Full Lecture: Žižek vs. Postmodernism

Thank you for watching this lecture. It’s a lot to cover in a short amount of time, but if you’d like to support me in continuing this video series, I’d highly appreciate it if you took a look at my patreon.
You can read this lecture as an essay here: / lecture-6-zizek-74911030
Patrons can access my ebook intro to Žižek, titled ‘Sisyphus in Love’ as well as download audio versions of the lectures, edited transcripts, and join the weekly discord q&a which is also posted as a members only podcast.
Visit: www.patreon.com/jenalineandjulian
Thanks for watching!
Julian
#zizek #slavojzizek #postmodernism

[@emiliaerle6030]

Gosh.. it was soo good. I planned to watch a movie before going to sleep but I ended up, again, on the Lacanian side of KZbin and I don't regret it!!

[@MarkoStev]

Please do more on this exact topic. I would buy an e-book with this title. Greetings from Serbia.

[@julianphilosophy]

You’re in luck! That’s exactly what I’m doing. The ebook will be titled “Spurious Infinities: Žižek on Postmodernism”.

[@MarkoStev]

@@julianphilosophy Looking forward to it get published. Thanks.

[@E88twenty2]

Can't wait!

[@Segkee]

"Within the difference itself we find the universal." Very important. Good lecture.

[@arhicluj2008]

Joining you from Romania, absolutely love your channel, i think I can finally sort of wrap my head around Zizek

[@jessicayoeun-diggles1565]

Watching from Arizona, your channel has been super helpful thank you ❤

[@wandilemtambo9962]

Hey Julian Another great vid, from South Africa

[@fos8789]

this was really good, thanks. Just a recommendation when speaking in "public" like this: do not open so many subjects, like every time you say "And this is like Plato, but we will go back to that later", "This is not so much in Aristotle, but we will come back to that later", etc. You end up not going back to those subjects, while you could just avoid needlessly opening those paths that take away the listener's attention while staying on the main subject. Anyway, this video is great, thanks. I hope my message is clear since my English is kinda meh.

[@erickechegar]

Glad i found this channel, subscribed. Salutations from a history and poli sci undergrad.

[@maxonmendel5757]

very difficult but very well done. its very helpful. zizek has helped me a lot.

[@tonatiuhl.8433]

Im new to your channel, didnt saw it live, but, its amazing :) best regards from Mexico

[@julianphilosophy]

Greetings from Washington!

[@Nakfourmenow]

Best philosophy channel on KZbin! I know it's difficult but can you give more concrete examples to understand the abstract stuff?

[@julianphilosophy]

I’ll try!

[@stevejeffery3112]

This is awesome. Thankyou for this.

[@julianphilosophy]

My pleasure. Thank you for watching. And if this is up your alley, I’d also recommend joining our community on patreon. The bonus session I record for patrons is always a lot of fun. The link is: www.patreon.com/jenalineandjulian

[@gustavsbrigmanis8599]

Greetings from Riga city in Latvia, Julian!

[@RydSpyn]

Really good lecture! It's funny how closely this mirrors the thought of recent Christian thinkers like Jonathan Pageau. Also, I wonder why Zizek never once mentions Baudrillard, who seems like he would have been a really good ally. I'm not so familiar with the timeline of Zizek's thought, but Baudrillard was describing most of these things in the late 70s and early 80s, giving many of the same arguments. If anybody has an opinion on why Zizek has been ignoring him, I'd love to hear it! ( For instance, In Zizek's book "The desert of the real", which is named after a quote from the Matrix, which in turn appropriated it from one of Baudrillard's books, Zizek manages to never once allude to Baudrillard and his thought)

[@thenowchurch6419]

Good point. I find it strange that none of the Critical Theorists or Post-Moderns ever mention the fact that the infamous Aleister Crowley foreshadowed and covered all the points and tropes of critical and PostModern thought. I get that he has terrible P.R. and all kinds of fictional horror stories about him and no one wants to be associated with that, but the guy was a brilliant philosopher in his own right.

[@harisubramanian4165]

Great Explaination.... India❤

[@Anabsurdsuggestion]

Excellent.

[@jessa1299]

Take a shot every time he says “thereby”

[@julianphilosophy]

and ‘in other words’ 😂

[@Vladimir-Struja]

Taking photos of food before eating is the new "saying grace"

[@Jerrybaldy]

Excellent

[@omarkhazri4204]

I'm joining you from Morocco!

[@AlejandroCastillo-wf1dt]

Title: Zizek Picture: Zizek Speaker: Julian

[@babaksoleimani]

Starts at 3:23

[@lotoreo]

Wait, I don't get it. If there really is no ground upon which the universal is predicated as you say, and that any universal is already the sublimation of a previous universal, which in turn is also a sublimation of the universal that came before it and so on and so on, isn't that just another spurious infinity?

[@martinb4272]

"...and so on and so on," - Zlavoj Zizek Anyways, I am pondering the same question. Guess I have to rewatch this as I might have missed out on the part that explains how it differs. I think the answer has something to do with the Hegelian perspective, which I do not yet completely understand.

[@dundema]

Pls .. book tour will be so great.... esp zizek works and books

[@FG-fc1yz]

8:00 analog dazu, was Gesellschaft bedeutet: was bedeutet Liberalismus, Kapitalismus, Kommunismus 10:40 immer wenn etwas als Universal (als natürlich, Wesen, Gesetz, Tautologie, common sense, natural order etc.) erscheint / bezeichnet wird, haben wir es mit eines ideologischen Effekt zu tun und philosophisch frag-würdig 14:00 Def. Postmodernismus, Problem damit: 15:15 20:20 partikulare Idee, die als universale Idee angenommen wird und alle anderen verleugnet, ist das false universal of hegemony 25:48 universal because of the antagonism 28:00 Expl + in LGBTPQ + 32:00 ab 35:20

[@markoslavicek]

What are your sources for this summary? Does Zizek write this critique of postmodernism in one of his publications or do you refer to his lectures/interviews?

[@julianphilosophy]

It’s throughout his works but for the most succinct version of this I’d recommend the book: contingency, hegemony, universality. Published by verso. And I think his chapter on this is the third one

[@fuzzydunlop4513]

this the one we been waiting for 😈

[@harisubramanian4165]

Can you explain why you are specifically interested in Zizek Philosophy?

[@julianphilosophy]

Because I believe it provides the best and most enjoyable pathway towards getting into Kant/Hegel/Marx and because although I don’t think you necessarily need Lacanian psychoanalysis to do so, he is one of the few remaining thinkers dedicated to philosophy in a truly post-metaphysical sense

[@pinkmatter8488]

@@julianphilosophy Could you explain a bit please what you mean by "post-metaphysical" and how Zizek relates to that aspect, if it's not too much of a bother, thx 🙏🏿

[@harisubramanian4165]

@@julianphilosophy Do you have any ideas to break down Zizek panel interviews like the one which involves Zizek and Jorden Peterson, Zizek and Alain badiou and so on...

[@DelandaBaudLacanian]

​@@harisubramanian4165 follow the rabbit holes around particular subjects you do not understand, and so on...

[@joakinzz]

Excellent as always proffesor, just wanted to add that this is a very western worry, the east puts all of this in very different terms because they dont see nature or even reality as inherently coherent or estatic, much less as something radically divorced from culture. Nature for them is dynamic and deeply contradictory from the human perspective, straking for harmony and not evolutionary progress or coherence.

[@acht2849]

Do you want to make a lecture about Zizek's mode of thought in the light of modernism? I think that would be interesting!

[@nicolasruiz4643]

I think the problem really is that we treat universals as if they were particulars. That is, the problem is to think there are only particulars, and then treat the universal as particulars, because there are only particulars. Universals are pretty difficult to think about, so common sense most probably does not think in terms of universals. Philosophers are pretty stupid in treating common sense. They just “think” what people “really think”, but they have no idea.

[@uncommonsensewithpastormar2913]

Another fascinating lecture. You seem to be suggesting that Zizek, like Hegel and Marx, believes history has some sort of objective meaning or purpose to it. This is the primary reason he is opposed to postmodernism which is fundamentally nihilistic in its outlook.

[@lgr7787]

Toronto, Canada

[@luckyducki]

woah I didnt know you were on youtube

[@akamahmad3129]

From Kurdistan, love you mate!

[@gdrdm]

Joining from Lisbon, Portugal. (Medeiros sounds like you might have ancestry here)

[@MartinThau]

Leibniz calls universals monads. 1. This text is about Monads. Monads are units. They give perfection. Units are without parts. 2. There must be units because things consist of parts. Without unity, things would disintegrate. 3. What has no parts has no extension. It cannot be halved. That is why Monads are the basic units of nature. 4. Unity cannot disintegrate. Monads are therefore immortal. 5. They cannot have emerged. Because they have no parts. 6. A Monad can only start or stop existing at once. They owe their being to an act of creation. And only in such a manner can they be taken back. Things, in contrast, emerge new by composition. They decay back into their parts when they die. 7. Monads cannot be influenced. After all, they are invisible. One cannot address them or bring them around. What they are up to they determine themselves. And they cannot communicate it either. Monads have no windows. 8. Monads must be distinguishable. Because nature is in motion. And Monads are its basic units. That is why all movement must come from Monads. If all the Monads were the same, they all would behave identically. In such a case, nothing would move. 9. Every single Monad must distinguish itself from every other Monad. Because in the world, there are no two beings that are completely the same. Every being feels a little different. 10. It can be assumed that Monads change, like any created being - continuously. MONADOLOGY ("easy read" version)

[@gewgew9136]

Wellsburg, NY

[@leehayes4019]

Cincinnati!

[@dialaskisel5929]

Look, I just came here to order a muffin. Can I have my muffin now? 😛 In seriousness, I'd be very curious to hear some of Zizek's positions on things like Pragmatism and also Buddhism, and how they fit into this kind of discussion.

[@denisselorenzi]

Costa Rica!

[@thenowchurch6419]

Of whom is that little photo behind you? It looks like Heidegger from a distance.

[@julianphilosophy]

It’s Stefan Zweig, in some ways an inferior writer, but one who I nonetheless admire hugely on a personal level.

[@thenowchurch6419]

@@julianphilosophy Oh, Thank you. I will look into him.

[@adidasadriano]

“Is there an absolute truth?” “No!!” “But then the claim that there is no absolute truth is the absolute truth and therefore is wrong” Something like that?:D

[@lotoreo]

yoo Groeten uit Nederland

[@ainemacdonald2626]

Slay

[@robwithoutabody449]

South Africa

[@pdgrayson]

The jump/conflation of postmodernism as a critique of ideology with identity politics is a bit strange, though, and borderline a strawman, because, as you say, id politics is just conservatism already (always ;)).

[@sylvester5022]

He's not so much against postmodernism as he critiques the potential hypocrisies of postmodernists creating their own "absolute narratives", as you say when he uses what would be considered postmodernism deepen it further. I also think "post-modernism" is far to broad of a philosophical lense to define it either in political terminology. Deconstruction of those terms is a staple in post modern tradition with Derrida. It's less of a system and more of an analytical tool.

[@maxonmendel5757]

Chicago area

[@muhammedtaylan4684]

Spolier allert!! Žižek is a comminist.

[@savagearteconomy]

for sure, commonist❣️

[@albertodimaio496]

a commanist❤

[@ludviglidstrom6924]

Sweden

[@SulavNepal]

nepal

[@a775873]

Taipei, taiwan.

[@themanicmechanics496]

Who even knows what Postmodernism actually is in this day and age? Did it ever really exist? Does it exist now? Zizek avoids such blunt and stupid as being either for or against a massively vague idea like Postmodernism. And, by the way, this lecturer is so pandering and self-congratulatory that it is nauseating. So cute.

[@TheGrowlingAraknid]

Ironically your comment is an example of postmodernist thought lol

[@john-lenin]

37:30 I haven't read much of Zizek's recent work - yet, but he was never a "modernist" before.

[@taranehnaseri507]

Hi julian thank you sooo much for the amazing lectures. Im iranian but joining from Turkey🤍

[@john-lenin]

He's tying himself in knots attempting to deny the political implications. He normally deconstructs. This isn't a deconstruction.

[@john-lenin]

Why do you keep saying postmodernist when you mean poststructuralist? We are all Postmodernists because we live in a Postmodern world.