Žižek and So On podcast - episode 2 with Slavoj Žižek
Interview · ŽIŽEK & SO ON PODCAST ·
2020-03-18 · 0:58:13 · 8,354 words
psychoanalysishegel-dialecticsideologycinema-art-culturesexuality-gendereveryday-life
Žižek argues that true love and political commitment require an irreducible gap where one's vocation remains primary, rendering the lover secondary yet essential. He applies a Hegelian framework to history and art, positing that contingency becomes retroactively necessary and that examples (like films or jokes) contain more truth than abstract ideas. He concludes by analyzing vulgar modern examples, such as a racist's dilemma or a pornographic actor's reliance on fantasy, to demonstrate the constitutive gap between bodily reality and the fantasy required for subjectivity.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 7
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Implied in the discussion of how historical necessity operates through contingent figures like Napoleon, rather than existing as an abstract force independent of contingent agents.
The quality of a work of art (like Shakespeare) that survives and is reinvented by different historical contexts, proving its universality is embedded in its specific concrete form.
A figure from Hegel's Phenomenology representing pure moral consciousness or asceticism, which Žižek uses to illustrate how staging an idea as an example reveals its inherent inconsistency.
The Lacanian insight that the gap between the body and fantasy is not a failure but a constitutive element of sexual subjectivity; one is never alone with the body.
The structural separation between love and vocation, or between bodily reality and fantasy, which must be maintained for either to function authentically.
as “materialism of the example”
The anti-Platonic view that 'there is more truth in an example than in the idea itself,' as the example reveals inconsistencies and truths dormant in the pure concept.
The Hegelian concept where a contingent event, once it occurs, is reinterpreted as having been necessary all along, rather than merely realizing a pre-existing historical necessity.
Stories he reaches for 1
A hypothetical story where a man slips on a banana peel, a lady helps him up, they hate each other, meet again to thank her, and fall in love; this contingent event retroactively makes one's entire life appear as leading up to this point.
“It is totally contingent but retroactively all your life appears as something leading up to this point.”
Works invoked 8
Hegel's work, specifically the section on 'pure moral consciousness' or 'beautiful soul,' which Žižek quotes to illustrate how examples reveal the inconsistency of ideas.
Antigone play
Mentioned alongside Hamlet as a work reinvented by every epoch, illustrating concrete universality.
What is Sex? book
A book co-authored with Alenka Zupančič, cited for its concise discussion on the contingency of love.
Hamlet play
Shakespeare's play, which Žižek argues is an 'open work of art' reinvented by every epoch, demonstrating concrete universality.
Rashomon film
A film by Akira Kurosawa, mentioned alongside 'Seven Samurai' as part of his favorite works.
Rhapsody film
A 1954 melodrama starring Elizabeth Taylor, used by Žižek to illustrate the paradox that true love requires maintaining a gap where one's vocation remains primary.
Akira Kurosawa's 1960 film adaptation of Hamset, starring Toshiro Mifune, cited by Žižek as a favorite example of 'concrete universality' in art.
Seven Samurai film
A film by Akira Kurosawa, mentioned alongside 'Rashomon' as part of his favorite works.
People invoked 22
Alain Weisman positive
A commenter (likely a journalist or writer) whose observation about a porn documentary scene is used by Žižek to illustrate the gap between reality and fantasy.
Jean-Pierre Dupuy positive
Described as a 'good friend' whose work on retroactive necessity and contingency Žižek frequently quotes.
Alenka Zupančič positive
A colleague and friend who co-wrote 'What is Sex?' with Žižek; he cites her work on the contingency of love and her new book on 'the end' as a key point.
King Vidor positive
The director of the film Rhapsody, described as a 'melodrama from early mid-60s, mid-50s' (likely a transcription error for mid-50s).
Jacques Lacan positive
Cited regarding the lesson that one is never alone with the body in sexuality, but always requires fantasy.
David Lynch positive
One of three directors Žižek analyzes using 'ridiculous' examples that self-destroy.
Daniel Dennett negative
A 'cognitivist' whose interpretation of Lincoln's intent (that he 'didn't know' what he was saying) is rejected by Žižek, who argues instead for the 'openness' of language and the emergence of thought from messiness.
Gwyneth Paltrow positive
An actress whose marketing of a 'vagina-scented' candle is used by Žižek as a 'vulgar' but serious example to analyze the functioning of political correctness.
Elizabeth Taylor positive
The star of the film Rhapsody, which Žižek uses to illustrate the paradox of love and vocation.
Toshirō Mifune positive
The actor in Kurosawa's Hamlet adaptation, playing the son of a rich man who returns to Japan.
George Hitchcock positive
One of three directors (along with Lynch and Kieślowski) Žižek analyzes using 'ridiculous' examples that self-destroy.
Cited by a guest speaker as using 'jugs' as an example of Forms, contrasting with Plato's 'chairs'.
Napoleon negative
Used as a counter-example to 'standard Marxist vulgarity'; Žižek argues against the view that Napoleon was merely a contingent figure realizing historical necessity.
Krzysztof Kieślowski positive
One of three directors Žižek analyzes using 'ridiculous' examples that self-destroy.
William Shakespeare positive
Cited as an example of 'concrete universality'; Žižek argues that understanding Shakespeare requires ignoring historical context to see how the work is an 'open work of art' reinvented by every epoch.
Akira Kurosawa positive
A film director whose adaptation of Hamlet ('Bad People Sleep Well') is cited by Žižek as a favorite example of cinematic greatness transcending context.
Andrei Tarkovsky positive
Mentioned as a possible fourth director whose films Žižek analyzes.
Plato negative
Žižek calls himself an 'anti-Platonist' in the context of examples, arguing against Plato's view that examples are imperfect copies of eternal Forms, asserting instead that examples contain more truth than the idea.
Abraham Lincoln negative
Cited via Daniel Dennett's cognitivist interpretation that Lincoln's famous quote about deceiving people was just a witty utterance without deep meaning, which Žižek disputes in favor of a Hegelian view of linguistic openness.
Sigmund Freud positive
Cited alongside Hegel and Lacan regarding the gap between the body and fantasy in sexuality.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
The primary philosophical influence; Žižek attributes to him the concepts of retroactive necessity, concrete universality, and the idea that examples reveal the truth of an idea.
Cited by a guest speaker alongside Heidegger regarding the use of 'hammers' as examples.
Transcript 106 turns
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This week on Žižek and so on, we hear from Žižek himself in the second half of our interview in which he talks more in depth about his thoughts surrounding love and the relationship between contingency and necessity. He speaks also about the importance of examples and jokes in his work as well as touching on things like Hegel, retroactivity, and the meaning of life. If you would like to hear the first half of the interview, it came out about a week ago and can be found on all podcast platforms and of course on our YouTube channel. Welcome back.
This week on Žižek and so on, we hear from Žižek himself in the second half of our interview in which he talks more in depth about his thoughts surrounding love and the relationship between contingency and necessity. He speaks also about the importance of examples and jokes in his work as well as touching on things like Hegel, retroactivity, and the meaning of life. If you would like to hear the first half of the interview, it came out about a week ago and can be found on all podcast platforms and of course on our YouTube channel. Welcome back.
Slavoj Žižek
This might be an obsession. This may be a social approach to society. I try to find elements of it of course. Maybe I'm too fast, I don't know, but when I'm accused of not understanding quantum physics, I don't like to boast but I can guarantee you that I know, almost ten books, friends I have are how should I put it ironically towards myself, real quantum physicists. They are not bluffing. No, the real thing. And I go through this with them, but you know where this, this, this impossibility to combine the two dimensions gets really interesting when I try to, sorry, when I try to transpose this into not just psychoanalytic topic but even personal life. For example, recently for a German, I think it was Philosophie Heute or whatever, some philosophical monthly magazine, they asked me a very naive question and I like naive questions, they're the most stupid ones, which means the most difficult to answer. What is, what makes life meaningful? What's the point of life? What makes it worth living? You know. And my point is, of course, at some, of course, it's the two things. On the one hand, the cause you dedicate your life to, it can be something, not just your job, that you really are in it. Traditional examples: if you are a fanatical science theorist, a politician, whatever. The cause, artist. And sexual love, private fulfillment. But then I complicate things when I say that although love is the ultimate point of personal happiness, you ruin everything if you put it on the top. Like, I will sacrifice my profession, my political cause for love. It appears vulgar. So it's the paradox of something which is absolutely crucial to your love, to your life, but it has to remain secondary. You shouldn't put it on the first place. Like I even use this melodramatic example referring I propose your readers to read it, sorry, you can download it for free now, I think it's even public domain, I think it's King Vidor melodrama from early mid-60s, mid-50s with Elizabeth Taylor, Rhapsody. She is a beauty and a guy who loves her first dedicates his life to her, abandons his career, it ends up in ruin. At the end, it's a more complex story. I just give you the point. They get together again and in when he finishes his studies, the night, not even the night, half an hour before his big concert, she tells him I don't love you, I'm abandoning you, you will have to do your concert on your own. Of course, half dead crying he does it, a triumph and then, sorry, he does it and then she comes back to him. But in true love, the message of true love is you mean everything to me but I'm ready to survive without you. You are not the top. That's why my ideal of love is almost a political love. I'm passionately in love, but if my partner, woman, man, whoever, makes the wrong choice politically, I'm, I'm ready to liquidate him. You see my point? It's an irreducible gap. You cannot make, if there is a choice to make, you have to choose not career in a deep sense but your vocation. Politics, art, whatever. You should never say to your lover I'm ready to sacrifice it for you. That means in some deeper sense paradoxically you betray love yourself. You don't prove your love in this way. Your colleague Zupančič speaks I think of this in the last chapter of What is Sex? pretty concisely about this sort of the contingency of love and making it something necessary, right? And that that's very much present in this sort of what you would call like the impossibility, right? The incompleteness of being. Yes, but you see now you made a good point because what unites and incidentally Alenka Zupančič now just published in Slovene, but this is just the first draft of a book that she will do in English, a wonderful new book on the end. The end as end of time, are we approaching apocalypse, all that topic, the end of history and so on and so on. And yes, I just talked, we often meet here, we are friends of course, and she made this point what you mentioned, I think that's the key of Hegel. Contingency to necessity. It's not just that necessity realizes itself through contingency. That's the standard Marxist vulgarity. Like, there is for example, this is the example of some Marxists. At the end of French Revolution, a passage was necessary from revolution as in some sense democratic collective reign to empire. But then Napoleon was the contingent person who realized it. Without Napoleon, probably there would have been another playing a different similar role. This is the usual logic. You have historical necessity which realizes itself in a contingent way. But I think Hegel's message, notion is much more radical. It's that we are in an open situation and something happens contingently, but once it happens it becomes retroactively necessary. My good friend, read him, we are good friends although we don't appear together, I often quote him, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, D-U-P-U-Y. He developed this in a wonderful way apropos of, of for example, Caesar
This might be an obsession. This may be a social approach to society. I try to find elements of it of course. Maybe I'm too fast, I don't know, but when I'm accused of not understanding quantum physics, I don't like to boast but I can guarantee you that I know, almost ten books, friends I have are how should I put it ironically towards myself, real quantum physicists. They are not bluffing. No, the real thing. And I go through this with them, but you know where this, this, this impossibility to combine the two dimensions gets really interesting when I try to, sorry, when I try to transpose this into not just psychoanalytic topic but even personal life. For example, recently for a German, I think it was Philosophie Heute or whatever, some philosophical monthly magazine, they asked me a very naive question and I like naive questions, they're the most stupid ones, which means the most difficult to answer. What is, what makes life meaningful? What's the point of life? What makes it worth living? You know. And my point is, of course, at some, of course, it's the two things. On the one hand, the cause you dedicate your life to, it can be something, not just your job, that you really are in it. Traditional examples: if you are a fanatical science theorist, a politician, whatever. The cause, artist. And sexual love, private fulfillment. But then I complicate things when I say that although love is the ultimate point of personal happiness, you ruin everything if you put it on the top. Like, I will sacrifice my profession, my political cause for love. It appears vulgar. So it's the paradox of something which is absolutely crucial to your love, to your life, but it has to remain secondary. You shouldn't put it on the first place. Like I even use this melodramatic example referring I propose your readers to read it, sorry, you can download it for free now, I think it's even public domain, I think it's King Vidor melodrama from early mid-60s, mid-50s with Elizabeth Taylor, Rhapsody. She is a beauty and a guy who loves her first dedicates his life to her, abandons his career, it ends up in ruin. At the end, it's a more complex story. I just give you the point. They get together again and in when he finishes his studies, the night, not even the night, half an hour before his big concert, she tells him I don't love you, I'm abandoning you, you will have to do your concert on your own. Of course, half dead crying he does it, a triumph and then, sorry, he does it and then she comes back to him. But in true love, the message of true love is you mean everything to me but I'm ready to survive without you. You are not the top. That's why my ideal of love is almost a political love. I'm passionately in love, but if my partner, woman, man, whoever, makes the wrong choice politically, I'm, I'm ready to liquidate him. You see my point? It's an irreducible gap. You cannot make, if there is a choice to make, you have to choose not career in a deep sense but your vocation. Politics, art, whatever. You should never say to your lover I'm ready to sacrifice it for you. That means in some deeper sense paradoxically you betray love yourself. You don't prove your love in this way. Your colleague Zupančič speaks I think of this in the last chapter of What is Sex? pretty concisely about this sort of the contingency of love and making it something necessary, right? And that that's very much present in this sort of what you would call like the impossibility, right? The incompleteness of being. Yes, but you see now you made a good point because what unites and incidentally Alenka Zupančič now just published in Slovene, but this is just the first draft of a book that she will do in English, a wonderful new book on the end. The end as end of time, are we approaching apocalypse, all that topic, the end of history and so on and so on. And yes, I just talked, we often meet here, we are friends of course, and she made this point what you mentioned, I think that's the key of Hegel. Contingency to necessity. It's not just that necessity realizes itself through contingency. That's the standard Marxist vulgarity. Like, there is for example, this is the example of some Marxists. At the end of French Revolution, a passage was necessary from revolution as in some sense democratic collective reign to empire. But then Napoleon was the contingent person who realized it. Without Napoleon, probably there would have been another playing a different similar role. This is the usual logic. You have historical necessity which realizes itself in a contingent way. But I think Hegel's message, notion is much more radical. It's that we are in an open situation and something happens contingently, but once it happens it becomes retroactively necessary. My good friend, read him, we are good friends although we don't appear together, I often quote him, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, D-U-P-U-Y. He developed this in a wonderful way apropos of, of for example, Caesar
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crossing Rubicon. It could have been possible for Caesar to say fuck it, I will not provoke the senate, I will not cross Rubicon. And it could have been totally different story. But the moment he crossed Rubicon this became his fate. It becomes necessary. Again, this wonderful, and isn't love like this? Isn't it? You walk on the street,
crossing Rubicon. It could have been possible for Caesar to say fuck it, I will not provoke the senate, I will not cross Rubicon. And it could have been totally different story. But the moment he crossed Rubicon this became his fate. It becomes necessary. Again, this wonderful, and isn't love like this? Isn't it? You walk on the street,
Slavoj Žižek
you sorry for the stupid
you sorry for the stupid
unknown
example, you slip on a
example, you slip on a
Slavoj Žižek
banana peel, a lady by accident walking there helps you stand up. And to make it more beautiful, not the usual vulgar story, then you go to drink, you fuck all the night passionately. No, maybe you first even hate each other, you know. But then you meet again just to thank her and it's the love of your life. It is totally contingent but retroactively all your life appears as something leading up to this point. And I think even with writers it's this. Here I'm, I'm against this usual historical contextualization. The example I like to use is Shakespeare. You know all the historicist stuff: how can we really know what Shakespeare meant? You have to know all the historical conditions of Elizabethan, of Elizabethan England and so on. I would say no, it's the opposite. Maybe even the, maybe even to truly understand Shakespeare don't you, it's better not to know too much about Elizabethan England. I find it deeply interesting how good some movie versions of Shakespeare are which take place in a totally different context. For example, now I discovered my favorite Hamlet. I don't know if I already wrote about it. You know Akira Kurosawa, Rashomon, Seven Samurai and so on. You know that around he did a Hamlet which takes place in Japan at that time. It's Toshiro Mifune plays a son of a rich guy who was studying in United States. He returns to Japan, discovers that his father died, his mother married the uncle and the usual story, with an excellent title. I love it. The title is Bad People Sleep Well. It's one of the best titles. It's Hamlet at that. So you see what I mean. The true greatness of a work of art is not that it is limited to its context, that it survives different context. That's what Hegel called concrete universality. Every epoch reinvented its Hamlet. Every epoch reinvented its Antigone and so on and so on. So in this sense, it's not simply that we have different interpretations. No, the original itself is an open work of art. Shakespeare didn't know what he didn't know what he was doing. You know whom I like here at the level of language? Sorry, I'm jumping from example to example but just to give you an idea. You know that the most famous saying maybe, one of the most famous saying of Lincoln: you can cheat some people some of the time, you cannot deceive all the people all the time. Do you know that this is a deeply ambiguous saying? What does the second part mean? Does it mean, mean that at any point, like now, you cannot deceive all the people? I can deceive most of the people but not all. Or does it mean that there are some people who can never be deceived? You know. And Daniel Dennett, the cognitivist, I read intelligent cognitivist, claims that it's wrong to ask the question what did Lincoln really mean? He didn't know. He probably just wanted to say something witty, you know. It sounds good to him, it sounded good to him. You see, I believe even at the level of language in this openness. The best thing that happened and this is deep profound Hegelian insight and intelligent cognitivists are coming to it today is that when you say something and you don't know what you are saying, and then when you discover this that you got yourself into a mess, you try desperately to find a way out. Great thoughts always emerge out when you say too much without knowing what you wanted to say. That's Hegel in fact. We are, we were actually to your point that you're jumping around to examples, we were intending to ask you what you think the role of example plays in your work because you know you reference film and jokes and popular culture. So wondering how you, how you understand. I can give you a very precise answer to this which may surprise you. First, as a good Hegelian, I am at least at this level an anti-Platonist. In traditional Platonic perspective, although I've written a lot about Plato, I love him but nonetheless, examples are imperfect bodily material sensible images of an eternal idea. Examples are by definition always deficient. Hegel, I think, operates in a totally opposite way. There is more truth in an example than in the idea. You can have an idea which may appear consistent, clear, blah blah. Then you try to exemplify it, imagine an example, how this would have worked here there and you in this way you bring out something that was not yet thought out in the idea itself. Examples are never mere examples. They are, they are the truth of an idea. So that's for me one of the minimum examples precisely of what I would call materialism. That there is more truth in the example of an idea than in the pure idea itself. And I think this is what Hegel is doing all the time. He has a certain, I always quote the same example and so on, in phenomenology he talks about pure moral consciousness, beautiful soul, or asceticism and so on. And he imagines as an example what does it mean to act like this? And the moment you stage it, you imagine it as an example, you see the inconsistency, you see how this idea proves proves deficient. But in a little bit more of self-critical way, I must say that Hegel is here, not Hegel, me, I am here more ambiguous. In what sense? You know with my examples from popular culture and so on and so on, I must say that in many cases it's really just examples to make a philosophical idea clear. Sometimes with popular culture cinema it's a little bit more in the sense that I use it as examples not of an idea but of social critical ideological analysis. I always try to find the extreme examples like my favorite example, I'm writing a short text on it now. Did you, was it also in your media? It's incredibly vulgar, I couldn't believe it. Did you read in the media, it's not a joke, I repeat it, I checked it up, it's serious. What Gwyneth Paltrow, the actress did two weeks ago, I think. She put the perfume. The perfume, "It smells like my vagina." Oh my God. It says, you can buy it, go. It's a nicely package, no it's not a perfume, sorry, it's a candle I think. It's a candle. Oh yeah. It says it smells like my vagina. Now how is this possible? When you make one wrong politically incorrect remark you are ruined, why is she not ruined? This is what interests me. How politically correct rules, how they effectively function. So this is this. Then very rarely, now I will be critical, just in a couple of my analysis of films, not all, I would just point out maybe three names: Hitchcock, David Lynch and Krzysztof Kieślowski, maybe Tarkovsky, I do a real
banana peel, a lady by accident walking there helps you stand up. And to make it more beautiful, not the usual vulgar story, then you go to drink, you fuck all the night passionately. No, maybe you first even hate each other, you know. But then you meet again just to thank her and it's the love of your life. It is totally contingent but retroactively all your life appears as something leading up to this point. And I think even with writers it's this. Here I'm, I'm against this usual historical contextualization. The example I like to use is Shakespeare. You know all the historicist stuff: how can we really know what Shakespeare meant? You have to know all the historical conditions of Elizabethan, of Elizabethan England and so on. I would say no, it's the opposite. Maybe even the, maybe even to truly understand Shakespeare don't you, it's better not to know too much about Elizabethan England. I find it deeply interesting how good some movie versions of Shakespeare are which take place in a totally different context. For example, now I discovered my favorite Hamlet. I don't know if I already wrote about it. You know Akira Kurosawa, Rashomon, Seven Samurai and so on. You know that around he did a Hamlet which takes place in Japan at that time. It's Toshiro Mifune plays a son of a rich guy who was studying in United States. He returns to Japan, discovers that his father died, his mother married the uncle and the usual story, with an excellent title. I love it. The title is Bad People Sleep Well. It's one of the best titles. It's Hamlet at that. So you see what I mean. The true greatness of a work of art is not that it is limited to its context, that it survives different context. That's what Hegel called concrete universality. Every epoch reinvented its Hamlet. Every epoch reinvented its Antigone and so on and so on. So in this sense, it's not simply that we have different interpretations. No, the original itself is an open work of art. Shakespeare didn't know what he didn't know what he was doing. You know whom I like here at the level of language? Sorry, I'm jumping from example to example but just to give you an idea. You know that the most famous saying maybe, one of the most famous saying of Lincoln: you can cheat some people some of the time, you cannot deceive all the people all the time. Do you know that this is a deeply ambiguous saying? What does the second part mean? Does it mean, mean that at any point, like now, you cannot deceive all the people? I can deceive most of the people but not all. Or does it mean that there are some people who can never be deceived? You know. And Daniel Dennett, the cognitivist, I read intelligent cognitivist, claims that it's wrong to ask the question what did Lincoln really mean? He didn't know. He probably just wanted to say something witty, you know. It sounds good to him, it sounded good to him. You see, I believe even at the level of language in this openness. The best thing that happened and this is deep profound Hegelian insight and intelligent cognitivists are coming to it today is that when you say something and you don't know what you are saying, and then when you discover this that you got yourself into a mess, you try desperately to find a way out. Great thoughts always emerge out when you say too much without knowing what you wanted to say. That's Hegel in fact. We are, we were actually to your point that you're jumping around to examples, we were intending to ask you what you think the role of example plays in your work because you know you reference film and jokes and popular culture. So wondering how you, how you understand. I can give you a very precise answer to this which may surprise you. First, as a good Hegelian, I am at least at this level an anti-Platonist. In traditional Platonic perspective, although I've written a lot about Plato, I love him but nonetheless, examples are imperfect bodily material sensible images of an eternal idea. Examples are by definition always deficient. Hegel, I think, operates in a totally opposite way. There is more truth in an example than in the idea. You can have an idea which may appear consistent, clear, blah blah. Then you try to exemplify it, imagine an example, how this would have worked here there and you in this way you bring out something that was not yet thought out in the idea itself. Examples are never mere examples. They are, they are the truth of an idea. So that's for me one of the minimum examples precisely of what I would call materialism. That there is more truth in the example of an idea than in the pure idea itself. And I think this is what Hegel is doing all the time. He has a certain, I always quote the same example and so on, in phenomenology he talks about pure moral consciousness, beautiful soul, or asceticism and so on. And he imagines as an example what does it mean to act like this? And the moment you stage it, you imagine it as an example, you see the inconsistency, you see how this idea proves proves deficient. But in a little bit more of self-critical way, I must say that Hegel is here, not Hegel, me, I am here more ambiguous. In what sense? You know with my examples from popular culture and so on and so on, I must say that in many cases it's really just examples to make a philosophical idea clear. Sometimes with popular culture cinema it's a little bit more in the sense that I use it as examples not of an idea but of social critical ideological analysis. I always try to find the extreme examples like my favorite example, I'm writing a short text on it now. Did you, was it also in your media? It's incredibly vulgar, I couldn't believe it. Did you read in the media, it's not a joke, I repeat it, I checked it up, it's serious. What Gwyneth Paltrow, the actress did two weeks ago, I think. She put the perfume. The perfume, "It smells like my vagina." Oh my God. It says, you can buy it, go. It's a nicely package, no it's not a perfume, sorry, it's a candle I think. It's a candle. Oh yeah. It says it smells like my vagina. Now how is this possible? When you make one wrong politically incorrect remark you are ruined, why is she not ruined? This is what interests me. How politically correct rules, how they effectively function. So this is this. Then very rarely, now I will be critical, just in a couple of my analysis of films, not all, I would just point out maybe three names: Hitchcock, David Lynch and Krzysztof Kieślowski, maybe Tarkovsky, I do a real
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immanent analysis of a movie or a director. So, so, so I don't really consider myself fully a cinema theorist. Mostly I just brutally use it. But you know now I will give you a very problematic example. I know I will be accused for racism by it but I love it because I think this is how we should fight racism really.
immanent analysis of a movie or a director. So, so, so I don't really consider myself fully a cinema theorist. Mostly I just brutally use it. But you know now I will give you a very problematic example. I know I will be accused for racism by it but I love it because I think this is how we should fight racism really.
Slavoj Žižek
By looking at, taking examples which are so ridiculous that they self-destroy themselves. I couldn't believe my luck. Two weeks ago I spoke with a friend who has a relative, or some distant aunt, it doesn't matter, who is an old-fashioned Slovene racist, absolutely against black people. Okay, but what happened with this lady? And I remind you I checked it up doubly. This is not a joke. The lady is so fanatic she really meant it. She complained to my, to my friend that now she, she likes eating fishes so much but she cannot any longer even eat fishes. My friend asked her why? What's wrong? And she said because there are now most of our fishes are caught come from Mediterranean Sea. And there are now from Libya to Southern Italy or elsewhere in Europe many refugees, most of them black, who try to cross Mediterranean, many of them drown there. And many of them since they drown are probably eaten by the fishes. And she said I don't want to eat black people, I hate them so much. Now you see the complete madness of it. I think not only okay, if you are a mad person like that lady then God help you. But I, I think that and I tested this joke, I told it already to
By looking at, taking examples which are so ridiculous that they self-destroy themselves. I couldn't believe my luck. Two weeks ago I spoke with a friend who has a relative, or some distant aunt, it doesn't matter, who is an old-fashioned Slovene racist, absolutely against black people. Okay, but what happened with this lady? And I remind you I checked it up doubly. This is not a joke. The lady is so fanatic she really meant it. She complained to my, to my friend that now she, she likes eating fishes so much but she cannot any longer even eat fishes. My friend asked her why? What's wrong? And she said because there are now most of our fishes are caught come from Mediterranean Sea. And there are now from Libya to Southern Italy or elsewhere in Europe many refugees, most of them black, who try to cross Mediterranean, many of them drown there. And many of them since they drown are probably eaten by the fishes. And she said I don't want to eat black people, I hate them so much. Now you see the complete madness of it. I think not only okay, if you are a mad person like that lady then God help you. But I, I think that and I tested this joke, I told it already to
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some of my black friends and they laughed so much, they said I will use it and so on and
some of my black friends and they laughed so much, they said I will use it and so on and
Slavoj Žižek
so on. You see that's how we should proceed. Not in
so on. You see that's how we should proceed. Not in
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some stupid politically
some stupid politically
Slavoj Žižek
correct way but to to you begin with this total ridiculous example and then comes the next step to show how even the usual racism which is unfortunately I wouldn't say acceptable but popular among the new right is maybe not
correct way but to to you begin with this total ridiculous example and then comes the next step to show how even the usual racism which is unfortunately I wouldn't say acceptable but popular among the new right is maybe not
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in the same open way but
in the same open way but
Slavoj Žižek
implicitly no less ridiculous. You know. I believe in this immanent undermining. That's the Hegelian approach. To push you to the necessary point of your stupidity if I may put it like this. Or did you read my comment this is Hegel Lacan Freud all in one? I think I used it but now nobody wants to publish me, it's difficult to publish it in popular media. I read a comment I forgot I think, I think Weisman is the lady's name, she wrote a comment about how as she, this lady saw a documentary on making hardcore pornography. And there was a scene there where standard heterosexual hardcore, the guy, it was shot from a camera behind so that you see the whole scene. And okay, the guy was doing the usual thing, screwing the lady, and in the middle he lost erection. You know what he did? He told to the lady and cameraman sorry, I need a moment to regain erection. He stepped back, reached for his iPhone and looked at a Pornhub. A wonderful absurdity. He had the thing itself naked lady aroused with her legs spread in front of him, but no, you go to the virtual media. You know this gap is always there. That's the lesson of Freud and Lacan. You need a fantasy. You are never alone with the body now I have you here naked. No, you always need fantasy. This is not, the lady claims this is our utter alienation, blah blah blah. No, it's the alienation which is constitutive of sexuality as such. There is this gap between the reality of the body with which you are interacting in sexuality and the level of what you are fantasizing about and so on. The gap is always here. Well, I mean, I think the basic arc of the second half of the conversation is he's talking about love and vocation and then he goes to a brief discussion of the tradition and of art and then he gets to Pete asks him the question about examples and then he talks about materialism and then what's the last thing he talks about? The the porn example. Yeah, we always need, it really, the the end is... The end is shocking, especially I think for a first time listener they're going to be like what the fuck? Yeah, it's great though. I mean I love that. It's pure Žižek. It's pure Žižek. And I mean that's so so maybe I guess what one thing that we'll talk about today is is the examples and Pete maybe this is a good opportunity to to say sort of what you what you said earlier which was like you know it it can be difficult to just sort of jump jump in but that's really this is that's what you have to do and follow the you know these examples which are so telling. It's funny I think when you're first encountering his writing or seeing his lectures the examples kind of serve as a lifeline. Um but you're not necessarily aware or I wasn't at least of like what they have to do with the philosophical point that he's making, right? Because they can seem a bit separate from them. Yeah, he says at minute he says I'm an anti-Platonist, there's more truth in the example. You you bring out something that in the example that was not yet expressed in the idea and there's a truth in the example that's not that's only dormant in the in the concept. He says, he says examples are the truth of an idea and I thought that was an amazing way of putting it. And it's obviously extremely Hegelian and um yeah, just like what you're saying about examples in terms of like when you first arrive to it, yeah, it is it's in a sense confusing but it's also I've never heard him describe his use of examples quite like that because he actually has a theoretical reason why why he approaches it in that way. Jake, do you want to give us a brief description of what Plato's idea of an example might mean or what an idea is even to Plato? Well, I think that probably for for our sake if we're going to talk about Plato and example, the word to use is Form. And I think that I think that oh god, this is okay, I stretching back. Yeah, well no I I think that okay if you talk about Plato's Form is that or or his idea of or the realm of what is it, is it the Kingdom of... No, Kingdom of Ideas is Kant. Realm of Ideas or or the Realm of the Form is that in the physical world, um we have examples of a Form. I mean, that's that to me that's like sort of the most diluted version of it is that so I think that Plato uses the concept of a chair, or is it a table, in the Republic. The idea of a chair in philosophy, the example's always of a chair. Always a chair. That's because people sit in chairs when they're when they're trying. Heidegger likes to use jugs. Oh he does, or a hammer is a very common one too. Hammer as well, yeah, yeah. Wittgenstein and and Heidegger with the hammer. But so for Plato if we whatever that we whatever that we experience is merely a reference to its Form which is not necessarily its idyllic version, so, but it's more like its reference. So, um all chairs refer to the Form of chair, all cups refer to the Form of cup. So so all chairs are an example of of chairness. Of chairness, yeah, of a way of applying to this greater referent which I think posits it or situates it in our experience by way of this reference. And the and the individual itself, the individual chair itself is beholden to its idea and is somehow not fully what it is because it's always in reference to the true Form of what it is. Yeah, and it's a it's a deformed version of the Form of the chair. Right, which is not to say that it's a perversion, it's that it's it's actually incomplete, right? That it's that it is merely a reference to a greater reference, its Form. Which which is funny because if we do listen to to Žižek in the in this part of the interview and he when he says he's anti-Platonist, I think actually if we take it on a literal level there's a reversal that's quite unique here to Žižek's thought, is that there he's referencing as it were that
implicitly no less ridiculous. You know. I believe in this immanent undermining. That's the Hegelian approach. To push you to the necessary point of your stupidity if I may put it like this. Or did you read my comment this is Hegel Lacan Freud all in one? I think I used it but now nobody wants to publish me, it's difficult to publish it in popular media. I read a comment I forgot I think, I think Weisman is the lady's name, she wrote a comment about how as she, this lady saw a documentary on making hardcore pornography. And there was a scene there where standard heterosexual hardcore, the guy, it was shot from a camera behind so that you see the whole scene. And okay, the guy was doing the usual thing, screwing the lady, and in the middle he lost erection. You know what he did? He told to the lady and cameraman sorry, I need a moment to regain erection. He stepped back, reached for his iPhone and looked at a Pornhub. A wonderful absurdity. He had the thing itself naked lady aroused with her legs spread in front of him, but no, you go to the virtual media. You know this gap is always there. That's the lesson of Freud and Lacan. You need a fantasy. You are never alone with the body now I have you here naked. No, you always need fantasy. This is not, the lady claims this is our utter alienation, blah blah blah. No, it's the alienation which is constitutive of sexuality as such. There is this gap between the reality of the body with which you are interacting in sexuality and the level of what you are fantasizing about and so on. The gap is always here. Well, I mean, I think the basic arc of the second half of the conversation is he's talking about love and vocation and then he goes to a brief discussion of the tradition and of art and then he gets to Pete asks him the question about examples and then he talks about materialism and then what's the last thing he talks about? The the porn example. Yeah, we always need, it really, the the end is... The end is shocking, especially I think for a first time listener they're going to be like what the fuck? Yeah, it's great though. I mean I love that. It's pure Žižek. It's pure Žižek. And I mean that's so so maybe I guess what one thing that we'll talk about today is is the examples and Pete maybe this is a good opportunity to to say sort of what you what you said earlier which was like you know it it can be difficult to just sort of jump jump in but that's really this is that's what you have to do and follow the you know these examples which are so telling. It's funny I think when you're first encountering his writing or seeing his lectures the examples kind of serve as a lifeline. Um but you're not necessarily aware or I wasn't at least of like what they have to do with the philosophical point that he's making, right? Because they can seem a bit separate from them. Yeah, he says at minute he says I'm an anti-Platonist, there's more truth in the example. You you bring out something that in the example that was not yet expressed in the idea and there's a truth in the example that's not that's only dormant in the in the concept. He says, he says examples are the truth of an idea and I thought that was an amazing way of putting it. And it's obviously extremely Hegelian and um yeah, just like what you're saying about examples in terms of like when you first arrive to it, yeah, it is it's in a sense confusing but it's also I've never heard him describe his use of examples quite like that because he actually has a theoretical reason why why he approaches it in that way. Jake, do you want to give us a brief description of what Plato's idea of an example might mean or what an idea is even to Plato? Well, I think that probably for for our sake if we're going to talk about Plato and example, the word to use is Form. And I think that I think that oh god, this is okay, I stretching back. Yeah, well no I I think that okay if you talk about Plato's Form is that or or his idea of or the realm of what is it, is it the Kingdom of... No, Kingdom of Ideas is Kant. Realm of Ideas or or the Realm of the Form is that in the physical world, um we have examples of a Form. I mean, that's that to me that's like sort of the most diluted version of it is that so I think that Plato uses the concept of a chair, or is it a table, in the Republic. The idea of a chair in philosophy, the example's always of a chair. Always a chair. That's because people sit in chairs when they're when they're trying. Heidegger likes to use jugs. Oh he does, or a hammer is a very common one too. Hammer as well, yeah, yeah. Wittgenstein and and Heidegger with the hammer. But so for Plato if we whatever that we whatever that we experience is merely a reference to its Form which is not necessarily its idyllic version, so, but it's more like its reference. So, um all chairs refer to the Form of chair, all cups refer to the Form of cup. So so all chairs are an example of of chairness. Of chairness, yeah, of a way of applying to this greater referent which I think posits it or situates it in our experience by way of this reference. And the and the individual itself, the individual chair itself is beholden to its idea and is somehow not fully what it is because it's always in reference to the true Form of what it is. Yeah, and it's a it's a deformed version of the Form of the chair. Right, which is not to say that it's a perversion, it's that it's it's actually incomplete, right? That it's that it is merely a reference to a greater reference, its Form. Which which is funny because if we do listen to to Žižek in the in this part of the interview and he when he says he's anti-Platonist, I think actually if we take it on a literal level there's a reversal that's quite unique here to Žižek's thought, is that there he's referencing as it were that
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there's more truth in the example than in the
there's more truth in the example than in the
Slavoj Žižek
concept itself, which is the exact reversal of of what, you know, Platonic theory would be, is that there's that truth capital T Truth exists in the realm of Forms and that what we experience around us in the physical world is a kind of incompleteness in its reference to the realm of Forms, whereas Žižek's saying that in fact, I mean I'm this is a bit of a stretch, but he's he's always he's constantly doing this, but to say that he's anti-Platonist is to I think kind of reverse this, to say that there's more truth in the example in a way that in the concept itself this truth is is only dormant and that the example really enlivens it or... Yeah, because because until the
concept itself, which is the exact reversal of of what, you know, Platonic theory would be, is that there's that truth capital T Truth exists in the realm of Forms and that what we experience around us in the physical world is a kind of incompleteness in its reference to the realm of Forms, whereas Žižek's saying that in fact, I mean I'm this is a bit of a stretch, but he's he's always he's constantly doing this, but to say that he's anti-Platonist is to I think kind of reverse this, to say that there's more truth in the example in a way that in the concept itself this truth is is only dormant and that the example really enlivens it or... Yeah, because because until the
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example comes in the the truth of the idea is untested and then once once it's exemplified you're able to sort of tease out the limitations and perhaps the paradoxes that are latent in the idea that don't get worked out
example comes in the the truth of the idea is untested and then once once it's exemplified you're able to sort of tease out the limitations and perhaps the paradoxes that are latent in the idea that don't get worked out
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necessarily until it's exemplified. Right, and this ties into his general view of like an idea as such being itself incomplete. When I think about the two experiences
necessarily until it's exemplified. Right, and this ties into his general view of like an idea as such being itself incomplete. When I think about the two experiences
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of what I what I thought of when I was
of what I what I thought of when I was
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introduced to Plato, you know, was like I actually tried to distinguish in my mind the Form of things. I was like well what's the Form of chair to me? And I would
introduced to Plato, you know, was like I actually tried to distinguish in my mind the Form of things. I was like well what's the Form of chair to me? And I would
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visualize that chair. And what's interesting is with Žižek when I encounter one of his examples instead of this kind of feeling of a of a sketch, of a kind of projection of the concept, what I what I'm getting is this kind of I always end up sort of smiling out of the side of my mouth. There's like this like sort of steering I've just
visualize that chair. And what's interesting is with Žižek when I encounter one of his examples instead of this kind of feeling of a of a sketch, of a kind of projection of the concept, what I what I'm getting is this kind of I always end up sort of smiling out of the side of my mouth. There's like this like sort of steering I've just
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been shown and I've just experienced the truth of the concept in such in such a way in the example that it's not so much of a sketch as it is a kind of like an experience of the truth instead of you know is that I don't know if that... Yeah no that's really true I totally agree with that.
been shown and I've just experienced the truth of the concept in such in such a way in the example that it's not so much of a sketch as it is a kind of like an experience of the truth instead of you know is that I don't know if that... Yeah no that's really true I totally agree with that.
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Does this do you want to tie this into the jarring and surprising hardcore porn example later on in the in the interview? Right, right. Well it's because it's so sad. Like there's actually like it's hilarious and it's sad, but what you experience in in hearing him and then and I think this happens in his books all the time is like there's this kind of like I don't know tip of the cap moment where
Does this do you want to tie this into the jarring and surprising hardcore porn example later on in the in the interview? Right, right. Well it's because it's so sad. Like there's actually like it's hilarious and it's sad, but what you experience in in hearing him and then and I think this happens in his books all the time is like there's this kind of like I don't know tip of the cap moment where
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you're where you're exposed to the truth of a concept that he's just been talking about, right? At sort of ad nauseam. And then in an example he can really neatly package this sort of like the experience of the concept. When he tells that that anecdote or or when he gives that example rather, it's it's quite shocking and part of me is like why did you use that
you're where you're exposed to the truth of a concept that he's just been talking about, right? At sort of ad nauseam. And then in an example he can really neatly package this sort of like the experience of the concept. When he tells that that anecdote or or when he gives that example rather, it's it's quite shocking and part of me is like why did you use that
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example man, you know? But it I think it's exactly what you're saying it was like the way that
example man, you know? But it I think it's exactly what you're saying it was like the way that
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it sort of confronts you and it doesn't even have to be such an extreme example but the way it confronts you in in the terms of your own experience. He actually this is how he
it sort of confronts you and it doesn't even have to be such an extreme example but the way it confronts you in in the terms of your own experience. He actually this is how he
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he says just
he says just
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before using the example of the hardcore porn he talks about how this is how he actually uses Hegel, or this is an example of Hegel to its to to Hegel's sort of utmost, is the immanent undermining that's present in his version of critique. Um which is also I think present in in the sort of the more extreme examples here is you're bringing
before using the example of the hardcore porn he talks about how this is how he actually uses Hegel, or this is an example of Hegel to its to to Hegel's sort of utmost, is the immanent undermining that's present in his version of critique. Um which is also I think present in in the sort of the more extreme examples here is you're bringing
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a certain concept or a way of thinking to its absolute point of what
a certain concept or a way of thinking to its absolute point of what
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Žižek calls stupidity, is you're you're bringing it to its sort of utmost
Žižek calls stupidity, is you're you're bringing it to its sort of utmost
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expression in in an example that always has a little bit more than the concept, always gives us... Well I'd say the it's it's something that you can that you know is well he refers to this being his materialism. So when you encounter an example as as containing in it an idea or or being yeah being an example of an idea it's something that has heft to it and you actually engage with on an everyday basis. Perhaps we could think of it as the material of an idea. And that's of course like the the whole Hegelian kind of like structure of of ideas and like how
expression in in an example that always has a little bit more than the concept, always gives us... Well I'd say the it's it's something that you can that you know is well he refers to this being his materialism. So when you encounter an example as as containing in it an idea or or being yeah being an example of an idea it's something that has heft to it and you actually engage with on an everyday basis. Perhaps we could think of it as the material of an idea. And that's of course like the the whole Hegelian kind of like structure of of ideas and like how
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they are manifest through
they are manifest through
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their kind of specific moments and that the it's not one or the other, it's not like that an idea is its moment or its kind of general unfolding, or let's say
their kind of specific moments and that the it's not one or the other, it's not like that an idea is its moment or its kind of general unfolding, or let's say
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the more
the more
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Platonic notion of an idea, but rather it's the it's the functioning of the two in that they're always intertwined and that like an idea is only ever expressed truly through its example. Right, so concept and... Perhaps we could call that concrete universality, which is something that I'd like to discuss at a later point more but I think that's I think that's how he put it. He did, yeah, concrete universality. So can would you go far as as to say that like Žižek's use of example and of pop culture and of like, you know, a myriad of sources when it comes to his references in his works and in his lectures, is he actually doing something kind of is this is this based in Hegel? Oh yeah definitely. Well that's what he sees. I mean when I read Hegel I I don't particularly see that. I see a lot of things that I don't understand. But I think that he and he does give examples of it in Phenomenology of Spirit, he uses the idea of the beautiful soul. Um I think something that's
Platonic notion of an idea, but rather it's the it's the functioning of the two in that they're always intertwined and that like an idea is only ever expressed truly through its example. Right, so concept and... Perhaps we could call that concrete universality, which is something that I'd like to discuss at a later point more but I think that's I think that's how he put it. He did, yeah, concrete universality. So can would you go far as as to say that like Žižek's use of example and of pop culture and of like, you know, a myriad of sources when it comes to his references in his works and in his lectures, is he actually doing something kind of is this is this based in Hegel? Oh yeah definitely. Well that's what he sees. I mean when I read Hegel I I don't particularly see that. I see a lot of things that I don't understand. But I think that he and he does give examples of it in Phenomenology of Spirit, he uses the idea of the beautiful soul. Um I think something that's
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that's comparative in terms of seeing the way that an example of something uh contains its own paradox or its own uh refutation is maybe in the way that
that's comparative in terms of seeing the way that an example of something uh contains its own paradox or its own uh refutation is maybe in the way that
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we now think of liberals today. Someone who fundamentally cares about other people and their well-being. But
we now think of liberals today. Someone who fundamentally cares about other people and their well-being. But
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I think that there is something in liberalism that also, and this is what he was saying I think in the last in the first half of the of the interview is like it there's there's a seed in liberalism that clearly that gives way to something much more extreme and and even and even fascistic. Right. Um I think the example maybe that I would give of of liberalism is I remember when I was in I think I was in 12th grade and we were I was in a sociology class and the teacher we were learning about I forget what the we were learning about Africa and homophobia in in African countries. And my teacher said in a very I think, you know, generally open-minded liberal way, not that all liberals think this, but she said that homophobia in this particular African country was just part of the culture so we
I think that there is something in liberalism that also, and this is what he was saying I think in the last in the first half of the of the interview is like it there's there's a seed in liberalism that clearly that gives way to something much more extreme and and even and even fascistic. Right. Um I think the example maybe that I would give of of liberalism is I remember when I was in I think I was in 12th grade and we were I was in a sociology class and the teacher we were learning about I forget what the we were learning about Africa and homophobia in in African countries. And my teacher said in a very I think, you know, generally open-minded liberal way, not that all liberals think this, but she said that homophobia in this particular African country was just part of the culture so we
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couldn't fault them in the same way that we could fault
couldn't fault them in the same way that we could fault
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homophobia in our own culture. But it even hit me at the time how kind of absurd that is because you could just say that homophobia's just
homophobia in our own culture. But it even hit me at the time how kind of absurd that is because you could just say that homophobia's just
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part of our culture too, couldn't you? So there's like a limitation I think or or like the way that she kind of immanently disproved that attitude was I think already a sort of racist depiction of of Africans, that oh they're they're kind of deficient in their belief to the effect that to the
part of our culture too, couldn't you? So there's like a limitation I think or or like the way that she kind of immanently disproved that attitude was I think already a sort of racist depiction of of Africans, that oh they're they're kind of deficient in their belief to the effect that to the
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degree that they can't understand that homophobia is wrong themselves, only we can as good Western liberals. As good universal, more universal perspective. Yeah, does that make sense to you guys? That makes sense and I think part of um one of a like kind of key Žižekism is saying "No, it's
degree that they can't understand that homophobia is wrong themselves, only we can as good Western liberals. As good universal, more universal perspective. Yeah, does that make sense to you guys? That makes sense and I think part of um one of a like kind of key Žižekism is saying "No, it's
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actually the opposite." There's a he reverses ideas so like he'll often situate, unfortunately I'm not coming up with an immediate example in my mind but um he often poses an idea and then and then says this is the way it's regularly thought of and then he says but what if we think of it in the opposite way? And this kind of reversal is is a very Hegelian function of because ideas are as dependent on what they are not as what they are. So this contradiction is
actually the opposite." There's a he reverses ideas so like he'll often situate, unfortunately I'm not coming up with an immediate example in my mind but um he often poses an idea and then and then says this is the way it's regularly thought of and then he says but what if we think of it in the opposite way? And this kind of reversal is is a very Hegelian function of because ideas are as dependent on what they are not as what they are. So this contradiction is
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vital not only to the Hegelian kind of structure but also to the way that Žižek approaches um not only ontology but like his use of examples. I think it's also important that we focus on like the the distinction between concept and example here also means that there's concept
vital not only to the Hegelian kind of structure but also to the way that Žižek approaches um not only ontology but like his use of examples. I think it's also important that we focus on like the the distinction between concept and example here also means that there's concept
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and its application. And uh this this does come back to what we were talking about in the first episode which is um, you know, that lib that democracy or or even communism or or whatever the the um the concept may be in its application is also its failure, right? It's embedded. We discussed this last time. And I've I've heard for example why from from some people that, you know, all examples of
and its application. And uh this this does come back to what we were talking about in the first episode which is um, you know, that lib that democracy or or even communism or or whatever the the um the concept may be in its application is also its failure, right? It's embedded. We discussed this last time. And I've I've heard for example why from from some people that, you know, all examples of
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communism, all real examples
communism, all real examples
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of
of
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communism have have actually only ever brought about, you know,
communism have have actually only ever brought about, you know,
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terror or disparity or, you know, mass death or persecution. Maybe that's the Platonic
terror or disparity or, you know, mass death or persecution. Maybe that's the Platonic
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view. Sorry sorry to interject. Well perhaps it is the Platonic view um up against the Hegelian view is that the the idea of communism and its application, the idea of democracy and its application, there is going to necessarily be a tension between the concept and how it's applied. And um and I think that tension actually always outcomes in its own failure, right? That it that a concept cannot be applied
view. Sorry sorry to interject. Well perhaps it is the Platonic view um up against the Hegelian view is that the the idea of communism and its application, the idea of democracy and its application, there is going to necessarily be a tension between the concept and how it's applied. And um and I think that tension actually always outcomes in its own failure, right? That it that a concept cannot be applied
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perfectly. And which is why there's always something a little bit left over or um like a little bit of a residue with any of Žižek's examples, um in his texts there's something extra, there's an excess. Um and that excess is... I I would say the excess is is maybe to some degree wondering why the example was used in the first place or how the how the multiple myriad examples connect with each other. And that that kind of wondering opens the space maybe to to the concept. Does that make sense? Maybe not. I think I think it does like what it kind of it puts you in a kind of closer relationship to the to the concept because you're you're kind of implicating yourself into the example, you're thinking you're like actively kind of internalizing it and and approaching it through your own understanding. Well I'm just thinking about about trying to tie it back to the first episode with the idea that what did you say, concrete universality, right Pete? That was what you said. Yeah. Yeah, I just think that there's something really interesting, he said I can't remember if I read it in The Sublime Object or if I encountered it in our interview, because I was reading The Sublime Object yesterday. But he talks about how we can't essentialize from the example, like only things like things are only retroactively sort of understood as necessary, right? That I know he
perfectly. And which is why there's always something a little bit left over or um like a little bit of a residue with any of Žižek's examples, um in his texts there's something extra, there's an excess. Um and that excess is... I I would say the excess is is maybe to some degree wondering why the example was used in the first place or how the how the multiple myriad examples connect with each other. And that that kind of wondering opens the space maybe to to the concept. Does that make sense? Maybe not. I think I think it does like what it kind of it puts you in a kind of closer relationship to the to the concept because you're you're kind of implicating yourself into the example, you're thinking you're like actively kind of internalizing it and and approaching it through your own understanding. Well I'm just thinking about about trying to tie it back to the first episode with the idea that what did you say, concrete universality, right Pete? That was what you said. Yeah. Yeah, I just think that there's something really interesting, he said I can't remember if I read it in The Sublime Object or if I encountered it in our interview, because I was reading The Sublime Object yesterday. But he talks about how we can't essentialize from the example, like only things like things are only retroactively sort of understood as necessary, right? That I know he
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says
says
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in the interview. Like the whole
in the interview. Like the whole
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structure of love that that it doesn't seem as though it was inevitable but as soon as it becomes like the case you your entire past changes so that it appears inevitable. The whole life has been leading up to it, the banana peel. I love that. Yeah and this brings us to to a major theme, major recurring theme in Žižek's work is retroactivity.
structure of love that that it doesn't seem as though it was inevitable but as soon as it becomes like the case you your entire past changes so that it appears inevitable. The whole life has been leading up to it, the banana peel. I love that. Yeah and this brings us to to a major theme, major recurring theme in Žižek's work is retroactivity.
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Which is something that he that he got from Hegel but but you really see it
Which is something that he that he got from Hegel but but you really see it
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play out constantly in in Žižek's books. Um and love is an example of that. But he
play out constantly in in Žižek's books. Um and love is an example of that. But he
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also talked about it with reference to to great art, which I thought was a really interesting part of the of the discussion. That was beautiful man. I actually you know, I seemingly I missed it on the second way around. What what does he say about about art? Well he talks about how um each each generation has its own sort of rearticulation of I think he uses Hamlet as an example or or Shakespeare in general. So like Shakespeare is Shakespeare is new... there's something about Shakespeare's work that is that is open and it's not it's not a like a a distinct point that that happened that we're sort of progressing on onwards from and and it's sort of a closed topic.
also talked about it with reference to to great art, which I thought was a really interesting part of the of the discussion. That was beautiful man. I actually you know, I seemingly I missed it on the second way around. What what does he say about about art? Well he talks about how um each each generation has its own sort of rearticulation of I think he uses Hamlet as an example or or Shakespeare in general. So like Shakespeare is Shakespeare is new... there's something about Shakespeare's work that is that is open and it's not it's not a like a a distinct point that that happened that we're sort of progressing on onwards from and and it's sort of a closed topic.
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Um but that the greatness, well there's a difference, I think he did talk about the greatness of the art and then also the retroactivity. So I'm getting I'm getting a bit mixed up here. But in terms of the tradition of art, the tradition seems to reshuffle once a new great piece of art has been created so that when you look back at the at the trajectory of art it seems to have been necessarily leading to that point, even if before that happened one might have said that the tradition would lead in a different way. So like that James Joyce wrote Ulysses now seems like a necessary event in in modernist literature but it just as could easily have not happened, which is what he said with with Caesar crossing the Rubicon, you know. Caesar could have said fuck it. And well history has had has has descended from that point that it seems like an absolute impossibility for for for Caesar not to have crossed the Rubicon. And just to tie it all together his example with Shakespeare is extremely interesting because it ties together in a sense his anti-Platonism in terms of like like there's not the idea of Shakespeare that that kind
Um but that the greatness, well there's a difference, I think he did talk about the greatness of the art and then also the retroactivity. So I'm getting I'm getting a bit mixed up here. But in terms of the tradition of art, the tradition seems to reshuffle once a new great piece of art has been created so that when you look back at the at the trajectory of art it seems to have been necessarily leading to that point, even if before that happened one might have said that the tradition would lead in a different way. So like that James Joyce wrote Ulysses now seems like a necessary event in in modernist literature but it just as could easily have not happened, which is what he said with with Caesar crossing the Rubicon, you know. Caesar could have said fuck it. And well history has had has has descended from that point that it seems like an absolute impossibility for for for Caesar not to have crossed the Rubicon. And just to tie it all together his example with Shakespeare is extremely interesting because it ties together in a sense his anti-Platonism in terms of like like there's not the idea of Shakespeare that that kind
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of every every iteration is is kind of incomplete and insufficient but rather there is the idea of of Shakespeare in terms of the Hegelian sense and that it manifests in different contexts um but it's not the kind of Marxist um kind of vulgar Marxist approach, I think he might have
of every every iteration is is kind of incomplete and insufficient but rather there is the idea of of Shakespeare in terms of the Hegelian sense and that it manifests in different contexts um but it's not the kind of Marxist um kind of vulgar Marxist approach, I think he might have
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mentioned this but... He did mention it. The vulgar Marxist approach would would would reduce it to its context, you know, the it's always the materialist approach but this is where this is where Žižek kind of like breaks the bounds of of Marxism a little
mentioned this but... He did mention it. The vulgar Marxist approach would would would reduce it to its context, you know, the it's always the materialist approach but this is where this is where Žižek kind of like breaks the bounds of of Marxism a little
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bit intertwining it or kind of reactualizing Hegel in relation to it where um it's almost a challenge to that Marxist approach where where you you open up
bit intertwining it or kind of reactualizing Hegel in relation to it where um it's almost a challenge to that Marxist approach where where you you open up
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the
the
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notion of Shakespeare in being non-specific and being um immensely open to a variety of
notion of Shakespeare in being non-specific and being um immensely open to a variety of
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contexts that also that makes it almost truer now than it ever was because we are here now we are we are from our own perspective now so we have our own version of Shakespeare that is truer than the original contextual, you know, version of Shakespeare. Yeah, like Leonardo DiCaprio is clearly Romeo and and Romeo
contexts that also that makes it almost truer now than it ever was because we are here now we are we are from our own perspective now so we have our own version of Shakespeare that is truer than the original contextual, you know, version of Shakespeare. Yeah, like Leonardo DiCaprio is clearly Romeo and and Romeo
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always should have been Leonardo DiCaprio. Yeah. Yeah, well I like where Žižek says you know Shakespeare had no idea what he was doing
always should have been Leonardo DiCaprio. Yeah. Yeah, well I like where Žižek says you know Shakespeare had no idea what he was doing
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which I really
which I really
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like as a kind of as a way of picturing it because you know it's like sometimes with art you know the artist has absolutely no concept of the effect that they're going to have and you know my heart always breaks for the artists who died without fame, you know, who were not recognized, the
like as a kind of as a way of picturing it because you know it's like sometimes with art you know the artist has absolutely no concept of the effect that they're going to have and you know my heart always breaks for the artists who died without fame, you know, who were not recognized, the
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Vincent van Goghs of the world. But it's like but the role
Vincent van Goghs of the world. But it's like but the role
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of Shakespeare, I mean there are libraries dedicated to figuring out who this guy was, if he really was a guy. But but I think Žižek's point... Which seems to so so crucially miss the point of of the worth of Shakespeare's art. Right, right. But that's but that's an interesting, I mean I think that puts Žižek's example into focus is that you know really what are we talking about? Are we talking about the the intens... the necessity of contextualizing the work or are we or are we understanding that the work uh constantly is revitalized by the shift in context and by its different applications and that there is no there is no true like I don't know now I'm now I'm this is a bit of a stretch but like sometimes I think about, you know, back to the example of communism, is there in fact a true communism? Are there only its examples and the constant and the re-application of it? Or is there really such a thing as, you know, democracy? I know that it's rote, I know that there are constitutions that seem to have it sort of articulated,
of Shakespeare, I mean there are libraries dedicated to figuring out who this guy was, if he really was a guy. But but I think Žižek's point... Which seems to so so crucially miss the point of of the worth of Shakespeare's art. Right, right. But that's but that's an interesting, I mean I think that puts Žižek's example into focus is that you know really what are we talking about? Are we talking about the the intens... the necessity of contextualizing the work or are we or are we understanding that the work uh constantly is revitalized by the shift in context and by its different applications and that there is no there is no true like I don't know now I'm now I'm this is a bit of a stretch but like sometimes I think about, you know, back to the example of communism, is there in fact a true communism? Are there only its examples and the constant and the re-application of it? Or is there really such a thing as, you know, democracy? I know that it's rote, I know that there are constitutions that seem to have it sort of articulated,
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but really in its application
but really in its application
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we see the sort of frustration of the concept, the the inability to bring the concept to completion.
we see the sort of frustration of the concept, the the inability to bring the concept to completion.
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Like I just think that it's really easy interesting that that um that there's a connection I think seemingly between art, between love and between, you know, this this tension between concept and example that... And as and as you said before when you asked your question Jake, the tension between necessity and contingency, I think that that plays a role in it also. Right, and and and his answer is really that that contingency does not equal necessity and that that if we if we do sort of adopt a Hegelian perspective, we're always in an open situation, you know, a historical open situation but also on a level of experience we're talking about the way, you know, language, we're talking about history, we're talking about uh politics, it's that something, you know, we're in a situation where something happens, something is said and only retroactively can we then deem it as necessary. Every time you leave your house it's basically like you're Franz Ferdinand, you know. I really I do think that like if
Like I just think that it's really easy interesting that that um that there's a connection I think seemingly between art, between love and between, you know, this this tension between concept and example that... And as and as you said before when you asked your question Jake, the tension between necessity and contingency, I think that that plays a role in it also. Right, and and and his answer is really that that contingency does not equal necessity and that that if we if we do sort of adopt a Hegelian perspective, we're always in an open situation, you know, a historical open situation but also on a level of experience we're talking about the way, you know, language, we're talking about history, we're talking about uh politics, it's that something, you know, we're in a situation where something happens, something is said and only retroactively can we then deem it as necessary. Every time you leave your house it's basically like you're Franz Ferdinand, you know. I really I do think that like if
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what what a crazy paranoiac way to live your life. But you know could you imagine every
what what a crazy paranoiac way to live your life. But you know could you imagine every
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day you're Franz Ferdinand with the gun in your hand and you don't know if you're starting World War
day you're Franz Ferdinand with the gun in your hand and you don't know if you're starting World War
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One. Uh he didn't have the gun in his hand Jake, he was the one who got killed. It was Gavrilo Princip baby. Right, right, what a guy. Well... So you started with the the notable suicide of Franz Ferdinand. Here it is. That's my example. No maybe what I mean to say is that every day you don't know if you're Franz Ferdinand leaving your house whether to get fucking shot. Um but truly every day I wake up in the morning and I think am I Franz Ferdinand
One. Uh he didn't have the gun in his hand Jake, he was the one who got killed. It was Gavrilo Princip baby. Right, right, what a guy. Well... So you started with the the notable suicide of Franz Ferdinand. Here it is. That's my example. No maybe what I mean to say is that every day you don't know if you're Franz Ferdinand leaving your house whether to get fucking shot. Um but truly every day I wake up in the morning and I think am I Franz Ferdinand
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or am I Gavrilo Princip today? That's a true
or am I Gavrilo Princip today? That's a true
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that's a good that's a great way of living. Uh what were we talking about? No but no but okay but I I think that it's it's something is is to be said here is that we're living in an open situation that may not mean anything until much later on. And um that's kind that's kind of interesting. Is that is that liberating? Is that freeing? Or is that frustrating? Or both? I think that in a sense it is liberating and I think especially in in his use of love I thought and I think that's such a an amazing formulation of it in that it's not like in a way it is kind of the highest um meaning to your life but if that if that is structured that way if it is like what you direct your life for it becomes it kind of completely falls apart and that it is only through being like um pursuing your vocation that you can
that's a good that's a great way of living. Uh what were we talking about? No but no but okay but I I think that it's it's something is is to be said here is that we're living in an open situation that may not mean anything until much later on. And um that's kind that's kind of interesting. Is that is that liberating? Is that freeing? Or is that frustrating? Or both? I think that in a sense it is liberating and I think especially in in his use of love I thought and I think that's such a an amazing formulation of it in that it's not like in a way it is kind of the highest um meaning to your life but if that if that is structured that way if it is like what you direct your life for it becomes it kind of completely falls apart and that it is only through being like um pursuing your vocation that you can
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actually truly appreciate what love is. No that's a good that's a good way of putting it. I also
actually truly appreciate what love is. No that's a good that's a good way of putting it. I also
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think that it's really cool how it how it skirts around it kind of avoids I think this this Hegelian perspective avoids moralism on a really interesting level where you can actually read something like the victory of Donald Trump clear-eyed, you know, and say, you know, and actually assess it from a certain kind of critical distance that allows you to understand it as meaningful in a way potentially beyond the current situation. Someone like Donald Trump might mean a potential for the revitalization of the left or of of social democracy. And that like that's not guaranteed but I think
think that it's really cool how it how it skirts around it kind of avoids I think this this Hegelian perspective avoids moralism on a really interesting level where you can actually read something like the victory of Donald Trump clear-eyed, you know, and say, you know, and actually assess it from a certain kind of critical distance that allows you to understand it as meaningful in a way potentially beyond the current situation. Someone like Donald Trump might mean a potential for the revitalization of the left or of of social democracy. And that like that's not guaranteed but I think
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it's a
it's a
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really cool it's a cool way of approaching
really cool it's a cool way of approaching
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the now, what's happening currently from a from a certain
the now, what's happening currently from a from a certain
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open critical distance that allows... Exactly because the now usually seems to be the result of immovable historical conditions that we can't do anything about that have led us to this sort of
open critical distance that allows... Exactly because the now usually seems to be the result of immovable historical conditions that we can't do anything about that have led us to this sort of
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impossible point. But if it's open and if and if even the past is open it
impossible point. But if it's open and if and if even the past is open it
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creates a totally different reference to both the present and future and the past actually. Yeah exactly. I mean temporally speaking then
creates a totally different reference to both the present and future and the past actually. Yeah exactly. I mean temporally speaking then
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everything's
everything's
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kind of open. Um and and I I remember Jesus I
kind of open. Um and and I I remember Jesus I
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remember I remember in February I was like well this is the end of the world. It's weird right like
remember I remember in February I was like well this is the end of the world. It's weird right like
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you can at one point see the like the current
you can at one point see the like the current
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as the as the absolute necessity of of all things before it and then you know four years later...
as the as the absolute necessity of of all things before it and then you know four years later...
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That was he he called his concept of love even a political concept of love. And he said the message of true love is you mean everything to me but I'm ready to survive without you. You are not the top. That's why my idea yeah and then he says that's why my idea of love is almost a political love. But if my partner makes the wrong choice I am ready to liquidate him.
That was he he called his concept of love even a political concept of love. And he said the message of true love is you mean everything to me but I'm ready to survive without you. You are not the top. That's why my idea yeah and then he says that's why my idea of love is almost a political love. But if my partner makes the wrong choice I am ready to liquidate him.
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Yeah. Um how do you feel about about Žižek's concept of love? Because I I mean one of the first times I ever heard Žižek talk about love was on you can see it on YouTube it's from the Žižek documentary where he's you know he's basically saying love is a horrible violent act and that you know to choose amidst all this contingency to choose one being you know and to single it out and say that I love you more than I love anything else is inherently a violent act. But I think that that that point is included in his concept that he gave us in the interview. And how do you how do you feel about his concept of love?
Yeah. Um how do you feel about about Žižek's concept of love? Because I I mean one of the first times I ever heard Žižek talk about love was on you can see it on YouTube it's from the Žižek documentary where he's you know he's basically saying love is a horrible violent act and that you know to choose amidst all this contingency to choose one being you know and to single it out and say that I love you more than I love anything else is inherently a violent act. But I think that that that point is included in his concept that he gave us in the interview. And how do you how do you feel about his concept of love?
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Well I think that the what he's saying about the political aspect of it is that you know a when a political event occurs it and he's written this somewhere else it always in a sense happens too soon or it happens out of context. And and I think that's what is the sort of uh Jake how did you phrase the the violence of love or like the... how did you phrase
Well I think that the what he's saying about the political aspect of it is that you know a when a political event occurs it and he's written this somewhere else it always in a sense happens too soon or it happens out of context. And and I think that's what is the sort of uh Jake how did you phrase the the violence of love or like the... how did you phrase
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that Jake? I did say uh I did say the violent act, the violent act of love. But it's a you know okay let's
that Jake? I did say uh I did say the violent act, the violent act of love. But it's a you know okay let's
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just put it like this like the disaster of love basically means that in the context of your own life you have no way of predicting for the event of love because it always happens you know outside of the context of your of your daily life and then the moment of that completely rearranges retroactively your whole relationship to that moment. Yeah exactly. Žižek is using love as an example of making something totally that is totally
just put it like this like the disaster of love basically means that in the context of your own life you have no way of predicting for the event of love because it always happens you know outside of the context of your of your daily life and then the moment of that completely rearranges retroactively your whole relationship to that moment. Yeah exactly. Žižek is using love as an example of making something totally that is totally
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contingent necessary, right? Is that
contingent necessary, right? Is that
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he he mentions the slipping of the banana peel, right? Like you slip on a banana peel the person who helps you up turns out to be the love of your life. Um and everything prior to the slipping on the banana peel then sort of shifts into this context of necessity and that all things leading up to that were can now be aligned into what is now deemed necessary in retrospect. But but why love is ultimately a violent act is because out here in this kind of you know this is sort of from his perspective influenced by quantum physics we're in this absolutely like atomic contingent ridiculous existence where everything is is in flux. In flux. In flux um chance and beyond and then by by love is to choose something is to choose something and deem it necessary.
he he mentions the slipping of the banana peel, right? Like you slip on a banana peel the person who helps you up turns out to be the love of your life. Um and everything prior to the slipping on the banana peel then sort of shifts into this context of necessity and that all things leading up to that were can now be aligned into what is now deemed necessary in retrospect. But but why love is ultimately a violent act is because out here in this kind of you know this is sort of from his perspective influenced by quantum physics we're in this absolutely like atomic contingent ridiculous existence where everything is is in flux. In flux. In flux um chance and beyond and then by by love is to choose something is to choose something and deem it necessary.
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Yeah and the contingency of love you know that it it occurs as an seemingly impossible event in your life and then only after the fact becomes retroactively necessary and it
Yeah and the contingency of love you know that it it occurs as an seemingly impossible event in your life and then only after the fact becomes retroactively necessary and it
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always feels like that when you're in
always feels like that when you're in
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love I think. Absolutely.
love I think. Absolutely.
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Yeah well you always you can always tell by you know couples tell about the story about how they meet you know it becomes instantly this very significant moment. I wrote down this sentence and I think I think it might properly kind of formulate what we're talking about here where um contingency is retroactive necessity. Where necessity there's we're drawing this kind of opposition between or at least dynamic between contingency and necessity and what what I think we're we're articulating here is contingency is made necessary through retroactivity.
Yeah well you always you can always tell by you know couples tell about the story about how they meet you know it becomes instantly this very significant moment. I wrote down this sentence and I think I think it might properly kind of formulate what we're talking about here where um contingency is retroactive necessity. Where necessity there's we're drawing this kind of opposition between or at least dynamic between contingency and necessity and what what I think we're we're articulating here is contingency is made necessary through retroactivity.
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Absolutely that's like that's the thesis. Um and and I just for the for the purpose of of bringing it back to the personal is I've looked at lovers previously and been like where did you come from? You know what happened to what happened to make this happen? What led up to this like this encounter? And I think this is actually what's going on when I when I'm having this thought process is is really encountering the the tension between uh the recognition of contingency and the will and the want to make it necessary. And how that that retroactively by making something uh seemingly necessary amidst the field of what is ultimately contingent you're it's about providing things meaning right it's about... Yeah it's about giving things meaning because otherwise as Žižek is saying in his concept of love you know to truly love is to be able to allow the thing to disappear as as it
Absolutely that's like that's the thesis. Um and and I just for the for the purpose of of bringing it back to the personal is I've looked at lovers previously and been like where did you come from? You know what happened to what happened to make this happen? What led up to this like this encounter? And I think this is actually what's going on when I when I'm having this thought process is is really encountering the the tension between uh the recognition of contingency and the will and the want to make it necessary. And how that that retroactively by making something uh seemingly necessary amidst the field of what is ultimately contingent you're it's about providing things meaning right it's about... Yeah it's about giving things meaning because otherwise as Žižek is saying in his concept of love you know to truly love is to be able to allow the thing to disappear as as it
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appeared. Like that ultimately this everything is still contingent. Love is about this sort of violent
appeared. Like that ultimately this everything is still contingent. Love is about this sort of violent
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uh interruption of
uh interruption of
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necessity in the field of contingency. I think it also it speaks to that openness that we were talking about before that
necessity in the field of contingency. I think it also it speaks to that openness that we were talking about before that
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that love can even happen proves the openness and the possibility of I guess I'll say life. And I think that's what um connects it with with how he described it as political. Like in our political situation which can seem so determined and so impossible there always is this plane of openness and this possibility of openness that can only be that maybe is only accessed through that sort of uh disaster of moment that maybe a revolution or an act of violence or something or a miracle he says sometimes. An event. Tell us why you like Hegel so much. Yeah totally. We basically listened to you take a shit so just honestly tell us why you like him you know so much.
that love can even happen proves the openness and the possibility of I guess I'll say life. And I think that's what um connects it with with how he described it as political. Like in our political situation which can seem so determined and so impossible there always is this plane of openness and this possibility of openness that can only be that maybe is only accessed through that sort of uh disaster of moment that maybe a revolution or an act of violence or something or a miracle he says sometimes. An event. Tell us why you like Hegel so much. Yeah totally. We basically listened to you take a shit so just honestly tell us why you like him you know so much.