Rules

Zizek tells/told a small anecdote about 4 boys who take a vow of silence. One boy breaks it, another verbally accuses him of breaking it, the third shouts that both of the first boys have broken their vows, and then the fourth boy says to himself (aloud of course) “I’m the only one who hasn’t spoken yet”.

This example is meant to illustrate how the Non-dupes errent (the fools who err) are themselves duped by their perceived lack of violating the Nom du Pere (name of the father, social norms, etc). [or something like that, I’m not a philosopher, just a humble carpenter like Christ was]

Does anyone know where I can find the talk or transcript that includes Zizek’s exact wording of this example?

At which point has Zizek quoted Adorno, an ambiguous phrase used in correspondence, "there is no hope for us now" or similar? In effect, the statement could be interpreted multiple ways and Zizek uses it to call for actions that were retroactively revolutionary. I may have left out some important details thanks in advance

Every single long form talk and so on I have seen of him he gets rudely cut off by some moderator telling him that time is running out, usually resulting in him making a joke about the audience questions being prepared in advance.

Do you know of any examples where the man himself concludes his speech?

I was wondering if anyone had read this one, and whether or not it's worth a read. Despite being a voracious reader of his, I'd never even heard of this one until now, even though it actually sounds interesting.

Any book by Žižek can more or less be categorized as a must-read (e.g., The Sublime Object of Ideology, The Plague of Fantasies, the Parallax View, etc), or as redundant and skippable (e.g., The Courage of Hopelessness, Pandemic!, etc).

So, where does Disparities fall?

Why does this piece of work get quoted by many people of many ideologies?

Being psychologically tortured into believing a certain narrative could describe almost any ideology?

The point that seems never said about Authoritarianism is that it's always someone else doing it for some clearly bad cause. It's never ideologically specific. That makes it very easy to put meaning into it. The thing it doesn't seem to say is that we are all somewhat authoritarian. Are we all guilty of feeling and or potentially acting in such way?

Just a thought and I thought since this is in this realm I thought it interesting since it's such an ideologically based sub Reddit.

It will be expected when the Democratic establishment retroactively blames an array of forces as the culprits for Kamala Harris defeat and the subsequent harmful measures Trump’s administration implements: from reducing sociopolitical rights to worsened living standards; as well as becoming another purely sovereign nation-state to join the BRICS coalition who all maintain their own spheres of influence to commit state terror and not be interfered with by the other superpowers. Each to celebrate their own ossified nationalist identity and culture, demonstrated in homogenized local cultural practices.

The Democratic Party consistently bypasses the conditions of the economy and material hardships as the basis of their political program; not addressing the universal grievances of lower class ordinary people, instead fixating on particular cultural conflicts - greater representation - that revolve around gender, sex, and ethnic/racial identity. By avoiding this haunting specter of class struggle, they increasingly diminish the remaining sectors of the working class who still vote for them. The double-bind in this situation is the mainstream Left’s negation of class mobilization, and the abstainment from proper engagement within the Political as a fierce antagonistic force pitted against their opponent striving for state power.

In light of this, the fetishist disavowal being committed by the liberal establishment is the refusal to take responsibility for their own defeats and their predictable scapegoating of: minorities - Hispanic, Black, Arabic - who vote Republican, white working class workers being racist or sexist or too ignorant, Russian political interference and Palestinian solidarity backers. The Leftist elite are fundamentally deprived of any self-reflection, yet this shortcoming is committed purposefully on account of their disavowal; allowing them to sustain their foundation of identitarian politics.

What hope therefore, can the eroding authentic Western political Left - epitomized by Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn - give to the despondent and further disappointed leftwing voterbase? I argue for two mutually corresponding stances: the Communist-Leninist dictum of ‘try again, fail again, fail better’, and the assumption of the Courage of Hopelessness. Both posit the possibility of the emancipatory New precisely in the contexts that seem out of hope; the zero-point to reimagine and reformulate our Cause, changing the methods (form) to accomplish its aims (content) - all organized around the strong opposition to Far Right populism and the inert Center-Left party hegemony.

Structural transformation is always a long-term process; an emancipatory death drive with neither any assurance from, nor reliance on, a big Other (symbolic authority who guarantees meaning and success, e.g. God, multiparty democracy, the “Will of the People”, autocratic ruler, a theory of historical determinism) since there is only contingent outcomes for the future. To participate in this progressive legacy of achieving emancipation - inclusive of all its difficult work - through collective participation, with a movement that doesn’t betray its loyalty to the Cause despite the many unexpected reversals and setbacks and defeats - is why hope still abides. Ergo, the radical leftist dictum spotlighted by Max Horkheimer is more true than ever in our epoch: pessimism in theory, optimism in practice.

It was Lenin who best articulated the above standpoint: “Communists who have no illusions, who do not give way to despondency, and who preserve their strength and flexibility ‘to begin from the beginning’ over and over again in approaching an extremely difficult task, are not doomed (and in all probability will not perish).”

The movie ends in an ambiguous place.

When Lucius (the son of an emperor turned slave turned freeman turned gladiator) defeats Macrinus (the slave turned rich man turned almost-emperor), the moment is supposed to feel triumphant.

The movie seems to imply that this is some moment of victory for democracy and freedom, but what exactly happens to the government of Rome is not clear. Does Lucius become emperor? And, if so, why would we think that he is any more equipped to be emperor than Macrinus? If anything, this interpretation would mean the movie has a monarchical spirit, more confident in the principle of heritage and divine right than anything else.

Even if he doesn’t become emperor, what does happen? Does someone else become emperor? And, if so, how is that determined and what kind of emperor would they be? And, once again, the movie gives us no reason to believe whoever this is would be a more just and effective leader than Macrinus— in fact, the movie tells us almost nothing about Macrinus’ politics.

Is there no emperor anymore? Does that mean the senate regains control? Or does it become a direct democracy? I would kill to see a movie about how any of these play out in a state full of turmoil like ancient Rome.

I don’t understand, because he must know about the anti semitic connotations with the term Jewish Lobby. He uses the term ‘Jewish lobby’ at 3mins 38 seconds in this interview https://youtu.be/djQjetPvPYc?si=Msu3MSaNnzunyKHf

Curious if Zizek has spoken on this topic. I feel that the issue of DEI initiatives has been coming up a lot lately here in the U.S., but I don’t know if it’s really a concept in countries outside the US and perhaps Canada.

Do you guys think there is anything to this?

Zizek and Peterson - A Deep Unity

In this short essay I am going to argue that understanding Zizek’s interpretation of Christianity can inform and clarify what I think Jordan Peterson is trying to get at in his interpretation, and that each interpretation adds to the other and generates a more complete picture of Christianity and provides the ontological grounding for a Christian Ethic. While Peterson emphasizes the Biblical meta-narrative and archetypal importance of sacrifice as a psychological foundation for ethics, Zizek’s Hegelian reading—exemplified in his paraphrasing of Hegel that 'Jesus is an example of an example of an example'—provides the frame for the dialectical synthesis that unifies these ideas, whereas Peterson provides the content, thus creating a full picture of the ontological framework.

I’m not going to give evidence for what either Jordan Peterson’s or Zizek’s positions are, nor defend them. I’ll just summarize them as I’ve come to understand them.

Core to Jordan Peterson’s interpretation of Christianity is the claim that no set of objective facts can get you to a value, because there are a potentially infinite number of facts that you can attend to at any given moment and it’s impossible to decide which ones to attend to without some value structure guiding you. He believes that it is narrative and archetype that provides the value structure for guiding productive human behavior. 

He claims that the Bible’s use of narrative and archetype to inform and model productive and destructive ways of being and that these archetypes have been so continuously modeled by fit, reproductive actors that they have possibly been embedded in our genetic code through the Baldwin Effect. The narratives of the Bible, whether or not literally true, are at least true in the sense that modeling these archetypes is a necessary functional condition for thriving human life.

Peterson further claims that within the biblical narrative, the story of Jesus presents the archetypal human model par excellence and that the story is maximally archetypal in the sense that it is an absolute limit case. The core character is God but also a man, that is blameless, but is betrayed by his followers and punished without cause in the most brutal way imaginable, but is resurrected and redeems the world.

He recognizes the importance of sacrifice in the narrative and that the archetypal model of Christ is a necessary structure for guiding productive human behavior, but he doesn’t seem to get the whole picture.

What he doesn’t seem to fully be able to express or understand is how the story sets the Ontological foundation for flourishing human life. He recognizes its psychological importance, but doesn’t know how to get to the Ontological significance. I argue that it does this through a dialectical synthesis whereby the notion of Commonality and Absolute Difference are synthesized through the notion of Sacrifice and embodied in the story of Jesus on the cross. This synthesis simultaneously unifies human experience of flourishing and sets a model for it. 

As it is written in the Didache "There are two ways, one of life and one of death”.

Here we go to Zizek. In order to understand Zizek’s paraphrasing of Hegel that Jesus Christ is an “example of an example of an example”, we must ask “what is an example?”, the notion of an example requires the notions of the general and the particular. First, you have a particular, say an apple. A particular apple is an example of an Apple. In order to recognize a particular apple as an example of an Apple, you have to ignore the ways in which the apple differs from the ideal notion of Apple and other apples. In order for two particular apples to both be examples of Apple, you must take into account their similarities, while ignoring the ways in which they differ. Their differences cannot be accounted for in the notion of Apple. 

Thus in order for an example to be an example, the example must be of a particular that has a commonality with other members of the general category, but also differs from other members of the category, due to its particular nature. For instance, this apple is painted blue, but apples aren’t blue, well this one is. Thus an example of an example includes the notions of both commonality and difference. 

So then, what is an example of an example of an example? In other words, is there any particular that embodies the notion of both commonality and absolute difference? Here we come back to the story of Jesus.

The story of Jesus, within the greater narrative of the Bible, whether true or false, is a dialectical narrative whereby Jesus is the embodiment of the dialectically opposed notions of God and Man. God is eternal, unconstrained, omnipotent, omniscient, etc. Man is temporal, embodied, finite, ignorant, etc. So if Man and God are so different, how can they have a relationship with each other? The answer is that both Man and God make sacrifices for each other. 

Man is different than God also in the sense that Man is always sacrificing, no matter what. Because of our embodied nature, sacrifice is embedded in all human experience. We cannot even have a perception without sacrificing. In order to see something, our perceptual system has to ignore a potentially infinite number of other things. This pattern plays out not just in perception, but in all other human experience and activity. In order to act, we must sacrifice a potentially infinite number of other actions we could undertake.

God, however, does not need to sacrifice anything ever. He could exhaust all possibilities with His creativity. He can “see” everything all of the time. However, God must make sacrifices if he desires to have a relationship with Man, because Man is not like Him. He allows Man to act. If God can exhaust all possibilities with His creativity, but He allows Man to act, then He allows possibilities within time to occur at the expense of other possibilities that He could instantiate. And because of His infinitely good nature, this means that He allows possibilities to be actualized that He does not desire. He allows man to cut off those possibilities in time and choose lesser goods and even evil. 

This dual sacrifice, Man always sacrificing all of the time in order to act, especially in order to do good, which we often find rather difficult, and God sacrificing the goodness that He desires in order to allow man to act and learn and grow, is embodied in Jesus on the cross. Jesus is Man sacrificing for God and God sacrificing for Man.

Back to Zizek and the question “is there any particular that embodies the notion of both commonality and absolute difference? As we have seen in the narrative, Jesus on the cross is an example of the embodiment of both commonality and absolute difference because His particular nature was the embodiment of both God and Man, two absolutely distinct categories being embodied on the cross. And the way that they are embodied and synthesized is through sacrifice. Jesus is the archetypal representation of Man sacrificing for God and God sacrificing for Man. He is the embodiment of the notion of sacrifice itself which unifies the two seemingly absolute differences between God and Man.

Thus it is the notion of sacrifice that both unifies all human experience and allows us to be in relationship with God. From this sacrificial relationship between two or more, the Holy Spirit emerges. This is, I think, the essential claim of Christianity. 

I've read a good amount of Zizek in my life and I find the most frustrating thing about his work is that although he writes about extremely fundamental philosophical ideas constantly, he never quite writes in a way that feels systematic like Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, etc. did. All that is to say that I was wondering if there is something approaching a "systematic" critique of Deleuze somewhere in his bibliography. (I know he has the "organs without bodies" book and I've read excerpts but everything I know about it seems to point to it being more of an appropriation than a critique.) Part of the problem for me also is that I also don't really grasp Deleuze's metaphysics and I find him nearly impossible to read most of the time. But whenever Zizek critiques the Deleuzian "multiple" in favor of the "non-coincidence of the one" without explaining precisely what that means I get very frustrated. And sometimes it seems like he oscillates between saying that it's only the late Deleuze that was bad because of Guattari's corrupting influence and the early stuff is good, but other times he seems to reject (albeit with admiration) the early Deleuze on a fundamental level as well. Any help parsing his critique in a precise, philosophical way would be greatly appreciated.

Hi all,

I'm hunting for a quote from Zizek about a very specific idea in his atheist Christianity thesis.

The idea is essentially that only atheists can embody true Christianity, as they alone expect no reward from their "Christian" acts of servitude.

I am confident that this idea was one I learned from a Youtube video, and not from one of his books. Can anyone help me find the clip? I'm struggling to find it and would be immensely grateful for some help!

A friend outside reddit, who is a fan of Zizek (I also find Zizek's analyses worth listening to), asked me about this clip of Zizek's view on personal identity and masks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iljhym_uNPM

His claim is that the "true self" is the face you show externally - the behaviours and speech you present to the world. If I've interpreted him correctly, this is incredibly ignorant, irrational and potentially dangerous - I would even say it's naive.

Firstly, I think it should be quite obvious that people alter their behaviour and speech under duress - there's a reason why laws are put in place to protect people being threatened for exercising free speech. Is the mask someone wears under duress their "true self"? I would say what's part of one's true, present-day self is the propensity towards feeling the need to alter outward behaviour in response to perceived threat.

Two people under the same perceived threat (perceived threat is different to actual threat. It's the perceived threat that determines the cognitive response, not the actual threat. For example, a person who's never heard of electricity will not react with the same attention or fear as a train engineer to an electrified train rail. A person who's been living in a violent atmosphere will rationally perceive more threat from an annoyed look or banging sound that someone who grew up in a much more peaceful atmosphere. Modern psychology research since at least the 90s also acknowledges that what is not typically perceived as a life-threatening, existential risk for an adult can typically be perceived as a life-threatening, existential risk for a child, due to the child's dependence on caregivers and relative inexperience about life (eg an able-bodied adult thrown out can imagine ways to survive and probably knows there are people who can help them, a 5yo child thrown out will die and assumes the attitude their parent has towards them will be mirrored in general society, as this is cognitively normal at that age)) can mask to different extents or in different ways. For example, two people who both know they have a moderate chance of being fired and have the same level of background economic risk (of homelessness, relationship loss, health issues etc. Someone with a safety net or with the knowledge they can quickly get another job is going to perceive less risk than someone without those) if they lose their job for speaking up against a bullying manager may still react differently - one employee could feel very strongly about the moral need to speak up so still chooses to speak up despite the stress level and risk, while the other decides it's not worth the stress and risk.

However, in reality it's incredibly difficult to know the level of danger and risk another person is actually perceiving and it's very difficult to compare perceived risks, because threats are multidimensional and complex - and because it requires knowing the environment the person is responding to, but also the person's internal state (which partly comes from past experience) that determines how they'll interpret the environment. Therefore, it's extremely difficult to know to what extent the difference in masking is due to differences in naturally propensity to mask and to what extent it is due to a difference in perceived threat (or perceived futility. I've focused on threat, but futility also applies - one person may give up on something due to a history of failures or hopelessness, whereas another with a different knowledge base to draw from may believe that there is hope so carries on - the difference in this case isn't from a difference in "self" but from a difference in perceived futility). What Zizek is saying reminds me of this article by psychiatrist David M Allen about the "fundamental/primary attribution error" in psychology - the "assumption that behavior is caused primarily by the enduring and consistent disposition of the actor, as opposed to the particular characteristics of the situation to which the actor responds". Zizek's claim presupposes either that all masking is done under equal levels of duress or a person's behaviour is the same irrespective of perceived threat.

To me it's very similar to Person 1, who's never been raped, saying to a rape victim named Person 2 "I would've said "stop", so you must've wanted to be raped for not saying "stop" too" (even if Person 1 had also been raped before, they still don't know the exact perceived threat of the rape - for example, Person 2 may have thought saying "stop" could anger the attacker and lead to a worse outcome, which Person 1 didn't think was as likely). Or similar to a child with respectful, non-dismissive parents who assumes a child with explosively violent or chronically dismissive parents (who 100% of the time dismiss the child's opinions or requests as stupid) is a "coward" for not expressing their opinions, whereas the difference in mask is not due to the true self being different but due to a difference in environment. If Person A has been hit by one parent for showing affection to the other parent so fears showing it (perhaps they even think "when I escape this unsafe situation in a few years, I'll give my real opinion/affection), and Person B isn't operating with that experience, it's irrational to assume the difference in affection externally shown is due to a difference in the "true self", rather than different masks being worn due to a difference in threat. Is Person B braver than Person A and Person's B true self is a quiet, affectionless person? No, that's an irrational and potentially disgusting conclusion to make, as it's basically blaming Person A for reacting to their environment, denying their experience/suffering and lets the perpetrator off the hook by minimising the effect of their behaviour on Person A. Let's use a less extreme example (not that that example was unrealistic, as I've based it on real experience) - does Zizek believe a person who is told by a teacher to be silent if they don't want a detention is exhibiting their "true self" by being silent? Nonsense. It's reminiscent of the comedian Russell Peters' standup segment where he talks about getting naive advice from a kid with relatively lenient parents on how to deal with his stricter dad. Zizek comes across as the naive kid here. I know Zizek is a philosopher and possibly his job allows him to unplug him from the usual rat race of adult life, he may have had liberal parents (I've only read that they were atheists, nothing more) and not experienced much threat by authoritarianism (from private actors or the state) and perhaps has never been in a situation where it was necessary to mask for personal safety, but surely he's a well-read, inquisitive person, so I'm surprised by his outlook here.

Secondly, Zizek's claim also ignores that the opportunity to even show a new mask in the first place comes from external stimuli. For example, a person only gets to show their mask as a caregiver if they have someone to care for (a child, sibling, friend). Does it mean that until they had that person to care for, that caregiver mask of them was not already part of their "true self"? Is being a "caregiver" more part of the true self of a person with a younger sibling than of a person who's never had the opportunity to have a younger person to care for? I'd say it can be down to a different in stimuli.

If I'm making a claim of my own, I claim the true self is made up of all the masks and the person's propensity towards feeling the need to mask and what masks they use, in response to environment stimuli (as explained above). I also claim that a person's true self includes all the potential masks they haven't yet worn, due to insufficient environmental stimuli (like the caregiver example above). Is the true self the mask that shows when under zero duress? I'd say that to an individual it can feel that way, but in reality 1. zero duress is impossible and 2. it assumes that zero duress is the natural state of things, whereas I'd say less duress isn't any more natural than more duress - for example, is the duress of being forced to eat as a picky toddler less natural than the lack of duress if the parent doesn't feed the toddler?

So I came across this video of zizek from 12yrs ago somewhere in india in a small union headquarters he seems to be eagerly listening unlike his usual What surprise me is his mindset of going into depths of a country and listening to their social and political problems which are far from topics he is know I unlocked next level respect for the man

https://youtu.be/yS4YF8ieM5I?si=PsRbCRpGZs-FxzCv https://youtu.be/87nSQMYPGvs?si=7KJcuM5eU0HEJ9A9

Zizek has criticized Lula for his geopolitical approaches, especially regarding Ukraine. Furthermore, Zizek openly states that the aims of the BRICS is not the way forward, and such a statement openly* condemns Lula's Brazil as it is a member of the organization.

However, while such criticisms could arguably be extremely valid, Lula nonetheless put forth suggestions that seem to be quite close with Zizek's idea of a global governance arrangement. Lula criticized the current global government arrangement for its economic injustices, environmental short-comings, and for its failings to provoke wars.

His suggestions democratize the international institutions, to globally tax billionaires, to strengthen the global fight against climate degradation by reforming the global governance system and the UN Security Council seem to me to be closely aligned with Zizek's views at the global level as well.

I cannot think of many (or really even any) other national leaders who are calling for such progressive change at the level of global governance. However, I may also just be ignorant of other national leaders who are doing so.

What do we think of Lula? Is it best to perceive him ambivalently? Is he a leftist figure who simultaneously holds visionary and outmoded views?

So, I´m reworking an old undergrad paper and I need to work through something which I´m not sure I got right the first time. I understand that the difference between the fetish and the symptom as the return of the repressed is that the symptom is that which reveals that the order of things is caught in a logical deadlock: beneath its surface of coherence bubbles the return of what it denies to maintain appearances. In this sense, we could think of the French Revolution as the return of the repressed in the Faubourg (the slums) in a lashing out. The fetish is that which allows me to keep enjoying in the guise of the Big Other, so is the fetishist a pervert? Specifically, the cynic who fetishizes knowledge -the "I know very well, but nonetheless"- to keep enjoying, to keep him/her/itself aligned with the No of the father? Or is the pervert in relation to the symptom in a way I am not seeing? Am I wrong to equate the cynic and the fetishist?

Edit: Thank you so much to the people who commented. You´ve helped me organize my ideas.

I'm new to Zizek and wondering which of his books might most/best address questions around the Good Life, Happiness, Well-being, etc. I imagine these will be tightly linked to ethics and politics, so if he has books that primarily lean into ethics/politics then I welcome these as well. If Zizek doesn't very much address questions around Happiness/Well-being then I'd welcome suggestions for related authors that might.

I graduated with a major in philosophy a while back and have read (or slammed my head against) Sublime Object of Ideology, so I feel relatively prepared to tackle whatever's suggested.

Hello,

I recently had Zizek come to my attention and I've been really excited to read and see his work. I've would like to know what you all would recommend to me as beginner reading material and what complements such as videos you all would recommend.

Thank you all for your time and I hope to hear from you all soon.

Best.