Philosopher Slavoj Zizeck on Democracy Now- 1/6

[the3mpyrean]

Zizek is the intellectual love of my life: self aware, funny, erudite, and ridiculously current.

[DrSourCream]

anarchism FTW

[queenkyoko]

I m from china and i cannot agree him more

I always feel sad/angry/bad when someone irresponsibly blame CPR government for what happened at the end of the Tiananmen Square protest

[pdecarlo]

I think Slavoj's analysis of anarchist theory and movements is lacking.

[RalucadnelpS]

@pdecarlo yea he doesn't lend enough credence to the transmodern theory of postanarchist structurally dialectical stateless collective communitarianism

[zzzzJAGJEETzzzz]

what an awesome man

[benjabubles]

It's "Žižek"...

[TreachMarkets]

@benjabubles So how do I type that? -Control-Alt- what?

[fahim113]

Wish he'd been my prof. at uni.

[JaCorBoar]

The parts of the sixties movements that were palatable to TPTB we're definitely co-opted for sure.

[havenet]

amy goodman needs a cheeseburger.

[feor2006]

The Left comes up with the best theories of how it failed! Best critique of the Left I have heard in a long time. We need more true revolutionaries like this. I have a dream....that the Left will wake up from its pathetic condition of suckling the teat of "reform" capitalism and demand real change. wake up!

[TheMccormackfam1997]

He said that "if China gave way to demonstrators and allowed true democratic reforms it would have been chaos". And the Chinese governments treatment of their citizens such as forced abortions and systematic starvation of millions is not chaos? This man is insane. He proves that afage, without God anything is possible. Ignore this man, he is idiotic and is claimed to be a true intellectual? Haaaaaa!

[Vormblood]

@TheMccormackfam1997

How come you are against forced abortions and hunger at the same time? I afraid there is only one option: we will regulate size of our population ourselves or it will be done by nature.

[tilemacro]

@Vormblood Its called being an idiot.

Idont have money but i want to buy this. lets get a loan.

The earth is full of them.

[zomailver1]

He should shave. Kung fu panda indeed. Some sort of old fashioned slavic patriarchal image he has got going on there. I would like to see him shaven. Or bang Amy out of her liberal Fukuyama delusions.

[smilingasteroid]

damn this presenter is unpresentable! I dont think it would be a bad idea to have someone young and sexy instead

[southsydney]

@smilingasteroid you're missing the fucking point

[ivesth]

she doesn't listen, just goes on to the next question... and it's so interesting what he says



[ivesth]

she doesn't listen, just goes on to the next question... and it's sointeresting what he says

[bonfirejovi]

He comes across as an economically illiterate confused old man.

[charlesfrith]

Is it possible the reason Slavoj Zizeck doesn't like people pronouncing his name correctly because his speech impediment prevents him from doing just that?

I like him. I just think he's possibly over rated. But then I would say that if I didn't understand, and I'm not saying I don't.

[roryphelan]

His name is spelt 'Zizek', no?

[wrichik]

@roryphelan

Žižek

[brandywine06026]

Be still, Cody



[warriorprince1010]

He is the leading communist apologist in Europe. Hence why Europes economy has collapsed and they are becoming a relic.

[CorvidaeHerald]

@warriorprince1010 Yeah, because Zizek is the president and company owner of Europe.

[Behrleaf]

i love the vuvuzela button!!!

[webmacho]

Genius

[mtklaric]

" I still consider myself a marxist and a communist" - very sad mr. Zizek.....

[brakimkb]

What's sad? Have you read Marx ?

[mtklaric]

yes I have, das kapital and the commi manifest.....utter evi inl disguise....especially when you really understand whats it about....just read the ten points (planks) in the manifesto....pure evil....

[NEDM1991]

its like the reverse ten commandments right?

[ipwnorcs]

@mtklaric Democracy is pure evil!!! ARRGGHHH

[lockeano]

You might have no idea that is very probable that manifesto was not written by Marx. Actually if you have read das kapital as you say, you must know that manifesto is bullshit! (theoretically speaking)

[CocktaSlo]

why should he consider himself anything else just you in favour....?!

[tinotrivino]

I am agree with you, that is for a man and thinker like him very very sad :( I guess he meant the other form of communism, something which never exists in the actual political arena!

[jowns0]

yeah and the 100 million deserved it, thilthy marxist.

[jowns0]

oh if anyone thought I was seious I apologize I relly do not belive in genocide.

[TurtlesandWolves]

Why does Goodman use the Chomsky or Godfather raspy tone. It's really annoying.

[aidy12354]

"Everybody in the World Except US Citizens Should Be Allowed to Vote and Elect the American Government"

Best thing I've heard in a long time ha!

[GristleTit]

Every one of Zizeck's youtube rants is littered with claims that things are 'precisely' thus and so. And every 'It is precisely...' styled clause is followed by a loosely knit mess of Freud, Hegel, Marx, Lacan and pop culture. I wonder what Freud would make of all these unconvincing affirmations of precision. Actually, scrap that. I don't wonder about it at all.

[RationalEmotive]

ok, I doubt you really have read a lot by Siseck

Good for you to know what Freud would have made of Siseck's use of the word "precise", why inform us about it or letting us in on the secret?

Following listing the line of Kings of Larsa to prove I am a smart guy:

Naplanum, Emisum, Samium, Zabaia, Gungunum, Abisare, Sumuel, Nur-Adad, Sin-Iddinam, Sin-Eribam, Sin-Iqisham, Silli-Adad, Warad-Sin, Rim-Sin I, Hammurabi of Babylon, Samsu-iluna of Babylon, Rim-Sin II.

[XYZandTime]

I think I love you because of the king portion.

[loewenclass]

I wonder what Freud would make of your account name.

[nikolalu]

How did you come up with this? So funny, still laughing !!!

[southsydney]

i love listening to this guy talk

[LuckyTHlRT33N]

@southsydney Yeah, don't you just love how a Marxist like him can reminisce about how it was good the Russians crushed democracy movements in 1968 and how the Tiananmen square massacre was really a victory for Marxism and the left. Yes, lovely guy. How does Democracy Now, even have democracy in their name, because brainwashing people into accepting Marxism like in Venezuela, is better than violent Communist revolutions like Cuba?

[southsydney]

@LuckyTHlRT33N oh im totally with you on marxism. it's only oppressed workers of the world not helped them. the pseudo religious "marxism fixes everything" pisses me off too, it's just funny listening to him slur about his words like a bloodhound trying to talk

[bilstew]

It would be interesting to hear his views of Trotsky.

[ReformedMarxist]

Verso publishes Terrorism and Communism by Trotsky with an introduction and essay on Trotsky by Zizek.

[neskuma]

prague 1968... i remember watching russian tanks comming sitting on my fathers shoulders... 3yo by then...

[ExMachine]

The position he claims here to find 'very sad' he later on seems to advocate (withdraw from actiom/power, analyse what is going on). Of course contradiction is nothing new in Zizeks speech but i wonder how he would explain it or distinguish the cases.

[brokennarcissist]

Marxism is too fixated articulating the reasons for failure? Isn't the point of dialectic to take up an position from it weaknesses?

[Gaelforced]

His perspective on the lefts view of "power" as almost Biblical in it's distain of the ultimate outcome of all form of Government,in that they are all corrupt in the end.I don't think it's moral cowardice ...it's perhpas a mature and intelligent conclusion,which imposes no stricture or penalty.

[KafkaCrow]

I do wish his books were as accessible as his interviews. Could anyone suggest a good primer on his thought?

[gramplemousse]

Pick up his book, "How to Read Lacan."

[scotty123123]

Read Lacan and Marx and Freud (after that understanding Zizek's writing is extremely easy,light-reading - but obviously it's far more important to read Freud/Lacan/Marx than it is to read zizek! )

[GristleTit]

Nah

[ion1984]

im no philosophy student, but i know this guy is smart. made a fantastic point about how capitalism is ONLY successfull because people understand its inherrently unfair. their lack of success or wealth can be blamed on chance, and not the power system. i love listening to him. must have been hard for him to keep his responses short for this show. he did a great job. thanks for posting.

[dildopsychologist]

i hate phylosophers-sluts - they are really want to be useable, but phylosophy and intellect in a share, itself is absolutelly useless, it is more poetry and muses sphere than a science - read Hehel and Heidegger, guys

FRWL (From Russia With Love) :D

[brokennarcissist]

Better we pathologize our subjectivity in the miserable moral and social death camps of modernism?

[1Cyberangels]

Slavoj Žižek is a very modest man with a lot of good ideas and general observation on different aspect of live, how one pronounces his name is totally irrelevant to the issues... one needs a lifetime to study and follow his genuine visions, it's an ongoing relationship with a great mind -- his as he posses it as none else ...

[historywillabsolve]

i heart zizek

[1noen1]

He isn't justifying Chinese repression. He's saying that the Chinese allowed true democratic reforms would have been too much too fast. Hence chaotic in ultimate effect. Societies simply cannot make deep radical changes without chaos and violence. Since that it undesirable we should work for more incremental change.

[Chomskyan]

As I said, the student movements did NOT ask for any deep radical changes, but very mild reforms, mostly in response to corruption.

The chaotic effect of an real structural changes would mostly come from exactly the form it took, state repression. In that sense I agree with you, we should push for reformist changes, as long as we don't have illusions about it.

At the same time we can build alternative structures, so that when we run up to the limits of the system, we can disamantle it.

[Chomskyan]

Now, maybe Zizek was trying to say that, but it just came out very clumsily and disingenuous.

No one can really predict what would have happened if the reforms had been implemented, maybe chaotic, maybe not. But what did happen WAS chaos, and the "ultimate" results 20 years later is a small sector of the population raising at the expense of the majority, and the most polluting country in the world.

If given the choice, I think I would take a chance on the (again, very mild) reforms.

[1noen1]

Yes, I was just trying to see it from his point of view. I wish I knew what the answer is because I see it coming here (US) before too long.

[leostoltoy]

You're misinterpreting Zizek. He is not critiquing (or siding with) China PRC, the protesters, or Capitalism. He is trying to dissolve a pervasive delusion of the post-Leninist Left. This is the comforting delusion that a successful Prague or Tiannanmen would have led to some third path that is neither totalitarianism nor capitalism. In fact, it probably would have either slipped back into another totalitarian state, or it would have just "joined the West" as he says. As Slovenia has.

[Chomskyan]

I am not misinterpreting anything, and I acknowledged what he was trying to say. I agree with you that there is a "pervasive delusion" that these actions might have led to utopia or something. What I tried to point out is that when he says it was probably for the best that it didn't succeed, I had to wonder about that and I feel it was insensitive at best and immoral at worst. The Chinese state crushed the movement by force, people were killed or jailed. How does that dissolve the delusion?

[Chomskyan]

Now, what the reform that was sought by the movement would have led to, we will never know. But I think I would take that chance over what did happen, which had actual human consequences, and effectively kept the rest of the population down. And the exact delusions Zizek was trying to dissolve eventually found its way in China. Just talk to any middle class urban Chinese about these issues. They are mostly market-socialist-nationalists.

I just thought he was clumsy in making his point.

[leostoltoy]

OK. Zizek was being provocative, and it worked: here we are, talking about what Tiannanmen meant.

I agree with you (and I think Zizek would) in preferring that the protest had succeeded rather than what actually happened.

But setting aside our sympathies, on another level the failure of the movement allowed some to project their own fantasies on 'what might have been', which Zizek feels allows the Left to indefinitely postpone thinking concretely about what it actually wants to achieve.

[leostoltoy]

Forgive my bluntness in saying that you and 1noen1 misinterpreted Zizek. But he was talking about Tiannanmen (and Prague etc) on a different level than the simple good/bad, sympathetic level. He was examining the role these failed revolutions play in Left mythology. Although I'm not of the left, IMO the resultant quasi-Fukuyaman consensus stifles genuine debate on fundamental principles. Such a debate would be healthy for both sides.

PS Interesting to hear a Chomskyan using the word immoral!

[p0lyph0ny]

If I understand correctly, when Zizek calls the failures of Prague/Tiannanmen "a blessing in disguise," he's not making a moral judgment about that, but rather a comment on the social utility of failed revolution. In this commentary, he is trying to both describe and challenge that socially useful illusion.

[leostoltoy]

Agreed.

PS One of my comments below is now out of sequence and should refer to the above thread, not P0lyph0ny's comment.

[jazzydurkheim]

I agree aswell...

[leostoltoy]

If you watch later segments, that's 'precisely what he's not saying' (to use a Zizekism!).

Zizek is trying to get the modern Left to think about itself and its comfortable position of (a) criticising both lib-dem capitalism and authoritarianism & (b)accepting the Fukuyama thesis and trying to soften capitalism's edges while fantasising that it is working for the vibrant leftist social democracy that would supposedly have followed Prague '68.

He later criticises third-way gradualism.

[Chomskyan]

I don't see how if the Chinese state gave in to the mild reformist measures proposed by the student movement at the Tienanmen protests, it would have lead to chaos. I agree people shouldn't have illusions about it but it kinda seems like a convoluted way to justify Chinese repression and violence.

China subsequently did open up to the West, in it's unique way of internal thirdworld-ization. Somehow that's preferable? I am not so sure.

I saw Chomsky comment on Zizek on the Z forums, wasn't kind.