Category Archives: Zizek

ZIZ205 Interview at the Book Fair Leipzig (17.03.2018)

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In an interview with the german newspaper Neues Deutschland, Žižek talks about DDR-pornography, #metoo, the new blade runner movie and robots.

The first question he was asked is in german and was “You introduced the term disparities. Does Wolfgang Fritz Haug now have to rewrite his historical-critical dictionary of marxism?”

Maulwurf means mole

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ZIZ202 Re-Reading the Revolution (06.10.2017)

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The School of Law and the Birkbeck Institute of the Humanities are very pleased to announce this historic event, featuring two of Europe’s foremost intellectuals in conversation with each other on their recent work. While Slavoj Žižek is a regular presence at Birkbeck, this will be Jean-Claude Milner’s only second visit here and the first time that the two philosophers will address each other’s work in front of a public audience.

Birkbeck, University of London

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ZIZ201 Transcendental Subjectivity Part 2 (06.10.2017)

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Masterclass: Masterclass: Transcendental Subjectivity, Sexual Difference, Brain Sciences Part 2. The two classes will examine how Lacan’s teaching enables us to grasp sexual difference as the constitutive feature of transcendental subjectivity, plus how recent advances in brain sciences continue to rely on transcendental presuppositions. The question to be discussed is: how will the new results of brain sciences, as well as the digitalization of our lives, affect subjectivity, especially in its political dimension?

Birkbeck, University of London

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ZIZ200 Transcendental Subjectivity Part 1 (04.10.2017)

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Masterclass: Masterclass: Transcendental Subjectivity, Sexual Difference, Brain Sciences Part 1. The two classes will examine how Lacan’s teaching enables us to grasp sexual difference as the constitutive feature of transcendental subjectivity, plus how recent advances in brain sciences continue to rely on transcendental presuppositions. The question to be discussed is: how will the new results of brain sciences, as well as the digitalization of our lives, affect subjectivity, especially in its political dimension?

Birkbeck, University of London

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ZIZ198 Freud Lives! with Stephen Grosz (05.10.2017)

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We are often told that psychoanalysis is dead. Outdated scientifically, in that the Freudian model of the mind has been superseded by neurobiology; outdated clinically, where the talking cure has lost ground to drug treatment or behavioural therapy; outdated socially, where the idea that we are repressed by the norms of others is no longer stocked in today’s supermarket of free choices. But perhaps the moment of psychoanalysis has only just arrived.
Emmanuel Centre, London

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ZIZ194 Lesson from „Airpokalypse“ (30.06.2017)

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Slavoj Žižek insists on the analysis of contemporary fascism, focusing on the question of the reception of the totalitarian fascination of the NSK at a time when the resurgence of fascism (ideal of supremacy Racialism and exacerbated nationalism) seems to begin to shape the new ideological landscape of post-Brexit Europe and the refugee crisis
Raina Sofía Museum, Madrid

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ZIZ163 Surveillance and Whistleblowers (17.05.2014)

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Part 1 of “I’m watching you” at International Author’s Stage

The Slovenian star philosopher Slavoj Žižek in the first of two conversations on surveillance with  interviewer Paul Holdengräber, director of Public Programs at the New York Public Library.

Copenhagen, Admiral Hotel

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ZIZ162 2011 as „The Year of Dreaming Dangerously“ (25.04.2012)

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“In 2011, we were witnessing (and participating) in a series of shattering events, from the Arab Spring to the Occupy Wall Street movements, from the UK suburban protests to Breivik’s ideological madness. 2011 was thus the year of dreaming dangerously, in both directions: there were emancipatory dreams mobilizing protesters in New York, on Tahir Square, in London and Athens–and there were the obscure destructive dreams propelling Breivik and other racist populists all around Europe.

What is the meaning of these explosions? Do they have a common root?”
–Slavoj Žižek, Spring 2012

New York Public Library

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ZIZ161 First as Tragedy, then as Farce – The Double Death of Neoliberalism and the Idea of Communism (25.11.2009)

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Slavoj Zizek argues that the neoliberalism died twice: first as a political doctrine in the tragedy of the attacks of 9/11; then its farcical collapse as an economic theory when the meltdown at the end of 2008 brought an end to the utopia of global market capitalism. Has this crisis now offered a vital opening for the left to seize the reins of politics and the state?
LSE, the London School of Economics and Political Science

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ZIZ158 Is there a Post-Human God? (02.03.2017)

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In this lecture, Žižek interrogates the religious impulse and delves further into his notion of of religious atheism as a response to techno-singularity. What is more, Žižek also announces his new theoretical book “The Incontinence of the Void” that is to be expected in Fall 2017
Lecture at UCLA, Los Angeles

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ZIZ157 From Surplus-Value to Surplus-Enjoyment (28.02.2017)

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This talk considers the ways in which Marx’s notion of “surplus-value” bears on Jacques Lacan’s idea of a “surplus-enjoyment” which, rather than a simple stepping up of pleasure, designates an additional pleasure obtained by its very deferral. These insights, it will be shown, bear crucially on the relevance of Marx’s critique of political economy to our contemporary political moment.
Pomona College, Los Angeles

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ZIZ156 Duel + Duet with Graham Harman (02.03.2017)

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In the Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) of Harman and his colleagues, the human subject is redefined according to the pressures of a “flat ontology” that treats all objects equally. In opposition to OOO, Žižek upholds the pivotal role of the subject as theorized in the tradition of the German philosophers Immanuel Kant, G.W. Hegel and F.W.J. Schelling and the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.
Slavoj Žižek and Graham Harman at SCI-Arc, Los Angeles

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ZIZ155 What is the Question? (23.09.2008)

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In New York on the last day of an American tour, absorbing the demise of Yankee Stadium and maybe of Wall Street as we thought we knew it, Zizek’s talk is a blast-furnace but not a blur. The theme through all Zizek’s gags is that the financial meltdown marks a seriously dangerous moment — dangerous not least because, as in the interpretation of 9.11, the right wing is ready to impose a narrative. And the left wing is caught without a narrative or a theory. “Today is the time for theory,” he says. “Time to withdraw and think.”

A Radio Open Source Interview with Chris Lydon

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ZIZ154 The Guardian Live Event (19.04.2016)

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In a new book, Against the Double Blackmail, in response to Europe’s refugee crisis, philosopher Slavoj Žižek argues that the left must shed its liberal taboos in favour of global, class solidarity.

At a Guardian Live event, Gary Younge sat down with Žižek to discuss the immigration crisis, the response of the liberal left, and the future for Europe.

This Guardian Live Event ook place on 19 April at the Emmanuel Centre, London

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ZIZ151 The Trouble With Pleasure: Deleuze and Psychoanalysis (19.07.2016)

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Is pleasure a rotten idea, mired in negativity and lack, which should be abandoned in favor of a new concept of desire? Or is desire itself fundamentally a matter of lack, absence, and loss? This is one of the crucial issues dividing the work of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Lacan, two of the most formidable figures of postwar French thought.
Debate with Aaron Schuster and Maria Aristodemou
Birkbeck, University of London

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ZIZ149 The Prospect Of The Post-Human (02.11.2016)

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Part 3 of the Masterclass: Between Philosophy and Psychoanalysis
In the entire span of his teaching, Lacan was engaged in an intense debate with philosophy and philosophers, from ancient Greek materialists to Plato, from Stoics to Thomas Acquinas, from Descartes to Spinoza, from Kant to Hegel, from Marx to Kierkegaard, from Heidegger to Kripke. It is through the reference to philosophers that Lacan deploys his fundamental concepts: transference through Plato, the Freudian subject through Descartes’s cogito, surplus-enjoyment through Marx’s surplus-value, anxiety and repetition through Kierkegaard, the ethics of psychoanalysis through Kant, etc.
Birkbeck, University of London

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ZIZ145 Organs Without Bodies (06.11.2003)

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Zizeks latest book is Organs Without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences. Turning the Deleuzian terminology around he analyzes these organs without bodies in the work of Hitchcock and in films such as Fight Club, identifying a Deleuze closer to the Oedipus he would disavow.
Lecture at the Arcitecutural Association, London

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ZIZ143 Home and Radical Evil (23.02.1994)

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Slavoj Zizek examines modern evil through a multitude of variations on a single motive: home is evil. For Zizek, evil is not primarily a property of persons but evil has to be defined in topological terms. Evil is a certain place. Evil is home.From an AA conference on Home, exploring the idea of ‘home’ as a domestic space and as the articulation of fundamental fantasies of space, memory and identity. The conference examined how the category Home operates as a point of political reference and mobilization, and considered the dangers of overinvestment in this category, both at the level of the city and in terms of fuelling political conflict.

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ZIZ142 Zero Squared Podcast #95: Zizek and the Double Blackmail (11.01.2017)

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Slavoj Zizek is the guest on The Zero Squared Podcast hosted by Douglas Lain as they discuss the flak he’s received for a few of his Lacanian interventions into politics recently, Marx’s Labor Theory of Value, and his most current book Against the Double Blackmail.
Original Post: http://zero-books.net/blogs/zero/zero-squared-95-zizek-and-the-double-blackmail/

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ZIZ135 Lacan’s Hypothesis: Psychoanalysis as the Ex-Timate Core of Philosophy (31.10.2016)

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Part 1 of the Masterclass: Between Philosophy and Psychoanalysis
Although psychoanalysis is not philosophy, its subversive dimension is grounded in the fact that it is not simply a particular science or practice but has radical consequences for philosophy: psychoanalysis is a “no” to philosophy that is internal to it, i.e., psychoanalytic theory refers to a gap/antagonism which philosophy blurs but which simultaneously grounds philosophy (Heidegger called this gap ontological difference). Without this link to philosophy – more precisely, to the blind spot of philosophy, to what is “primordially repressed” in philosophy – psychoanalysis loses its subversive dimension and becomes just another ontic practice.
Birkbeck, University of London

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ZIZ127 Against the Double Blackmail (20.04.2016)

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Refugees, Terror and Other Troubles with the Neighbours

In this talk Pro­fessor Žižek will talk about his new book, Against the Double Black­mail: Refugees, Ter­ror and Other Troubles with the Neigh­bours. From within the safety of Europe Žižek argues we face two ver­sions of ideo­lo­gical black­mail – open-door solid­ar­ity with refugees and draw­bridge-minded pro­tec­tion­ism. Both pro­long the prob­lem – so, con­fron­ted with this double black­mail, we find ourselves back at the great ques­tion: what is to be done? The refugee crisis offers to Europe an oppor­tun­ity: a unique chance to redefine itself. The only way, argues Žižek, to truly get to the heart of one of the greatest and most urgent issues con­front­ing Europe today is to insist on the global solid­ar­ity of the exploited and oppressed. Maybe such global solid­ar­ity is a uto­pia. But, he warns, if we don’t engage in it, then we are really lost. And we will deserve to be lost

The Forum for European Philosophy

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ZIZ126 Is Surplus-Value Marx’s Name For Surplus-Enjoyment? (19.04.2016)

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Part 2 of the Masterclass: Surplus-Value, Surplus-Enjoyment, Surplus-Knowledge
Jacques Lacan loc­ated the ori­gin of his key notion of plus-de-jouir (sur­plus-enjoy­ment) in Marx’s notion of sur­plus-value, and it is worth explor­ing in detail the homo­logy of the two notions, adding a third one, that of sur­plus-know­ledge, a pseudo-know­ledge in the guise of which our ignor­ance appears (“supreme” know­ledge of God and other hid­den forces, con­spir­acy the­or­ies, etc.). Such an ana­lysis is cru­cial for resus­cit­at­ing Marx’s cri­tique of polit­ical eco­nomy, as well as for prop­erly under­stand­ing today’s global cap­it­al­ism and its ideo­lo­gical effects, up to fun­da­ment­al­ist viol­ence
Birk­beck, Uni­ver­sity of Lon­don

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ZIZ125 From Pleasure-in-Pain To Surplus-Enjoyment (18.04.2016)

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Part 1 of the Masterclass: Surplus-Value, Surplus-Enjoyment, Surplus-Knowledge
Jacques Lacan loc­ated the ori­gin of his key notion of plus-de-jouir (sur­plus-enjoy­ment) in Marx’s notion of sur­plus-value, and it is worth explor­ing in detail the homo­logy of the two notions, adding a third one, that of sur­plus-know­ledge, a pseudo-know­ledge in the guise of which our ignor­ance appears (“supreme” know­ledge of God and other hid­den forces, con­spir­acy the­or­ies, etc.). Such an ana­lysis is cru­cial for resus­cit­at­ing Marx’s cri­tique of polit­ical eco­nomy, as well as for prop­erly under­stand­ing today’s global cap­it­al­ism and its ideo­lo­gical effects, up to fun­da­ment­al­ist viol­ence
Birk­beck, Uni­ver­sity of Lon­don

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ZIZ124 Hegel in Athens: what would Hegel have said about our predicament? (04.12.2015)

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Hegelian Battles – Lec­ture 3: Hegel in Athens: what would Hegel have said about our pre­dic­a­ment?The battle for Hegel goes on – new inter­pret­a­tions are emer­ging which per­haps pose an even greater threat to Hegel’s leg­acy than the usual rejec­tions of Hegel. This series of lec­tures will provide a cog­nit­ive map­ping of this twis­ted ter­rain, with the aim to redeem Hegel for the rad­ical thought
Birkbeck, University of London

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ZIZ123 What is Reconciliation? Hegel Against Schiller (03.12.2015)

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Hegelian Battles – Lec­ture 2: What is Recon­cili­ation? Hegel Against Schiller
The battle for Hegel goes on – new inter­pret­a­tions are emer­ging which per­haps pose an even greater threat to Hegel’s leg­acy than the usual rejec­tions of Hegel. This series of lec­tures will provide a cog­nit­ive map­ping of this twis­ted ter­rain, with the aim to redeem Hegel for the rad­ical thought

Birkbeck, University of London

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ZIZ122 Against Recognition: A Critique of the Liberal Reading of Hegel (02.12.2015)

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Hegelian Battles – Lec­ture 1: Against Recog­ni­tion: A Cri­tique of the Lib­eral Read­ing of Hegel (Pip­pin, Bran­dom)
The battle for Hegel goes on – new inter­pret­a­tions are emer­ging which per­haps pose an even greater threat to Hegel’s leg­acy than the usual rejec­tions of Hegel. This series of lec­tures will provide a cog­nit­ive map­ping of this twis­ted ter­rain, with the aim to redeem Hegel for the rad­ical thought
Birkback, University of London

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ZIZ116 Europe is Kaput – Long live Europe! (11.2015)

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Philosopher Slavoj Žižek and former Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange discuss Europe’s future. With the recent economic crisis in Greece, unprecedented challenges to centralised European policy, and the lack of consensus on the ongoing refugee crisis, many would agree that Europe faces its greatest ever predicament.

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ZIZ106 Hegel, Modern Art and the End of Art (07.04.2015)

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When a philo­sopher deals with another philo­sopher or philo­sophy, his or her stance is never the one of dia­logue, but always the one of divi­sion, of draw­ing the line that sep­ar­ates truth from fals­ity – from Plato whose focus is the line that divides truth from mere opin­ion, up to Lenin obsessed with the line that sep­ar­ates mater­i­al­ism from ideal­ism. The courses are an exer­cise in this art of delim­in­a­tion: their aim is to spe­cify the con­tours of the dia­lect­ical-mater­i­al­ist notion of neg­at­iv­ity by draw­ing a line that sep­ar­ates it from other forms of thought of neg­at­iv­ity

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ZIZ103 A Defense of Universalism (12.12.2014)

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Slavoj Žižek held this lecture at Litteraturhuset in Oslo, Norway on December 12, 2014. It is part of a series of lectures on the topic of universalism, organized by Litteraturhuset. Other lecturers in the series include Wang Hui, Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Binyavanga Wainaina, Gayatri Spivak and Tara Smith

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ZIZ102 The Hegelian Wound (26.11.2014)

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Deutsches Haus at New York University presents:
Slavoj Žižek: The Hegelian Wound
Friday, September 26th, 2014
at the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Film Center at NYU

For Hegel, spirit is the wound of nature, it derails every natural balance, but it is at the same time spirit itself which heals its own wound. This Hegelian insight will be developed in its philosophical, theological, and political implications: why is the Fall a happy occurrence? How does permissiveness turn into oppression? Why does only the most brutal capitalist alienation open up the possibility for freedom?

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ZIZ098 A Philosophical Journey Through A Concept (23.09.2014)

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Žižek discusses his book by the same title ‘Event: A Philosophical Journey Through A Concept’, going through such notions as violence, fundamentalism, ideology, political correctness, freedom, and of course event.
From the Free Library of Philadelphia

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ZIZ097 What is to be done for politics? (27.06.2012)

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As a guest lecturer for the Kyung Hee University Lecture series, Slovene philosopher Slavoj Zizek visited Kyung Hee University on June 27.
Drawing a large audience of over three thousand, professor Ziezek, a world-renowned scholar in the field of political philosophy, addressed his vision for our civilization in a lecture entitled, “What is to be done for politics?” at the Grand Peace Hall

Seoul

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ZIZ095 The Future of Surveillance (18.05.2014)

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Part 2 of “I’m watching you” at International Author’s Stage

Zizek says he doesn’t care about surveillance. He simply believes that it’s not efficient and possible if government controlled secret police reads and analyze all our data. If you take it seriously He says that “it’s stupid computer program if experts are analyzing, 90% of people should be employed to analyze it”. Zizek also says that even if you do that “People are stupid they don’t threaten me, it’s like showing hegel’s logic to a cow”. Zizek also adds “All these state control can end only in a big confusion.”
Copenhagen, Admiral Hotel

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ZIZ092 Until the End of the World (10.02.2014)

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Three world renowned philosophers: Arthur Kroker, Brenda Longfellow and Slavoj Žižek consider the profound ecological and economic issues that confront the Planet in 2015. The symposium is inspired by the Wim Wenders film of the same title, Until the End of the World. The director’s cut will be screened after the last talk. The symposium is organized by Christine Davis, Janine Marchessault and Scott MacKenzie for the journal PUBLIC: Art/Culture/Ideas. This intense symposium explores a shift from global consciousness to planetary awareness in a world of radical interdependencies where ecology must win out over political economy, where a history of the world must become a history of the Earth. The symposium explores the very concept and reality (ecology and economy) of end times. What does it mean to say that the world is ending? Has capitalism come to an end? What is left behind? The Symposium will be held in Toronto City Hall Council Chambers

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ZIZ090 Lacan’s Four Discourses (2014)

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Slavoj Zizek talking about the theoretical richness of Lacan’s four discourses: the master’s discourse, the hysteric’s discourse, the university discourse, and the analyst’s discourse. What follows is a prolonged discussion of the various guises of the object small a in its imaginary, symbolic and real forms and its relevance for contemporary ideology critique. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland Europe

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ZIZ088 Objet Petit a and Digital Civilization (2014)

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Slavoj Žižek talking about object small a, digital civilization, desire, psychoanalysis, prosthetic extension, virtual reality, projection, science, language, universality, sexuality, in relation to the authors Freud, Lacan, Kierkegaard and Hegel. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland Europe

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ZIZ081 A Reply to my Critics (28.02.2013)

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Although most of the critiques to which my work was exposed in the last years are “so-called,” fast denunciations not worthy of a serious reply, some of them do at least raise pertinent questions : which, exactly, is the status of violence in social life, and how can one justify resort to it? Is in our societies a radical social change — not just a revolt but the imposition of a new order – objectively possible? What is materialism today, beyond the usual versions of deconstructionist discursive materialism, Deleuzian “new materialism,” and scientific naturalism? And, last but not least, what immanent role do jokes play in theory?
Birkbeck University, February 28, 2013

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ZIZ080 Ecology Without Nature (2013)

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One of the topics dealt with here is just how easily ecological disasters are incorporated into the capitalist “system”, thereby casting doubt on whether capitalism will naturally cease to exist as the result of the ecological crises it is criticized for causing. In this way, and much to the horror of Leftist doomsayers, capitalism is not just going to break on its own.
Another interesting thing he mentions in passing is how human waste has become so integrated into the functioning of the ecosystem that (as some ecologists suggest?) an imaginary, sudden removal of all human pollution could ITSELF be an ecological catastrophe. Something to think about for anti-capitalists, environmentalists and philosophers alike

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ZIZ077 Living in the End Times

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Zizek is given the floor to show of his polemic style and whirlwind-like performance. The Giant of Ljubljana is bombarded with clips of popular media images and quotes by modern-day thinkers revolving around four major issues: the economical crisis, environment, Afghanistan and the end of democracy. Zizek grabs the opportunity to ruthlessly criticize modern capitalism and to give his view on our common future

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ZIZ075 Maybe We Just Need a New Chicken

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Raising questions on ideology and its omnipresence in every day life – as he points out in his penetrating observations of quotidian pop culture, from the McCain campaign’s hijacking of the “change” banner, to the Dark Knight, to Kim Jong Il, to home intrusions by Israeli soldiers, to Kung Fu Panda – he makes it clear that we will always have a chicken, it is just a matter of being sincere about it. Cynicism is not a way out of the dilemma of the chicken, according to Žižek

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ZIZ074 The New Sacred

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Jean-Pierre Dupuy, prophet of what he calls “enlightened doomsaying,” has long warned that modern society is on a path to self-destruction. In this book, he pleads for a subversion of this crisis from within, arguing that it is our lopsided view of religion and reason that has set us on this course. In denial of our sacred origins and hubristically convinced of the powers of human reason, we cease to know our own limits: our disenchanted world leaves us defenseless against a headlong rush into the abyss of global warming, nuclear holocaust, and the other catastrophes that loom on our horizon. Reviving the religious anthropology of Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and Marcel Mauss and in dialogue with the work of René Girard, Dupuy shows that we must remember the world’s sacredness in order to keep human violence in check. A metaphysical and theological detective, he tracks the sacred in the very fields where human reason considers itself most free from everything it judges irrational: science, technology, economics, political and strategic thought. In making such claims, The Mark of the Sacred takes on religion bashers, secularists, and fundamentalists at once. Written by one of the deepest and most versatile thinkers of our time, it militates for a world where reason is no longer an enemy of faith

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ZIZ073 Post-Modern Architecture

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The following is the full version of a lecture delivered by Slavoj Zizek on Architecture and Aesthetics in which he talks about a range of issues including, but not limited to, the meanings and implications of public spaces (what he says is the ‘privatized public spaces’), the invisible space (i.e., canalization referring to sewage system), the sanitatization of the city, ideology embedded in our everyday architecture (i.e., toilet), the notions of ‘more’ imbedded in ‘less’, etc. Even though this lecture is vague to understand in depth, it still holds some interesting concepts and ideas

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ZIZ071 Is God Dead?

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Death of God theology is a predominately Christian theological movement, origination in the 1960’s in which God is posited as having ceased to exist, often at the crucifixion. It can also refer to a theology which includes a disbelief in traditional theism, especially in light of increasing secularism in parts of the West. The Death of God movement is sometimes technically referred to as “theothanatology,” deriving from the Greek theos (God) and thanatos (death)

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ZIZ070 Vote: For Hegel

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Zizek claims that we need to repeat Hegel (not return) and reinterpret Hegel as a dialectical materialist and not an idealist of absolute knowing. How can we use Hegel to traverse the ideological fantasy and act in accordance to the truth of an event? How do we overcome subservience to a market system that dictates our ethical discourse?

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ZIZ069 How to Rebel

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The anxious expectation that nothing will happen, that capitalism will go on indefinitely, the desperate demand to do something, to revolutionize capitalism, is a fake. The will to revolutionary change emerges as an urge, as an “I cannot do it otherwise,” or it is worthless. With regard to Bernard Williams’s distinction between Ought and Must, an authentic revolution is by definition performed as a Must – it is not something we “ought to do” as an ideal we are striving for, but something we cannot but to, since we cannot do it otherwise. Which is why today’s worry of the Leftists that revolution will not occur, that global capitalism will just go on indefinitely, is false insofar as it turns revolution into a moral obligation, into something we ought to do while we fight the inertia of the capitalist present.

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ZIZ068 More Alienation and the Cultural Violence

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The shock over the terrorist attacks in Paris in January 2015 inspired Žižek to write an essay on Islam and modernism. In it, he addresses the rupture between the Western world’s advocacy for tolerance and the fundamental hatred of Western liberalism within radical Islam. Žižek makes a plea for the West to insist on the legacy of the Enlightenment, with its strengths of criticism and self-reflection. He argues for a renaissance of individual autonomy and the sovereignty of the people.

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ZIZ067 Violence Revisited

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Using history, philosophy, books, movies, Lacanian psychiatry, and jokes, Slavoj Žižek examines the ways we perceive and misperceive violence. Drawing from his unique cultural vision, Žižek brings new light to the Paris riots of 2005; he questions the permissiveness of violence in philanthropy; in daring terms, he reflects on the powerful image and determination of contemporary terrorists.
Violence, Žižek states, takes three forms–subjective (crime, terror), objective (racism, hate-speech, discrimination), and systemic (the catastrophic effects of economic and political systems)–and often one form of violence blunts our ability to see the others, raising complicated questions.
Does the advent of capitalism and, indeed, civilization cause more violence than it prevents? Is there violence in the simple idea of “the neighbour”? And could the appropriate form of action against violence today simply be to contemplate, to think?
Beginning with these and other equally contemplative questions, Žižek discusses the inherent violence of globalization, capitalism, fundamentalism, and language, in a work that will confirm his standing as one of our most erudite and incendiary modern thinkers

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ZIZ063 How and Why Violence Functions (2013)

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The main ambition of this book is to bring together subjective violence with the objective violence that is its underside and precondition. “Systemic violence is thus something like the notorious ‘dark matter’ of physics,” Zizek writes: invisible to naked eye. Zizek offers a rather cool and at times cruel analysis of the varieties of objective violence. He asks tolerant multicultural Western liberals to suspend our outraged responses to acts of violence and turn instead to the real substance of the global situation. In order to understand violence, we need some good old-fashioned dispassionate materialist critique

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ZIZ059 Signs from the Future (14.05.2012)

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Today it is well known that the future has become a thing of the past. Gone are the days when humanity dreamt of a different tomorrow. All that remains of that hope is a distant memory. Indeed, most of what is hoped for these days is no more than some slightly modified version of the present, if not simply the return to a status quo ante — i.e., to a present that only recently became deceased. This is the utopia of normality, evinced by the drive to “get everything running back to normal” (back to the prosperity of the Clinton years, etc.). In this heroically banal vision of the world, all the upheaval and instability of the last few years must necessarily appear as just a fluke or bizarre aberration. A minor hiccup, that’s all. Once society gets itself back on track, the argument goes, it’ll be safe to resume the usual routine. 14.05.2012, Zagreb

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ZIZ055 Ontological Incompleteness in Painting, Literature and Quantum Theory (2012)

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Slavoj Žižek talking about ontological incompleteness in modernist painting, literature and quantum theory. In this lecture Slavoj Žižek discusses void and multiplicity, pre-ontological reality, spectral materiality, theology, detective novels and political revolution in relationship to Jacques-Louis David, Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Jacques Lacan, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Quentin Meillassoux, Walter Benjamin, Franz Kafka, William Shakespeare, Agatha Christie, David Bohm, Vincent Van Gogh, Karen Barad, Peirre Bayard and Edvard Munch focusing on The Death of Marat, Jacobins, Robespierre, Lenin, science fiction, love, desire, not-all, Columbo, temporal paradox, retroactivity, wave particle duality and Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland Europe

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ZIZ053 The Buddhist Ethic and the Spirit of Global Capitalism (2012)

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Slavoj Žižek discusses Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki, Western Buddhism, the West, capitalism, science, ideology, cognitive neuroscience, psychology, psychoanalysis, bodhisattva, samsara, enlightenment, kharma, nirvana, war, Thomas Metzinger, free will, Benjamin Libet, Martin Heidegger, Patricia and Paul Churchland, and The Lion King. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland

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ZIZ052 On Melancholy (2012)

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Slavoj Žižek talking about melancholy as the loss of the object cause of desire. In this lecture Slavoj Žižek discusses the zero level of dialectics, the death of God, Christianity, the symbolic order and the Freudian distinction between mourning and melancholy in relationship to Jacques Lacan, Karl Marx, Alenka Zupančič, Mladen Dolar, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Judith Butler, Daniel Dennett, Gilles Deleuze and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel focusing on lamella, suture, big Other, commodity fetishism, fantasy, object a, desire, death drive and the unconscious. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland Europe

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ZIZ050 Communist Absconditus (2012)

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Slavoj Žižek talking about the European debt crisis, the revolutions of 2011, and where things stand now. In this lecture Slavoj Žižek discusses the concepts of exploitation, unemployment, the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street in relationship to Yanis Varoufakis’s “Global Minotaur,” Keynesianism, deficits, Paul Volker, Fredric Jameson, surplus value, recognition, T.J. Clark, Basic Income, Philippe van Parijs, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Alain Badiou, Walter Benjamin, Karl Marx, Hegel focusing on Blaise Pascal, miracles, Deus Absconditus, Julian Assange, Kant, partial objects, contractual relationships and Adam Kotsko. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland Europe

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ZIZ049 The Function of Fantasy in the Lacanian Real (2012)

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Slavoj Žižek talking about the transcendental constitution of reality. In this lecture Slavoj Žižek discusses the logic of dreams in Freud, subjectivity, how real sex functions against fantasy, ethical certainty, temporal delay in the act of psychoanalysis and Badiou’s concept of decision and forcing the real in relationship to Jacques Lacan, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Sigmund Freud, Alain Badiou, David Lynch, Roland Barthes and Jean-Pierre Melville focusing on the neighbor, censorship, prohibition, sexual non-relation, big Other, trauma, libido, pornography and love. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland Europe

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ZIZ048 Object a and the Function of Ideology (2012)

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Slavoj Žižek talking about the structure of belief and the mediation of desire. In this lecture Slavoj Žižek discusses his polemic with Badiou on the notion of subtraction as a political and philosophical category, object a as cause of desire, the event, inconsistency in the symbolic order and the function of the master signifier in relationship to Jacques Lacan, Alain Badiou, Karl Marx, Michel Foucault, Jacques Rancière and Charles Darwin focusing on singular universality, the supernumerary element, Zapatistas, evolution, minimal difference, the point, ecology, nature, love, and generic sets. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland Europe

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ZIZ047 Being and Subjectivity: Act and Evental Enthusiasm (2012)

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Slavoj Žižek in a friendly debate with students on ontology and politics in relation to Alain Badiou’s philosophy. In this lecture Slavoj Žižek discusses the status of the subject, transcendental phenomenal existence, the difference between act and Event, the necessity of terror, Christianity, Saint Paul, inconsistency of the big Other, the communist hypothesis and political nomination in relationship to Jacques Lacan, Alain Badiou, Alenka Zupančič, Mladen Dolar, Sigmund Freud, Gilles Deleuze, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Jacques Alain Miller, Bruno Bosteels, Ernesto Laclau, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler focusing on truth, void, multiplicity, immanent Two, phallus, inexistence, the barred One, object a, le point, Hegelian essence, anxiety, political enthusiasm, master signifier, love and fidelity. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland Europe

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ZIZ046 Lacanian Theology and Buddhism (2012)

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Slavoj Žižek talking about Lacanian theology in relation to Christianity and Buddhism. In this lecture Slavoj Žižek discusses the Kantian sublime in opera and film, the spectral texture of narrative, the mediation of desire, the Freudian unconscious, the fall in Christianity and Badiou’s conception of the event of love in relationship to Jacques Lacan, Joan Copjec, Immanuel Kant, Richard Wagner, Alain Badiou, Gioacchino Rossini, Gilles Deleuze, G.K. Chesterton, Martin Luther, Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka, Soren Kierkegaard, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Plato focusing on the Lacanian formulas of sexuation, Tristan and Isolde, object a, Christian prohibition, Catholic propaganda, enjoyment, infinite judgment, lamella, the undead, death drive, immortality, logic of envy, capitalism, anamnesis, objective appearance, truth. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland Europe

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ZIZ045 The Big Other and The Event of Subjectivity (2012)

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Slavoj Žižek talking about the big Other in Lacan in relation to Alain Badiou’s theory of the Event. In this lecture Slavoj Žižek discusses the universality of anxiety, Lacan’s theory of truth and subjectivity, the inconsistency of the symbolic structure and his polemic with Badiou in relationship to Jacques Lacan, Alain Badiou, Sigmund Freud, René Descartes, Jacques-Alain Miller, Antonio Hardt and Michael Negri focusing on being, truth, the real, language, knowledge, the existence of animal life, death drive, transposed belief, the figure of the neighbor, terror, political enthusiasm and capitalism. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland Europe

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ZIZ044 The Irony of Buddhism (2012)

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Slavoj Žižek talking about the truth and irony of Buddhism. In this lecture Slavoj Žižek discusses Badiou’s conception of the Event and supernumerary element, the universality of truth, the paradox of inactivity, the temporality of analysis, American ideology, the problem of bodhisattva, politics of sacrifice and the gap between ethics and enlightenment in relationship to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Ayn Rand, Jean Pierre Dupuy, Alain Badiou, Karl Marx, Jacques-Alain Miller, Jacques Lacan, George Orwell, Theodor Adorno and Adam Kotsko focusing on retroactivity, the symptomal point, freedom of choice, capitalism, Stalinism, the Dali Lama, suffering, reincarnation, nirvana and Mahayana. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland Europe

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ZIZ041 The Empowerment of the Right and the Dissolution of the Left (05.11.2011)

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Slavoj Zizek was one of the speakers at the The empowerment of the Right, the dissolution of the Left event. The public sector is facing severe economy measures. The budgets for culture, education and health care are being cut. The measures are implemented by the political right. The political left, in this period of turmoil, does not seem to be able or willing to meet force with force and turn the tide. Has the left become unsettled? Does the binary division between left and right still apply to read the current political developments and state of flux? Can the left reinvent itself and find an answer to the spreading attitude of rigidity and xenophobia?
Recorded on the 5th of November, 2011 at Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht

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ZIZ039 Great Minds (01.07.2011)

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Modern radical thinker Slavoj Žižek spoke on the 1st July as part of the ‘Great Minds’ series, and affirmed his status as a great mind of modern philosophy and social, cultural and political theory. Starbucks, social solidarity and self-commodification were among the varied and enlightening topics touched upon by Žižek, all grounded by his interpretation of ideology and its continuing importance

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ZIZ037 The Idea of Communism and its Actuality (23.03.2011)

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Part 1 of the Masterclass 23, 25 & 26.03.2016
While the global political and social situation is getting more and more explosive, emancipatory struggles are more and more hampered by ideological prejudices. This is why some ruthless clarifications are necessary.
introduction by Costas Douzinas

Birkbeck, University of London

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ZIZ024 Utopias (15.06.2009)

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Masterclass – day 1 – Notes Towards a Definition of Communist Culture: Utopias

The master class analyses phenomena of modern thought and culture with the intention to discern elements of possible Communist culture. It moves at two levels: first, it interprets some cultural phenomena as failures to imagine or enact a Communist culture; second, it explores attempts at imagining how a Communist culture could look, from Wagner’s Ring to Kafka’s and Beckett’s short stories and contemporary science fiction novels

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ZIZ020 The Ambiguity of Obscenity (2009)

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Slavoj Žižek speaking about the production of the couple in Hollywood films, focusing initially on the film Titanic, in a careful analysis of the films narration to examine the theme of an occlusion by catastrophe of catastrophe. Slavoj Žižek lecturing about ideology in cinema, discussing surplus enjoyment, Titanic, triumph of authentic love, catastrophe occurring as a blessing, the Prague spring of 1968, incest, Alan Turing, the film Casablanca, the simultaneity of narrative threads in contemporary cinema. He used these subjects to launch a discussion on the ambiguity of obscenity, on the horror of the carnival and the comedy of tragedy. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland

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