An interview with Slavoj Žižek | Ideology, the pandemic and anti capitalism

Slavoj Žižek discusses how to navigate the most intensely political moment of our lifetimes.
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From how to emancipate ourselves from ideology, to why liberals should be involved in anti-capitalist work, Žižek explains how to navigate the most intensely political moment of our lifetimes.
Slavoj Žižek is a globally renowned philosopher and cultural critic. He is the author of The Sublime Object of Ideology and is the International Director of Humanities at Birkbeck.
#SlavojŽižek #cynicismphilosophy #AntiCapitalism
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Thumbnail photo: Žiga Živulović jr./ Bobo

[@ujean56]

I love how the video repeats a highly produced graphic/music framework. Just in case you forgot what capitalist ideology looks and sounds like. This is the most bank commercial-like I have ever experienced Zizek.

[@joemama8354]

pure ideaology - fax

[@peacesellsstevebuyin]

I think Zizek would (correctly) argue that a more natural, "authentic" looking format (without music, crappy graphics, etc.) is more ideological in that it lulls you into a sense of trust.

[@Sandra-lu3ri]

The difference between this aesthetics and Zizek is truly jarring 0_o

[@jetblack8250]

@@peacesellsstevebuyin spot on

[@user-hi3rs9hz9q]

Yea that music is super annoying. I cant even watch this

[@Life_Of_Mine_]

Will there be a hero who will start a youtube channel for Slavoj?

[@nightoftheworld]

lol yeah. Zizek’s channel is the meta-network of channels attracted to his thoughts-which he is able to give endless interviews across. The pandemic and it’s _bringing of the lower form higher_ (the rise of video-chat to the fore in the media) has been a field day for Zizek.

[@Life_Of_Mine_]

@@nightoftheworld genius 👏

[@Max-sy4yf]

@@Life_Of_Mine_ Żałuje, że nie jest tłumaczony na polski. Wielka szkoda, bo to najwiekszy geniusz naszych czasów. W Polsce tylko sie ględzi o religi i JPII . Ciemnota , ciemnota, ciemnota.

[@Life_Of_Mine_]

@@Max-sy4yf yes

[@caspar_gomez]

theres radical revolution and ippolit belinski

[@hsl7168]

"Mind; what you think, is a mask of, what covers up, what mystifies what you are doing in the practice. So how to emancipate ourselves from ideology: to change not so much our mind but our actual social practice" - Slavoj blowing my mind once again.

[@schadowizationproductions6205]

I always feel like German Ideology is breathing through Slavoj's German pronounciation of feudal Industrialisierung und so weiter und so weiter.

[@thethree60five]

Yet, he is not... Deppert.

[@firdausbenakil6839]

@@thethree60five (800>00

[@pricenaseen]

Warum ist er der beste Vertreter deutscher Denker??

[@sultixz5380]

well, his accent as well as origin are slovenian...

[@krinkle909]

Wow, Zizek is back and more helpful than ever. The world is becoming strange and unstable. I don't know what to make of it. I'm glad you posted this lecture. Thank you!

[@pancake6685]

Chaos is a ladder. Most of the time created by people in power to gain more power.

[@omletecrayola]

It is hard to understate this man’s genius insight, as well the unique perspective of his upbringing and motivation for his views. We are lucky to have him and his clarity.

[@tribebuddha]

Clarity. Read his books.

[@gammypage]

The music is nice between sections but it makes it difficult to focus on and at times make out what he is saying, particularly as his audio quality is so bad. Would be better if silence while he speaks. Thanks

[@alexsapsarras4812]

thought of this too, on the other hand since he tends to repeat himself alot, will probably meet these same points on another video again, with greater production quality.

[@yusofplayed]

Zizek said somewhere that a new perverts guide movie is in the works but I simply can't find the talk. Zizek, please make it, we need you more than ever!

[@morgengold]

One of the best political analysis of today's sitaution

[@yabyum108]

Zizek firing on all cylinders.

[@StJust]

He's a unique thinker in our times. Many years to him and much health. I'm just wondering, who will carry the torch after Zizek? Who, in my generation, is capable of such a thing? There is nobody, not a single soul on the current world stage who is capable of truly radical thinking, coming from my generation

[@JebacPresretac101]

Some of us, people he claims to come from (ML), consider him a joke, or at minimum, our clown mascot. He is fun to listen to, but not too practical, even coherent sometimes. Few to none are capable of matching his idealism, quite a few outrun him by a mile in materialism. He literally is what he talks about, our ideology jokified, to be taken not too seriously. A communist comodified, a product of relations of production himself.

[@benoitguillette8945]

In relation to Trump, Zizek also wrote: “We are thus gradually approaching what effectively can be called a post-truth discursive space, a space which oscillates between pre-modern superstition (conspiracy theories) and post-modern cynical scepticism. This is why Trump is not a fascist; he is something maybe even more dangerous. In the old royal courts, a king often had a clown whose function was to destroy the noble appearance with sarcastic jokes and dirty remarks, thereby confirming - by contrast - the king’s dignity. Trump doesn’t need a clown; he already is his own clown, and no wonder that his acts are sometimes more funny or tasteless than the performances of his comic imitators. The standard situation is thus inverted: Trump is not a dignified person about whom obscene rumors circulate; he is an openly obscene person who wants his obscenity to appear as a mask of his dignity.” -Slavoj Žižek, ‘Trump’s flexible relationship with the truth made him more dangerous than a fascist’, in RT, 26 Nov, 2020

[@nightoftheworld]

Amen

[@HakWilliams]

Wow 👏

[@RobertCEakins]

Very dialectical

[@benoitguillette8945]

@@RobertCEakins indeed

[@nuclearcatbaby1131]

He unleashed the vaccine from Hell on an unsuspecting world, while distracting you all with a culture war, and his political adversaries were first in line for that Koolaid. Jim Jones, eat your heart out.

[@arshbad1]

Slavoj Zizek has himself become a product.

[@bobb9466]

I think it's interesting, he himself probably doesn't see it this way, he's just doing what he is always doing, but whoever produced this is using him as a product lol.

[@kspfan001]

What choice does anyone not born into wealth have but to turn themselves into a product to sell the product of their labor (if they are lucky), or their labor time directly (aka: life for the vast majority of people)?

[@TheRealTyriam]

Your comment is the cynical ideology in action 😂

[@testtest2608]

@@bobb9466 I am certain that Zizek is well aware of this. He is all for utilizing capitalist resources to forward some particular idea or end.

[@DominicTrinajstic]

Is there no alternative?

[@sparkledarkle.]

Thank you for sharing this video. The background music is very distracting, Zizek's explanation is more than enough.

[@Life_Of_Mine_]

Splendid!

[@Chottlytte]

Love him 😍

[@ArtAristocracy]

"Ideology begins here: What do we perceive is an actual problem, ideology is in the definition of 'problem'" -SZ

[@ManojJinadasa]

yes of course........love love love this talk more and more

[@PeterOslak]

the music is annoying

[@Dayglodaydreams]

I wonder what Zizek's take on the phrase "sex work" is.

[@sagan9ne]

With regards to the political situation, I think Slavoj has a point. It still breaks my heart to admit that the German Green party has lost its auspicious momentum and, most likely, won't receive the votes necessary to appoint the chancellor.

[@johnhunter8896]

I am intrigued so what is the connection between the difference in toilets in different countries and ideology? I can understand toilets their availability, quality even shapes and management differ, if he mean that ideology similarly differ but is making some equivalent standard of measurement.

[@ironmantis25]

This video would be much better without the background music, it's distracting.

[@GenteelCretin]

12:00 - I hear people talk about "neo-feudalism" as though it's an entity apart from capitalism, and I think the terminology provides a degree of comfort to neoliberals. Fundamentally, "neo-feudalism" is second-order capitalism; it's another capitalist subsystem inside the larger capitalist framework. For neoliberals, this presents itself as the perfect linguistic strawman to attack while they maintain the system that creates these subdivisions. By Žižek's own reasoning, isn't this now an additional "symptom" of the same "trauma" that is the Capitalist Real?

[@alexrichter1362]

The FDP was always pro AFD, because they have the same goal of free markets and neoliberalism, but the AFD is culturally conservative.

[@farrider3339]

Culturally conservative is a nice euphemism. They are radical rightists in every sense of the word. They drive forward by looking in the rear view mirror. And a vanishing minority (10% of voters, number declining) likes this nationalism. So fogg the AfD and let's wait for their Selbstdemontage by power games inside their own party. Trust me they will implode

[@johntracey1973]

It’s strange Zizek seems aware that his views are Hegelian in nature but thinkers such as Lacan were unaware in their Hegelian terms of thinking and nuances. It appears that Lacan believed his views to align more with Kojéve and Hyppolite.

[@nightoftheworld]

14:24 *move to the Left* “The only way liberalism can be saved, in the sense of redeeming/maintaining what is worth fighting for (human freedoms, blah blah all the things that we like) is to make a leftward spin you know-to move to the Left.”

[@anela7975]

True, that is why right wing are sent to demos for freedom , maybe to prevent it

[@buicktothemoon]

It's interesting they in the western world, ideology functions via an over saturation of belief and the deadlocks it causes to allow neoliberalism to flow unimpeded behind it. Zizek is absolutely correct. At this specific point, it really doesn't matter what you believe, as the complexity of capitalism - and how the attention economy works - means it is just another commodity. Just like how I'm typing this comment on KZbin now. Maybe there is an ideological solution in the late Lacan and the concept of the Ones all alone. A discourse that results from the degeneration of the social bond and what is known as the End of the Analysis. However, I don't know what that would look like...

[@miket4071]

One should add some science to their “ideology”. A short presentation on “The Science of Rights” at a thermodynamics conference having the KZbin title: “T02 W107 Michael Takac | Thermodynamics 2.0 | 2020”

[@thethree60five]

The intersection of ideology vs science vs nature vs nurture is very interesting.

[@thefbat5847]

Not gonna lie as an engineer who's invested in social philosophy, that felt like pseudoscience.

[@miket4071]

@@thefbat5847 The convolution of philosophy, with anthropology, and physical science can easily be interpreted as “pseudoscience”. Thanks for the critique. You may find additional background on the “science of rights” and the “Constructal law” via an internet search.

[@stefanleithner6922]

why the music in the background 😂

[@nightoftheworld]

10:50 *Global corporate tax* It’s a good start, but Joseph Stiglitz has said his bets are on it being instituted at the 15% minimum floor which is pretty far below the world average of ~23%-baby steps are steps tho..

[@chafiqbantla1816]

Average doesnt really matter if capital is highly concentrated

[@nightoftheworld]

@@chafiqbantla1816 yes I agree, but what the global tax rate can do is put a floor beneath us-stop the race to the bottom zealotry..

[@johnjordansailing]

That beeping sound is annoying.

[@leiferiksson5548]

To fully master the art of using many words to say nothing one must watch/listen to a lot of videos/podcasts with Žižek and Dugin.

[@ontological_clips7486]

to truly master the art of hearing many words but learning nothing one must cultivate a special kind of stubborn ignorance

[@flamenqueantesthedodges6372]

🌏🐨The Sublime Object of Ideology🌎🌹🌍🍧🍷🥩🍾Zlavoj Ziζek.🐝😊💕🇲🇽🎻🎂

[@Mancheguache]

Get rid of the horrible music!

[@ElectricityTaster]

You dare to edit down our leader's speech?

[@elnegronestor]

He seems to show a lot less nervous ticks here than when he speaks in public.

[@LeValsedeMarienbad]

this annoying 90s ambient loop... sounds like I'm at a spa with Slavoj...

[@futuropasado]

Neo-feudal corporatism is a genius designation for what's coming, and today's tendency. Huge corporations renting services, and more tendency to this, all renting.

[@juliusaugustino8409]

I think it's a false dichotomy to say "well we should support Biden and Harris, because true revolutionary action and stance is basically just larping". I'm paraphrasing, but it is precisely that we should be against Biden as much as we were against Trump. Socialists can appeal to people who like Trump and they can appeal to liberals aswell. It's a matter of strategy and also it's that if you're for the people then youre even for the people who have some reactionary opinions, but who are nonetheless suffering. Zizek always talks against political correctness which is good, but it is Biden and Harris who precisely are the establishment political correct imperialist killers and that establishment is what people are fed up with so yes Biden has done some decent things in his term now but supporting him is a losing game and it is to participate in political nihilism which is something that the left cannot afford. There's all this energy in the people but the left hasn't been able to harness that. We need to think through some contradictions very thoroughly now

[@nightoftheworld]

Zizek was totally for Bernie, as were many Americans. But had Bernie been elected and his policies blocked/neutered (very conceivably so) by the establishments we could have had a worse situation explode. At least with Biden what we get is someone with a little more across the aisle appeal, albeit _incrementalist,_ who now has the immense pressure of *Our Revolution* knocking down his door-with Biden taking the heat, Bernie’s spirit can live on more cooly I believe. More effective communication is always good, but the situation in the streets is one of feverish partisanship and increasingly viral ideological madness. Biden is a step backwards agreed, but maybe that nostalgia, after Trumps fiasco, and Biden’s _any way the wind blows_ nature will seize the day and take a small step forward into greener pastures. I do know that Biden has progressive concerns-about the increasingly uncompetitive nature of the economy and trust busting necessity, also rebuilding our infrastructure and combatting climate change, addressing gender, class and racial disparities… all fundamental items of Bernie’s campaign. Biden is no Bernie, but don’t write him off too hard, he wants to be popular and what’s popular now is being for the people who built this country and have seen their lives degrade beneath the footprint of corporate/elite power over the democratic process.

[@TheSonicfrog]

@@nightoftheworld "the immense pressure of Our Revolution knocking down his [Biden's] door" ... you're kidding, right? Biden - and the Democrat Party regime - have shown utter contempt for anyone other than their corporate donors. The only promise Biden has kept is the one he made to his donors - "nothing will fundamentally change" - and guess what? Nothing has, except Democrat voters have now gone back to sleep, after consciously electing a warmongering rapist and proto-fascist to the Presidency, one who if judged by Nuremberg principles, should be wearing a rope necklace, whose actual crimes far exceed that of Trump. I say this in all sincerity as a combat Vietnam veteran.

[@robledoferreira1389]

I believe this "support" (a critical support to say the least) should be directed not to Biden/Harris and the stabilishment, but to the material content of its developmental measures. The socialists should defend that those measures are in the right direction, but with the wrong driver in the seat, because he doesn't want to arrive at the (emancipated) destination. It's a very difficult task, and one of the utmost importance. If we dismiss this keynesian turn, we may end in a closed alley when trying to propose more radical changes under the same principle (of emancipating the working class from capitalism's brutal and insane exploitation). It is a very hard task indeed. But when have communists fought with easy?

[@johnryan3913]

But if Bernie won and his policies were blocked his connection to the voters would have led to genuine protest and rebellion, whereas Biden leaves people indifferent personally and politically, and as of a year post election will likely lose house, senate and presidency over next 2 years. Betnie would have kept dialogue and debate going regardless of his legislative record because of his humanity and passion. So on various levels Trump is worse in terms of criminality, coup attempt, anti constitutionality etc; and cultural impact. Biden/Harris are mostly empty suits.

[@mastersahebutkarshumang7540]

Plssssssssssss give subtitles also

[@tomigrgicevic]

As usually, Zizek sounds so refreshing, his style is exuberant. But just try to resume in few clear sentences what was said in one of his speeches (like this one), you might have a big problem. It's very interesting to read how Chomsky commented on Zizek, Derida, Lacan... Behind very obscure language there is less intelligent ideas hiding than you would expect...

[@Hurricane2139]

Maybe Chomsky is less intelligent than you would expect.

[@tomigrgicevic]

@@Hurricane2139 But you are surely more.

[@moesibai4277]

and he tells me how he loves blacks, arabs, and JUICE

[@falliezhang4269]

😂

[@wowjef]

When was this?

[@fidomusic]

My brain hurts.

[@scarlet4941]

I wish someone would give this guy subtitles 🤧

[@MrTheo747]

unfortunately the youtube auto-generated caps think he's speaking Italian lol

[@robertomon5697]

Wow. Those poor captions lol. They tried.

[@vif3182]

it's defaulted to italain now

[@PianoDentist]

Interestingly, One could argue that Slavoj identifying emergent capitalist paradigms as corporatist and his endorsement of crypto-currencies - on these 2 points makes him sound like a classical liberal economist. He could be mistaken for an Adam Smith or an Austrian free market type.

[@philipvalentini3112]

This time his haircut is quite good!

[@jamesruscheinski8602]

Political central / federal government is empire of liberty, and Christianity is liberty from empire / state.

[@RichMitch]

Subtitles, please?...

[@funkymunky]

"Ideology at itsch purescht."

[@RichMitch]

@Lucian Popa His English is fine, it is his pronunciation that is off

[@RichMitch]

@Lucian Popa I can't understand your English now

[@entyropy3262]

@@RichMitch Learn english if you are interested in using the internet ??

[@Schopenhauer7]

If English isn’t your first language, you may (?) have trouble following. But If you are a native English speaker and you still can’t follow him, it’s pretty pathetic.

[@JootsyMann]

eliminate the music, when Zizek is speaking. it is distracting and detracting. 👍

[@Hoekiszoek]

what is this annoying sound on the background...

[@funkymunky]

Ideology is the wasp that reprograms spiders to hate reality and love flies.

[@boiwaif]

Žižek literally said "ideology is part of our reality". He is a materialist so all ideology is founded upon a certain love of material.

[@funkymunky]

@@boiwaif Yes, and?

[@nightoftheworld]

White Anglo Saxon Protestants?

[@funkymunky]

@@nightoftheworld Toxoplasma gondii.

[@nightoftheworld]

@@funkymunky funny that _T.Gondi_ behaviorally effects rats/humans by increasing dopamine metabolism.

[@leomoore3597]

Please stop that incessant beeping sound !

[@kevintewey1157]

Communism or Barberism

[@egertonmark]

He is genius at saying nothing very much at all and getting his listeners to get their brains working a bit and then getting the credit.

[@MrBezagreen]

He was referring to claims he made in the past and so if you have no idea what he said in the past then you would think that he said nothing here. Things he's talked about in the past and addressed again in this video: 1. Cultural wars and political correctness being the new face of liberalism without any revolutionary effect: because the corporate world can subsume the ideology of tolerance without having to change any of the actual systems of oppression 2. The pandemic creating, by necessity, social and ecological programs which at one point would not have passed. At the same time, increased power in the hands of the technocrats leading to a different power center of capitalism. 3. The toilets as an example of ideology. This is actually a funny analogy which he has explained in detail before, which talks about how the amount of water Germany, France and the U.S. use in flushing demonstrates their political and cultural attitudes.

[@egertonmark]

@@MrBezagreen see - he did it to you too. He is a genius.

[@peacesellsstevebuyin]

@@egertonmark You should try reading his books. He's actually pretty insightful and a funny writer. You do you tho.

[@tomisaacson2762]

Translation: "I don't understand Zizek and if I can't then everybody else must be pretending or confused."

[@egertonmark]

@@tomisaacson2762 I'd call that a spin rather than a translation - if he gets your neurons jigging then enjoy the ride and no harm done.

[@SaintNektarios]

I wish I could understand what Zizek was saying. The slobbering and slurring is just too much to take.

[@elektrochava]

Who decided to pot this terrible soundtrack underneath

[@maryreilly5102]

He's a babe

[@TheDavveponken]

I hate these written out questions on screen. It's so lazy and makes it near impossible to listen to it in the background. Besides it's not very transparent either. As Zizek often likes to joke, “you can edit it so that I reply to a totally different question”. And what's with the music? Big thumbs down.

[@walexander8378]

Toilets

[@nuclearcatbaby1131]

I’m writing a blog on Substack about characters who are toilets.

[@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885]

Eurocentric Platonist forgets to mention the ecological crisis.

[@AleksandarBloom]

KZbin dolt signals le ecology.

[@boiwaif]

The ecological crisis is already framed in eurocentric terms.

[@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885]

@@boiwaif So you have never heard of Winona LaDuke or Vandana Shiva or Helena Norberg-Hodge? Slavoj Zizek wrote how the ecological crisis would cause the "Collapse of the Big Other" or the Self in ideological terms yet Zizek himself has refused to engage with the ecological crisis in nonWestern terms. I wrote a 1996 critique of Zizek and my critique was from a nonwestern Ecofeminist perspective. He sent me back a postcard, "After a quick glance it looks very interesting. I will read it and get back to you." So then in 1997 he published his book, "Plague of Fantasies" that was a strawman attack of my critique of him - mainly he was focused against nonwestern ecofemnism. Well Mother Nature is now taking revenge against the West and you can continue to claim that the ecological crisis is defined by Eurocentric terms. Ecuador disagrees as Ecuador passed a law that Pachamama has inherent legal rights. haha. So did Bolivia: "Bolivia's Law of Mother Earth (“Ley de Derechos de La Madre Tierra”) holds the land as sacred and holds it as a living system with rights to be protected from exploitation." The fact is that Zizek does not study science enough to realize that science itself has caused the ecological crisis and so science now can only report to us just how bad the ecological crisis is. So if Zizek studied science more he would realize that Mother Nature is now in positive feedback loops of ecological destruction - and these are accelerating. So for example the Arctic is about to go ice free for the first time in 3 million years!! Jennifer MacKinnon just finished a SCRIPPS study of the arctic - and she says that next year could even be the first BOE (ice-free) Arctic. And then there is the East Siberian Arctic Shelf Methane Bomb about to go off - as studied by Natalya Shakhova and her research team. The fact that Zizek does not even know about these aspects of the ecological crisis is a total disagree to his supposed "leading" the Left philosophically. Zizek is just a father figure for wannabes. He was interesting to read in the early 90s - but he got too fixated in his own limited ideological agenda.

[@kef1317]

@@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885 interesting comment! is there any chance that i can read your critique of Zizek that you mentioned from 1996? seems like i could learn a thing or two :)

[@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885]

@@kef1317 Here is the excerpt from my master's thesis, 2000 - on Zizek: Even with new paradigm science revealing this ancient simple harmonic foundation of analysis, the deeply rooted inaccurate linear symbolic reification is just as strong today in the community of public intellectuals (or academics focused on structural change and exposing hegemonic ideologies). For instance, while grand theorist Slavoj Zizek has done a brilliant job clarifying dialectic thinking and crucially applying it to cultural analysis, he devoted a large part of a recent book to attacking rhythmic vibrations of energy. It is not that Zizek's theory is incorrect but only that he refuses to systematically take into account dialectic analysis beyond that of Hegel and Lacan-or beyond the limits of language as represented by the Freudian "primordially repressed."243 (see below for further description of primordially repressed) Zizek writes, "Hegel's point is not a new version of the yin/yang balance, but its exact opposite: 'truth' resides in the excess of exaggeration as such."244 What is missing from Zizek's understanding of Taoist qi gong is that the disease is considered the teacher for the cure, just as Zizek states, "the wound is healed by the spear that smote it." In other words, the dialectical process, accurately modeled by music theory and Taoist qi gong as will be shown, uses resonance-the exaggerated 'comma of Pythagoras' ( to achieve a new synthesis or a new form. Zizek does recognize the meaning of music as "the pre-ontological texture of relations" when he refers to Plato's "chora" (i.e. chorus) from the Pythagorean dialogue Timaeus ( calling it "a kind of matrix-receptacle of all determinate forms, governed by its own contingent rules."245 Zizek also impressively traces the history of the ego or the modern Subject as corresponded with the development of opera. The end of the cultural dominance of opera coincides with the beginning of the modern paradigm and the hysterical subject as the object of psychoanalysis.246 In a chapter on music Zizek writes: What is music at its most elementary? An act of supplication: a call to a figure of the big Other (beloved Lady, King, God...) to respond, not as the symbolic big Other, but in the real of his or her being (breaking his own rules by showing mercy; conferring her contingent love on us...). Music is thus an attempt to provoke the 'answer of the Real': to give rise in the Other to the 'miracle' of which Lacan speaks apropos of love, the miracle of the Other stretching his or her hand out to me. The historical changes in the status of 'big Other' (grosso modo, in what Hegel referred to as 'objective Spirit') thus directly concern music - perhaps, musical modernity designates the moment when music renounces the endeavour to provoke the answer of the Other.247 One of the main cultural criticisms emphasized by Zizek is that the dialectical process of Hegel has been misunderstood as a new ideological Absolute Subject thus, as Berendt also points out, causing materialistic Marxism to be a distorted example of dialectical thought. Currently Zizek has pinpointed new age thinking as also being representative of a misguided Absolute Subject through the goal of a new balanced order of harmonious nature or "New Age Consciousness: the balanced circuit of Nature."248 But to correct Zizek, contrary to a reified Absolute Subject or big Other of nature, prominent analysis of qi gong ironically distinguishes dialectics from the common misunderstanding of Hegel ( the same error that Zizek has focused on clarifying: The term synthesis in this context does not refer to polar opposites merging into a higher unity so as to be separately indistinguishable. (This form of synthesis was one of the goals of the dialectical process identified by the philosopher G.W. Hegel in his development of the Absolute). The method may be simply described as positing something as a thesis, then realizing that it can only be truly defined by taking other aspects or its opposite into account (antithesis), and finally arriving at the explicit recognition that the thesis and antithesis are related on a higher level of objective truth: synthesis). To understand ongoing process, which Chinese philosophy favors in the spirit of synthesis, we might consider the psychological concept of integration.249 The true open systems ongoing process is modeled by sound-current nondualism in a manner that very specifically and simply clarifies the correct dialectical analysis that has been the focus of Zizek's investigation. As Zizek states, in dialectics first there is a thesis then an antithesis and as each is taken to their extreme logical conclusions both points negate each other by their mutual absurdity (called the dialectical reversal after the unity of opposites). Then that negation is affirmed as a new ground that both points now hold in common. This last formal step is naming or recognizing the first negation and called double negation or determinate reflection. The point, not recognized in the dominant linear interpretation of dialectics, is that it is "the very lack [void] they have in common" which enables a new synthesis. Zizek writes, "Being reveals itself as Nothing at the very moment we try to grasp it in its pureness," and in reference to Hegel, "the subject is precisely that which is not substance." Zizek then states that the dialectic process is the same "nodal" problem again and again.250

[@salvandorum]

Marxian nonsense

[@owabowa]

What a lack of substance in your comment. Consider not commenting again.