Slavoj Žižek meets Yanis Varoufakis (Part 1)

[Music] good evening good evening everyone good evening good evening welcome to the Royal geographical society which I'm very pleased to note is still going strong in the era of Google Maps a delicious anachronism um radical piece of conservatism which is the best venue given the subject matter the subject of tonight's celebration of zek at 75 himself a piece of remarkable brilliant marvelous radical anacronismo communist as he calls himself uh just opposing himself to what I called myself once a Libertarian communism just to to confuse both both Libertarians and Communists uh you know slavo you know

the brilliant that oozes out of his mouth out of his books you don't need me to say any of this but there is an aspect of slavo which I'm sure he's going to hate me recounting which you don't know and that is slavo as a genuine loyal friend independently of whether he agrees with you or not we've had clashes we've disagreed we nearly hit each other uh but I can tell you that behind this facade of the person who is suffering from serious verbal diarrhea and audacity and political incorrectness and all that behind that facade

there is a a genuine sweetie pie and I know this from personal experience and I I want to thank you slavo for this enough said on this um a living contradiction a hegelian has to be a living contradiction because contradiction is what fuel slavo uh slavo come to the stage let's have um anarchic thank you I thought we should start with right at the beginning because um uh slavo has three fixations in life heel heel and Hegel and therefore It's a grand another grand contradiction that he is so celebrated in this country and I say

this because in this country if you ever study philosophy in any of the universities they start with the ancient Greeks uh then they move on to the Middle Ages then they jump to Emanuel Kant and then from count they go to B Bon Russell always bypassing heel because from the perspective Anglo Saxon Anglo kilting analytical philosophy heel was the EP epitome of model thinking so how come you're so celebrated as a hegelian in a country which doesn't give a damn about Hegel a good point where I would as you hinted that but in a way

that you would agree uh uh uh where I would maybe a little bit disagree with you is C is Has Two Faces it's more complex for example and crazy things like this give me seriously an intellectual orgasm which at my age it's maybe better than real orgasm which is did you read a small note in news it was reported you know that that kingr ex kenberg yeah there R beautiful little anomaly yeah they have Governor there and he recently said that they are not proud of C there because C is the origin of all modern

evils socialism human Freedom women's rights and he finished with that c is ultimately responsible for the Ukrainian War so uh I think that c is the point of split so why from C to heer because I will not go into uh details just to be really brief which is very difficult for me uh I wonder if you would agree for me paradoxically it may sound crazy but in some sense my crazy sense sense Hegel is in some sense I repeat it more materialist than Marx what you find in Marx is still an implicit let's call

it theology maybe there will be socialism maybe not but we may be guilty if there will be no socialism we can screw it up but history there is a general sense of orientation or as Rosa Luxembourg put it future will be socialist or Barbarian not the same thing because when you say that he could be Barbarian this is not a sense of improvement it's exactly the opposite so I thought that Rosa Lu was breaking from this deterministic yes but when I don't agree with her no but every good Marxist would say this but I have

another problem when she says this but what about what happened in stalinism which was socialist barbarism NE but where what my point of heel is that if there ever if you want to hear more about this read my books if there ever was a philosopher of contingency totally open to the Future it's Hegel Hegel is not a determinist you know uh in for example his philosophy of right he says thought always comes too late like the all of minurva he strictly prohibits any speculations about the truth at each moment that's I think the deepest Insight

of Hegel at each moment we retroactively reconstruct the past not in the magical sense but uh and today we are I think in such a position if new authoritarianism will prevail socialism will be just a blind Aly and so on so we have like in quantum physics a superposition of four or five options and uh this is what fascinates me in Hegel again it's not just necessity and contingency in the sense of there is a general necessity but then it actualizes itself in a contingent way panov the very bad Marxist for me used hear the

example of Napoleon there was a tendency towards Imperial order in France it was contingency that Napoleon did it I think hegel's point is to a large extent the exact opposite something happens contingently and retroactively when a new order is imposed it's read as necessary let me give you my own pathetic example although I've written a lot about it in politics and so on uh let's say you fall in love in the oldfashioned way which is today almost considered politic in the only way you mean sorry in the only way in the only way yes and

I will not go into it but what I wanted to say is that uh is that once it may be totally contingent like the stupid you know you walk on the street sorry for stupidity you sleep on a banana peill a lady comes you up H it's the love of your life but once you are in it you automatically reinterpret all the past as leading to this point and marks at his best moments knew this you know the famous line from G grund said that capitalism that in the same way that only the anatomy of

men provides the key for the anatomy of Apes capital is M provides the key for all previous social formations this is not theological determinism it's totally clear from Marx capitalism emerged in a contingent way it could have not happened but once capitalism we only understood the Bronze Age when we shifted to the Iron Age yeah same thing yeah and this I think again is heel at his best another thing so I understand why you're heeling because I'm heelan what I don't understand and I will never understand C committee will decide if you really heelan well

yes of course the Central Committee that meaning him but why do I need to care about laan because uh the way I refer I've never managed to understand and I'm never going to startop trying unless you explain why do I need Lan to understand the the exercise and pattern of power first don't you agree many people with whom I otherwise don't agree not you uh uh uh they make it clear that even altiser balibar I don't agree with them often but they made this clear that don't you think that Marx didn't really understand political power

something is missing there to understand state power and so in Marx but uh sure but why is Lan the one who is going to elucidate it for us because uh let me I mean Freud I understand yeah the whole concept of the manufactur desires yeah no no no no forget about that the The crucial Insight absolutely crucial today people tend to forget it is when Freud says I remember I'm a little bit older than you probably so I was there very young at 68 and I remember the hidden anti-feminism the idea of young protesters was

we are against hysteria hysterical subjects read between the lines ween they just protest they don't really go to the end while perverts go to the end they realize what hysterics only dream about Freud gave a proper answer to this which is nowhere is the uncom conscious more repressed more inaccessible than in hysteria and the best minds of Frankfurt School like adoro were fully aware of this when they introduced a crucial notion of uh repressive dis sublimation you dis sublimate in the common sense do whatever you want vulgarly and so on but the result is a

nightmare a much more oppressive world now to be very sure that I don't get lost I will make a mega que jump here you want the pro for trp will you answer the question why do I care about Lan if you want to understand Trump you sh okay explain to me why is elucidated Trump will I cannot not you we are on the same wave here so when I take power the people that's me don't worry you don't go to gulak Just it will ser you know what I think going to happen reeducation he's going

to send me no he will send me to the gulag but he will visit me often no no no no I I have precise plans no sorry let's go on to L to uh to to L here yes I how could leftists stupid leftist not you be be so really stupid as to repeat the same mistake you know they thought now we had caught Trump as it were with his pants down he was caught lying obscenities and so on but that's how Trump he never loses votes because of being caught lying I read a friend

sent me from United States a wonderful analysis why people vote for Trump they claim and up to a point they are right Kamala Harris and Democrats don't look spontaneous they gave this prepared answers and so on while they say uh uh uh Trump looks sincere and then if you analyze it closely there are two proofs of this sincerity that he is obscene dirty undescribable fi what he's saying I'm even me a well-known tasteless guy I I am embarrassed here to repeat some of for example Trump's remarks about Kamala Harris and that's the surprise when he

is caught lying Trump voters read this as a sign of his sincerity you know he's not prepared by Specialists and so on so uh so uh uh the Paradox for me is this one and here L enters that uh you know uh to understand Trump you have to take into account at theal level psychoanalytic this tension officially he proclaims I'm a fundamentalist Christian neoconservative moral values and so on and the enemy is what he calls postmodernism historicist relativism inconsistency he doesn't know these words he not okay but people said after the word postmodernism I don't

think he he can come out of but by great Russian philosophers I mean it ironically do you know I quoted somewhere that the real guy madman Alexander dugin yeah he Praises Trump and especially Vin in his crazy reading of Lon he said my reaction was like you know in cartoons when Tom or Jerry seen something your eyes go out and he said V is doing such a wonderful g v Lan intervention mention that probably he must have read laon so what I'm saying is that that's the key to Trump but in the mode he functions

as a person can you imagine a more radical caricatural version of let's say postmodernism he see lies is inconsistent and so on and so on so something really new a new form of not just of AR mentation Trump doesn't really argue but of how political subjectivity functions and so on here you need somebody like laon to see what to see that uh that uh Liberation sexual libidinal is not simply open up yourself your repressed desires and so on if you do that it can be even worse not to be too long I advise you to

read I rediscovered now and I'm more stupid than you which means when I say laong it's like Hegel I always begin with reading good interpretations and then maybe uh I read laon but in his seminar from 6970 his reaction to 68 laon said something wonderful he says protesters are missing something in their demand for sexual Liberation they are missing a little bit of Shame the way they want Liberation they will get a new master which will be more obscene than themselves and that's what we are getting today that's why I wonder if you would agree

with this yes privately I am OB seen we make jokes but you know in what age we live when I was young I'm older than you so before do you remember uh the typical Lefty strategy was do obscene gestures uh say dirty words to those in power who pretend to be dignified and so on while uh uh we protest while those in power pretend to be dignified and so on uh uh but uh uh now it's almost the opposite it's those in power who are doing unimaginable things so I think the lesson of Psych analysis

today is not get rid of repression but shame not shame as a sign of Oppression like I'm ashamed of my dirty dreams but shame in what sense here I hope we have here the same position I'm very critical here and there about Lenin but this people notice something which I find wonderful we know all old Marxist then in's Testament M you know he goes through all the contenders for the highest post and said bharin doesn't understand dialectic KV zov were against October he find some political fault in everyone but then the only guy he is

really against is Stalin but what's his reproach to Stalin just that he doesn't have manners he's shamelessly brutal and and so on it's I find this wonderful this idea he wasn't wrong he wasn't wrong he wasn't to extrapolate from basic human behavior yeah what he would do when he was an absolute dictator but as Communists yeah I introduced you as a reasonably or moderately conservative communist that's what you you call yourself okay aren't we at the same level here because I notic we both were screwed up in Germany and so on do you know that

I always remember when I look at your and also my fate I also had not as big as you but some trouble after last year's Frankfurt book fair that moderately conservative mass media I can publish their things which this fake Progressive left Center media never published tell me about it yeah is the radical Center that effectively tries to annihilate people like me and you so in but let's go back to Communism right yeah we're both Communists yeah we very odd not socialist but communist yeah a hugely contradictory communist and you know and reluctant communist yeah

but because the sitation is in your communism what happens to Google meta and mercedesbenz what do we do with them let's say you know you are the leader now you are you want to be evil now in the you don't visit me right what do we do about Google meta Amazon mercedesbenz Alston it isace I is absolutely clear that although I am not able here I should learn from you that we absolutely have to establish some sort of social control to to use your terms def falize them because here we come to your topic of

feudalism and would you agree with me here my key where I reading your stuff not only this book you were using this term for Neo falis techn falis is that the key of this new Mega corporative capitalism digital and so on is that it's a new form of the privatization of Commons but not the old style where what was common one capitalist grab this the other that no take Bill Gates take Jeff Bezos and so on the very space in which even capitalists and workers and so on Exchange stuff is controlled by them that's the

fal moment I