Zizek - Douzinas- "Σκέψη στην εποχή των τεράτων"
Debate · Michalis Loggos ·
2010 · 1:06:24 · 9,484 words
ideologydemocracyrevolution-violencephilosophy-generalpsychoanalysiscapitalismgeopolitics-wareveryday-life
Žižek argues that contemporary public intellectuals are not worse off than in the past, as modern ethical perplexities force ordinary people to engage with philosophy. He contrasts the Socratic dialectic with the Cynicism of Diogenes, favoring Plato’s structural vision and Socrates’ method over Diogenes’ empty performative cynicism. He analyzes current political crises, such as the Greek debt crisis and Portuguese abstention, as forms of 'Bartleby politics' that reveal the crisis of representative democracy and the ideological manipulation of 'free choice' under neoliberalism. Žižek and a guest discuss the paradoxes of globalization, arguing that new walls are an immanent part of capitalist globalization rather than a failure of it. They analyze the crisis in Greece as a laboratory for a new biopolitical dispensation where ideology operates through the control of life processes rather than interpellation. The conversation concludes by examining how corruption and moralization have become necessary components of the current system, ending with a call for a radical, 'dirty' leftist resistance.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 19
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “pure hystericization”
Žižek’s description of Socrates’ method of undermining interlocutors by taking their claims seriously and exposing their contradictions from within.
as “healthy cynicism”
The positive, dispossessed aspect of Cynicism (kynicism) where the outsider mocks authority, distinguished from the cynical functioning of power.
as “kynicism vs. cynicism”
Sloterdijk’s distinction (endorsed by Žižek) between the dispossessed’s mocking of power (kynicism) and power’s private mockery of its own ideology (cynicism).
A Stoic concept of the common spirit or generative breath, referenced by Žižek in the context of Zeno’s proto-communist Politeia.
Žižek’s metaphor for Greece, which serves as a warning of the systemic collapse and panic that will eventually affect the entire European project.
A strategy of refusal, silence, or abstention (‘I would prefer not to’) that functions as a potent political act when dialogue is co-opted by power.
A Nietzschean distinction applied to abstention: not passive apathy, but an active, positive refusal that carries a political message.
as “ideological manipulation of free choice”
The neoliberal framing of precarity, flexibility, and market-based healthcare as ‘freedom,’ which obscures the loss of actual autonomy and security.
The argument that exclusionary walls are not a failure of globalization but a constitutive element of its current form.
The paradox that capitalist globalization functions by limiting the circulation of people (via walls) while maximizing the circulation of commodities.
Universal principles that are not derived from or immanent within the current 'fake democracy' or 'false noble lie' of liberal human rights.
A Hegelian view where the current reality (e.g., the Hague Court's failure) is not just a deviation but a symptom of the underlying contradiction.
as “biopower / biopolitical dispensation”
Power that operates not by controlling minds/ideology but by controlling conduct, bodies, and life processes (health, pensions, family).
The highest triumph of ideology when it presents itself not as a choice but as simple economic necessity, bypassing the need for interpellation.
as “Marxists de nos jours”
A sarcastic label for ruling elites who believe in the automatic, necessary progression of history/economics, only to lose that certainty during crisis.
The idea that corruption is no longer a contingent deviation from capitalism but a necessary function for the system to operate.
as “charity as necessary”
Following Sloterdijk, the view that charity is now required to prevent social explosions, functioning alongside corruption to stabilize the system.
as “moralizing the system”
A sign of deep crisis where a system directly tries to moralize itself, indicating it can no longer function on pure economic/legal terms alone.
A biblical reference (Psalm 23) reinterpreted by Žižek as a call for radical, aggressive leftist resistance.
Stories he reaches for 1
Žižek contrasts strikes of marginalized textile workers with strikes of high-paid public servants (customs, judges), noting how the latter differentiates the working class rather than building solidarity.
“we had a strike of people who work in custom, border police, judges, doctors... it hurts me when the strike has this clear level of differentiating the working class”
Works invoked 9
Cited as part of Kant's work that Habermas updates/castrates.
Homo Sacer book
Žižek explicitly states 'I don't like homo sacer,' rejecting Agamben's concept.
Criticized for ignoring the radical roots of Stoicism and promoting a UN-style human rights framework.
Cited for the distinction between kynicism and cynicism.
Hague Court other
Used as an example of 'moral universalism' that fails to match reality, serving as a symptom of the system's contradictions.
Parthenon artwork
Used as an example of how ideological framing (European destiny) is necessary to appreciate ruins.
Cited for its lack of slaves and principled equality of women, challenging the standard leftist view of Plato.
Described as a 'proto-communist text' and 'utopian antinomian text' that was censored by later Stoics.
Seeing - Saramago book
Referenced in relation to the Lisbon abstention example (ASR likely mangled title).
People invoked 33
José Saramago positive
Referenced via his work 'Seeing' (likely 'Seeing') in relation to the Lisbon abstention example.
David Held negative
Cited alongside Nussbaum for promoting a sanitized version of Stoic cosmopolitanism.
Silvio Berlusconi negative
Cited as an example of universalized corruption, showing the collapse of the public-private division of civility.
Vladimir Lenin negative
Cited as having influenced the fashionable opposition of Plato (bad) vs. Aristotle (good).
Niccolò Machiavelli positive
Cited for the insight that small acts can lay the foundation for big changes.
Zeno of Citium positive
Founder of Stoicism; Žižek highlights his 'Politeia' as a proto-communist text that was censored by later Stoics.
Stephen Hawking positive
Cited as an example of the popular return of metaphysical debates (cosmology, freedom, God).
Louis Althusser positive
Cited for the concept of 'interpolating individuals into subject,' which Žižek contrasts with the current state of ideology.
George W. Bush negative
Grouped with Reagan as practicing 'vulgar Keynesian strategy' under the guise of neoliberalism.
Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens negative
Cited as a postmodern leftist who formulates the ideological manipulation of free choice under neoliberalism.
George H. W. Bush negative
Used in a thought experiment to show how Socratic dialectic would expose the emptiness of his 'human rights' rhetoric.
Martha Nussbaum negative
Criticized for promoting a sanitized version of Stoic cosmopolitanism while ignoring its radical, anti-normative roots.
Helmut Kohl negative
Cited as the German reunifier who left politics in disgrace for taking backhanders, exemplifying universalized corruption.
Cited as a figure of 'big revolution' contrasted with Bartleby politics.
Giorgio Agamben negative
Žižek states 'I don't like homo sacer and so on,' rejecting Agamben's framework.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva positive
Cited as an example of radicalizing democracy through dialogue with social movements (dispossessed farmers).
Peter Sloterdijk positive
Cited for his distinction between kynicism (dispossessed) and cynicism (power), which Žižek endorses.
Jacques Rancière positive
Cited as agreeing with the idea that 'the universal today is the most excluded'.
Cited as an 'eccentric' philanthropist who also had private detectives beat workers, contrasting with modern charity.
Herman Melville positive
The character Bartleby, source of 'Bartleby politics' (preferring not to).
Diogenes of Sinope negative
Žižek critiques Diogenes’ Cynicism as ineffective in modern systems of power, preferring Socratic dialectic.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau negative
Cited alongside Kant as being updated by Habermas to combine moral universalism with democratic legitimacy.
Henry Kissinger negative
Cited as having signed off on CIA arms in a coup, representing the 'smoking gun' of condoned murder behind human rights rhetoric.
Barack Obama negative
Cited for his healthcare debate, which Žižek sees as exposing the core of American ideology regarding freedom of choice.
Jürgen Habermas negative
Cited alongside Nussbaum for promoting a sanitized version of Stoic cosmopolitanism.
Plato positive
Žižek expresses sympathy for Plato, arguing he was more progressive than Aristotle regarding slavery and gender, and represents the structural/political dimension.
Aristotle negative
Used as a foil to Plato; Žižek argues Aristotle defended slavery and was less progressive than Plato.
Karl Marx positive
Cited for the idea that capitalism doesn't need corruption/fraud to operate, and for the observation that crises occur when rulers stop believing their own beliefs.
Socrates positive
Žižek favors Socrates as a figure of 'pure hystericization' and dialectic, contrasting him with Diogenes.
Immanuel Kant negative
Habermas is said to 'update' Kant, but Žižek sarcastically claims Habermas 'castrates Kant' by mixing moral universalism with democratic legitimacy.
Friedrich Nietzsche positive
Cited for predicting the return of metaphysical debates and for the distinction between 'not-willing' and 'willing not'.
Used as an example of the crisis of representative democracy (most hated but won elections).
Ronald Reagan negative
Cited as a 'radical neoliberal president' who actually practiced 'vulgar Keynesian strategy,' leading to huge US debt.
Transcript 51 turns
unknown
So Slavoj, here we are in Athens and we have next to us two contrasting monuments. On the one hand, the Acropolis and the Parthenon and on the other hand, this museum, the Acropolis Museum, which is being presented as one of the major architectural achievements of modern times. Now clearly there is quite a lot of contrast between the two and it is that contrast that I would like to start with. Not half a kilometer from here, Socrates was teaching and eventually died. But also not half a kilometer from here, Diogenes the Cynic had his barrel where he lived and he lived a life of the body, a proto-Nietzsche, someone that Nietzsche always copied and followed. What is the role of the public intellectual today? Is it the role of Socrates and Plato or is it the role of Diogenes the Cynic?
So Slavoj, here we are in Athens and we have next to us two contrasting monuments. On the one hand, the Acropolis and the Parthenon and on the other hand, this museum, the Acropolis Museum, which is being presented as one of the major architectural achievements of modern times. Now clearly there is quite a lot of contrast between the two and it is that contrast that I would like to start with. Not half a kilometer from here, Socrates was teaching and eventually died. But also not half a kilometer from here, Diogenes the Cynic had his barrel where he lived and he lived a life of the body, a proto-Nietzsche, someone that Nietzsche always copied and followed. What is the role of the public intellectual today? Is it the role of Socrates and Plato or is it the role of Diogenes the Cynic?
Slavoj Žižek
You know, I am more on the side of not even so much Socrates as even Plato. But let me clarify a couple of points before. First, you know, it's very fashionable to say how today everything is so commodified and media effect, that we no longer have true public intellectuals. And then you evoke a golden era. Some Americans who hate postmodernism, they say the fifties were the golden era, true public intellectuals. Now with this all French jargon, blah blah blah. But I think let's be frank. I don't think there was an old golden time where public intellectuals were really heard by the majority of the population. No, we are not even doing so bad today. And I will tell you why. Because we live, and this is, in the dark times where we are living, maybe one, one thing which can give us some hope. You know, we live in very perplexing times. Look at the debates about abortion, what to do in biogenetics and so on, it is clear that we are in a situation where the old ethical rules cannot simply be applied. You cannot read Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas and decide should we do brain surgery to change some of our innate properties or not. In other words, to take a position in today's public debates, ordinary people in some sense have to resolve or get an answer to a philosophical problem even. In these times of perplexion, philosophy is becoming something of a common concern and I will give you a proof. We intellectuals, it's true, neglected big philosophical issues, we prefer this historicist analysis and so on. You know where we are getting revenge? Isn't it that in the extreme popularity of new books about cosmology and Darwinism? The last Stephen Hawking is what? It's about the origin of the world, can we know it, is there human freedom, is there God? So I think that if anything, 21st century, Nietzsche was right here who predicted this, will be metaphysical in the sense that these big metaphysical debates will return with a vengeance. So I'm not too pessimistic here. Another thing I want to note: I like this co-presence of the thing itself, the antique original ruins, Parthenon and the museum, because I was told that there is a big window in the museum from where you can see... sorry, from where you can see Acropolis, but through a frame. And I think are we aware that even when we are not in the museum, this is how we see Acropolis. Imagine a total barbarian, not in the racist sense, in the sense of simple sense of someone who doesn't know anything about ancient Greece, he would say interesting, but nothing special, some old stones in ruins. You need the whole frame of destiny of Europe, foundation of Europe, to admire it. So in a way I like this, it makes us somehow aware that all the time when we look at ruins and so on, no matter how authentic they are, to be fascinated by them you need a frame. And the true ideological struggle is the struggle for that frame. In this case, ancient Greek, still I think was something which we shouldn't leave it to the right-wingers. You know it's fashionable today to say ancient Greek, it's a European imperialist myth, in reality it was Egyptians, whatever. No, no, ancient Greeks did some tremendous things. But we have to fight for what? Unfortunately today, if you say ancient Greek and German, especially if you add German legacy, you are kind of a racist anti-third-world nationalist. So we should fight for a legacy, and how to fight? As you pointed out very nicely, Greek legacy cannot be limited to one person. We have the figure of Socrates, we have the figure of Diogenes, and slightly different from Socrates, Plato. You know where is the difference? Socrates was basically, if I may use psychoanalytic terms, at least the original Socrates, the young one, was more of a figure, figure of pure hystericization. You know his famous, the only thing I know is that I don't know, which doesn't mean he was an idiot. It meant his basic procedure was when you claimed you know something, not to criticize you from outside, but taking you seriously and as it were, undermine you through your own arguments. Be consistent and so on. Plato as we know moved forward then in a positive view and let me emphasize especially today my sympathy for Plato, because under the unfortunate influence here of Lenin and some others, it's fashionable to oppose Plato and Aristotle as bad guy versus good guy, you know, Plato aristocracy, hatred of democracy, Aristotle more open. True, but let's never forget two things: that Plato first, in his Politeia, Republic... there is no place for slaves, he doesn't need them. While it was Aristotle who did all that stuff, you know, slaves are talking, talking instruments, tools and so on. Second thing, you know that Plato says that it's pure contingency of our present time that there are more men in position of power than women. He said in principle in an ideal Republic, sex shouldn't be a divide, the positions of power should not be reserved for women. So wait a minute, no slaves, principled equality of women, this wasn't so much. But now of course for many leftists especially or this anarchic, the most sympathetic figure would have been Diogenes. I think it’s very ambiguous figure. On the one hand, of course it is good to have someone who as it were with his very presence undermines the pompous authority of the discourse of power. He was able the way I imagine Diogenes to do something that in my experience only women can do. You know, let's say you a man or me are bluffing, giving some pathetic talk, and then only a woman can do something in my experience. She looks at you with this not even evil, condescending, skeptical look and in one second you are ruined, you know like, what are you bullshitting? I this is the good side, this healthy cynicism, healthy cynicism. On the other hand, let's never forget that cynicism is the main mode of functioning of corrupted powers. Peter Sloterdijk, who is not one of us, a right-winger but an intelligent right-winger, he should be read, already in his early book Critique of Cynical Reason, he introduced a wonderful distinction between kynicism, original kynics, and cynicism. And saying clearly, kynicism is the arm of those dispossessed, poor, like the master gives you the ideological preaching and you, haha, look who is talking. Cynicism is those in power privately making fun of their own ideology. This line is crucial, because especially today when terror is no longer this direct state terror, I think that it's no longer really productive this Diogenes position of being a cynical outsider. This I think system almost functions like way, we are allowed all to be half-isolated atoms and in this way we function perfectly. So I'm more here for Socrates, for this like, you know, what would have Socrates, can you imagine something as wonderful... okay, but she should have gotten somebody more intelligent, like not the leftists claiming Bush is lying, but just Socrates confronting George Bush. Ah, you are going to Iraq to impose human rights. Okay, define human rights. Wouldn't Socrates have ruined Bush in five minutes? I mean... I want a little to disagree with you about Diogenes, Diogenes, because I think what you just said I think is part of a two millennia censorship around the figure of the cynic, the figure of the cynic and also about a text that we know only through small fragments that were written by the disciples of Zeno of Kition, a Politeia, a Republic that was written by the founder of the Stoa as a direct response to Plato. Now Zeno was a disciple of Crates and Crates of Diogenes. So to that extent there is direct link between the Diogenese principles and Zeno. Now Zeno writes in that Republic, the Politeia, that the only proper city, polis, Politeia has to be a city in which we will have no courthouses, no gymnasia, no money, that property would be shared by everyone and that all the major customs and conventions should be changed towards a Politeia of lovers and wise men. Now of course this is Zeno who also started the Stoa. Today we hear from people like Martha Nussbaum, Habermas, Held, they all have a little thing in their cosmopolitan books about cosmopolitanism that started with the Stoics. Not a single person mentions that proto-communist text, the Politeia, which as I said, we know it why? Because later Stoics, Athenodorus, Cassius and others, who are totally embarrassed that their leader and founder Zeno had written such a text which had disappeared, mention a few fragments of that text in their own publications in order to say our founder could never have said something like that. And we have today people writing about cosmopolitans, particularly Nussbaum whose text has become totally iconic about what is cosmopolitan today, who totally forget that this was an antinomian, perhaps utopian you could say, the first utopian antinomian text in the Greek tradition which goes out and says against modern cosmopolitanism which is all about the United Nations, human rights and so on, let’s create a proto-communist society and try through the coming together of lovers and wise men and so on, address the idea of the common spirit, the pneuma spermatikon and so on that's part of the tradition. To that extent I would say that you Slavoj, in your work, you represent both of these principles. You both represent the principle of the Platonic-Socratic deliberation, dialectics, the bringing out of the hidden truths or indeed the surface truths that are being always occluded by ideology, and that kind of more radical principle which does not just look towards building institutions
You know, I am more on the side of not even so much Socrates as even Plato. But let me clarify a couple of points before. First, you know, it's very fashionable to say how today everything is so commodified and media effect, that we no longer have true public intellectuals. And then you evoke a golden era. Some Americans who hate postmodernism, they say the fifties were the golden era, true public intellectuals. Now with this all French jargon, blah blah blah. But I think let's be frank. I don't think there was an old golden time where public intellectuals were really heard by the majority of the population. No, we are not even doing so bad today. And I will tell you why. Because we live, and this is, in the dark times where we are living, maybe one, one thing which can give us some hope. You know, we live in very perplexing times. Look at the debates about abortion, what to do in biogenetics and so on, it is clear that we are in a situation where the old ethical rules cannot simply be applied. You cannot read Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas and decide should we do brain surgery to change some of our innate properties or not. In other words, to take a position in today's public debates, ordinary people in some sense have to resolve or get an answer to a philosophical problem even. In these times of perplexion, philosophy is becoming something of a common concern and I will give you a proof. We intellectuals, it's true, neglected big philosophical issues, we prefer this historicist analysis and so on. You know where we are getting revenge? Isn't it that in the extreme popularity of new books about cosmology and Darwinism? The last Stephen Hawking is what? It's about the origin of the world, can we know it, is there human freedom, is there God? So I think that if anything, 21st century, Nietzsche was right here who predicted this, will be metaphysical in the sense that these big metaphysical debates will return with a vengeance. So I'm not too pessimistic here. Another thing I want to note: I like this co-presence of the thing itself, the antique original ruins, Parthenon and the museum, because I was told that there is a big window in the museum from where you can see... sorry, from where you can see Acropolis, but through a frame. And I think are we aware that even when we are not in the museum, this is how we see Acropolis. Imagine a total barbarian, not in the racist sense, in the sense of simple sense of someone who doesn't know anything about ancient Greece, he would say interesting, but nothing special, some old stones in ruins. You need the whole frame of destiny of Europe, foundation of Europe, to admire it. So in a way I like this, it makes us somehow aware that all the time when we look at ruins and so on, no matter how authentic they are, to be fascinated by them you need a frame. And the true ideological struggle is the struggle for that frame. In this case, ancient Greek, still I think was something which we shouldn't leave it to the right-wingers. You know it's fashionable today to say ancient Greek, it's a European imperialist myth, in reality it was Egyptians, whatever. No, no, ancient Greeks did some tremendous things. But we have to fight for what? Unfortunately today, if you say ancient Greek and German, especially if you add German legacy, you are kind of a racist anti-third-world nationalist. So we should fight for a legacy, and how to fight? As you pointed out very nicely, Greek legacy cannot be limited to one person. We have the figure of Socrates, we have the figure of Diogenes, and slightly different from Socrates, Plato. You know where is the difference? Socrates was basically, if I may use psychoanalytic terms, at least the original Socrates, the young one, was more of a figure, figure of pure hystericization. You know his famous, the only thing I know is that I don't know, which doesn't mean he was an idiot. It meant his basic procedure was when you claimed you know something, not to criticize you from outside, but taking you seriously and as it were, undermine you through your own arguments. Be consistent and so on. Plato as we know moved forward then in a positive view and let me emphasize especially today my sympathy for Plato, because under the unfortunate influence here of Lenin and some others, it's fashionable to oppose Plato and Aristotle as bad guy versus good guy, you know, Plato aristocracy, hatred of democracy, Aristotle more open. True, but let's never forget two things: that Plato first, in his Politeia, Republic... there is no place for slaves, he doesn't need them. While it was Aristotle who did all that stuff, you know, slaves are talking, talking instruments, tools and so on. Second thing, you know that Plato says that it's pure contingency of our present time that there are more men in position of power than women. He said in principle in an ideal Republic, sex shouldn't be a divide, the positions of power should not be reserved for women. So wait a minute, no slaves, principled equality of women, this wasn't so much. But now of course for many leftists especially or this anarchic, the most sympathetic figure would have been Diogenes. I think it’s very ambiguous figure. On the one hand, of course it is good to have someone who as it were with his very presence undermines the pompous authority of the discourse of power. He was able the way I imagine Diogenes to do something that in my experience only women can do. You know, let's say you a man or me are bluffing, giving some pathetic talk, and then only a woman can do something in my experience. She looks at you with this not even evil, condescending, skeptical look and in one second you are ruined, you know like, what are you bullshitting? I this is the good side, this healthy cynicism, healthy cynicism. On the other hand, let's never forget that cynicism is the main mode of functioning of corrupted powers. Peter Sloterdijk, who is not one of us, a right-winger but an intelligent right-winger, he should be read, already in his early book Critique of Cynical Reason, he introduced a wonderful distinction between kynicism, original kynics, and cynicism. And saying clearly, kynicism is the arm of those dispossessed, poor, like the master gives you the ideological preaching and you, haha, look who is talking. Cynicism is those in power privately making fun of their own ideology. This line is crucial, because especially today when terror is no longer this direct state terror, I think that it's no longer really productive this Diogenes position of being a cynical outsider. This I think system almost functions like way, we are allowed all to be half-isolated atoms and in this way we function perfectly. So I'm more here for Socrates, for this like, you know, what would have Socrates, can you imagine something as wonderful... okay, but she should have gotten somebody more intelligent, like not the leftists claiming Bush is lying, but just Socrates confronting George Bush. Ah, you are going to Iraq to impose human rights. Okay, define human rights. Wouldn't Socrates have ruined Bush in five minutes? I mean... I want a little to disagree with you about Diogenes, Diogenes, because I think what you just said I think is part of a two millennia censorship around the figure of the cynic, the figure of the cynic and also about a text that we know only through small fragments that were written by the disciples of Zeno of Kition, a Politeia, a Republic that was written by the founder of the Stoa as a direct response to Plato. Now Zeno was a disciple of Crates and Crates of Diogenes. So to that extent there is direct link between the Diogenese principles and Zeno. Now Zeno writes in that Republic, the Politeia, that the only proper city, polis, Politeia has to be a city in which we will have no courthouses, no gymnasia, no money, that property would be shared by everyone and that all the major customs and conventions should be changed towards a Politeia of lovers and wise men. Now of course this is Zeno who also started the Stoa. Today we hear from people like Martha Nussbaum, Habermas, Held, they all have a little thing in their cosmopolitan books about cosmopolitanism that started with the Stoics. Not a single person mentions that proto-communist text, the Politeia, which as I said, we know it why? Because later Stoics, Athenodorus, Cassius and others, who are totally embarrassed that their leader and founder Zeno had written such a text which had disappeared, mention a few fragments of that text in their own publications in order to say our founder could never have said something like that. And we have today people writing about cosmopolitans, particularly Nussbaum whose text has become totally iconic about what is cosmopolitan today, who totally forget that this was an antinomian, perhaps utopian you could say, the first utopian antinomian text in the Greek tradition which goes out and says against modern cosmopolitanism which is all about the United Nations, human rights and so on, let’s create a proto-communist society and try through the coming together of lovers and wise men and so on, address the idea of the common spirit, the pneuma spermatikon and so on that's part of the tradition. To that extent I would say that you Slavoj, in your work, you represent both of these principles. You both represent the principle of the Platonic-Socratic deliberation, dialectics, the bringing out of the hidden truths or indeed the surface truths that are being always occluded by ideology, and that kind of more radical principle which does not just look towards building institutions
unknown
and cities and laws, but looks towards a different kind of way of bringing people together through common ideas, through
and cities and laws, but looks towards a different kind of way of bringing people together through common ideas, through
Slavoj Žižek
the commons, common property and so on and so forth. So
the commons, common property and so on and so forth. So
unknown
I think it is important as you have done with many other figures
I think it is important as you have done with many other figures
Slavoj Žižek
that have been censored by history to also accept that
that have been censored by history to also accept that
unknown
Diogenes the kynic, as Sloterdijk put it, not the cynic in the Western translation, is part of our tradition. No, I again, I simply didn't know this, I admit it. My Diogenes, Diogenes is the Diogenes that you this kind of cynic in the sense of an idiot, but idiot in the etymological sense, the one who isolated himself. I agree with you that this communitarian aspect is totally absent from like what you learn in philosophical standard, history of philosophy books, is
Diogenes the kynic, as Sloterdijk put it, not the cynic in the Western translation, is part of our tradition. No, I again, I simply didn't know this, I admit it. My Diogenes, Diogenes is the Diogenes that you this kind of cynic in the sense of an idiot, but idiot in the etymological sense, the one who isolated himself. I agree with you that this communitarian aspect is totally absent from like what you learn in philosophical standard, history of philosophy books, is
unknown
something all this already the choice of anecdotes is significant. You learn for example that he, was it him, it was him I think, that he liked to masturbate in public and so on, you know all this stupid... But let me tell you about this, a wonderful little story that we know about Diogenes. When he was asked, why Diogenes, you masturbate in public? He said imagine if when you are hungry, you could rub your stomach and get the hunger away. That is exactly what I am doing, you know, with my penis. Now in that in that way he totally undermines the culture-nature tradition and I think you know so again brings out a kind of radical antinomian principle that eventually makes him totally illegitimate, immoral and so on. And I think that kind of idea which to my mind relates more to the Hegelian rather than the Kantian idea, the Hegelian idea in which the body, passions, emotions and so on are part of the historical process rather than you know just reason, thinking and so on. So to that extent I wanted to mention that today because for me you Slavoj represent precisely the dialectical overcoming of the Platonic and Diogenesian position. Yeah but you know where maybe, I'm not sure, we disagree here, because it's very sympathetic what you said just now. But my general view is more towards social control, organization and so on. I have this deep mistrust of the idea that you know, oh how wonderful carnival, social order disintegrates and so on. I don't like to apply it to today's order. I don't like the left who likes this once every twenty years ecstatic moment so that you can then tell your children I was there and then afterwards usually you become a good corrupted businessman or whatever. I like the left who thinks about what will happen the day after, when you are sober, to introduce new order. This is what is so terribly needed today. This is a challenge in its pure form, that you in Greece have literally this month, these weeks.
something all this already the choice of anecdotes is significant. You learn for example that he, was it him, it was him I think, that he liked to masturbate in public and so on, you know all this stupid... But let me tell you about this, a wonderful little story that we know about Diogenes. When he was asked, why Diogenes, you masturbate in public? He said imagine if when you are hungry, you could rub your stomach and get the hunger away. That is exactly what I am doing, you know, with my penis. Now in that in that way he totally undermines the culture-nature tradition and I think you know so again brings out a kind of radical antinomian principle that eventually makes him totally illegitimate, immoral and so on. And I think that kind of idea which to my mind relates more to the Hegelian rather than the Kantian idea, the Hegelian idea in which the body, passions, emotions and so on are part of the historical process rather than you know just reason, thinking and so on. So to that extent I wanted to mention that today because for me you Slavoj represent precisely the dialectical overcoming of the Platonic and Diogenesian position. Yeah but you know where maybe, I'm not sure, we disagree here, because it's very sympathetic what you said just now. But my general view is more towards social control, organization and so on. I have this deep mistrust of the idea that you know, oh how wonderful carnival, social order disintegrates and so on. I don't like to apply it to today's order. I don't like the left who likes this once every twenty years ecstatic moment so that you can then tell your children I was there and then afterwards usually you become a good corrupted businessman or whatever. I like the left who thinks about what will happen the day after, when you are sober, to introduce new order. This is what is so terribly needed today. This is a challenge in its pure form, that you in Greece have literally this month, these weeks.
Slavoj Žižek
It's not just, oh let's
It's not just, oh let's
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demonstrate, blah blah blah, it's
demonstrate, blah blah blah, it's
Slavoj Žižek
you will be more and more
you will be more and more
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challenged by, yeah but what can you offer? And I am not saying that the cause is lost, I'm not repeating the mistake that you sometimes find in some of these postmodernists, and I include already Adorno, from Adorno to Agamben where the idea is that today's society is more and more one-dimensional, self-enclosed, you cannot do anything. We have much more still within the existing global order, we have much more space to maneuver, you just have to find your way. I think that to say what some leftists are saying, capitalism triumphed so basically for the next years all we can do is cultural
challenged by, yeah but what can you offer? And I am not saying that the cause is lost, I'm not repeating the mistake that you sometimes find in some of these postmodernists, and I include already Adorno, from Adorno to Agamben where the idea is that today's society is more and more one-dimensional, self-enclosed, you cannot do anything. We have much more still within the existing global order, we have much more space to maneuver, you just have to find your way. I think that to say what some leftists are saying, capitalism triumphed so basically for the next years all we can do is cultural
Slavoj Žižek
critique and enjoy our privileged post and paint a dark picture. No, you Greece today symbolizes in a clear form the fact that my God we are forced to act. When things are happening like the way they are happening in Greece, but isn't the whole Greece today a Cassandra for Europe, no? You can see nicely in European reactions to Greece how first they mocked you in a racist way, hoho those stupid lazy Greeks, now they are much more in a panic, seeing you as the starting point of a process which concerns the whole of Europe. And so I think that the ethical
critique and enjoy our privileged post and paint a dark picture. No, you Greece today symbolizes in a clear form the fact that my God we are forced to act. When things are happening like the way they are happening in Greece, but isn't the whole Greece today a Cassandra for Europe, no? You can see nicely in European reactions to Greece how first they mocked you in a racist way, hoho those stupid lazy Greeks, now they are much more in a panic, seeing you as the starting point of a process which concerns the whole of Europe. And so I think that the ethical
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challenge is immense here. And we also, we so-called radical intellectuals, were we not used for a long time to live in this relatively comfortable situation? We knew it's a bad world, but we somehow arranged for us good professorships, we didn't do so bad and you know, to feel good you painted a bad picture but you live your life in it. Now we can no longer afford it. We can no longer afford it and here I think you touch a major paradox or even impossibility that the left intellectual feels today. Up until a few
challenge is immense here. And we also, we so-called radical intellectuals, were we not used for a long time to live in this relatively comfortable situation? We knew it's a bad world, but we somehow arranged for us good professorships, we didn't do so bad and you know, to feel good you painted a bad picture but you live your life in it. Now we can no longer afford it. We can no longer afford it and here I think you touch a major paradox or even impossibility that the left intellectual feels today. Up until a few
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years ago, even in before the big crisis in September, I think you but also many other people would say that if the left is thinking in action, this is the time to do the thinking. We have to go back and I think you have repeatedly used the Bartleby principle, I would prefer not to, repeatedly the Lenin joke about you know, learn, learn, learn and so on, go to Switzerland and read Hegel. Yes, all that, the idea that this is a time to think through the questions as you put it, not necessarily the answers, and as it were prepare a thinking that could perhaps have some
years ago, even in before the big crisis in September, I think you but also many other people would say that if the left is thinking in action, this is the time to do the thinking. We have to go back and I think you have repeatedly used the Bartleby principle, I would prefer not to, repeatedly the Lenin joke about you know, learn, learn, learn and so on, go to Switzerland and read Hegel. Yes, all that, the idea that this is a time to think through the questions as you put it, not necessarily the answers, and as it were prepare a thinking that could perhaps have some
Slavoj Žižek
influence later on. But clearly in the last two years all of us, including you, have changed and we now say that although we're not sure about what exactly is happening in the world and we're not sure what the immediate answer or the immediate principle of resistance should be, we have to act. We have to go out, we have to be outside. No, no, I always emphasized, you know, my Bartleby principle originated in my personal experience of how I often noticed how there is a certain type of being a critical intellectual which perfectly fits and legitimizes the existing order. So I'm here very open when people often tell me you are inconsistent, sometimes you are talking about Bartleby politics, sometimes you are talking about small rational steps, sometimes you sound like a kind of a Bakunin-like big revolution. My answer is: why choose? There are clearly times when those in power to legitimize their position love nothing more than kind of independent critique which justifies, legitimizes in an direct or intermediate way or mediate way their power. So at such points it works very good when you refuse dialogue and remain silent. Silence becomes ominous. For example, my own experience here, at a certain point when they started to lose, Communists in the second half of the eighties in my own country Slovenia, ex-Yugoslavia, I remember how they were all the time inviting us, come to the Central Committee, dialogue, and when we ignored it they were in a total panic. We didn't have any big plan to make a coup d'état whatever. Then there are clearly moments when, and this is for me the best formal definition of an authentic revolutionary situation: in ordinary tensions this anti-utopian thinking is valid, that is to say don't aim at the big thing, pragmatically steps. But sometimes, rarely but sometimes, there are situations when even to solve the small problems you have to do a big thing. And sometimes there is also time for pragmatism, and here you have to show not in this sense of the bourgeois myth Machiavelli horror but the best of Machiavelli. He knew this, namely that often you cannot even clearly distinguish small and big acts. Often if you insist on an apparently small particular point, you are laying the foundation for a big change. For this is why with all my doubts of course, I'm not stupid, about Obama, I think that the debate that he started there about healthcare, it wasn't just a particular problem healthcare. Then we can be critical of him, terrible compromises he made, but didn't this debate focus on the basic component of American ideology? How personal freedom of choice is used to discredit every large
influence later on. But clearly in the last two years all of us, including you, have changed and we now say that although we're not sure about what exactly is happening in the world and we're not sure what the immediate answer or the immediate principle of resistance should be, we have to act. We have to go out, we have to be outside. No, no, I always emphasized, you know, my Bartleby principle originated in my personal experience of how I often noticed how there is a certain type of being a critical intellectual which perfectly fits and legitimizes the existing order. So I'm here very open when people often tell me you are inconsistent, sometimes you are talking about Bartleby politics, sometimes you are talking about small rational steps, sometimes you sound like a kind of a Bakunin-like big revolution. My answer is: why choose? There are clearly times when those in power to legitimize their position love nothing more than kind of independent critique which justifies, legitimizes in an direct or intermediate way or mediate way their power. So at such points it works very good when you refuse dialogue and remain silent. Silence becomes ominous. For example, my own experience here, at a certain point when they started to lose, Communists in the second half of the eighties in my own country Slovenia, ex-Yugoslavia, I remember how they were all the time inviting us, come to the Central Committee, dialogue, and when we ignored it they were in a total panic. We didn't have any big plan to make a coup d'état whatever. Then there are clearly moments when, and this is for me the best formal definition of an authentic revolutionary situation: in ordinary tensions this anti-utopian thinking is valid, that is to say don't aim at the big thing, pragmatically steps. But sometimes, rarely but sometimes, there are situations when even to solve the small problems you have to do a big thing. And sometimes there is also time for pragmatism, and here you have to show not in this sense of the bourgeois myth Machiavelli horror but the best of Machiavelli. He knew this, namely that often you cannot even clearly distinguish small and big acts. Often if you insist on an apparently small particular point, you are laying the foundation for a big change. For this is why with all my doubts of course, I'm not stupid, about Obama, I think that the debate that he started there about healthcare, it wasn't just a particular problem healthcare. Then we can be critical of him, terrible compromises he made, but didn't this debate focus on the basic component of American ideology? How personal freedom of choice is used to discredit every large
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social action and so on and so forth. So again I hope we all agree here, this is a false choice. My God, ironically sometimes I say this is like accusing me of inconsistency if today, if today, if today I will have a moussaka and tomorrow I will have spaghetti. Yes, sorry, it's the same there, you should... Okay, let me then
social action and so on and so forth. So again I hope we all agree here, this is a false choice. My God, ironically sometimes I say this is like accusing me of inconsistency if today, if today, if today I will have a moussaka and tomorrow I will have spaghetti. Yes, sorry, it's the same there, you should... Okay, let me then
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going back to this idea of the debate between actual political intervention without being clear where you're going and that withdrawal from politics. About a month ago here in Greece, there was a series of local elections and that was the first occasion in which this new government with all these measures that it has introduced was being judged by the electorate. And we had something unique, particularly here in Athens and Attica where half of the population of the country lives. For the first time ever, up to percent, percent of the population did not vote. And usually you have high voting, percent, almost if I may ironic, Stalinist social numbers. And percent, percent
going back to this idea of the debate between actual political intervention without being clear where you're going and that withdrawal from politics. About a month ago here in Greece, there was a series of local elections and that was the first occasion in which this new government with all these measures that it has introduced was being judged by the electorate. And we had something unique, particularly here in Athens and Attica where half of the population of the country lives. For the first time ever, up to percent, percent of the population did not vote. And usually you have high voting, percent, almost if I may ironic, Stalinist social numbers. And percent, percent
Slavoj Žižek
spoiled ballots. Now the attitude
spoiled ballots. Now the attitude
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of politicians, including the left, was that this was apathy, lack of political involvement, intervention. In something that I wrote, I used this wonderful political parable by Saramago, the great Portuguese communist, Seeing (Ensaio sobre a Lucidez). That is a novel, a wonderful novel in which the
of politicians, including the left, was that this was apathy, lack of political involvement, intervention. In something that I wrote, I used this wonderful political parable by Saramago, the great Portuguese communist, Seeing (Ensaio sobre a Lucidez). That is a novel, a wonderful novel in which the
Slavoj Žižek
inhabitants of a city, obviously Lisbon, at some point they don't go to vote in an election. There is abstention and spoiled ballots up to percent. The government calls another election, the same happens. There is nobody organizing this kind of activity, there is no party or political slogan to do that and eventually the government becomes so upset that they abandon the city, they take the police and the fire service out because they expect that the city will collapse, it will collapse in anarchy. And it does not happen, it does not happen. In my view at that point was that those people who precisely at this point are unsure, they're totally lost, they see their wages being cut by and percent, the only thing they could do because they could not see any political movement or party that could represent that type of in a sense ignorance, insecurity, anxiety, they just didn't go to vote. And to that extent for me that was a positive thing because it brings us in a sense, and that's how you finished your intervention just now, to this whole idea of how can the citizen, me as a thinking citizen, in this situation in which free choice appears as the main way through which we organize our lives and so on, how can we act in ways that both appear morally important for us but have a certain political effectiveness? Could that kind of abstention be? No, I love this example because I already used Saramago's Seeing. Namely you see, when people told me what crazy thing is this unrealistic, do you mean by Bartleby politics? This the last Greek votes were an example of Bartleby politics. And would you agree that one should apply here a wonderful Nietzschean distinction between a not-willing things and willing not. The active, I think that it's the mistake of the left if I got you correctly, that they read this as just apathetic, we don't want anything. No, it was an active no. It was a message and we should take the message very seriously. Often if you are skeptical about parliamentary democracy, you're immediately accused, I want Stalin back, whatever. No no no, but it's a fact all around the world that today the standard parliamentary representative democracy is in a crisis. In a crisis in the sense that you showed and one can make the same point in France, in England, United Kingdom. How, the example I always use, Tony Blair was voted the most hated person in the UK six-seven years ago, a week later he won the elections. This means that there is a certain explosive level of amount of dissatisfaction which cannot be captured through our aseptic impotent representative democracy. What to do to save democracy by radicalizing it? I don't know, maybe in some cases like up to a point Brazil, up to a point Bolivia, Morales. One element is social movements there. The whole success relative, even in capitalist terms, of Lula is that his partners in dialogue were not only parliamentary parties but movements, movement of the dispossessed farmers and so on and so forth, the women and so
inhabitants of a city, obviously Lisbon, at some point they don't go to vote in an election. There is abstention and spoiled ballots up to percent. The government calls another election, the same happens. There is nobody organizing this kind of activity, there is no party or political slogan to do that and eventually the government becomes so upset that they abandon the city, they take the police and the fire service out because they expect that the city will collapse, it will collapse in anarchy. And it does not happen, it does not happen. In my view at that point was that those people who precisely at this point are unsure, they're totally lost, they see their wages being cut by and percent, the only thing they could do because they could not see any political movement or party that could represent that type of in a sense ignorance, insecurity, anxiety, they just didn't go to vote. And to that extent for me that was a positive thing because it brings us in a sense, and that's how you finished your intervention just now, to this whole idea of how can the citizen, me as a thinking citizen, in this situation in which free choice appears as the main way through which we organize our lives and so on, how can we act in ways that both appear morally important for us but have a certain political effectiveness? Could that kind of abstention be? No, I love this example because I already used Saramago's Seeing. Namely you see, when people told me what crazy thing is this unrealistic, do you mean by Bartleby politics? This the last Greek votes were an example of Bartleby politics. And would you agree that one should apply here a wonderful Nietzschean distinction between a not-willing things and willing not. The active, I think that it's the mistake of the left if I got you correctly, that they read this as just apathetic, we don't want anything. No, it was an active no. It was a message and we should take the message very seriously. Often if you are skeptical about parliamentary democracy, you're immediately accused, I want Stalin back, whatever. No no no, but it's a fact all around the world that today the standard parliamentary representative democracy is in a crisis. In a crisis in the sense that you showed and one can make the same point in France, in England, United Kingdom. How, the example I always use, Tony Blair was voted the most hated person in the UK six-seven years ago, a week later he won the elections. This means that there is a certain explosive level of amount of dissatisfaction which cannot be captured through our aseptic impotent representative democracy. What to do to save democracy by radicalizing it? I don't know, maybe in some cases like up to a point Brazil, up to a point Bolivia, Morales. One element is social movements there. The whole success relative, even in capitalist terms, of Lula is that his partners in dialogue were not only parliamentary parties but movements, movement of the dispossessed farmers and so on and so forth, the women and so
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on. You know, so that in this way you try to introduce an additional dynamics. I mean this
on. You know, so that in this way you try to introduce an additional dynamics. I mean this
Slavoj Žižek
is not an abstract
is not an abstract
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intellectual topic. My God, let's be pathetic and say insofar as here Athens, Greece, the founding site of democracy, you know I like to be pathetic here and take from right-wingers this topic, oh we stand for Western legacy. No, we leftists who try to reinvent democracy, we are truly stand, we are the one who will save what is worth saving in Western legacy. Today's those conservatives who appeal to Judeo-Christian or Greek legacy, they are the true barbarians, they are the true
intellectual topic. My God, let's be pathetic and say insofar as here Athens, Greece, the founding site of democracy, you know I like to be pathetic here and take from right-wingers this topic, oh we stand for Western legacy. No, we leftists who try to reinvent democracy, we are truly stand, we are the one who will save what is worth saving in Western legacy. Today's those conservatives who appeal to Judeo-Christian or Greek legacy, they are the true barbarians, they are the true
Slavoj Žižek
traitors. I totally agree with you and I think this is an extremely
traitors. I totally agree with you and I think this is an extremely
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important point that you have put in your work: that the future of democracy today depends almost totally on the radical left. It is only the radical left that can save it. And let me say a couple of things on this. What we had over the last or years around the world, but also here in Europe, was this idea of
important point that you have put in your work: that the future of democracy today depends almost totally on the radical left. It is only the radical left that can save it. And let me say a couple of things on this. What we had over the last or years around the world, but also here in Europe, was this idea of
Slavoj Žižek
globalization of legality, of law on the one
globalization of legality, of law on the one
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hand, we had all these regulatory institutions, the WTO and so on, that were telling governments what to do, and also globalization of capital. Governments could not in any way resist that kind of introduction of legal measures, of financial measures, of economic measures, of open of investment and so on. So what they do? Basically they told us that that kind of governance that has now replaced government is something that can operate through only the experts. So democracy becomes just elections and police powers. The rest is done by experts. This is something very clear, very characteristic in Europe. And what happens to democracy for the other people? It becomes the idea that you have lifestyle choices. You can change yourself, you can change your career, you can move along, you can even change your sex, you know, so of it is all about changing all the time because now you have freedom of choice and this is what makes you autonomous, the idea of autonomy of self-determination and so on. So now we have a conception of democracy which is: elections every four years, but then the experts make the decisions, and for us, those of course who are the one-third who are in jobs, who have a good income and so on, to be able to go to London and shop, to change perhaps our skills, to move from profession to profession, from place to place, to establish ourselves elsewhere. In other words, free
hand, we had all these regulatory institutions, the WTO and so on, that were telling governments what to do, and also globalization of capital. Governments could not in any way resist that kind of introduction of legal measures, of financial measures, of economic measures, of open of investment and so on. So what they do? Basically they told us that that kind of governance that has now replaced government is something that can operate through only the experts. So democracy becomes just elections and police powers. The rest is done by experts. This is something very clear, very characteristic in Europe. And what happens to democracy for the other people? It becomes the idea that you have lifestyle choices. You can change yourself, you can change your career, you can move along, you can even change your sex, you know, so of it is all about changing all the time because now you have freedom of choice and this is what makes you autonomous, the idea of autonomy of self-determination and so on. So now we have a conception of democracy which is: elections every four years, but then the experts make the decisions, and for us, those of course who are the one-third who are in jobs, who have a good income and so on, to be able to go to London and shop, to change perhaps our skills, to move from profession to profession, from place to place, to establish ourselves elsewhere. In other words, free
Slavoj Žižek
choice means now three things: consumption, change, and movement. And if you have that, then you are supposed to be autonomous, therefore to participate in democracy. What of course that is now being reduced to even a smaller part of the population in the North and indeed in the South. This is a wonderful point that you made now. Let me just add some variations. What you said about free choice, I think this is one of the typical ideological manipulations today which was perfectly formulated by even people who consider themselves postmodern left like Anthony Giddens and so on. When your actual welfare is cut by these neoliberal reforms, they try to sell you this bitter pill as a new form of freedom. For example, after years, and this was your fate, you did a certain work in a steelwork, whatever. Now you lose your job, they tell you but see this as a new opp... or you know this tendency in today's capitalism, less and less permanent job, more and more flexibilization... yeah they call it wonderful flexibility. You are not forced, you will not fall into a routine, you are given a freedom. Or for example less and less healthcare guaranteed by state, more and more you have to invest, they tell you another freedom. You don't have to worry, you, it's not predetermined. Here I like to say that, but are we aware that to be effectively free, and I don't mean this in any obscure Stalinist way, but effectively free in the simple sense of being able to dedicate your life to what really matters to you, many things, quite many things have to run smoothly behind. My, when people tell me this, I tell them the following: imagine how we deal today mostly with electricity and water. We don't have de facto freedom of choice. You live here, you have a company or state company usually hope to provide electricity, water. But frankly, if this more or less functions, I prefer not to be bothered with these choices. I don't want that and isn't it the same with healthcare? I find it, taking into account today's civilizational standards, it doesn't in any way curtail, limit my freedom if I can simply rely on a certain basic healthcare so that I don't have all the time to worry about what happens if and so on. What you said about globalization is also very important, namely I think the left, maybe we
choice means now three things: consumption, change, and movement. And if you have that, then you are supposed to be autonomous, therefore to participate in democracy. What of course that is now being reduced to even a smaller part of the population in the North and indeed in the South. This is a wonderful point that you made now. Let me just add some variations. What you said about free choice, I think this is one of the typical ideological manipulations today which was perfectly formulated by even people who consider themselves postmodern left like Anthony Giddens and so on. When your actual welfare is cut by these neoliberal reforms, they try to sell you this bitter pill as a new form of freedom. For example, after years, and this was your fate, you did a certain work in a steelwork, whatever. Now you lose your job, they tell you but see this as a new opp... or you know this tendency in today's capitalism, less and less permanent job, more and more flexibilization... yeah they call it wonderful flexibility. You are not forced, you will not fall into a routine, you are given a freedom. Or for example less and less healthcare guaranteed by state, more and more you have to invest, they tell you another freedom. You don't have to worry, you, it's not predetermined. Here I like to say that, but are we aware that to be effectively free, and I don't mean this in any obscure Stalinist way, but effectively free in the simple sense of being able to dedicate your life to what really matters to you, many things, quite many things have to run smoothly behind. My, when people tell me this, I tell them the following: imagine how we deal today mostly with electricity and water. We don't have de facto freedom of choice. You live here, you have a company or state company usually hope to provide electricity, water. But frankly, if this more or less functions, I prefer not to be bothered with these choices. I don't want that and isn't it the same with healthcare? I find it, taking into account today's civilizational standards, it doesn't in any way curtail, limit my freedom if I can simply rely on a certain basic healthcare so that I don't have all the time to worry about what happens if and so on. What you said about globalization is also very important, namely I think the left, maybe we
unknown
even disagree here a little bit, I'm not sure, so we'll present that I'm maybe a little bit more globalist but not globalist in the sense of course of this neo... I claim that dialectically at the same time, the trick of this globalization is that it's not really globalization, it cheats, it violates its own rules all the time. Which is why, okay here maybe we slightly disagree, even typical imperialist inventions like the Hague court. I think there are positions when one can use them against how they were intended. Let me give you an example. Can you imagine what important this was to unmask United States when on the one hand they pushed for Hague court, celebrating it, finally Milosevic, no Pol Pot will be able to walk freely, but at the same time they put brute, brutal pressure on countries to deliver their own suspected criminals to the Hague? Friends from Serbia told me that this was a catastrophic moral event when they saw often literally as persons the same diplomats putting pressure on Serbia, okay, deliver Karadzic, Mladic, at the same time sign with us the non-extradition treaty, it doesn't apply to us. And I think it was a great piece of education when we saw the limit. The limit became clear apropos Pinochet. You know they somehow swallowed it, but nobody was really satisfied. Like wasn't the message of inclusive, the new labor, Blair, all of them we didn't really mean Hague for these cases. And then, although he is now pro-Bush, I know where he stands now, but I still appreciate the way Christopher Hitchens tried to play the game, his game was in strictly legalistic terms because it is important for everyday people to show them how the system cheats in its own terms. You remember he basically built a perfect legal case against Henry
even disagree here a little bit, I'm not sure, so we'll present that I'm maybe a little bit more globalist but not globalist in the sense of course of this neo... I claim that dialectically at the same time, the trick of this globalization is that it's not really globalization, it cheats, it violates its own rules all the time. Which is why, okay here maybe we slightly disagree, even typical imperialist inventions like the Hague court. I think there are positions when one can use them against how they were intended. Let me give you an example. Can you imagine what important this was to unmask United States when on the one hand they pushed for Hague court, celebrating it, finally Milosevic, no Pol Pot will be able to walk freely, but at the same time they put brute, brutal pressure on countries to deliver their own suspected criminals to the Hague? Friends from Serbia told me that this was a catastrophic moral event when they saw often literally as persons the same diplomats putting pressure on Serbia, okay, deliver Karadzic, Mladic, at the same time sign with us the non-extradition treaty, it doesn't apply to us. And I think it was a great piece of education when we saw the limit. The limit became clear apropos Pinochet. You know they somehow swallowed it, but nobody was really satisfied. Like wasn't the message of inclusive, the new labor, Blair, all of them we didn't really mean Hague for these cases. And then, although he is now pro-Bush, I know where he stands now, but I still appreciate the way Christopher Hitchens tried to play the game, his game was in strictly legalistic terms because it is important for everyday people to show them how the system cheats in its own terms. You remember he basically built a perfect legal case against Henry
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Kissinger. I mean it is clear that the murder of Orlando Letelier, Allende's foreign minister, later in exile, and the coup against Allende, and the murder especially of that, the first Rene Schneider I think, the Chief of
Kissinger. I mean it is clear that the murder of Orlando Letelier, Allende's foreign minister, later in exile, and the coup against Allende, and the murder especially of that, the first Rene Schneider I think, the Chief of
Slavoj Žižek
Staff who was opposed to the coup d'état, but not a communist, just an honest legalist, he found a smoking gun, Kissinger signed that he agrees, even ordered CIA to provide arms and so on and so forth. This is a clear case of murder, of condoning in... and it is important that people get this lesson, how it's not really human rights taken in this naive sense, freedom... how the system has to cheat. Another thing: it's important to learn how the problem of this globalization is not only we are losing national sovereignty, all one big state of capital. No, how an immanent part of this globalization are new walls all around. It's as if we cut off one wall, Berlin Wall, and pop they are returning with a vengeance, wall between United States Mexico, West Bank wall, we in Europe have our literal wall. You know Spain has across Gibraltar a very small domain, it's walls so that from Africa refugees don't come and so on and so forth. And this is crucial to see that this is not a sign of imperfect globalization, a Habermasian would probably say oh this is globalization as an unfinished project. No no no, this is an immanent part of globalization. Capitalist, capitalist globalization functions only by limiting circulation of people, commodities. It's a globalization of commodities, not of people. Excellent, but that brings us in a sense to the philosophical question behind that in which I always had some problems with your position, but we're not going to discuss that now. And the philosophical problem behind that is precisely the question of universalism and what kind of universalism we are prepared and indeed bound to promote and defend and what other kinds of universalism we are prepared to accuse and demystify as precisely you know sort of being totally false and doing exactly the opposite. Now you mentioned Habermas and it seems to me that for people like Habermas or David Held, all the American liberals, have argued that this kind of cosmopolitan democracy that is being developed is precisely the human face of globalization. And it has two things, for Habermas who obviously updates Kant and Rousseau for the 21st century. Bad Kant, he castrates Kant. Sure, the second critique and all that. Yeah, and the metaphysics of morals. So
Staff who was opposed to the coup d'état, but not a communist, just an honest legalist, he found a smoking gun, Kissinger signed that he agrees, even ordered CIA to provide arms and so on and so forth. This is a clear case of murder, of condoning in... and it is important that people get this lesson, how it's not really human rights taken in this naive sense, freedom... how the system has to cheat. Another thing: it's important to learn how the problem of this globalization is not only we are losing national sovereignty, all one big state of capital. No, how an immanent part of this globalization are new walls all around. It's as if we cut off one wall, Berlin Wall, and pop they are returning with a vengeance, wall between United States Mexico, West Bank wall, we in Europe have our literal wall. You know Spain has across Gibraltar a very small domain, it's walls so that from Africa refugees don't come and so on and so forth. And this is crucial to see that this is not a sign of imperfect globalization, a Habermasian would probably say oh this is globalization as an unfinished project. No no no, this is an immanent part of globalization. Capitalist, capitalist globalization functions only by limiting circulation of people, commodities. It's a globalization of commodities, not of people. Excellent, but that brings us in a sense to the philosophical question behind that in which I always had some problems with your position, but we're not going to discuss that now. And the philosophical problem behind that is precisely the question of universalism and what kind of universalism we are prepared and indeed bound to promote and defend and what other kinds of universalism we are prepared to accuse and demystify as precisely you know sort of being totally false and doing exactly the opposite. Now you mentioned Habermas and it seems to me that for people like Habermas or David Held, all the American liberals, have argued that this kind of cosmopolitan democracy that is being developed is precisely the human face of globalization. And it has two things, for Habermas who obviously updates Kant and Rousseau for the 21st century. Bad Kant, he castrates Kant. Sure, the second critique and all that. Yeah, and the metaphysics of morals. So
unknown
what he says is
what he says is
Slavoj Žižek
that our new world order has two basic principles, the two principles of autonomy. The Kantian principle which is universal legal and moral principles that all the laws of the states must follow and so on, but also a democratic principle which is that those laws will be enacted by representatives whom we elect, we vote for and so on. And therefore he brings together Kant and Rousseau and he has both the moral universalism of human rights, the Hague court and so on, and the democratic aspect of legitimacy that people vote. And then precisely, you know, when we look at all these examples that you mentioned, you know, with the walls that are going up, with the exclusion and the new xenophobia all over Europe and so on, and indeed all over the world, that idea of immanent critique that you talked about. And what do I mean by immanent critique? That these people are saying we have a principle of human rights, a principle of universal dignity and so on, and of course if it goes a little wrong we have to take certain measures, either on the legal normative side or on the democratic side, to bring it up. And that idea while of course me as a legal philosopher I've used it all my life, you always have to show how the law does not come up to the principles of justice that he represents. We also however come to a point where, first we may have to agree that certain universal principles, particularly of that liberal cosmopolitan type, not only do not work but precisely end up doing the opposite. But secondly and more important for me, going back to our initial debate, we also need non-immanent universal principles. In other words, principles... Could you be precise, what do you mean by non-universal? ...that are not immanent in our current, current you know sort of dispensation of fake democracy and you know sort of false noble lie, human rights universalism and so on. And that brings us in a sense to the question of the universal that you have written about, of course other people, Rancière, myself in my work, that perhaps the universal today is the most excluded. It is the position of the excluded from those universal dispensations is precisely the position of the universal. I total... no, here maybe it's just a matter of accent or whatever because the way you put it now I totally agree with you. First, as a good Hegelian, I'm well aware that in its immediate appearance universalism is usually the most violent position of exclusion. Why? Let us say I have my own tribe, you have your own tribe. If I remain particular, I still don't claim that I am all. I have my tribe, I exclude you. But you are outside but still we are both humans. But if I claim I stand for universal values of humanity, then if I'm against you it's not just one part of humanity opposing others, you are somehow much more radically excluded. Always with universality you have this trick. Second thing, I totally agree with what you said about just getting it better, which is why for me the point of me comparing Hague court with reality, the idea of Hague court. Wait a minute, I'm a Hegelian here, for me reality is a symptom, not in the sense of yeah yeah we need to make it better,
that our new world order has two basic principles, the two principles of autonomy. The Kantian principle which is universal legal and moral principles that all the laws of the states must follow and so on, but also a democratic principle which is that those laws will be enacted by representatives whom we elect, we vote for and so on. And therefore he brings together Kant and Rousseau and he has both the moral universalism of human rights, the Hague court and so on, and the democratic aspect of legitimacy that people vote. And then precisely, you know, when we look at all these examples that you mentioned, you know, with the walls that are going up, with the exclusion and the new xenophobia all over Europe and so on, and indeed all over the world, that idea of immanent critique that you talked about. And what do I mean by immanent critique? That these people are saying we have a principle of human rights, a principle of universal dignity and so on, and of course if it goes a little wrong we have to take certain measures, either on the legal normative side or on the democratic side, to bring it up. And that idea while of course me as a legal philosopher I've used it all my life, you always have to show how the law does not come up to the principles of justice that he represents. We also however come to a point where, first we may have to agree that certain universal principles, particularly of that liberal cosmopolitan type, not only do not work but precisely end up doing the opposite. But secondly and more important for me, going back to our initial debate, we also need non-immanent universal principles. In other words, principles... Could you be precise, what do you mean by non-universal? ...that are not immanent in our current, current you know sort of dispensation of fake democracy and you know sort of false noble lie, human rights universalism and so on. And that brings us in a sense to the question of the universal that you have written about, of course other people, Rancière, myself in my work, that perhaps the universal today is the most excluded. It is the position of the excluded from those universal dispensations is precisely the position of the universal. I total... no, here maybe it's just a matter of accent or whatever because the way you put it now I totally agree with you. First, as a good Hegelian, I'm well aware that in its immediate appearance universalism is usually the most violent position of exclusion. Why? Let us say I have my own tribe, you have your own tribe. If I remain particular, I still don't claim that I am all. I have my tribe, I exclude you. But you are outside but still we are both humans. But if I claim I stand for universal values of humanity, then if I'm against you it's not just one part of humanity opposing others, you are somehow much more radically excluded. Always with universality you have this trick. Second thing, I totally agree with what you said about just getting it better, which is why for me the point of me comparing Hague court with reality, the idea of Hague court. Wait a minute, I'm a Hegelian here, for me reality is a symptom, not in the sense of yeah yeah we need to make it better,
unknown
in the sense of a necessary symptom. If you... this is the basic lesson of Hegel. You cannot simply play the ideal against reality. If the ideal is realized at this in this way, generating its opposite, the first critical question to ask is, can we really simply say oh they just got it wrong, or was something wrong already in the idea? So I totally agree with you that, and here we return to the place where we are. This brings us to the foundations of democracy, the original democratic idea is not redistribution within a certain corporate in the sense of bodily place like you know we have a corporate body of society, rulers, workers and ordinary people say wait a minute we want a little bit more, we want our place. No, democracy begins when demos says we stand for all. But this why is this not
in the sense of a necessary symptom. If you... this is the basic lesson of Hegel. You cannot simply play the ideal against reality. If the ideal is realized at this in this way, generating its opposite, the first critical question to ask is, can we really simply say oh they just got it wrong, or was something wrong already in the idea? So I totally agree with you that, and here we return to the place where we are. This brings us to the foundations of democracy, the original democratic idea is not redistribution within a certain corporate in the sense of bodily place like you know we have a corporate body of society, rulers, workers and ordinary people say wait a minute we want a little bit more, we want our place. No, democracy begins when demos says we stand for all. But this why is this not
Slavoj Žižek
the same as a
the same as a
unknown
totalitarian exclusive universalism, because it is said by as you said by those who are outside. This doesn't mean we should all become beggars or what.
totalitarian exclusive universalism, because it is said by as you said by those who are outside. This doesn't mean we should all become beggars or what.
unknown
It means that the standard of universalism should be those. This is what basically Marx meant by proletarian position and so on. And I claim today, when we are living in very tragic times, I wonder if you would agree with this. Marx's vision of exploitation was still this classical capitalist vision of let's say I am a capitalist, you are the worker. And you are a capitalist, we know that, Slavoj. But, okay let's... but it's that we both share the same formal as they are political freedoms, human rights, and the whole point of exploitation for Marx is that it's free exploitation. We meet on the market, we really freely exchange but unfortunately I have money you don't, you have to... but you know there is a certain illusory as it is space of uni... I claim that all these problems with immigrants, apartheid and so on is that I think, and this is tragic news, that today's global capitalism can less and less afford even this. In order to function, it has limit even this universal formal freedom. Because what all these philosophers who someone some often even in a way that probably we both don't agree, what they propose with the idea of homo sacer, apartheid, whatever, it's precisely this idea that the existing order can less and less afford its own ideals the way they were even institutionalized till now. So again in this sense, yes I think, yes I think, yes I think we agree here. And I think that, but you know this is why for me now let me make another provocative remark. We should be very critical here also sometimes against ourselves. For example, we in our country, my country sorry, Slovenia, we had the big strike of public workers. Now oh my god, leftist, I'm always for strikes, but there I still was for but divided. Why? Because did you notice how more and more in our societies to be in a position to have organize a strike is more and more a privileged position, almost of what Lenin called workers' aristocracy. It's usually those who have guaranteed
It means that the standard of universalism should be those. This is what basically Marx meant by proletarian position and so on. And I claim today, when we are living in very tragic times, I wonder if you would agree with this. Marx's vision of exploitation was still this classical capitalist vision of let's say I am a capitalist, you are the worker. And you are a capitalist, we know that, Slavoj. But, okay let's... but it's that we both share the same formal as they are political freedoms, human rights, and the whole point of exploitation for Marx is that it's free exploitation. We meet on the market, we really freely exchange but unfortunately I have money you don't, you have to... but you know there is a certain illusory as it is space of uni... I claim that all these problems with immigrants, apartheid and so on is that I think, and this is tragic news, that today's global capitalism can less and less afford even this. In order to function, it has limit even this universal formal freedom. Because what all these philosophers who someone some often even in a way that probably we both don't agree, what they propose with the idea of homo sacer, apartheid, whatever, it's precisely this idea that the existing order can less and less afford its own ideals the way they were even institutionalized till now. So again in this sense, yes I think, yes I think, yes I think we agree here. And I think that, but you know this is why for me now let me make another provocative remark. We should be very critical here also sometimes against ourselves. For example, we in our country, my country sorry, Slovenia, we had the big strike of public workers. Now oh my god, leftist, I'm always for strikes, but there I still was for but divided. Why? Because did you notice how more and more in our societies to be in a position to have organize a strike is more and more a privileged position, almost of what Lenin called workers' aristocracy. It's usually those who have guaranteed
Slavoj Žižek
state employ and so on and so forth. So this makes me very sad how strikes instead of functioning as instruments of worker solidarity become instruments of differentiation. Like in my country because of cheap east competition we know the story, thousands of textile workers especially women are informed let's say in their fifties after working years that sorry you are out. And then a postmodern theorist comes and tells them oh what a freedom you can make a new choice, reinvent yourself, whatever. There was no solidarity apart from a couple of empty phrases for from trade unions with them. Then we had a strike of people who work in custom, border police, judges, doctors, all in the top top top salary section who organized a big strike. Again I sympathize with strike, but it hurts me when the strike has this clear level of differentiating the working class. This is why and this is another paradox, to put it very precisely: we often of course make fun of only formal democracy, but how today's society precisely as global can less and less afford even this. More and more we get a kind of a maybe not tribal but new group identities and so on, solidarity is a problem today. How to practice it really, not this humanitarian solidarity, oh my heart is bleeding for the children. Precisely precisely and indeed the example you gave with the Slovenian strikes is absolutely central also to the situation in Greece, because of course here what you had was an attack against the public service workers as being corrupt, lazy, people who always get a fakelaki, a little you know sort of a little bribe to do their job, and then an attack on the private sector workers for again being lazy and liars, but basically not paying taxes, not you know doing a proper day's work and that's why Greek economy is not competitive. So what you had there was precisely an attempt to differentiate the two, the two strata. And again to follow your example, perhaps there are clear differentiations and perhaps some people have contributed more or less on the popular side, because of course the popular side you know sort of is the side to blame less in this situation, some more or less. However what I think brings us into perhaps a new type of political thinking, new type of political philosophy is and like you I don't like homo sacer and so on, but this idea that the way that power operates, which I find also behind quite of much of your work, that idea of biopower, that it is no longer a power that operates through making your mind think in particular ways. Ideology is now the reality of our lives, but a power which basically is interested in controlling conduct, in controlling the body, in how you work. And here I have started suspecting, I've said it a few times, my colleagues here in Greece have not developed the idea yet, that Greece is becoming a kind of lab, laboratory of a new dispensation of the relationship between power and the people, of a biopolitical kind of nature. Because what the Greek people now, the whole of the Greek people outside the elite, are being asked to have such a total reorganization of their life processes and the way they live and organize and link to each other in their families, in their workplace, in the public spaces, which is quite radical and quite brutal, quite fast. So within a year, you know that you've lost salaries up to even percent, that the health service more or less you know sort of have finished and now you have to have private insurance, the pensions, you know the pensions are going to be cut by half. So you have now to take over your own life outside of the ways in which it was organized for or years. And as we see those measures in Greece gradually being introduced in Iceland, in Ireland, in Britain of course and so on, we perhaps move into a new configuration in which the relationship between life processes, ideas and ideology and political power is started moving to a new dispensation, which is not the dispensation that we learned through Marxism and post-Marxism and so on. No I totally agree with you here. I would just the way I try to theorize this, sometimes I'm tempted by this idea is to claim traditional ideology functioned in the way Louis Althusser described it: interpolating individuals into subject. If you mean by this you are an ordinary egotist individual, ideology tells you no fight for Greece, communism, church. We no longer need this pathetic interpolation. We are already caught in ideology as individuals, in the sense of everyday life, which is why and that's the highest triumph, which is why ideology can present itself as non-ideology. All the measures that you enumerated now, all this cutting, cutting healthcare and so on, they are not presented as ideological choices, they're presented as simple economic necessity formulated by, again we are back to your
state employ and so on and so forth. So this makes me very sad how strikes instead of functioning as instruments of worker solidarity become instruments of differentiation. Like in my country because of cheap east competition we know the story, thousands of textile workers especially women are informed let's say in their fifties after working years that sorry you are out. And then a postmodern theorist comes and tells them oh what a freedom you can make a new choice, reinvent yourself, whatever. There was no solidarity apart from a couple of empty phrases for from trade unions with them. Then we had a strike of people who work in custom, border police, judges, doctors, all in the top top top salary section who organized a big strike. Again I sympathize with strike, but it hurts me when the strike has this clear level of differentiating the working class. This is why and this is another paradox, to put it very precisely: we often of course make fun of only formal democracy, but how today's society precisely as global can less and less afford even this. More and more we get a kind of a maybe not tribal but new group identities and so on, solidarity is a problem today. How to practice it really, not this humanitarian solidarity, oh my heart is bleeding for the children. Precisely precisely and indeed the example you gave with the Slovenian strikes is absolutely central also to the situation in Greece, because of course here what you had was an attack against the public service workers as being corrupt, lazy, people who always get a fakelaki, a little you know sort of a little bribe to do their job, and then an attack on the private sector workers for again being lazy and liars, but basically not paying taxes, not you know doing a proper day's work and that's why Greek economy is not competitive. So what you had there was precisely an attempt to differentiate the two, the two strata. And again to follow your example, perhaps there are clear differentiations and perhaps some people have contributed more or less on the popular side, because of course the popular side you know sort of is the side to blame less in this situation, some more or less. However what I think brings us into perhaps a new type of political thinking, new type of political philosophy is and like you I don't like homo sacer and so on, but this idea that the way that power operates, which I find also behind quite of much of your work, that idea of biopower, that it is no longer a power that operates through making your mind think in particular ways. Ideology is now the reality of our lives, but a power which basically is interested in controlling conduct, in controlling the body, in how you work. And here I have started suspecting, I've said it a few times, my colleagues here in Greece have not developed the idea yet, that Greece is becoming a kind of lab, laboratory of a new dispensation of the relationship between power and the people, of a biopolitical kind of nature. Because what the Greek people now, the whole of the Greek people outside the elite, are being asked to have such a total reorganization of their life processes and the way they live and organize and link to each other in their families, in their workplace, in the public spaces, which is quite radical and quite brutal, quite fast. So within a year, you know that you've lost salaries up to even percent, that the health service more or less you know sort of have finished and now you have to have private insurance, the pensions, you know the pensions are going to be cut by half. So you have now to take over your own life outside of the ways in which it was organized for or years. And as we see those measures in Greece gradually being introduced in Iceland, in Ireland, in Britain of course and so on, we perhaps move into a new configuration in which the relationship between life processes, ideas and ideology and political power is started moving to a new dispensation, which is not the dispensation that we learned through Marxism and post-Marxism and so on. No I totally agree with you here. I would just the way I try to theorize this, sometimes I'm tempted by this idea is to claim traditional ideology functioned in the way Louis Althusser described it: interpolating individuals into subject. If you mean by this you are an ordinary egotist individual, ideology tells you no fight for Greece, communism, church. We no longer need this pathetic interpolation. We are already caught in ideology as individuals, in the sense of everyday life, which is why and that's the highest triumph, which is why ideology can present itself as non-ideology. All the measures that you enumerated now, all this cutting, cutting healthcare and so on, they are not presented as ideological choices, they're presented as simple economic necessity formulated by, again we are back to your
unknown
beginning,
beginning,
Slavoj Žižek
formulated by
formulated by
unknown
experts and so on. And it's so important to insist that, to insist in what? Here one should be very precise. On the one hand that as Marx emphasized, economy is political economy. You never have some pure level of economic necessity. But on the other hand also against some kind of leftist utopianism which may finish badly, we should be aware of the complexity of the economic system, how deeply it penetrates the entire social body. For example, in this crisis, you know how the slogan even of some right-wingers, populist one, help Main Street not Wall Street. Sounds nice, but you cannot do this in capitalism. I mean in a certain vulgar way it was true when Obama said basically sorry but in our society the only way for Main Street to prosper is in Wall... so you know you should think more radical. This cheap populist solution, take money there, put it here. I mean sometimes the system works that you cannot do this. But let me also now for the first time give some good news also in relation to that kind of analysis. You are absolutely right that once government moved into that kind of almost ghostly governance, the experts were there to tell us what was happening. And it's very interesting that one of the most important guys in Oxford writing about Europe, about the European Union, has said in a recent book that the project of the European Union is great because basically the people of Europe see it as a totally boring technical matter and leave it to the experts, so they don't get involved in what is happening there. So we need to have boring people like Van Rompuy and Lady Ashton who nobody knows because basically this is something that the experts understand. And then comes September the collapse of Lehman Brothers. And those people who had believed that through the mathematization of the economy, through the creation of those you know sort of stock exchange bubbles and you know sort of real estate bubbles somehow they would guarantee growth and therefore keep the larger part of the population inside the legitimating circle while the rest of course became a part for policing, walls and so on, their confidence I think was also shattered. And we see it now with the Greek government and the relationship between the Greek government, the European Union and the different bankers and stock exchange and bondholders and so on. They keep saying different things every day. We are
experts and so on. And it's so important to insist that, to insist in what? Here one should be very precise. On the one hand that as Marx emphasized, economy is political economy. You never have some pure level of economic necessity. But on the other hand also against some kind of leftist utopianism which may finish badly, we should be aware of the complexity of the economic system, how deeply it penetrates the entire social body. For example, in this crisis, you know how the slogan even of some right-wingers, populist one, help Main Street not Wall Street. Sounds nice, but you cannot do this in capitalism. I mean in a certain vulgar way it was true when Obama said basically sorry but in our society the only way for Main Street to prosper is in Wall... so you know you should think more radical. This cheap populist solution, take money there, put it here. I mean sometimes the system works that you cannot do this. But let me also now for the first time give some good news also in relation to that kind of analysis. You are absolutely right that once government moved into that kind of almost ghostly governance, the experts were there to tell us what was happening. And it's very interesting that one of the most important guys in Oxford writing about Europe, about the European Union, has said in a recent book that the project of the European Union is great because basically the people of Europe see it as a totally boring technical matter and leave it to the experts, so they don't get involved in what is happening there. So we need to have boring people like Van Rompuy and Lady Ashton who nobody knows because basically this is something that the experts understand. And then comes September the collapse of Lehman Brothers. And those people who had believed that through the mathematization of the economy, through the creation of those you know sort of stock exchange bubbles and you know sort of real estate bubbles somehow they would guarantee growth and therefore keep the larger part of the population inside the legitimating circle while the rest of course became a part for policing, walls and so on, their confidence I think was also shattered. And we see it now with the Greek government and the relationship between the Greek government, the European Union and the different bankers and stock exchange and bondholders and so on. They keep saying different things every day. We are
unknown
going to succeed, and then someone you know sort of the guy who is in charge Rubini, or the guy in charge
going to succeed, and then someone you know sort of the guy who is in charge Rubini, or the guy in charge
Slavoj Žižek
of the biggest bond-holding company: Greece has to get out of the euro immediately because it's going to be contagious. They said that in a couple of days ago. So you see that they have lost that sense of certainty that they had. In a sense they were the Marxists de nos jours, people who believed or old-type Marxists who believed that history you know works in a kind of automatic necessary way and we're going to get where we want to. And that sort of there is at this point I think a loss of certainty, of security, even a loss of belief in those ruling elites and so on. Yeah yeah but you know again to add nonetheless to give it not a totally pessimistic twist, but we should nonetheless be aware, although we should not avoid it, this crisis, one should use it. But let's be aware that such moments of loss of trust where as Marx put it wonderfully in his early years where the those in power do no longer believe their own beliefs. You know it also opens the way for much darker temptation. So this doesn't mean you know some leftists thought, oh now people will see crisis, oh there will be a revolution. No, people can see different things, people can also see a need for a new Messiah and so on. For example, one way that people, that reactionary forces use this disorientation is clearly the lesson to be taken is economy in itself as pure expertise cannot do the job. But then you get not only church but many who say the problem is ethical, moral, much more fundamental, we need new... this is one obfuscation. The other is again this nationalist one, we need to
of the biggest bond-holding company: Greece has to get out of the euro immediately because it's going to be contagious. They said that in a couple of days ago. So you see that they have lost that sense of certainty that they had. In a sense they were the Marxists de nos jours, people who believed or old-type Marxists who believed that history you know works in a kind of automatic necessary way and we're going to get where we want to. And that sort of there is at this point I think a loss of certainty, of security, even a loss of belief in those ruling elites and so on. Yeah yeah but you know again to add nonetheless to give it not a totally pessimistic twist, but we should nonetheless be aware, although we should not avoid it, this crisis, one should use it. But let's be aware that such moments of loss of trust where as Marx put it wonderfully in his early years where the those in power do no longer believe their own beliefs. You know it also opens the way for much darker temptation. So this doesn't mean you know some leftists thought, oh now people will see crisis, oh there will be a revolution. No, people can see different things, people can also see a need for a new Messiah and so on. For example, one way that people, that reactionary forces use this disorientation is clearly the lesson to be taken is economy in itself as pure expertise cannot do the job. But then you get not only church but many who say the problem is ethical, moral, much more fundamental, we need new... this is one obfuscation. The other is again this nationalist one, we need to
unknown
reassert beyond economy some national values, whatever. But here I agree with you, my, I will repeat the phrase often used of Hölderlin by Heidegger: where then the danger is, what can save us is also, is also is also growing. This is our situation. But I just claim that, so I agree with you that the most catastrophic thing to do is what some American half-Marxists whom I otherwise appreciate they did good stuff like Moishe Postone do, you know what is their conclusion? Crazy one. Since I simplify, but that's basically what they are saying. Since today a crisis of capitalism means a rise of new racist anti-immigrant populism, all we can do leftists is to pray that for some time capitalism will work well and so on. I mean this is the crazy conclusion. But nonetheless we should be aware that where there is hope for us it also a danger. And this is why again as you said, it's important especially in the times of crisis that the initiative is not left
reassert beyond economy some national values, whatever. But here I agree with you, my, I will repeat the phrase often used of Hölderlin by Heidegger: where then the danger is, what can save us is also, is also is also growing. This is our situation. But I just claim that, so I agree with you that the most catastrophic thing to do is what some American half-Marxists whom I otherwise appreciate they did good stuff like Moishe Postone do, you know what is their conclusion? Crazy one. Since I simplify, but that's basically what they are saying. Since today a crisis of capitalism means a rise of new racist anti-immigrant populism, all we can do leftists is to pray that for some time capitalism will work well and so on. I mean this is the crazy conclusion. But nonetheless we should be aware that where there is hope for us it also a danger. And this is why again as you said, it's important especially in the times of crisis that the initiative is not left
unknown
only to the other side as it were. Because if this as you described it wonderfully and for me there was an emblematic point here, there is even a symbol of all this, you remember when Greenspan was questioned in the Senate? He said, I must admit there was a flaw in my ideology and so on, no. You know it's just that you know when you lose belief the field is open, the struggle is open at that point. We have to be, we have to be aware of this. And I totally agree with you concerning this expertise and so on, even I mean when I say
only to the other side as it were. Because if this as you described it wonderfully and for me there was an emblematic point here, there is even a symbol of all this, you remember when Greenspan was questioned in the Senate? He said, I must admit there was a flaw in my ideology and so on, no. You know it's just that you know when you lose belief the field is open, the struggle is open at that point. We have to be, we have to be aware of this. And I totally agree with you concerning this expertise and so on, even I mean when I say
Slavoj Žižek
we shouldn't leave it to the experts, I mean I'm not dismissing many economists who are doing a very proper job showing how especially I like economists who show how neoliberalism cheats with regard to its own rules. For example, if again if you take two typical radical neoliberal presidents, Reagan and Bush younger, they were basically doing the most vulgar Keynesian strategy. That's why the debt of the United States is so huge. Yeah, yeah, so you you see I totally agree with you and almost at a similar at the simple most private bourgeois level of a citizen. This makes me afraid because in a way, and I don't think this is only bad, we have the right to feel a certain security. You know I don't think it's only conformism when you say okay they are class enemies but my god it is still good to have people in power who know their job. Unfortunately we can have less and less of this trust. I don't know, I no longer trust the ruling classes to do their own job not for socialism but my god in their own terms to do their their proper job. And that is the immanent critique. I mean for example you know the the whole problem with Berlusconi, with corruption all over the world. You know they used to tell us even Marx said that, you know capitalism does not need corruption, criminality, does not need fraud, does not need any of that. It can operate and create profit through surplus value and so on. What we now see and this is not just Berlusconi, you know we see it even Helmut Kohl, the guy who reunified Germany you know had to leave politics in disgrace because he was taking you know sort of backhanders for his party. So that principle of corruption that is now totally universalized certainly here in the Western world, of course elsewhere too, shows that the idea of politics as expertise has led to the collapse of the old public-private division we on the left always of course criticized it and so on. But it was a division of civility, that you go into politics and you stop basically you know sort of playing the stock exchange, you know because you can you know intervene in thing. And that is now seems to have gone away. You know we are in a world of monsters, everything seems to be the same but everything is different at the same time. I think this is a very good point to conclude what you just said about corruption becoming not just a deviation, a contingent but a necessary component of how the system works. And this is where I think Church, Catholic Church especially enters with its extremely reactionary role of moralizing it. Let me give you an example. I
we shouldn't leave it to the experts, I mean I'm not dismissing many economists who are doing a very proper job showing how especially I like economists who show how neoliberalism cheats with regard to its own rules. For example, if again if you take two typical radical neoliberal presidents, Reagan and Bush younger, they were basically doing the most vulgar Keynesian strategy. That's why the debt of the United States is so huge. Yeah, yeah, so you you see I totally agree with you and almost at a similar at the simple most private bourgeois level of a citizen. This makes me afraid because in a way, and I don't think this is only bad, we have the right to feel a certain security. You know I don't think it's only conformism when you say okay they are class enemies but my god it is still good to have people in power who know their job. Unfortunately we can have less and less of this trust. I don't know, I no longer trust the ruling classes to do their own job not for socialism but my god in their own terms to do their their proper job. And that is the immanent critique. I mean for example you know the the whole problem with Berlusconi, with corruption all over the world. You know they used to tell us even Marx said that, you know capitalism does not need corruption, criminality, does not need fraud, does not need any of that. It can operate and create profit through surplus value and so on. What we now see and this is not just Berlusconi, you know we see it even Helmut Kohl, the guy who reunified Germany you know had to leave politics in disgrace because he was taking you know sort of backhanders for his party. So that principle of corruption that is now totally universalized certainly here in the Western world, of course elsewhere too, shows that the idea of politics as expertise has led to the collapse of the old public-private division we on the left always of course criticized it and so on. But it was a division of civility, that you go into politics and you stop basically you know sort of playing the stock exchange, you know because you can you know intervene in thing. And that is now seems to have gone away. You know we are in a world of monsters, everything seems to be the same but everything is different at the same time. I think this is a very good point to conclude what you just said about corruption becoming not just a deviation, a contingent but a necessary component of how the system works. And this is where I think Church, Catholic Church especially enters with its extremely reactionary role of moralizing it. Let me give you an example. I
unknown
almost felt a sympathy with the ultimate corrupted person Bernard Madoff. Why? He was elevated as an individual into you see that guy stole billions and so on. It almost sounded anti-Semitic, you know we got the Jew who did it. But wait a minute, wasn't he just a perfect product of the system? He was I think an exemplary postmodern capitalist. You steal as much as you can and then you play the big humanitarian giving half back and so on and so forth. I think that paradoxically... ...the other side of the Bill Gates and Soros of this world. Exactly. Which is why I think the only way I would supplement your analysis but just supplement is to say that strictly correlative to this rise of corruption is the rise of charity. It's as if the system can no longer
almost felt a sympathy with the ultimate corrupted person Bernard Madoff. Why? He was elevated as an individual into you see that guy stole billions and so on. It almost sounded anti-Semitic, you know we got the Jew who did it. But wait a minute, wasn't he just a perfect product of the system? He was I think an exemplary postmodern capitalist. You steal as much as you can and then you play the big humanitarian giving half back and so on and so forth. I think that paradoxically... ...the other side of the Bill Gates and Soros of this world. Exactly. Which is why I think the only way I would supplement your analysis but just supplement is to say that strictly correlative to this rise of corruption is the rise of charity. It's as if the system can no longer
Slavoj Žižek
function in purely economic legal normal terms so you need corruption but also and here our enemy Sloterdijk made a nice remark of how there is so much poverty and so on that it would have been, it's no longer as it was years ago where you had somebody like like Carnegie, crazy philanthropist who at the same time had private detectives to beat the workers, but nonetheless and he was considered eccentric. Today not only corruption, charity also is necessary to prevent explosions so that the system functions and so on. And I think again as
function in purely economic legal normal terms so you need corruption but also and here our enemy Sloterdijk made a nice remark of how there is so much poverty and so on that it would have been, it's no longer as it was years ago where you had somebody like like Carnegie, crazy philanthropist who at the same time had private detectives to beat the workers, but nonetheless and he was considered eccentric. Today not only corruption, charity also is necessary to prevent explosions so that the system functions and so on. And I think again as
unknown
you said, this is sad
you said, this is sad
Slavoj Žižek
but it gives us a hope. When a system, Marx knew this, when a system directly tries to moralize itself it means it's a deep crisis. So we have to end up in a positive and optimistic point. This is a time of monsters but this is also our time. Yeah you know what would be my phrase here if you dare to use it? You know it will be one dirty word we can afford it. You know this phrase from the Bible which is, I walk in the valley of tears and shadows but I fear no evil, no? That you know that you have then one wonderful black resistance resistance version of it, I love it, it's one dirty word here: I walk in the valley of tears and shadows but I fear no evil because I'm the meanest motherfucker in the whole valley. You know this is what we should be the left you know. Okay. Thank you very much for especially for the deep thought at the end.
but it gives us a hope. When a system, Marx knew this, when a system directly tries to moralize itself it means it's a deep crisis. So we have to end up in a positive and optimistic point. This is a time of monsters but this is also our time. Yeah you know what would be my phrase here if you dare to use it? You know it will be one dirty word we can afford it. You know this phrase from the Bible which is, I walk in the valley of tears and shadows but I fear no evil, no? That you know that you have then one wonderful black resistance resistance version of it, I love it, it's one dirty word here: I walk in the valley of tears and shadows but I fear no evil because I'm the meanest motherfucker in the whole valley. You know this is what we should be the left you know. Okay. Thank you very much for especially for the deep thought at the end.