Slavoj Zizek. On Belief and Otherness. 2002 1/6

http://www.egs.edu/ Slavoj Zizek speaking about belief, the other, others radical otherness, respect for otherness, resistance, hatred, intolerance towards wisdom, totalitarian regimes, displacement, multitude and diversity, just action, fighting fascism, preserving humanity by killing the enemy, Alain Badiou, Judith Butler, including references to movies like Unbreakable with Bruce Willis and Shrek. Public open lecture for the students of the European Graduate School EGS, Media and Communication Studies department program, Saas-Fee, Switzerland, Europe, 2006, Slavoj Zizek.

Slavoj Zizek, a Slovenian sociologist, postmodern philosopher, and cultural critic is a professor at the Institute for Sociology, Ljubljana and at the European Graduate School EGS who uses popular culture to explain the theory of Jacques Lacan and the theory of Jacques Lacan to explain politics and popular culture. He was born in 1949 in Ljubljana, Slovenia where he lives to this day but he has lectured at universities around the world. He was analysed by Jacques Alain Miller, Jacques Lacan's son in law. His research focuses on Karl Marx, Hegel and Schellingfundamentalism, tolerance, political correctness, globalization, subjectivity, human rights, Lenin, myth, cyberspace, postmodernism, multiculturalism, post-marxism, David Lynch, and Alfred Hitchcock.

He has published many books and translations in several languages. He is the author of The Sublime Object of Ideology, 1989, Beyond Discourse Analysis (a part in Ernesto Laclau's New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time), London: Verso. 1990, For They Know Not What They Do, London: Verso. 1991, Looking Awry, MIT Press. Enjoy Your Symptom!, Routledge. 1992, Tarrying With the Negative, Durham, New Carolina: Duke University Press. 1993, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lacan, But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock,1993, The Metastates of Enjoyment,1994, The Indivisible Remainder: Essays on Schelling and Related Matters, 1996, The Abyss of Freedom, University of Michigan Press. 1997, The Plague of Fantasies, Multi-culturalism, or, the Cultural Logic of Multi-national Capitalism, New Left Review, issue 225 pgs. 28--51, The Ticklish Subject, 1999, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality (authored with Judith Butler and Ernesto Laclau), Verso. 2000, The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch's Lost Highway, Washington: University of Washington Press. The Fragile Absolute, 2000, Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?. 2001, The Fright of Real Tears: Kryzystof Kieślowski Between Theory and Post-Theory, British Film Institute (BFI), On Belief, Routledge. Opera's Second Death, Repeating Lenin, Zagreb: Arkzin D.O.O. 2001, Welcome to the Desert of the Real, 2002, Revolution at the Gates: Žižek on Lenin, the 1917 Writings, Organs Without Bodies. 2003, The Puppet and the Dwarf, 2003, Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle, 2004, Interrogating the Real, London, Continuum International Publishing Group. 2005, The Universal Exception, London, 2006, Neighbors and Other Monsters (in The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology), Cambridge, Massachusetts: University of Chicago Press. The Parallax View, How to Read Lacan, New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Slavoj
• Zizek
• Belief
• other
• respect
• otherness
• hatred
• intolerance
• killing
• Alain
• Badiou
• EGS
• European
• Graduate
• School

[randylahey123]

Yes but Zizek has reinterpreted Hegelian concept of history and dialectics (in sublime object of ideology) through Lacan and rejects Hegel as a "idealist-monist" and says "in Hegel is the strongest affirmation yet of difference and contingency"(intro to sublime...) he even argues (paradoxically) that Hegel is the first post-Marxist!

[davius4321]

ANOTHER ZIZEK! EXCELLENT! Thanks a lot...

[dragmio]

He saw thru Shrek wonderfully. It's pure modern hipocrisy. Like, it isn't important what you look like, but princess must get ugly to marry Shrek. Or what's worse, we're sooo politically correct, but the bad guy is soooo short. So, we can't ridicule ugly, but we can ridicule short?

[ExMachine]

@rebellionsucks - I haven't heard Zizek claim working class revolutionary agency is impossible. Only that - it isn't there today-; where is the massive militant working class movement that Zizek is denying? His point is that there isn't one today(decline of fordist organized labour etc), that's the problem.

Yet Zizek positing himself as a 'philosopher' is suspicious and does smack of a certain double-think. 'Let them read Hegel'. The problem of professional radicals.

[ExMachine]

@vulvatronic - Zizek doesn't advocate torture. His point is that the other doesn't know where their own truth lies. So to respect the lie someone tells about themselves is to approach the situation in totally the wrong way. Listen to the glossing he gives to the point. Hatred, anger, can be progressive. If a black person hated those who viciously repressed them in segregationist america or apartheid south africa- and if that anger led to their challenging the situation and changing it...

[sweenith]

@randylahey123 But Marx was a Hegelian. So that makes Marx a post-Marxist. lol

[vulvatronic]

a respect for other when at war...god damn it! it means you don´t torture the enemy to death with most imaginative way and eat his/her eyeballs, &c! stupid question, mr B, and I DON`T agree with you on this, mr Z... there are certain rules of respect for OTHER everywhere...depending on situation...even with nazis, even at war...now this is Z at his wrst, just bullshitting, and you brainless fans can´t see your bloody hero´s just hitting air at the moment...

[BehaviorModification]

"Tout comprendre, c´est tout pardonner." Yes, even the oppressors. All seeks equilibrium. Human behavior being no different. It's driven by desire, which is based upon a near infinite number of factors from cultural to genetic; all of which are then spurned along by moment-to-moment circumstance. This CAN be overridden if one is willing. Yet, to 'will' one has to 'care.' Only then can one even consider 'thinking' & be made aware of 'options.' & only then will ideas manifest into relevance.

[toucanchrist]

Radical academia.......that's one gem of an oxymoron!

[sharonvideo]

"for the old story to go on" YEAH MAN!!

[ZizekianRevolution]

i meant to give a negative thumbs up but i accidentally did otherwise:(

[shakeyourdimsims]

to me part of the significance of this guy is that he speaks what very few people are willing to say. to accept what Zizek says here is to reject what is one of this epoch's central ethos. regardless of whether people agree i say he's got balls