Slavoj Žižek. The Return To Hegel. 2009 1/16

http://www.egs.edu/ Slavoj Žižek speaking about Hegel and Hegelian concepts of history and historicity, drawing not only on the works of Marxs Grundrisse and Jacques Lacan, but also on opera, Schoenbergs atonal revolution, the experience of impossibility, Freuds death drive, Steven King, Immanuel Kant, Martin Luthers radical revolution, concepts of authenticity and inauthenticity. In addition, Žižek referenced Alain Baidou, Gilles Deleuze, Pascal, Charlie Chaplin and the role of the spectator in The Grand Dictator, the drive to culture and the true satisfaction of the circular movement. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland. 2009


Slavoj Žižek is one of the most renowned philosophers working today. Taking Marxs injunction that philosophers must not only examine the world, but change it, his work borders on the evangelic. Standing astride critical theory, traditional philosophy, political and film theory and theoretical psychoanalysis, he is, in one sense the sole contemporary inheritor of Lacan, doing to Lacan what Lacan once did for Freud. Though at times accused of inconsistency, Žižek instead uses the philosophical tradition to constantly examine (and undermine) received truths. He has argued that it is not the role of the philosopher to act as the Big Other who tells us about the world, but rather it is the role of the thinker to challenge our own ideological assumptions.


Slavoj Žižek is the International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, a professor of philosophy and psychoanalysis at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland and a visiting professor at the University of Chicago, Columbia University, the London School of Economics, Princeton University, The New School for Social research and the University of California, Irvine. He has published over forty books and been the subject of two movies, Žižek! and The Perverts Guide To Cinema. In 1990 he ran unsuccessfully for president in Slovenias first democratic elections and he has been a consistently powerful voice in the world since then. His essays are regularly published in the New York Times, Lacanian Ink, the New Left review and the London Review of Books.


There is little in contemporary thought that Žižek has not explored on some level. From communism to Maoism, film studies to literature, and from Lenin to the issue of torture in the post-9/11 world, Žižek's work has, and continues to, inform the dialogue that surrounds them. Žižek's first book in English translation, The Sublime Object of Ideology, examines the issues surrounding the placement of "sublime objects" in a regime's iconography which allow it to transgress or alter commonly accepted moral law or thought. It is these objects—be it God, Fuhrer, Dear Leader or Land, the Flag, Democracy—that allow the regimes to "self-sanctify" their actions. While much of Žižek's work is strictly philosophical or psychoanalytical dealing with Hegel, Kant, Freud and Lacan, since 9/11 his work has become increasingly political, directly referencing the illegal actions taken by the Bush administration and the complicit nature of the European regimes of Blair, Sarkozy and Berlusconi.


Slavoj Žižek is the author of The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment As A Political Factor (1991), Looking Awry: an Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture(1991), Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lacan (But Were Afraid To Ask Hitchcock) (1992), Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan In Hollywood And Out (1992), Tarrying With The Negative: Kant, Hegel And The Critique Of Ideology (1993), Mapping Ideology (1994), The Metastases Of Enjoyment: Six Essays On Woman And Causality (Wo Es War) (1994), The Indivisible Remainder: An Essay On Schelling And Related Matters (1996), Gaze And Voice As Love Objects (1996), The Plague of Fantasies (1997), The Abyss Of Freedom Ages Of The World (1997), The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology (1999), Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out (2000), Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left (with Judith Butler and Ernesto Laclau) (2000), The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime, On David Lynchs Lost Highway (2000), The Fragile Absolute or Why the Christian Legacy is Worth Fighting For (2000), On Belief (2001), The Fright of Real Tears, Kieslowski and The Future (2001), Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? Five Essays on the (Mis)Use of a Notion (2001), The Puppet and the Dwarf (2003), Organs Without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences (2003), Iraq The Borrowed Kettle (2004) and Violence (2008). Most recently, in 2009, Žižek published First As Tragedy, Then As Farce, analyzing the financial meltdown.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Slavoj
• Žižek
• Hegel
• historicity
• Marx
• Grundrisse
• Jacques
• Lacan
• Alain
• Baidou
• Gilles
• Deleuze
• Pascal
• martin
• luther
• charlie
• chaplin
• barber
• of
• seville
• Schoenberg
• atonal
• european
• graduate
• school
• egs
• saas
• fee
• switzerland

[eduardorenato]

Is it Judith Butler that asks "what is the Slovenian way?"

[egsvideo]

@eduardorenato thank you for the comment. i dont think so, as she was conducting her own workshops the same day. let me put it that way: workshops and seminars at european graduate school can be quite exhausting, any free minute is usually spent up in the mountains, glaciers, rocks and with the mountain goats ;)

[darkprose]

Žižek is, without doubt, the finest lecturer in philosophy alive today, I think. I'm not a German idealist, but I love to hear him talk on just about anything.

[chrish12345]

I like the way he says please be patient this is a serious lecture, then somehow they end up doing a short seminar on fucking.

[CommunistWarrior1917]

@100radoja If you need help understanding Hegel, look up Andy Blunden. He's written quite a bit on Hegel, and it's been an invaluable help for me. Also, have you read the Preface to Phenomenology of Spirit? It's a relatively clear intro to Hegelianism.

[cscambler]

I think I understand the name of this lecture.... the basic content is Zizek uttering the name of Hegel, running as far away from him conceptually as possible and then carving a circuitous and often dubious route back, "the return", indeed, to Hegel.

None the less, very entertaining. Wouldn't want to have him as a lecturer though...

[pawsoned]

I think that Zizek employs the amazing scope of presented issues what Deleuze calls rhizomatic thinking, and yet manages to stay with the topic and talks about one of the the most dull and cumbersome philosophers ever in an intriguing and interesting way.

Those who prefer 'pure' Hegel go and read him or watch other vids from the sixties like "Peter Singer on Hegel and Marx" where it's Hegel for the dummies, as it were.

[Mauser91]

Alright just watched this lecture. Very entertaining and informative, but if you are after pure Hegel, don't bother at all.

[macsm]

awesome lecture

[100radoja]

I watched some of Zizek`s lecture, and first of all, I am not sure what is initially talking about. He starts with one issue and jumps from issue to issue so often that I lose my self trying to get him. If the theme of this lecture is Hegelian concept of the philosophy, why he does not talk about it. I have red Hegel and I need some help to understand his concept. Some of his ideas are familiar to me but Zizek does not help me at all.

[DrMerkwuerdichliebe]

The 'dialectical triad' is to be found in FICHTE.

[alifeofreason]

His wife is like 30 years younger than him.

[FaaarLeft]

Ok... I'll take that under advisement.

[IamthePopeRome]

There is no Hegel in this lecture.