then IS is italicized so it's not What is sex? but What IS sex? so there is a certain
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subplot of like relation this difficult relation between the oldest philosophical question of being and the question of sex and so these are books which are very precisely focused and thin books if we take Slavoj I think Slavoj since ever I met him and we met actually as undergraduates in if my memory holds well then this was in the fall of which is like years ago like in three years we will be celebrating the anniversary this is my longest standing friendship and what a friendship it is and I think that since ever I met Slavoj he has been writing one single book okay it's whenever a certain amount of material adds up then he cuts it and wraps it up as a book and there they have been some whatever nobody nobody counts them any longer I don't think he knows how many there are so there is a very different style you write a single text and you then you cut it at some at some points and this text goes is not quite focused but goes in all kinds of directions so there's a very different quality to this because all his texts are like a tapestry the tapestry which give references to the hardest philosophical questions in the philosophical tradition and on the other hand to what may seem to be the ephemeral latest phenomena in popular culture and everything in between so this tapestry quality this spreading out quality and okay if you have these big two modernist authors on the one hand James Joyce on the other hand Beckett you know that Joyce was always adding his exuberant this is like Slavoj's style Alenka's style is the style of reduction reduction and focusing to the minimal to the absolute core okay I will just give a cue I mean my function here is just a brief introduction and the first cue would be precisely this intersection between sexuality and ontology Slavoj this is what both books are about and Slavoj adds to this the question of political economy another focus so I think first Alenka's book What IS Sex? I think the biggest one of the biggest qualities of this book is that it very successfully thwarts all the expectations raised by the title like everybody somehow the title gives an expectation finally we will learn what is sex or there will be juicy stories there will be examination of various sexual practices social repercussions of sexuality etc. etc. the proliferation of sexual meanings but actually what we find instead is a very stern austere dealing with very abstract questions a core a certain something that stands at the core of sexuality the question of being the question of one and these are two oldest philosophical categories philosophy started by Parmenides positing this first philosophical thesis being is one the question of being the question of one the question of negativity the question of a minus the question of excess so instead of proliferation of all possible sexual meanings we have a reduction of them reduction of sexuality to something meaningless at its core so my first cue would be simply this these abstract philosophical categories being, one, negativity why how come they have a relation to sexuality how come what is the what is the point where do you see the possible mapping between the most abstract philosophical question and where does sexuality come come in and this is a sort of cue for both because one part of Slavoj's book actually is a kind of response reaction to Alenka's book it was written after Alenka's book but they were published at roughly the same time so what is this one, being, negativity on the one hand the question of sex
subplot of like relation this difficult relation between the oldest philosophical question of being and the question of sex and so these are books which are very precisely focused and thin books if we take Slavoj I think Slavoj since ever I met him and we met actually as undergraduates in if my memory holds well then this was in the fall of which is like years ago like in three years we will be celebrating the anniversary this is my longest standing friendship and what a friendship it is and I think that since ever I met Slavoj he has been writing one single book okay it's whenever a certain amount of material adds up then he cuts it and wraps it up as a book and there they have been some whatever nobody nobody counts them any longer I don't think he knows how many there are so there is a very different style you write a single text and you then you cut it at some at some points and this text goes is not quite focused but goes in all kinds of directions so there's a very different quality to this because all his texts are like a tapestry the tapestry which give references to the hardest philosophical questions in the philosophical tradition and on the other hand to what may seem to be the ephemeral latest phenomena in popular culture and everything in between so this tapestry quality this spreading out quality and okay if you have these big two modernist authors on the one hand James Joyce on the other hand Beckett you know that Joyce was always adding his exuberant this is like Slavoj's style Alenka's style is the style of reduction reduction and focusing to the minimal to the absolute core okay I will just give a cue I mean my function here is just a brief introduction and the first cue would be precisely this intersection between sexuality and ontology Slavoj this is what both books are about and Slavoj adds to this the question of political economy another focus so I think first Alenka's book What IS Sex? I think the biggest one of the biggest qualities of this book is that it very successfully thwarts all the expectations raised by the title like everybody somehow the title gives an expectation finally we will learn what is sex or there will be juicy stories there will be examination of various sexual practices social repercussions of sexuality etc. etc. the proliferation of sexual meanings but actually what we find instead is a very stern austere dealing with very abstract questions a core a certain something that stands at the core of sexuality the question of being the question of one and these are two oldest philosophical categories philosophy started by Parmenides positing this first philosophical thesis being is one the question of being the question of one the question of negativity the question of a minus the question of excess so instead of proliferation of all possible sexual meanings we have a reduction of them reduction of sexuality to something meaningless at its core so my first cue would be simply this these abstract philosophical categories being, one, negativity why how come they have a relation to sexuality how come what is the what is the point where do you see the possible mapping between the most abstract philosophical question and where does sexuality come come in and this is a sort of cue for both because one part of Slavoj's book actually is a kind of response reaction to Alenka's book it was written after Alenka's book but they were published at roughly the same time so what is this one, being, negativity on the one hand the question of sex
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and sexual difference on the other how do these two domains of pure philosophy and this take on sexuality that we have in psychoanalysis how do they come together and Alenka please first okay thank you and thank you all for coming here yeah I couldn't help noticing when you made this Joyce-Beckett comparison that actually the title of Slavoj's book nevertheless comes from Beckett it's a bit more no I don't know just to say a couple of things to what you opened as a discussion perhaps starting from the beginning of your introductory exposé which is the this kind of encounter of psychoanalysis and philosophy I think we are all work out of this conviction conviction that something happened to philosophy when psychoanalysis appeared so that and this something is was a kind of conceptual innovation and that philosophy cannot and should not simply pretend that nothing happened here so there was a certain kind of event that concerns philosophy as well now what is this event and why because okay there are still nevertheless many people who work in some sense with both fields and Lacan did inspire quite some philosophical readings and I think basically what I tried to do in this book with this emphasis on focus that you brought up also is to actually focus on two things that seem the most incompatible that is to say if you look into how philosophy usually if it does so adopts or appropriates psychoanalysis it can more or less digest everything and in Lacan there are lots of things like this from this notion of the concept of the other of truth of subjectivity of whatever the four discourses the political dimension all this but sex sexuality it is really usually something that is simply left out as something that philosophy finally doesn't knows what to do with and on the other hand so this is on the side of philosophy and if you look at the side of psychoanalysis it is ontology the word that is usually I mean that psychoanalysis doesn't really know what to do with and Lacan had some kind of really harsh words for ontology being the discourse of the master so I really tried to not really put these two together but actually cast them in the opposite camps namely cast the sexuality as the very philosophical problem of psychoanalysis and ontology to some extent as the core problem of sexuality as psychoanalysis kind of sees it so these were these kind of abstract stakes abstract stakes that Mladen mentioned and basically the the the argument there is that for Lacan what is interesting is that ontology as as this science of being qua being come
and sexual difference on the other how do these two domains of pure philosophy and this take on sexuality that we have in psychoanalysis how do they come together and Alenka please first okay thank you and thank you all for coming here yeah I couldn't help noticing when you made this Joyce-Beckett comparison that actually the title of Slavoj's book nevertheless comes from Beckett it's a bit more no I don't know just to say a couple of things to what you opened as a discussion perhaps starting from the beginning of your introductory exposé which is the this kind of encounter of psychoanalysis and philosophy I think we are all work out of this conviction conviction that something happened to philosophy when psychoanalysis appeared so that and this something is was a kind of conceptual innovation and that philosophy cannot and should not simply pretend that nothing happened here so there was a certain kind of event that concerns philosophy as well now what is this event and why because okay there are still nevertheless many people who work in some sense with both fields and Lacan did inspire quite some philosophical readings and I think basically what I tried to do in this book with this emphasis on focus that you brought up also is to actually focus on two things that seem the most incompatible that is to say if you look into how philosophy usually if it does so adopts or appropriates psychoanalysis it can more or less digest everything and in Lacan there are lots of things like this from this notion of the concept of the other of truth of subjectivity of whatever the four discourses the political dimension all this but sex sexuality it is really usually something that is simply left out as something that philosophy finally doesn't knows what to do with and on the other hand so this is on the side of philosophy and if you look at the side of psychoanalysis it is ontology the word that is usually I mean that psychoanalysis doesn't really know what to do with and Lacan had some kind of really harsh words for ontology being the discourse of the master so I really tried to not really put these two together but actually cast them in the opposite camps namely cast the sexuality as the very philosophical problem of psychoanalysis and ontology to some extent as the core problem of sexuality as psychoanalysis kind of sees it so these were these kind of abstract stakes abstract stakes that Mladen mentioned and basically the the the argument there is that for Lacan what is interesting is that ontology as as this science of being qua being come
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with come with a certain price this would be this kind of criticism of what philosophy does it comes with a certain price and this price is that it has to kind of obliterate or even stitch up a certain negativity that is part of being but is not reducible to being I mean it's not being nor no-being but it irreducibly it belongs to it so it's you have a slightly different story than for example in Heidegger when you have the story that philosophy is a forgetting history of philosophy is a kind of forgetting of being here it's the forgetting of something in being which is not fully being and the importance of this negativity of this something is precisely that while not being fully being and Lacan calls this the real as different from being precisely it nevertheless affects the laws of being and its appearing so it's not this kind of a simple neutral negativity but it's a negativity that is very much inscribed into what appears as what is
with come with a certain price this would be this kind of criticism of what philosophy does it comes with a certain price and this price is that it has to kind of obliterate or even stitch up a certain negativity that is part of being but is not reducible to being I mean it's not being nor no-being but it irreducibly it belongs to it so it's you have a slightly different story than for example in Heidegger when you have the story that philosophy is a forgetting history of philosophy is a kind of forgetting of being here it's the forgetting of something in being which is not fully being and the importance of this negativity of this something is precisely that while not being fully being and Lacan calls this the real as different from being precisely it nevertheless affects the laws of being and its appearing so it's not this kind of a simple neutral negativity but it's a negativity that is very much inscribed into what appears as what is
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there and so what was really important for me to put it in a kind of a nutshell is that this is not simply about a certain dimension precious dimension that was kind of let out by philosophy and that psychoanalysis discovers and now protect or is the guardian of it because it cannot speak for itself the crucial turnaround turnaround is I think this main thesis of psychoanalysis that this dimension very much speaks it speaks and is inherent into everything that is out there but we have to know how to listen to it to recognize it and to like work with it so and in this way then we can perhaps later on but I won't go into this now come into this what I referred to as this short circuit between ontology and epistemology because the notion where these things come together is precisely the notion of the unconscious which is not simply the opposite of conscious it's not some container of some deeply refreshed thoughts but it's precisely a very precise formal structure in psychoanalysis which is a structure of knowing it's not simply not knowing it is knowing but precisely a knowledge that can never be of this kind of immediate kind so this just kind of general way of saying what is the main argument of my book Slavoj I will approach this from another perspective incidentally I'm grateful to the lady who introduced us I just want to make an obvious self-critical remark I was introduced as this, that and psychoanalyst please I talk all the time can you imagine me to sit there and listen patiently to another person for more than seconds whatever no no no not that okay let me go on I will try to formulate what you were approaching in a much nastier way but don't be afraid no big trigger warnings are needed although for some of you it may be problematic but please take very naively and seriously what I will say this how sexuality is a not a threat to ontology but signals an inherent self-blockade self-impediment in the order of being look I'm sorry if some of you will be wounded I asked myself inquiring with friends who know more than me about it what would have been a zero level most elementary shot in standard male chauvinist hardcore pornography and different people came with the same answer it's a very specific shot woman lying on her back with her legs up spread in front you see in close-up because the camera is close to that point the guy penetrating her but there is almost always another feature which is absolutely crucial between her thighs legs in the air you always see in the background her face breaking the basic rule of fiction cinema where you know an actor if it's not a point of view shot is not allowed to look into the camera she is addressing you or me or the spectator trying to demonstrate yes I'm really enjoying of this stop trigger warning no dirty stuff what interests me in this scene so much is first how wrong it is the standard critical notion that a hardcore pornography objectivizes instrumentalizes the woman it's exactly the contrary in most of the movies I was told I'm talking about this short minutes just a copulation you even don't see the man's face he is just an instrument his point is to have the erection and bam bam do the work the only one treated as subject in this totally elementary sense reflection and also the one who explodes the closed space it's not
there and so what was really important for me to put it in a kind of a nutshell is that this is not simply about a certain dimension precious dimension that was kind of let out by philosophy and that psychoanalysis discovers and now protect or is the guardian of it because it cannot speak for itself the crucial turnaround turnaround is I think this main thesis of psychoanalysis that this dimension very much speaks it speaks and is inherent into everything that is out there but we have to know how to listen to it to recognize it and to like work with it so and in this way then we can perhaps later on but I won't go into this now come into this what I referred to as this short circuit between ontology and epistemology because the notion where these things come together is precisely the notion of the unconscious which is not simply the opposite of conscious it's not some container of some deeply refreshed thoughts but it's precisely a very precise formal structure in psychoanalysis which is a structure of knowing it's not simply not knowing it is knowing but precisely a knowledge that can never be of this kind of immediate kind so this just kind of general way of saying what is the main argument of my book Slavoj I will approach this from another perspective incidentally I'm grateful to the lady who introduced us I just want to make an obvious self-critical remark I was introduced as this, that and psychoanalyst please I talk all the time can you imagine me to sit there and listen patiently to another person for more than seconds whatever no no no not that okay let me go on I will try to formulate what you were approaching in a much nastier way but don't be afraid no big trigger warnings are needed although for some of you it may be problematic but please take very naively and seriously what I will say this how sexuality is a not a threat to ontology but signals an inherent self-blockade self-impediment in the order of being look I'm sorry if some of you will be wounded I asked myself inquiring with friends who know more than me about it what would have been a zero level most elementary shot in standard male chauvinist hardcore pornography and different people came with the same answer it's a very specific shot woman lying on her back with her legs up spread in front you see in close-up because the camera is close to that point the guy penetrating her but there is almost always another feature which is absolutely crucial between her thighs legs in the air you always see in the background her face breaking the basic rule of fiction cinema where you know an actor if it's not a point of view shot is not allowed to look into the camera she is addressing you or me or the spectator trying to demonstrate yes I'm really enjoying of this stop trigger warning no dirty stuff what interests me in this scene so much is first how wrong it is the standard critical notion that a hardcore pornography objectivizes instrumentalizes the woman it's exactly the contrary in most of the movies I was told I'm talking about this short minutes just a copulation you even don't see the man's face he is just an instrument his point is to have the erection and bam bam do the work the only one treated as subject in this totally elementary sense reflection and also the one who explodes the closed space it's not
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just the two of them making love and I observe them no one of them is subjectivized and directly addresses me is the woman now to avoid a misunderstanding I am a feminist and my point here is not oh so it's okay women are subjectivized no this subjectivization is a fake which is in a way even much more brutal and humiliating for the woman than for the man but the point that I like here is that I don't see this minimal constellation as some kind of perversion of proper sexuality where it's always something like this in sexual act the couple is never alone it's never my god now I'm with the person whom I'm in love blah blah and it's just the two of us there is always a third element a gaze imagined a fantasy element and so on which is incidentally also
just the two of them making love and I observe them no one of them is subjectivized and directly addresses me is the woman now to avoid a misunderstanding I am a feminist and my point here is not oh so it's okay women are subjectivized no this subjectivization is a fake which is in a way even much more brutal and humiliating for the woman than for the man but the point that I like here is that I don't see this minimal constellation as some kind of perversion of proper sexuality where it's always something like this in sexual act the couple is never alone it's never my god now I'm with the person whom I'm in love blah blah and it's just the two of us there is always a third element a gaze imagined a fantasy element and so on which is incidentally also
Slavoj Žižek
why it's totally wrong to claim that hardcore pornography meant for men is simply a masturbatory device no I don't identify certainly not with that poor anonymous guys who is doing the hard work I identify with my pure gaze I'm really kind of almost Cartesian subject who is just looking for the confirmation of being of jouissance like it is really jouissance is there and so it's never just MF this is one of the ways to read what Lacan says about there is no sexual relationship or sexual difference it's not difference between the sexes it's something the difference is something to be added to it I as a viewer am that plus added to it and so just so what has this to do this the philosophical content of this vulgar example is simply the basic reflexivity of being you never get an immediate full enjoyment where all the differences disappear and so on and so on there is always a complication which has to be filled in by fantasy fantasy in psychoanalysis is not oh I would like to sleep with that girl man whatever and I cannot get him her so I fantasize about it no the problem of fantasy is the opposite one what do I have to think dream about when I do make love with him her the idea is that it's never the two of us alone something is always added and now let me make a crazy jump so that I don't take too much time this LGBTQ topic the aspect there and you find this in her book more than in mine that attracts all of us is the mysterious plus you know LGBTQ+ we claim that it's wrong to read this plus in a nominalist empirical way like you know there are so many forms of gender identities or sexual identities we will never cover them all so we should be modest my god what if we miss some version so let's add a plus signaling we are modest it's not all our speculative thesis is no plus is not just this plus is a you can be also a plus directly as she develops in her book not in this book because this is another text but okay I treat you the way Mladen treated me you are also I think deeply writing one and the same book and so on okay no is that the formula of difference is M plus a woman is plus which incidentally doesn't mean she is less than man but on the contrary that she is more and that's the mystery I'm so sad we don't have more time because we will have to answer to your stupid questions whatever but the point is this idea that you take something that appears just as an undefined excess and you say no this excess surplus as such as such it can exist and so just if you allow me one thing what forms does this excess take this excess you already mentioned it or you Mladen I forgot who the Lacanian name for it would be plus-de-jouir surplus enjoyment like in that I'm apologize in advance tasteless scene scene, s-c-e-n-e not s-i-n that I evoked the plus is the gaze the plus this plus has to be here this is the surplus enjoyment of the scene there and now let me make and then I stop the last concluding remark with regard to an event which goes on now and which I think should be taken very seriously I consider it a great revolution potentially you know this big let's call it naively feminine awakening women coming out we were harassed and so on and so on but I hope you will agree with me that the danger is that among other things and I am grateful to Mladen he noticed this when we had the same shitty round table yesterday in New York that that this will regress into yet another case of the of political correctness at its worst where what justifies you what gives credibility authority to your word is to proclaim the status of victimhood you know to be listened to seriously in this times you have to proclaim that in some sense you're a victim if we will follow just this path it's not enough we will have to find especially not we for them women to much more actively translate this victimhood experience not enjoying being victims but of course it's an obscene enjoyment non-acknowledged enjoyment but translate this into an active political stance so that's this difficult point how when Lacanians when we deal with ideology it's always even if it's the most ascetic sacrificing move look for hidden enjoyment for surplus enjoyment where and how an ideological edifice or practice as it were bribes you I've spoken too long I'm sorry okay I have I have two questions one for each and then we go to the questions by the audience which we did it in a Stalinist way he has questions there it was all censored you know and so on so that no no no I'm the censor I'm the censor Stalinism is over you notice the three seats here you will not hear about them they are already on their way to Gulag but okay let's go it's okay I have a brief question for Alenka or actually I just repeat a question we had a discussion about her book in Chicago last week and one student in the audience said okay I respect this theoretical work but you are taking all the fun out of sex and Alenka adamantly said yes this is what I'm doing so okay are you taking all the fun out of sex yes and I'm proud of this achievement because I think part of the way precisely in which I mean okay this is also to some extent a Foucauldian point and I kind of counteract it in another way part of the way in which precisely sexuality is being in fact exploited and subjected to all kinds of constraints via it is precisely by this idea that there is something inherently kind of non-problematically liberating about sexuality and precisely by this kind of injunction to produce sexual meanings to recognize you have sometimes this still very bizarre image that Freud was actually somebody who discovered sexual
why it's totally wrong to claim that hardcore pornography meant for men is simply a masturbatory device no I don't identify certainly not with that poor anonymous guys who is doing the hard work I identify with my pure gaze I'm really kind of almost Cartesian subject who is just looking for the confirmation of being of jouissance like it is really jouissance is there and so it's never just MF this is one of the ways to read what Lacan says about there is no sexual relationship or sexual difference it's not difference between the sexes it's something the difference is something to be added to it I as a viewer am that plus added to it and so just so what has this to do this the philosophical content of this vulgar example is simply the basic reflexivity of being you never get an immediate full enjoyment where all the differences disappear and so on and so on there is always a complication which has to be filled in by fantasy fantasy in psychoanalysis is not oh I would like to sleep with that girl man whatever and I cannot get him her so I fantasize about it no the problem of fantasy is the opposite one what do I have to think dream about when I do make love with him her the idea is that it's never the two of us alone something is always added and now let me make a crazy jump so that I don't take too much time this LGBTQ topic the aspect there and you find this in her book more than in mine that attracts all of us is the mysterious plus you know LGBTQ+ we claim that it's wrong to read this plus in a nominalist empirical way like you know there are so many forms of gender identities or sexual identities we will never cover them all so we should be modest my god what if we miss some version so let's add a plus signaling we are modest it's not all our speculative thesis is no plus is not just this plus is a you can be also a plus directly as she develops in her book not in this book because this is another text but okay I treat you the way Mladen treated me you are also I think deeply writing one and the same book and so on okay no is that the formula of difference is M plus a woman is plus which incidentally doesn't mean she is less than man but on the contrary that she is more and that's the mystery I'm so sad we don't have more time because we will have to answer to your stupid questions whatever but the point is this idea that you take something that appears just as an undefined excess and you say no this excess surplus as such as such it can exist and so just if you allow me one thing what forms does this excess take this excess you already mentioned it or you Mladen I forgot who the Lacanian name for it would be plus-de-jouir surplus enjoyment like in that I'm apologize in advance tasteless scene scene, s-c-e-n-e not s-i-n that I evoked the plus is the gaze the plus this plus has to be here this is the surplus enjoyment of the scene there and now let me make and then I stop the last concluding remark with regard to an event which goes on now and which I think should be taken very seriously I consider it a great revolution potentially you know this big let's call it naively feminine awakening women coming out we were harassed and so on and so on but I hope you will agree with me that the danger is that among other things and I am grateful to Mladen he noticed this when we had the same shitty round table yesterday in New York that that this will regress into yet another case of the of political correctness at its worst where what justifies you what gives credibility authority to your word is to proclaim the status of victimhood you know to be listened to seriously in this times you have to proclaim that in some sense you're a victim if we will follow just this path it's not enough we will have to find especially not we for them women to much more actively translate this victimhood experience not enjoying being victims but of course it's an obscene enjoyment non-acknowledged enjoyment but translate this into an active political stance so that's this difficult point how when Lacanians when we deal with ideology it's always even if it's the most ascetic sacrificing move look for hidden enjoyment for surplus enjoyment where and how an ideological edifice or practice as it were bribes you I've spoken too long I'm sorry okay I have I have two questions one for each and then we go to the questions by the audience which we did it in a Stalinist way he has questions there it was all censored you know and so on so that no no no I'm the censor I'm the censor Stalinism is over you notice the three seats here you will not hear about them they are already on their way to Gulag but okay let's go it's okay I have a brief question for Alenka or actually I just repeat a question we had a discussion about her book in Chicago last week and one student in the audience said okay I respect this theoretical work but you are taking all the fun out of sex and Alenka adamantly said yes this is what I'm doing so okay are you taking all the fun out of sex yes and I'm proud of this achievement because I think part of the way precisely in which I mean okay this is also to some extent a Foucauldian point and I kind of counteract it in another way part of the way in which precisely sexuality is being in fact exploited and subjected to all kinds of constraints via it is precisely by this idea that there is something inherently kind of non-problematically liberating about sexuality and precisely by this kind of injunction to produce sexual meanings to recognize you have sometimes this still very bizarre image that Freud was actually somebody who discovered sexual
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meanings behind everything it was actually
meanings behind everything it was actually
Slavoj Žižek
the other way around it was not that he didn't discover sexuality as the ultimate answer beyond all these meanings but as the ultimate question because it's precisely where you so the I think in some way you could say that the very the also the both psychological philosophical and political stakes of psychoanalysis lie precisely there where it is capable of cutting this kind of fluent circulation of meaning feeding all this kind of not only fantasies but precisely interrupting this flow and this juicy part of the the affair which kind of feed all kinds of social and other fantasies so yeah it is not only my achievement I guess that Lacan already I mean the formulas of sexuality I mean it is where can you get more abstract or more kind of deep into the logic and mathematics than with sex I mean this is somehow already written into Lacan but I think it is important not simply to reduce it to this point of impasse and impossibility which however as such is irreducible so I think that there are both moves the kind of but yeah meaning and this kind of enjoyment in innuendo is not exactly what is what psychoanalysis is there to promote or to promote okay Slavoj I have to ask you about this last part of your book I mean sexuality and ontology are already strange bedfellows if you add to this political economy makes it even stranger so why this triad I mean how do you see then the function of political economy in relation to the first two two things ontology and sexuality and you make this ups or oops or whatever triad like the universal ontology the particular sexuation the singular political economy critique of political economy how do you see the relation between the three what is the point of the third one being added to the first two this is a beautiful question and I'm tempted to say let's make a short break and then you return and we go on for three hours no because you touch the core of my book again I don't want to be too boring here so as which of you was it I forgot already indicated that crucial for Lacan's notion of plus-de-jouir surplus enjoyment enjoyment found in the very renunciation to enjoyment you know Lacan always proclaimed that anxiety is authentic okay but all the topic of sacrifice there was something fake in it for Lacan there is always a secret surplus enjoyment in renunciation itself so I would maybe like to give you one simple example which is in my book if I remember it correctly a friend of mine from Slovenia who works here in the states told me that once towards the end of the day he went to a Walmart store and noticed something very strange there it was
the other way around it was not that he didn't discover sexuality as the ultimate answer beyond all these meanings but as the ultimate question because it's precisely where you so the I think in some way you could say that the very the also the both psychological philosophical and political stakes of psychoanalysis lie precisely there where it is capable of cutting this kind of fluent circulation of meaning feeding all this kind of not only fantasies but precisely interrupting this flow and this juicy part of the the affair which kind of feed all kinds of social and other fantasies so yeah it is not only my achievement I guess that Lacan already I mean the formulas of sexuality I mean it is where can you get more abstract or more kind of deep into the logic and mathematics than with sex I mean this is somehow already written into Lacan but I think it is important not simply to reduce it to this point of impasse and impossibility which however as such is irreducible so I think that there are both moves the kind of but yeah meaning and this kind of enjoyment in innuendo is not exactly what is what psychoanalysis is there to promote or to promote okay Slavoj I have to ask you about this last part of your book I mean sexuality and ontology are already strange bedfellows if you add to this political economy makes it even stranger so why this triad I mean how do you see then the function of political economy in relation to the first two two things ontology and sexuality and you make this ups or oops or whatever triad like the universal ontology the particular sexuation the singular political economy critique of political economy how do you see the relation between the three what is the point of the third one being added to the first two this is a beautiful question and I'm tempted to say let's make a short break and then you return and we go on for three hours no because you touch the core of my book again I don't want to be too boring here so as which of you was it I forgot already indicated that crucial for Lacan's notion of plus-de-jouir surplus enjoyment enjoyment found in the very renunciation to enjoyment you know Lacan always proclaimed that anxiety is authentic okay but all the topic of sacrifice there was something fake in it for Lacan there is always a secret surplus enjoyment in renunciation itself so I would maybe like to give you one simple example which is in my book if I remember it correctly a friend of mine from Slovenia who works here in the states told me that once towards the end of the day he went to a Walmart store and noticed something very strange there it was
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toward the he noticed near the exit to the store many of those trolleys how do you
toward the he noticed near the exit to the store many of those trolleys how do you
Slavoj Žižek
put merchandise full of commodities merchandise but just left standing there and he asked the persons working there what's going on and they told him this is mostly the
put merchandise full of commodities merchandise but just left standing there and he asked the persons working there what's going on and they told him this is mostly the
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new impoverished middle class they were so attached to the ritual of
new impoverished middle class they were so attached to the ritual of
Slavoj Žižek
shopping in a megastore supermarket that they go there the whole family they go through the entire ritual of shopping and when it's full that
shopping in a megastore supermarket that they go there the whole family they go through the entire ritual of shopping and when it's full that
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trolley they simply leave it there because what gives them pleasure is just the process you know and so it's a nice example of how what remains there is surplus enjoyment without even enjoyment so the problem the point is as we all know this is a very primitive example of shopping that you just you don't just shop to get
trolley they simply leave it there because what gives them pleasure is just the process you know and so it's a nice example of how what remains there is surplus enjoyment without even enjoyment so the problem the point is as we all know this is a very primitive example of shopping that you just you don't just shop to get
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what you need it can be almost more important the very procedure of shopping at least I admit this for example that's why I have big as they say in California attitude problems with Amazon dot com because for me I like to go when I'm here to Harvard Bookstore not coop this is a class struggle here progressive Harvard versus reactionary coop and you know part of the I'm sorry to use this stupid Californian terms but part of the experience of it is precise precise precisely the process of shopping and okay I will now condense it very much what happens in capitalism is something unique although this destabilizing structure of a surplus and let me tell you very briefly another example and then I stop from my book which is my favorite if you ask me for the favorite pages from my book I think it's where I talk about Thomas Aquinas if you want to learn about perversities of enjoyment turn to theology they are full of it no he asks in one of his texts Thomas Aquinas will people who are in heaven the good guys will they be able to see also suffering in hell and the answer is it must be yes because they will know much more they will be all knowing so why should this be prohibited to them then of course he Thomas Aquinas is honest enough to raise the obvious question but isn't there some obscenity at work here will it not how can if they are good honest people how can bring them how can a view of others suffering terribly how can it bring them satisfaction and instead of admitting this perversity Aquinas cheats here no his answer is they are not really enjoying suffering in hell they are really enjoying the greatness of divine justice you know and so on of course we should claim no and the here you have surplus enjoyment at its purest even if you have all you want all the honey or whatever although with sex is more ambiguous do you remember Mladen you told me this
what you need it can be almost more important the very procedure of shopping at least I admit this for example that's why I have big as they say in California attitude problems with Amazon dot com because for me I like to go when I'm here to Harvard Bookstore not coop this is a class struggle here progressive Harvard versus reactionary coop and you know part of the I'm sorry to use this stupid Californian terms but part of the experience of it is precise precise precisely the process of shopping and okay I will now condense it very much what happens in capitalism is something unique although this destabilizing structure of a surplus and let me tell you very briefly another example and then I stop from my book which is my favorite if you ask me for the favorite pages from my book I think it's where I talk about Thomas Aquinas if you want to learn about perversities of enjoyment turn to theology they are full of it no he asks in one of his texts Thomas Aquinas will people who are in heaven the good guys will they be able to see also suffering in hell and the answer is it must be yes because they will know much more they will be all knowing so why should this be prohibited to them then of course he Thomas Aquinas is honest enough to raise the obvious question but isn't there some obscenity at work here will it not how can if they are good honest people how can bring them how can a view of others suffering terribly how can it bring them satisfaction and instead of admitting this perversity Aquinas cheats here no his answer is they are not really enjoying suffering in hell they are really enjoying the greatness of divine justice you know and so on of course we should claim no and the here you have surplus enjoyment at its purest even if you have all you want all the honey or whatever although with sex is more ambiguous do you remember Mladen you told me this
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story wasn't there an Italian nun about a year ago who was asked aren't you sorry of being a nun like you miss sex and she gave a wonderful answer that when I was younger I had sex but isn't it that we can expect from God imagine sex but imagine sex multiplied even greater pleasure and this will be heaven and so on no so obviously it doesn't work it has the same role as that gaze in hardcore pornography obviously you need the surplus of seeing others suffering to enjoy fully heaven and something like this is capitalist economy as they say this the version in capitalism it's not only that I should win it's that the other guy should
story wasn't there an Italian nun about a year ago who was asked aren't you sorry of being a nun like you miss sex and she gave a wonderful answer that when I was younger I had sex but isn't it that we can expect from God imagine sex but imagine sex multiplied even greater pleasure and this will be heaven and so on no so obviously it doesn't work it has the same role as that gaze in hardcore pornography obviously you need the surplus of seeing others suffering to enjoy fully heaven and something like this is capitalist economy as they say this the version in capitalism it's not only that I should win it's that the other guy should
Slavoj Žižek
lose you know and me enjoying in that and then I imagine a scene which I really like I'm proud of it of imagine hell we all know what is hell a place where they have fire only to give good barbecues you drink you eat you copulate all the time and I imagine it like this it's wonderful all the time but like once a week devil comes as said guys I know we have fun but I learned from my friend God up there that now we will be displayed to people in paradise please pretend now that you are suffering and people say oh oh oh and then I will tell you when they close the window and we can go on and so on you know so now a little bit more seriously this is capitalism is something tremendous Marx admired it it's the first system which directly used as its basic machinery something that all previous systems experienced as a threat the big motive of all traditional ontologists even in sex is you know the balance of masculinum femininum how to pre how to prevent the excess how to maintain the stability capitalism thrives of instability but today so that I don't talk too much just concluding comical event I love it today something strange is happening with this tensions you know prohibition which gives you a surplus enjoyment and so on a kind of a collapsing of the opposite with our permissivity neutralizing their tension let me tell you the story I have a wife who is a chain smoker so we went recently went to a hotel in Skopje where my wife presented her new book Macedonia south of ex-Yugoslavia and of course the first question of my wife was can I smoke in the hotel room and she got a unique answer it's prohibited by the law and you have ashtrays a couple of them in the room then this paradox was even confirmed by I'm so sad I didn't want to get it boring I have it on my USB as an image you know the ashtrays that were there you know usually you have on the bottom of the ashtray if they are made of glass some image the image was the prohibited to smoke sign you know and I find this rather sad okay it looks nice it's a supreme joke you know but something is lost in the of the traditional economy of transgression because the tension is simply canceled and I wonder if up to some point Donald Trump doesn't function as that ashtray you know I stop okay we will have to finish at some I don't know five past seven or something so we ha-ha that was the idea that you will not have time to no no no no we're we're supposed to do the book signing and stuff and we have to be out of here before eight so I will okay I have selected a couple of questions but not avoiding the tough ones and I will start a many questions turn around precisely on the note on which you finished which is our beloved Donald Donald Trump and maybe first for Alenka the question is is political correctness responsible for the election of Donald Trump yeah I think it is but not not necessarily only in this simple way of understanding this claim which is that Trump or the people voting for him is a simple reaction to some kind of political correctness going too far or running crazy or something there is this of course but I think what is more responsible for electing of the Donald Trump is that for a very long time now the left has been fighting all the wrong battles and the the fact that political correctness was almost the only kind of political formula fight on the left or kind of cause on the left is I think what has caused very much the the kind of desertion of a certain base of readership which would be there where there other causes addressed in a certain other way so I think the the problem here is really deeper it's not simply the the moment you reduce the political struggle in this kind of fighting for certain rights and certain kinds of expression which of course is also important I'm not denying it but you kind of let go of a more fundamental fight fundamental in the sense of causing huge amount of social difficulties and in- injustices and poverty and you just think that you've done your job if you solved some of these nominal problem which can have some kind of performative effect I agree but still they do not they are far from addressing what is really the problem and this I think is part of what played in the hands of the election of Donald Trump yeah okay Slavoj I will not avoid the sort of critical note which are expressed in some questions and the simplest one is this one did you endorse Donald Trump I did on on in two interviews never in a written text but I still absolutely cling to it in what sense I know my god Trump is an abomination an ontological scandal ontological even but my wild hope was that the true problem and that's also why it's linked to what you said why why Trump won the catast- the true catastrophe is everybody knows this the the Democratic Party the way they dealt with Bernie Sanders the way they avoided the tough questions and even now it goes on I I don't have any doubt that Russian secret services were messing things up here my only only thing I would like to add here is that Americans you are doing it all the time I hope you are you just call it fight for democracy humanitarian help I mean I am not for Putin I am attacking him ferociously all the time but at one point I have had almost a sympathy for Putin when in an interview he said are you aware that there are a couple of hundred NGO financed in obscure way who are all here to undermine him and so on and so on just imagine us doing this to the United States so so I think nonetheless that basically this obsession with did Russians hack the election is here just precisely to avoid confronting the true deadlock the true question what to do with Bernie Sanders revolution and so on and so on and the big task of the left here it's clear all these new movements which are very important the women's awakening that I mention and so on and so on not to allow the media to turn it into a simple another moment of victims making their claim and so on in this depoliticized way and so on and so on to turn it into a problem so my point was only this one I hoped that only an imaginable thing like disgusting like Trump the president can introduce a certain dynamic especially to the center-left Democratic Party which may change things otherwise and
lose you know and me enjoying in that and then I imagine a scene which I really like I'm proud of it of imagine hell we all know what is hell a place where they have fire only to give good barbecues you drink you eat you copulate all the time and I imagine it like this it's wonderful all the time but like once a week devil comes as said guys I know we have fun but I learned from my friend God up there that now we will be displayed to people in paradise please pretend now that you are suffering and people say oh oh oh and then I will tell you when they close the window and we can go on and so on you know so now a little bit more seriously this is capitalism is something tremendous Marx admired it it's the first system which directly used as its basic machinery something that all previous systems experienced as a threat the big motive of all traditional ontologists even in sex is you know the balance of masculinum femininum how to pre how to prevent the excess how to maintain the stability capitalism thrives of instability but today so that I don't talk too much just concluding comical event I love it today something strange is happening with this tensions you know prohibition which gives you a surplus enjoyment and so on a kind of a collapsing of the opposite with our permissivity neutralizing their tension let me tell you the story I have a wife who is a chain smoker so we went recently went to a hotel in Skopje where my wife presented her new book Macedonia south of ex-Yugoslavia and of course the first question of my wife was can I smoke in the hotel room and she got a unique answer it's prohibited by the law and you have ashtrays a couple of them in the room then this paradox was even confirmed by I'm so sad I didn't want to get it boring I have it on my USB as an image you know the ashtrays that were there you know usually you have on the bottom of the ashtray if they are made of glass some image the image was the prohibited to smoke sign you know and I find this rather sad okay it looks nice it's a supreme joke you know but something is lost in the of the traditional economy of transgression because the tension is simply canceled and I wonder if up to some point Donald Trump doesn't function as that ashtray you know I stop okay we will have to finish at some I don't know five past seven or something so we ha-ha that was the idea that you will not have time to no no no no we're we're supposed to do the book signing and stuff and we have to be out of here before eight so I will okay I have selected a couple of questions but not avoiding the tough ones and I will start a many questions turn around precisely on the note on which you finished which is our beloved Donald Donald Trump and maybe first for Alenka the question is is political correctness responsible for the election of Donald Trump yeah I think it is but not not necessarily only in this simple way of understanding this claim which is that Trump or the people voting for him is a simple reaction to some kind of political correctness going too far or running crazy or something there is this of course but I think what is more responsible for electing of the Donald Trump is that for a very long time now the left has been fighting all the wrong battles and the the fact that political correctness was almost the only kind of political formula fight on the left or kind of cause on the left is I think what has caused very much the the kind of desertion of a certain base of readership which would be there where there other causes addressed in a certain other way so I think the the problem here is really deeper it's not simply the the moment you reduce the political struggle in this kind of fighting for certain rights and certain kinds of expression which of course is also important I'm not denying it but you kind of let go of a more fundamental fight fundamental in the sense of causing huge amount of social difficulties and in- injustices and poverty and you just think that you've done your job if you solved some of these nominal problem which can have some kind of performative effect I agree but still they do not they are far from addressing what is really the problem and this I think is part of what played in the hands of the election of Donald Trump yeah okay Slavoj I will not avoid the sort of critical note which are expressed in some questions and the simplest one is this one did you endorse Donald Trump I did on on in two interviews never in a written text but I still absolutely cling to it in what sense I know my god Trump is an abomination an ontological scandal ontological even but my wild hope was that the true problem and that's also why it's linked to what you said why why Trump won the catast- the true catastrophe is everybody knows this the the Democratic Party the way they dealt with Bernie Sanders the way they avoided the tough questions and even now it goes on I I don't have any doubt that Russian secret services were messing things up here my only only thing I would like to add here is that Americans you are doing it all the time I hope you are you just call it fight for democracy humanitarian help I mean I am not for Putin I am attacking him ferociously all the time but at one point I have had almost a sympathy for Putin when in an interview he said are you aware that there are a couple of hundred NGO financed in obscure way who are all here to undermine him and so on and so on just imagine us doing this to the United States so so I think nonetheless that basically this obsession with did Russians hack the election is here just precisely to avoid confronting the true deadlock the true question what to do with Bernie Sanders revolution and so on and so on and the big task of the left here it's clear all these new movements which are very important the women's awakening that I mention and so on and so on not to allow the media to turn it into a simple another moment of victims making their claim and so on in this depoliticized way and so on and so on to turn it into a problem so my point was only this one I hoped that only an imaginable thing like disgusting like Trump the president can introduce a certain dynamic especially to the center-left Democratic Party which may change things otherwise and
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we learned this sad lesson again and again from Europe
we learned this sad lesson again and again from Europe
Slavoj Žižek
otherwise we will have this very sad scene
otherwise we will have this very sad scene
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Alenka wrote about it very nicely how how insufficient this left-liberal reaction is we have all those wonderful jokes against Trump you know Jon Stewart John Oliver and so on and yes we are dying of laughter but Trump will be winning more and more and so on and so on it's a very sad situation but so there is no I'm disgusted at Trump just what I like in him is that he is did you notice this he is basically systematically ruining the the Republican Party it's total confusion there this is why I will go now even a step further in this situation now you should pray
Alenka wrote about it very nicely how how insufficient this left-liberal reaction is we have all those wonderful jokes against Trump you know Jon Stewart John Oliver and so on and yes we are dying of laughter but Trump will be winning more and more and so on and so on it's a very sad situation but so there is no I'm disgusted at Trump just what I like in him is that he is did you notice this he is basically systematically ruining the the Republican Party it's total confusion there this is why I will go now even a step further in this situation now you should pray
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that Trump doesn't get impeached why if he gets impeached you get Mike Pence which I'm sorry to tell you is much worse what I like with Trump is all this crazy like disgusting all this crazy inconsistencies like take a guy like Steve Bannon almost neo-fascist and so on but did you hear what was his reaction to tax plan of Republicans now he said this just helps the rich no we should do the opposite we should raise the taxes for the rich up to percent and so on this is our situation now this total ideological mess we in Europe feel it even worse in Europe a only today only a neo-fascist right dares among the serious political agents dares to advocate some this type of old welfare measures and so on and the opposite side if you want really the toughest austerity politics you need radical left in power that the sad experience of Syriza it was absolutely crucial for the left to do it if the right were to do it the left would organize demonstrations and so on to get Syriza implementing austerity politics means people have no organized form to protest they get totally and so on and so on and another thing with Trump is that beware that he is not an abomination he is part of the global change in capitalism where a new authoritarian and more and more openly obscene leadership is becoming the norm it's not only Trump I was told
that Trump doesn't get impeached why if he gets impeached you get Mike Pence which I'm sorry to tell you is much worse what I like with Trump is all this crazy like disgusting all this crazy inconsistencies like take a guy like Steve Bannon almost neo-fascist and so on but did you hear what was his reaction to tax plan of Republicans now he said this just helps the rich no we should do the opposite we should raise the taxes for the rich up to percent and so on this is our situation now this total ideological mess we in Europe feel it even worse in Europe a only today only a neo-fascist right dares among the serious political agents dares to advocate some this type of old welfare measures and so on and the opposite side if you want really the toughest austerity politics you need radical left in power that the sad experience of Syriza it was absolutely crucial for the left to do it if the right were to do it the left would organize demonstrations and so on to get Syriza implementing austerity politics means people have no organized form to protest they get totally and so on and so on and another thing with Trump is that beware that he is not an abomination he is part of the global change in capitalism where a new authoritarian and more and more openly obscene leadership is becoming the norm it's not only Trump I was told
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recently in Poland that their Jarosław Kaczyński the secret authority de facto ruler of Poland he was a couple of years ago asked by a journalist now that your party
recently in Poland that their Jarosław Kaczyński the secret authority de facto ruler of Poland he was a couple of years ago asked by a journalist now that your party
Slavoj Žižek
won what's your program and he gave if you are some from Poland here you will probably know I hope I will be pronouncing it correctly expression he says Teraz, kurwa, my which means now it's our turn to fuck the whore it's a very cheap expression from military like you know when you wait a line in a cheap brothel the guy before you finishes then you are on and what I find so depressing that this is the guy who claims to be strict partisan of moral majority highest and so on moral rules and when he was confronted by this on TV he repeatedly stuck to it I think this is not a simple inconsistency I think what Trump brings out is not simply an abomination of neoconservatives he is their truth and this gives us in all his obscenity and it's a unique chance for us if you are this if you are not then you will follow the path of these three guys when we take over that sorry now seriously that you know this term moral majority is so abused as if these are some conservative nuts and so on but sorry today in contrast to our youth when the radical left were saying those in power are pseudo-dignified let's use the F-word and so on now the neocons are getting more and more obscene using incredibly openly racist dirty language it's a unique opportunity and Bernie Sanders is already doing to claim of course not in a conservative sense but in the sense of simple human dignity sorry we are the true moral majority if this term has any meaning we are for simple decency and so on that was I think also the secret of Jeremiah Corbin's success I stop I stop I stop I talked too much all right majority of questions were actually aimed are for you Slavoj and just but you should make a choice no no I will just I want us to finish on a maybe different political note and I'll take just this one last question which is we just passed the hundredth anniversary of the Russian Revolution there seemed to be relatively little recognition of this momentous event why do you think that is and you have another book which came out this year about Lenin and the Russian Revolution can you perhaps say something about this how do you see the function the legacy of whatever something to be learned from the Russian Revolution now I think we should first I still think to put it very simply I still think that October Revolution was not simply a coup d'état of Bolsheviks an elite there it was an authentic event an explosion and I think it was at the same time an authentic tragedy I don't believe in those Trotskyist or others dreams you know if only Lenin were to survive three years and make a pact with Trotsky it would have been freedom democracy and so on so I think that what we should focus or we should follow and that's the point of my introduction to Lenin's late writings this despair of the last two years of Lenin where while being fully responsible for the state of things with Stalin and so on gaining power he it became clearer and clearer to him that something went terribly wrong and so that okay read the book so that I don't lose time I would like to point this out you also point this me you know that famous Lenin's so-called testament advising asking the Politburo to remove Stalin today especially and also in view of Trump and other obscenities we should be attentive to this along the lines of what I mentioned moral majority and so on read it Lenin's reproach to Stalin is not wrong political line whatever it is Stalin doesn't have good manners he is too rude too brutal and so on and so on this is a beautiful point late Lenin coming to this simple ethical point we need proper manners and so this is not as naive as it may appear because rudeness always served a certain function and I say this as somebody who still count myself as a communist in communist discourse for example the last obscenity trigger warning but it's not a good one you know when the Great Leap Forward in China this attempted fast industrialization turned wrong terribly and there were millions of death Mao convoked a meeting in Lushan of party elite and it was supposed to be a self-critical meeting and in his speech and it you find it on all those Marxist sites official it's part of official texts you know Mao gives a speech admitting yes we are guilty we committed mistakes we should admit it but then the last five lines the conclusion of a speech ruins everything where Mao says something like I am the first one responsible so I have to admit my responsibility it's like to make it easier to release and then come the last lines literally I quote them if you feel the need to shit shit you will feel better if you feel the need to I'm sorry in advance to fart do it it will make feel you better that's how we should do our self-criticism now I find this pretty horrible and the key point is to understand the rhetoric why when he was talking about millions death where does this need
won what's your program and he gave if you are some from Poland here you will probably know I hope I will be pronouncing it correctly expression he says Teraz, kurwa, my which means now it's our turn to fuck the whore it's a very cheap expression from military like you know when you wait a line in a cheap brothel the guy before you finishes then you are on and what I find so depressing that this is the guy who claims to be strict partisan of moral majority highest and so on moral rules and when he was confronted by this on TV he repeatedly stuck to it I think this is not a simple inconsistency I think what Trump brings out is not simply an abomination of neoconservatives he is their truth and this gives us in all his obscenity and it's a unique chance for us if you are this if you are not then you will follow the path of these three guys when we take over that sorry now seriously that you know this term moral majority is so abused as if these are some conservative nuts and so on but sorry today in contrast to our youth when the radical left were saying those in power are pseudo-dignified let's use the F-word and so on now the neocons are getting more and more obscene using incredibly openly racist dirty language it's a unique opportunity and Bernie Sanders is already doing to claim of course not in a conservative sense but in the sense of simple human dignity sorry we are the true moral majority if this term has any meaning we are for simple decency and so on that was I think also the secret of Jeremiah Corbin's success I stop I stop I stop I talked too much all right majority of questions were actually aimed are for you Slavoj and just but you should make a choice no no I will just I want us to finish on a maybe different political note and I'll take just this one last question which is we just passed the hundredth anniversary of the Russian Revolution there seemed to be relatively little recognition of this momentous event why do you think that is and you have another book which came out this year about Lenin and the Russian Revolution can you perhaps say something about this how do you see the function the legacy of whatever something to be learned from the Russian Revolution now I think we should first I still think to put it very simply I still think that October Revolution was not simply a coup d'état of Bolsheviks an elite there it was an authentic event an explosion and I think it was at the same time an authentic tragedy I don't believe in those Trotskyist or others dreams you know if only Lenin were to survive three years and make a pact with Trotsky it would have been freedom democracy and so on so I think that what we should focus or we should follow and that's the point of my introduction to Lenin's late writings this despair of the last two years of Lenin where while being fully responsible for the state of things with Stalin and so on gaining power he it became clearer and clearer to him that something went terribly wrong and so that okay read the book so that I don't lose time I would like to point this out you also point this me you know that famous Lenin's so-called testament advising asking the Politburo to remove Stalin today especially and also in view of Trump and other obscenities we should be attentive to this along the lines of what I mentioned moral majority and so on read it Lenin's reproach to Stalin is not wrong political line whatever it is Stalin doesn't have good manners he is too rude too brutal and so on and so on this is a beautiful point late Lenin coming to this simple ethical point we need proper manners and so this is not as naive as it may appear because rudeness always served a certain function and I say this as somebody who still count myself as a communist in communist discourse for example the last obscenity trigger warning but it's not a good one you know when the Great Leap Forward in China this attempted fast industrialization turned wrong terribly and there were millions of death Mao convoked a meeting in Lushan of party elite and it was supposed to be a self-critical meeting and in his speech and it you find it on all those Marxist sites official it's part of official texts you know Mao gives a speech admitting yes we are guilty we committed mistakes we should admit it but then the last five lines the conclusion of a speech ruins everything where Mao says something like I am the first one responsible so I have to admit my responsibility it's like to make it easier to release and then come the last lines literally I quote them if you feel the need to shit shit you will feel better if you feel the need to I'm sorry in advance to fart do it it will make feel you better that's how we should do our self-criticism now I find this pretty horrible and the key point is to understand the rhetoric why when he was talking about millions death where does this need
unknown
to this extremely vulgar
to this extremely vulgar
Slavoj Žižek
metaphor come I think
metaphor come I think
unknown
I read Lenin as pointing in this direction I think again in contrast to fascism which was not a tragedy fascism is to simplify it an example of bad people promising that if they take power
I read Lenin as pointing in this direction I think again in contrast to fascism which was not a tragedy fascism is to simplify it an example of bad people promising that if they take power
unknown
they will do bad things and look at the miracle they really did this no and but in Stalinism was a genuine tragedy which is why in contrast to fascism dissidents is an inner dialectic of
they will do bad things and look at the miracle they really did this no and but in Stalinism was a genuine tragedy which is why in contrast to fascism dissidents is an inner dialectic of
Slavoj Žižek
this tragic turn of communism you don't have some marginal but nobody in Germany as far as I know accused Hitler in the same way as Trotsky accused Stalin of betraying the revolution I don't remember anyone accusing Hitler of this and now just to conclude I would like to praise your book which is there also to sign in your book on Voice and also in your works already decades ago you also point out and we developed it then together his wonderful book A Voice and Nothing More Mladen's I don't know if you included this there you know this basic difference between fascism and Stalinism fascism Hitler is a figure of voice Stalin is a figure of writing interpretation of sacred texts and so many other things follow for this just one example to amuse you and that's why I was laughing at her at you gently I was waiting for you at the beginning check it up on YouTube whenever a fascist leader makes a speech of course the people applaud but the leader just accepts the applause in Stalinism the leader simply joins the applause why because it's still this lecture message of enlightenment I'm ultimately one of you and so on it's totally different position another example I read this in Anne Applebaum's book on Gulag you know that every year in Gulag in the worst years on Stalin's birthday all the inmates were collected and each had to sign a telegram to Stalin wishing him happy okay it was a fake but you cannot even imagine the same thing in Nazism collecting all the Jews in Auschwitz and making them sign to him it was a totally different discourse and today more than ever when we have this liberal dismissal they are all the same no Stalinism was a nightmare totally but it's not the same again it was a tragedy from which we have to learn a lot it was a tragic twist maybe it was inevitable but to finish nonetheless again with you with Beckett you know like the lesson with Stalin with Stalinism is try again, fail again, fail better while this is definitely not the lesson what we should do with Hitler I would say so they told us to stop at like past at the latest so the prospect of revolution I mean there is a paradox in what you are saying because revolution in seemed to be the revolution precisely against established bourgeois state of things and against the bourgeois manners now we have to do the revolution in order to reintroduce the very notion of manners and dignity in public discourse it's a revolutionary revolutionary act is needed to get back to this very basic thing so you see what they are promising you no fun in sex just good manners and so on what you'll get from them so thank you very much we'll be there signing the and this is applause we applaud we applaud we learn our lesson you know how do you like
this tragic turn of communism you don't have some marginal but nobody in Germany as far as I know accused Hitler in the same way as Trotsky accused Stalin of betraying the revolution I don't remember anyone accusing Hitler of this and now just to conclude I would like to praise your book which is there also to sign in your book on Voice and also in your works already decades ago you also point out and we developed it then together his wonderful book A Voice and Nothing More Mladen's I don't know if you included this there you know this basic difference between fascism and Stalinism fascism Hitler is a figure of voice Stalin is a figure of writing interpretation of sacred texts and so many other things follow for this just one example to amuse you and that's why I was laughing at her at you gently I was waiting for you at the beginning check it up on YouTube whenever a fascist leader makes a speech of course the people applaud but the leader just accepts the applause in Stalinism the leader simply joins the applause why because it's still this lecture message of enlightenment I'm ultimately one of you and so on it's totally different position another example I read this in Anne Applebaum's book on Gulag you know that every year in Gulag in the worst years on Stalin's birthday all the inmates were collected and each had to sign a telegram to Stalin wishing him happy okay it was a fake but you cannot even imagine the same thing in Nazism collecting all the Jews in Auschwitz and making them sign to him it was a totally different discourse and today more than ever when we have this liberal dismissal they are all the same no Stalinism was a nightmare totally but it's not the same again it was a tragedy from which we have to learn a lot it was a tragic twist maybe it was inevitable but to finish nonetheless again with you with Beckett you know like the lesson with Stalin with Stalinism is try again, fail again, fail better while this is definitely not the lesson what we should do with Hitler I would say so they told us to stop at like past at the latest so the prospect of revolution I mean there is a paradox in what you are saying because revolution in seemed to be the revolution precisely against established bourgeois state of things and against the bourgeois manners now we have to do the revolution in order to reintroduce the very notion of manners and dignity in public discourse it's a revolutionary revolutionary act is needed to get back to this very basic thing so you see what they are promising you no fun in sex just good manners and so on what you'll get from them so thank you very much we'll be there signing the and this is applause we applaud we applaud we learn our lesson you know how do you like
unknown
Gulag do you like some warm sweater or whatever to survive in Siberia where you sorry sorry before I lead my authors offstage here I just would like to remind everyone if you
Gulag do you like some warm sweater or whatever to survive in Siberia where you sorry sorry before I lead my authors offstage here I just would like to remind everyone if you
Slavoj Žižek
already...
already...