Interview with Slavoj Zizek

[@matthew_thefallen]

I love this guy for one reason: he is simple in his complexity of thinking and very humane in his talking with interviewers, not a typical professor, as he shows after he tells to the interviewer that he doesn't like to be called professor.

[@MikeFuller-ok6ok]

To simplify complex issues is the work of the master. That is also what a poet does.

[@djslikkshola]

The pace of this interview is so insane haha

[@bya22666]

@Komyoshin nah its just slavoj :))

[@75hilmar]

It is 🤣

[@torbjrnhaugan4437]

Compliments on the interviewer. As much as I love Slavoj he have a tendency to suffocate other people in interviews. So to be in the strictest sense somewhat impolite and talk over him in order to get to the point of the questions without getting interrupted really helped create an interesting interview.

[@demit189]

This is probably my favorite interview of Žižek yet.

[@frogmoth]

One of the the clearest and most lucid interviews with him (at least in my opinion). Even if you don't like Zizek you have to admit that he makes some very interesting and reasonable points. (I also especially liked the point about writing about/engaging with thinkers. The ones who have read all of their work vs. the ones who didn't et cetera...)

[@mofuker199]

its kinda surreal seeing him so up close

[@archadeinteriors]

it's nice to see Slavoj coming into his own in the last recent years ( my conjecture, that is . .) as I move further and further, as a fan, back into the history of who he is and where he hails form , as it were, . .i think earlier on his earnestness weighed heavier and harder on him in public or popular forums and now he seems very comfortable as one of the current times' major figures, i would even go so far as to say he is quite stylish at times, and further, to contrast him with the uncanny fashion savvy of my other favorite philospeaker JBP, . . the latter who ( or at least his well chosen stylists ) exhibits great classical and formal attire combinations, Zizek on the other hand with his characteristic or sometimes quite laidback tees, and even cartoony t shirts at times, but generally a liberally or loosely unkempt, yet professionally presentable/approachable and sharply dressed, nonetheless, style, but very natural looking, that is, for a philosopher & 'high profile' intellectual academician such as he is hah haha . . see i threw you off didn't i, you expected nothing but endlessly deep philosophical philologisms from yours truly and suddenly i did a deep dive on the fashionista's flare and fame factor

[@Bryan-lu4du]

This was a fantastic interview

[@JapanDriver]

Zizek's insight into how to read philosophy is very clear here. And he's not even joking. Derrida said something similar. When asked whether he'd read all the books in his home library, he said I've only read a few, but the ones I read, I read them very very closely.

[@travisin3D]

I hear all of the secret agents running emergency sirens and jackhammers over Zizek's ideas trying to prevent us from hearing them, but it didn't work, thankfully.

[@ZombieDragQueen]

Great first question! I agree with Zizek on how to talk about books you haven't read. In a English literature class (university) we had to read a book and the exam was orally in groups. I read maybe a fifth of the book and got the highest grade. I thought that the book was so boring and predictable that given the context of the subject we discussed during classes I could get a good gist of it and, due to being a oral group exam, I could fill in the blanks from what others said to strengthen my points. I used to think that it's just the author and the work that is predictable, but Zizek does make a point about the focusing on one point and disregarding the rest. I remember having to do another analysis, this time in writing individually, and my theory about the text was a psycho-sexual BDSM drama between an abbess and a nun. I thought I had good arguments, since I only had the text and no other context for it to analyze it through. My teacher's response was "intelligent and imaginative, but totally wrong from the established consensus of the text's meaning". I've had several other experiences like that. Just read a fraction and reiterate and expand on the obvious and get good grades, or read the whole thing and come up with logically and thematically sound theories but that don't fit into the consensus and fail the task.

[@TarikCutuk]

Wow. It seems like Slavoj was actually really hurt by what Noam Chomsky said about him. I never realised. It's kind of sad.

[@AnonymousAnonymous-pk1to]

Chomsky has always been an arrogant asshole. To prove it to yourself disagree with him, get some popcorn, and watch the personal insults fly.

[@GHa-yz1bw]

What chomsky said precisely?

[@KhorneBred]

@@GHa-yz1bw very late addition to this conversation. You've probably looked it up by now, but Chomsky called him a charlatan.

[@TheSpiritOfTheTimes]

Where is the question? What is the timemark?

[@kiwicfruit]

@@TheSpiritOfTheTimes 1:23

[@Kumbaya6991]

Why isn't philosophy now uploading some more content?

[@HuntaDaKilla-b5i]

What is the book he refers to? The one about being an Intro to philosophy with the video game example. Anyone?

[@ahmetburak8511]

I couldnt find the book either but I believe article in intro is published in Nature (April 2016)“Exploring the quantum speed limit with computer games”

[@causticgrip8329]

Why would you ever try to interrupt the ultimate interruptor?

[@caglardemir5339]

22:49 makes me hug him

[@immortalx50]

31:37 "what people like ... ... and all these new materialists are doing.." Whom does he mention here?

[@SimonObirek]

Graham Harmon, Quentin Meillassoux, Ray Brassier, etc.

[@retrospeko]

The spot where the interview took place: www.google.com/maps/@51.5209645,-0.1229562,3a,75y,296.49h,87.06t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sAF1QipPmFwyJSdx91k2ZcaqgE-hIkrYcJ_T1tCUKYvTq!2e10!7i13312!8i6656

[@ThangNeihsial]

33:50 I don’t understand

[@demit189]

Zizek is asked about what is the most important question is in philosophy. Zizek answers by saying the state of appearance. What he means is that the appearance of something and external reality as a whole is the hardest question to answer and he goes through the malleability of appearance and how we are never seeing reality as what it is, but as a human interpretation.

[@Lambda_Ovine]

@@demit189 To add more detail, I think he means that the gap between appearances and an ultimate form of concrete reality IS reality itself, in a Hegelian way, that negation of perceiving a total objective and concrete reality is part of reality itself, that the gap itself is the solution to the question of the gap. Then, the correct question is not to ask how to breach the gap between appearance and reality because then you discard the solution, and that's why we need to go back to Hegel to ask the correct question. Both the question and answer need to include the gap. In other words; the correct question to ask is how is that the gap is part of reality?

[@demit189]

@@Lambda_Ovine beautifully put, well said.

[@MrSuvidh]

Slavoj: Who needs an interviewer....

[@adelizeva8927]

That we might better summarize a book without actually reading it. Similar to how we may better understand words, without necessarily reading their definitions in the dictionary.

[@vKarl71]

Zizek's mind is like a thousand 3-dimensional pinball machines.

[@Kashikoirojin]

40:00 holy shit hahahhaahahaha

[@farrider3339]

Top encounter with the zizekian Zizek 🎉 Cool stool

[@meneersas]

Recorded next to the steel factory

[@Ediblspaceships]

New game : Drink a beer 🍺 every time he sniffs or touches his nose 👃 😎🍻

[@Centauro7209]

He always changes the story of the attractive mature lady with two or three extra kilos

[@contentsniffer]

In another lecture I listened to, he says; "you know the woman with the two/three kilos? Yes? She has a name, she is my wife."

[@colormesilverr]

Whixh lecture is that? Please share link hehe​@@contentsniffer

[@75hilmar]

55:00 precious. The interviewer couldn't show more disapproval. 😂

[@danbul5853]

20:36. Wage slavery turned out to be more dynamic than slavery, is it not true that another kind of emancipatory progress in the structuring of society could be even more dynamic than the Capitalism we have today? And if more emancipation creates more dynamics, surely there is something deeper than Capitalism that we have to thank for progress? I'm aware that Capitalism was in some way instrumental, at least in part, for world to get where it is today, but is it not even more true that it was never Capitalism itself which was responsible, it simply unlocked something that existed within the horizon of human potential. Why do we need Capitalism? Surely what we need are the tools and knowledge that Capitalism coincided or conspired with historically to create.

[@ElectricityTaster]

He can talk non-stop because the constant nasal secretions supplement his salivary glands. This is evolution, I claim.

[@koxlc]

There is a lighter at the end of tunnel.

[@KKing-v8q]

We are our tools. Consciousness is phenomenological

[@juliansyahq]

I need translate indonesian

[@wellthatisgr8er]

WHaaaaa Slavoj has been telling us that he was talking to the woman 'with a perfect body except 1-2 kilos too much' and now he says it was his friend ?

[@randomthoughts6625]

It is actually his ex wife he has admitted it once

[@colormesilverr]

​@@randomthoughts6625Where did he admit it? Please share video link 😂

[@randomthoughts6625]

@@colormesilverr i don’t remember

[@sabdashwachakraborty1432]

He's a little wrong about Heisenberg though. Heisenberg also took the more radical ontological position.

[@rahmigenis9092]

Basically he was right

[@Andrejaumot]

Come to Venezuela for discourse?

[@kapuseta]

Hah, the irony! I have Rawls' theory of justice sitting on my bedside right this moment, but never bothered to read it :D oops...

[@dariusnikbin1695]

Richmond... END

[@jestekine5892]

U

[@lourak613]

Zizek - with a wedding band and Polo shirt. There's Marxism for you...

[@Fiascofiction]

Whenever I wonder what is wrong with the world I remind myself that clownish oafs control our education system

[@rhaegar2138]

this faux complexity and obscurantism is deployed merely to inspire admiration. His ideas, like Lacan's, will stay relevant only in the heads of his cult.

[@darrellee8194]

He needs to see a doctor about his nose.

[@PappyMandarine]

Great topics, weak interviewer...

[@Andrejaumot]

mumbo-jumbo charlatan strikes back hahahaah

[@Redrios]

did you take the time and read his "core" fundamental theoretical points? or are you reproducing what he just caricatured? (not "his", but rather, the Ljubljana Hegelian School... It's a troika... But, I must confess, If you are of the more-positivist, empiricist, utilitarian way of thinking things, not even French structuralism will appear "scientific" or "serious")

[@pergamonrecordings]

Its so easy to become someone by dismissing another out of hand...You might agree with him, agree with it in part or not at all.... but it is no mumbo jumbo and mostly brings insights

[@MasterFipacaster]

Is it me or is Slavoj becoming more right wing? I guess now that he has captured our attention with his leftist gibberish, he's trying to make it in the world of the right wingers. You see this is why socialism failed.

[@marcos1837]

youre confused lol

[@MrElicottero]

No, he's actually truly left wing. But the PC and outrage crowd fancy themselves leftists so when someone actually deals with left wing issues in a substantial way, they tend to see it as being on the right.

[@matt2.019]

I fucking hate this bullshit. Being left-wing is not synonymous with being psychologically weak. The left has been overrun with infantilized young adults as of late because they see it as the more friendly, less threatening political orientation, ie. the one concerned with helping people by generating novel solutions to problems. They're not wrong. Leftists have generally been the people to think up and implement solutions to problems over the years. But now the left is being filled with complacent idiots who don't do shit and angry retards who just run around trying the fight the power without any real strategy. And that is when the left fails. In large part it is now just a big circle-jerk of displaying empathy and being angry at people with power.

[@MrElicottero]

They are wrong insofar as they are too busy policing speech and finding racism in cartoons or sexual harassment in bad dates with mid-level TV stars. The left needs to return to what it was all about - workers' rights, unions, paid maternity and vacations, healthcare, higher salaries, progressive taxation, free public education (not just availability but also the quality). This means leaving youtube and twitter and going among people who work 3 jobs and are too busy to worry if their opinions offend someone. It means going among Trump voters in all those backwater areas and mobilizing them around issues such they actually care about. The left in America used to be concerned with solving problems of the working class, and now it has turn into a brigade of arrogant half-intellectuals who go about telling people they are racist and misogynist all the while forgetting that these people don't give a crap about anything except paying their bills, which they so often fail to do. And this is a critique coming from the left, I'm your regular Dewey and Gramsci-reading socialist. And I'm not the only one who is making this case - 20 years ago Richard Rorty predicted that this path the left is taking will give birth to people like Trump; he was ridiculed then, and apparently even after he turned out to be right, no one is willing to listen.

[@torsion2]

Mr Kiss knows the score