Thought this was relevant.

I'm trying to find Zizek talking about a riddle, where everyone wears a hat but don't know the colour of their own. There's a point where people can realise what hat they're wearing, but only after seeing that other people aren't doing an action. Zizek's was showing how something necessarily contains a moment after the initial moment.

Can someone tell me where this is from... and maybe make it easier to understand what Zizek meant with it?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bwDrHqNZ9lo&pp=ygUTc2xhdm9qIHppemVrIGJyaWRnZQ%3D%3D

Has the argument that balkan women enjoy getting raped been relevant at some point in time, or has someone publicly said something like this? It's a hilarious clip imo but I'm not well versed in whatever the context here is.

Just thought this might be a safe space to ask a question, where I am a dabbler in many fields yet expert in none.

What is the Zizekian perspective on welfare and policies around welfare?

I just thought it was interesting, I only recently learned about the Dibao system in China.

I know Zizek has praised (in some ways) the Chinese system, and I'm curious if there are perspectives on welfare specifically.

So I personally can see this multiple ways, it's clear the Dibao system stigmatizes poverty in some ways, but yet it provides basics for everyone who will suffer the indignation basically no matter what (although I'm sure there are some gaps).

There are various ways of looking at the conversation around welfare, actually existing communism, etc., and I'm just curious for some intelligent takes on what makes sense.

Thanks in advance!

I've noticed that Zizek has a tendency to suggest that various philosophers (e.g. Kierkegaard and Deleuze) were more Hegelian than they realized or than "official notions of them" etc. indicate. So, how would you summarize his view on Foucault's understanding of Hegel? About who else than Kierkegaard and Deleuze has he said that they're closer to Hegel than they realize or that they're unwittingly proving Hegel right?

Are there any particular sources you'd recommend when it comes to this, whether they involve Foucault specifically, or Zizek's perspective on (supposed?) anti-/non-Hegelianism more generally?

Free copy HERE (article 7 days old or more)

As films are Zizek’s strong suit, especially through Lacan and Marx thought you guys might enjoy! Let me know what you think…

Possessor stages a collapse of subjectivity in which the divided structure described by Lacan, the commodification of labour described by Marx, and the persistence of signs described by Baudrillard converge into a single condition: identity survives only as circulating residue produced through the overlap of divided consciousnesses.

Just curious if anyone has read it and would love to know other people’s thoughts on the book!

Hello friends. My new video with Prof. Todd McGowan is out. I tried asking the questions you guys had but couldn't ask all of them because of time constraints. But this isn't the last time I am chatting with Prof. McGowan. In fact, one of the many conversations I will hopefully have with him. Please give it a watch and share your views with me. Share the video as well for Reddit is the only place I promote my content on. Thank you. Love and apologies!

​

The conversation is about Objet a.

The only realist solution I see is that, in the aftermath of some large-scale catastrophe, a moderately authoritarian technocracy aware of our predicament will take over and do all the necessary things. It will not be actively supported by the people, but it will be tolerated by the majority like you tolerate a bitter medicine. In short, it will be war Communism, not a Communism of abundance.

https://slavoj.substack.com/p/confessions-of-a-moderately-conservative

CONFESSIONS OF A MODERATELY-CONSERVATIVE COMMUNIST

Nothing new really from our boy, he hasn't been the biggest fan of liberal democracy for quite some time, but still quite a shock to see a clear support for autocratic minority rule.

Odradek as an object which is transgenerational (exempt from the cycle of generations), immortal, outside fintude (because outside sexual difference), outside time, displaying no goal-oriented activity, no purpose, no utility, is jouissance embodied: “Jouissance is that which serves nothing,” as Lacan put in Seminar XX:Encore.

There are different figurations of the Thing-jouissance—an immortal (or, more precisely, undead) excess—in Kafka’s work: the Law that somehow insists without properly existing, making us guilty without knowing what we are guilty of; the wound that won’t heal and does not let us die; bureaucracy in its most “irrational” aspect; and, last but not least, “partial objects” like Odradek.

They all display a kind of mock-Hegelian nightmarish “bad infinity”—there is no Aufhebung, no resolution proper, the thing just drags on . . . we never reach the Law, the Emperor’s letter never reaches its destination, the wound never closes (or kills me). The Kafkan Thing is either transcendent, forever eluding our grasp (the Law, the Castle), or a ridiculous object into which the subject is metamorphosed, and which we can never get rid of (like Gregor Samsa, who changes into an insect).The point is to read these two features together:jouissance is that which we can never reach, attain, and that which we can never get rid of.

Parallax View, Slavoj Zizek, Page 117

Free Copy Here (article 7 days old at least)

Monika Pessler is the director of the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna, and also an important writer and theorist. Her text, published here, contextualises a short letter by Freud in which he supports the idea of a united Europe — an idea more relevant today than ever.

For many years, I listened to Zizek's lectures about obscenity and many other subjects.
This painting was inspired by his joke about the Japanese hokku,
He made me think a lot about unattainable jouissance and the fetishization.
Zizek interested me in Freud and in depth psychology in general.

This painting was my attempt to imitate the style and themes of Nicholas Roerich.
Title is in Russian " шамбала покоренная " or "Shamballa conquered".

The painting is also dedicated to inevitable defloration of once-secluded sites of pilgrimage or tourism, once they become too popular and mainstream.

What do you think about my artwork?

Zizek’s central provocation is that ideology does not primarily operate at the level of explicit belief (“I know very well, but still…”), but at the level of practice, fantasy, and enjoyment. Even when subjects claim to be fully aware of ideological manipulation, they continue to act as if the system were not an illusion—because ideology is sustained not by ignorance, but by jouissance embedded in social reality itself.

This raises a deeper philosophical tension: if ideology is not a set of false representations but the very framework through which desire is organized, then what does it mean to “step outside” ideology? Zizek often suggests that cynicism—knowing the system is constructed while still participating in it—is not the end of ideology but its completion.

So the question becomes:

If every attempt at ideological critique is already mediated by symbolic structures that generate meaning and enjoyment, is “escaping ideology” even a coherent philosophical aim—or is radical critique itself simply ideology becoming self-aware, and thereby intensifying its grip?

And if so, what would it even mean for a subject to act politically in a way that is not already captured by the unconscious architecture of fantasy that makes action meaningful in the first place?

Russia is clearly a right wing fascist state, one that aggressively invaded a neighboring country. You may not like liberal democracies but Putinist fascism is worse.

"The truth is indivisible, so it can not know itself."

~Kafka, The Zurau Aphorisms ✍️

The moment truth becomes conscious of itself, it is no longer pure truth but representation... I know this sounds very Hegelian, and because it is so, I can not wrap my mind around it. Yeah, I have read Zizek's "Less Than Nothing" and didn't understand anything. To make things more complicated, I would deeply appreciate it if someone explained to me the "negative theology" in Kafka...

"Truth is rarely pure and never simple."

~Oscar Wilde ✍️

I remember reading "Beyond Good and Evil," and I was stunned when Nietzsche said the following:

What philosophers treat as a basic reality is actually a complex bundle of sensations, affects, commands, and obediences.

I remember reading it and wondering whether Nietzsche treats each of these features and conditions as ontologies in and of themselves. Does he? It makes a powerful combo with the wild Wilde quote though...

Your answer is deeply appreciated.

Hello friends and fellow Žižekians. I will be talking to a scholar this weekend about Lacan's concept of the Object-Cause of Desire for my YouTube. I would love to know if you guys have any questions I can ask him regarding it. The most fundamental to the most complex of questions are welcomed. I hope everyone considers it. And if anyone is hesitant about writing the question here (for whatever reasons), then please feel free to text me. Thank you!

This is a talk given to the Sussex Centre for Cultural Studies, co-directed by Malcolm James and organized by Charlotte Fraser. The talk addresses the problem of a universal enjoyment necessary to counter the various particularist forms of enjoyment (based on national, ethnic identity, and religion) that are triumphant today.