Category Archives: Zizek

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

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ095 The Future of Surveillance (18.05.2014)

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ092 Until the End of the World (10.02.2014)

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ090 Lacan’s Four Discourses (2014)

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ088 Objet Petit a and Digital Civilization (2014)

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ081 A Reply to my Critics (28.02.2013)

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ080 Ecology Without Nature (2013)

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ077 Living in the End Times

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ075 Maybe We Just Need a New Chicken

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ074 The New Sacred

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ073 Post-Modern Architecture

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ071 Is God Dead?

Posted on by

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)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ070 Vote: For Hegel

Posted on by

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?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ069 How to Rebel

Posted on by

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ068 More Alienation and the Cultural Violence

Posted on by

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ067 Violence Revisited

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ063 How and Why Violence Functions (2013)

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ059 Signs from the Future (14.05.2012)

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ052 On Melancholy (2012)

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ050 Communist Absconditus (2012)

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ048 Object a and the Function of Ideology (2012)

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ046 Lacanian Theology and Buddhism (2012)

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ044 The Irony of Buddhism (2012)

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ039 Great Minds (01.07.2011)

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ037 The Idea of Communism and its Actuality (23.03.2011)

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ024 Utopias (15.06.2009)

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ020 The Ambiguity of Obscenity (2009)

Posted on by

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ019 Anti-Semitism, Anti-Semite and Jew (2009)

Posted on by

Slavoj Zizek confronting anti-semitism, zionism, Israel, jews, and Palestine, using, and in contrast to, the works of Jacques Lacan, Alain Baidou, Karl Marx, and Alfred Hitchcock amongst others, in a lecture at the European Graduate School, or EGS, in Saas Fee, Switzerland. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland Europe

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ018 Confronting Humanity & The Post-Modern (2009)

Posted on by

Slavoj Žižek discussing Hegel in reference to Charlie Chaplins The Great Dictator, Leni Riefenstahl, fascism, the Nazi propaganda film Kolberg, Alfred Hitchcocks Vertigo, objectivity in film. He also spoke about Peter Sloterdijk and Jürgen Habermas as well as ethics, dignity, military technology, pharmonarcoleptic drugs, scientology and Ron Hubbard. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee, Switzerland

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ017 The Interaction with the Other in Hegel (2009)

Posted on by

Slavoj Žižek discussing the process of the event in relation to Alain Baidou. Slavoj Žižek speaking about consciousness, neurobiology, awareness, David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett, the Ptolemization of string theory, Catherine Malabou, Jacques Derrida, sublation, difference of organic evolution and the dialectical process, commodity, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the totality of classification, the overcoming of metaphysics and concepts of duality. Slavoj Žižek lecturing about Nietzsche, Wolfgang Schirmacher and Avital Ronell and paraconsistent logic. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ016 The Reflection of Life in Hegel (2009)

Posted on by

Slavoj Žižek discussing the problem of negation and self reflection of life in Hegel, the logic of desire, Lacans master signifier and the object small a, opera, the masturbatory circle and the sexual act, as opposed to authentic love, Lars von Trier and jouissance of the other, pornography and the point of identification. Slavoj Žižek speaking about the the philosophy by Alain Baidou, referring to a speech by Alain Badiou delivered the previous night on the three types of principle negation. Slavo Žižek lecturing about identity functioning as a void, and the idea of the object in perception, as well as the work of Lynn Margulis, Jacques Lacan, Jurgen Habermas, and Laura Kipnis. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ015 The Return to Hegel (2009)

Posted on by

Slavoj Žižek speaking about Hegel and Hegelian concepts of history and historicity, drawing not only on the works of Marxs Grundrisse and Jacques Lacan, but also on opera, Schoenbergs atonal revolution, the experience of impossibility, Freuds death drive, Steven King, Immanuel Kant, Martin Luthers radical revolution, concepts of authenticity and inauthenticity. In addition, Žižek referenced Alain Baidou, Gilles Deleuze, Pascal, Charlie Chaplin and the role of the spectator in The Grand Dictator, the drive to culture and the true satisfaction of the circular movement. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ013 Left in Dark Times (16.09.2008)

Posted on by

Slavoj Zizek, author of Violence: Six Sideways Reflections (Picador; July 22, 2008), and Bernard-Henri Levy, author of Left In Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism (Random House; September 16, 2008) talked about their books on stage with Paul Holdengraber. They debated the parameters of tolerance and the global understanding of human rights. In his book Mr. Zizek examines how violence is perceived and questions whether capitalism and civilization encourage greater violence.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ011 Fear Thy Neighbor as Thyself (26.11.2007)

Posted on by

Zizek addresses perception, identity, and the “other” in an engaging lecture titled Fear Thy Neighbor as Thyself: Antinomies of Tolerant Reason. The lecture takes the audience on an enlightening journey through the perceptions of identity and tolerance.

Hosted by The Institute for Human Sciences at Boston University on November 26, 2007

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ010 Materialism and Theology (2007)

Posted on by

Slavoj Zizek lecturing about materialism and theology, Charles Darwin, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and the psychoanalysis of culture and societies. Videolecture focuses on fundamentalism, materialism, theology, atheism, atheists, humanists, humanism, reason, logic, rationality, intelligent design, believe, faith, religion, christian, christianity, islam, fundamentalists, fundamentalism, god, nature, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Public open lecture for the students of the European Graduate School EGS, Media and Communication Studies department program, Saas-Fee, Switzerland, Europe

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ009 Why Only an Atheist Can Believe (10.11.2006)

Posted on by

Why Only an Atheist Can Believe: Politics Between Fear and Trembling
Calvin College, Michigan. November 10, 2006
Žižek addresses the complicated relationship between belief, or what we take to be belief, and our desire to see all. The lecture is followed by a brief period of questions and answers.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ007 Rules, Race and Mel Gibson (2006)

Posted on by

Slavoj Zizek talking about the explicit, truth, rules, politics, Mel Gibson, society, race, racism, antisemitism; lecturing and developing a psychoanalysis of culture and societies. Public open lecture for the students of the European Graduate School EGS, Media and Communication Studies department program, Saas-Fee, Switzerland, Europe

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ005 Plea for Ethical Violence (2004)

Posted on by

Slavoj Zizek talking about the Plea for ethical violence, the logic of the system, ethical pressure, harassment, violence of power and politics, ideology, religion and law, reproducing through censorship and repression, Emmanuel Lévinas, objectivity, objectification, self expression and courses without titles. Slavoj Zizek in a free public open lecture for the students of the European Graduate School EGS, Media and Communication Studies department program, Saas-Fee, Switzerland, Europe

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

ZIZ002 On Belief and Otherness (2002)

Posted on by

Slavoj Zizek speaking about belief, the other, others radical otherness, respect for otherness, resistance, hatred, intolerance towards wisdom, totalitarian regimes, displacement, multitude and diversity, just action, fighting fascism, preserving humanity by killing the enemy, Alain Badiou, Judith Butler, including references to movies like Unbreakable with Bruce Willis and Shrek. Public open lecture for the students of the European Graduate School EGS, Media and Communication Studies department program, Saas-Fee, Switzerland, Europe

Podcast: Play in new window | Download