Slovenian Marxist philosopher (1949- )
The real tragedy of Obama is that he has every chance of turning out to be the ultimate savior of capitalism and, as such, one of the great conservative American presidents. There are progressive things that only a conservative with the right hard-line patriotic credentials can do: only de Gaulle was able to grant independence to Algeria; only Nixon was able to establish relations with China--in both cases, had a progressive president done these things, he would have been instantly accused of betraying national interests, selling out to the communists or to terrorists, and so on. Obama's predicament seems to be exactly the opposite one: his "progressive" credentials are enabling him to enforce the "structural readjustments" necessary to stabilize the system.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
First as Tragedy, Then as Farce
Why are so many problems today perceived as problems of intolerance, rather than as problems of inequality, exploitation, or injustice? Why is the proposed remedy tolerance, rather than emancipation, political struggle, or even armed struggle?
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
Living in the End Times
I think that the task of philosophy is not to provide answers, but to show how the way we perceive a problem can be itself part of a problem.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
lecture, "Year of Distraction"
Who dares to strike today, when having the security of a permanent job is itself becoming a privilege?
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
The Year of Dreaming Dangerously
A German officer visited Picasso in his Paris studio during the Second World War. There he saw Guernica and, shocked at the modernist "chaos" of the painting, asked Picasso: "Did you do this?" Picasso calmly replied: "No, you did this!"
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
Violence: Six Sideways Reflections
What we philosophers can do is just correct the questions.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
interview, New Statesman, Oct. 8, 2013
Think about the strangeness of today's situation. Thirty, forty years ago, we were still debating about what the future will be: communist, fascist, capitalist, whatever. Today, nobody even debates these issues. We all silently accept global capitalism is here to stay. On the other hand, we are obsessed with cosmic catastrophes: the whole life on earth disintegrating, because of some virus, because of an asteroid hitting the earth, and so on. So the paradox is, that it's much easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more modest radical change in capitalism.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
Zizek!
More and more crucial today are specialized markets, and in this sense, I think that it's even more interesting to see how trends which were originally meant to be subversive or critical can be perfectly reappropriated and sold for consumption. Ecological food, organic food, green products, and so on--this is one of the key niche markets today. Let's take a typical guy who buys organic food: he doesn't really buy it in order to be healthy; he buys it to regain a kind of solidarity as the one who really cares about nature. He buys a certain ideological stance. It's the same way as if you have stonewashed jeans, you don't really buy it for the jeans, but you buy it to project a certain image of your social identity. So again, you are not buying a product, you are buying a certain social status, ideology, and so on.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
interview, The Believer Magazine, Jul. 2004
Ideology today is unfreedom which you sincerely personally experience as freedom.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
interview, New Statesman, Oct. 8, 2013
Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn't give you what you desire -- it tells you how to desire.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
The Pervert's Guide to Cinema
We need useless theory more than ever today.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
"Slavoj Zizek: I am not the world's hippest philosopher!", Salon, Dec. 29, 2012
We feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
"Introduction: The Missing Ink", Welcome to the Desert of the Real!: Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates
While just looking, we are always hunting among objects, looking for what we desire or fear, endeavoring to recognize some pattern; on the other hand, objects themselves always "stare back," vie for our attention, throw at us their lures and endeavor to entrap us.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out
I already am eating from the trash can all the time. The name of this trash can is ideology. The material force of ideology makes me not see what I am effectively eating.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
The Pervert's Guide to Ideology
The horror of Communism, Stalinism, is not that bad people do bad things -- they always do. It's that good people do horrible things thinking they are doing something great.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
"Six Questions for Slavoj Zizek", Harper's Magazine, Nov. 11, 2011
Imagine a scene from a dystopian movie depicting our society in the near future: ordinary people walking the streets carry a special whistle; whenever they see something suspicious--an immigrant, say, or a homeless person--they blow the whistle, and a special guard comes running to brutalize the intruders.... What seems like a cheap Hollywood fiction is a reality in today's Greece. Members of the Fascist Golden Dawn movement are distributing whistles on the streets of Athens--when someone sees a suspicious foreigner, he is invited to blow the whistle, and the Golden Dawn special guards patrolling the streets will arrive to check out the suspect. This is how one defends Europe in the Spring of 2012.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
The Year of Dreaming Dangerously
What if culture itself is nothing but a halt, a break, a respite, in the pursuit of barbarity?
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
Living in the End Times
Words are never "only words"; they matter because they define the contours of what we can do.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
First as Tragedy, Then as Farce
Are we all not, when we sit in the cinema, in the position of humans in The Matrix, tied to chairs, immersed in the spectacle run by a machine? However, a more appropriate allegory is that of the viewer himself: beneath the illusion that we "just look" at the perceived objects from a safe distance, freely sliding along them, there is the reality of the innumerable ties that bind us to what we perceive.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out
Love is what makes sex more than masturbation. If there is no love even if you are really with a partner you masturbate with a partner.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
interview, HARDtalk, Jan. 12, 2010