Slovenian Marxist philosopher (1949- )
Friends told me that the latest trend, at least in Europe, is public sex. They showed me some clips, and they're terrifying. A couple enters a streetcar, half-full, simply takes a seat, undresses, and starts to do it. You can see from surprised faces that it's not staged. It's pure working-class suburb. But what's fascinating is that the people all look, and then they politely ignore it. The message is that even if you're together in public with people, it still counts as private space.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
"120 Minutes with Slavoj Zizek", New York Magazine, Nov. 3, 2013
The supreme irony of history is thus that it was Mao himself who created the ideological conditions for the rapid development of capitalism in China by tearing apart the fabric of traditional society. What was his call to the people, especially the young, in the Cultural Revolution? Don't wait for someone else to tell you what to do, you have the right to rebel! So think and act for yourselves, destroy cultural relics, denounce and attack not only your elders, but also government and party officials! Sweep away the repressive state mechanisms and organize yourself in communes! And Mao's call was heard--what followed was an explosion of unrestrained passion for de-legitimizing all forms of authority, such that, in the end, Mao had to call in the army to restore some order.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
First as Tragedy, Then as Farce
What Americans don't want to admit ... is that not only is there not a contradiction between state regulation and freedom, but in order for us to actually be free in our social interactions, there must be an extremely elaborated network of health, law, institutions, moral rules and so on.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
interview, New Statesman, Oct. 8, 2013
It's bad if we are controlled, but if we're not, it can be even worse.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
"120 Minutes with Slavoj Zizek", New York Magazine, Nov. 3, 2013
There is an old joke about socialism as the synthesis of the highest achievements of the whole human history to date: from prehistoric societies it took primitivism; from the Ancient world it took slavery; from medieval society brutal domination; from capitalism exploitation; and from socialism the name.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
Revolution at the Gates: Zizek on Lenin
Our biological body itself is a form of hardware that needs re-programming through tantra like a new spiritual software which can release or unblock its potential.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
Living in the End Times
Postcolonialism is the invention of some rich guys from India who saw that they could make a good career in top Western universities by playing on the guilt of white liberals.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
"Slavoj Zizek: I am not the world's hippest philosopher!", Salon, Dec. 29, 2012
As soon as we renounce fiction and illusion, we lose reality itself; the moment we subtract fictions from reality, reality itself loses its discursive-logical consistency.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology
Confucius was not so much a philsopher as a proto-ideologist: what interested him was not metaphysical Truths but rather a harmonious social order within which individuals could lead happy and ethical lives. He was the first to outline clearly what one is tempted to call the elementary scene of ideology, its zero-level, which consists in asserting the (nameless) authority of some substantial Tradition.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
Living in the End Times
I despise public appearances. This is why I almost stopped teaching entirely. The worst thing for me is contact with students. I like universities without students. And I especially hate American students. They think you owe them something. They come to you ... Office hours!
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
"Slavoj Zizek: I am not the world's hippest philosopher!", Salon, Dec. 29, 2012
The cliche about prison life is that I am actually integrated into it, ruined by it, when my accommodation to it is so overwhelming that I can no longer stand or even imagine freedom, life outside prison, so that my release brings about a total psychic breakdown, or at least gives rise to a longing for the lost safety of prison life. The actual dialectic of prison life, however, is somewhat more refined. Prison in effect destroys me, attains a total hold over me, precisely when I do not fully consent to the fact that I am in prison but maintain a kind of inner distance towards it, stick to the illusion that "real life is elsewhere" and indulge all the time in daydreaming about life outside, about nice things that are waiting for me after my release or escape. I thereby get caught in the vicious cycle of fantasy, so that when, eventually, I am released, the grotesque discord between fantasy and reality breaks me down. The only true solution is therefore fully to accept the rules of prison life and then, within the universe governed by these rules, to work out a way to beat them. In short, inner distance and daydreaming about Life Elsewhere in effect enchain me to prison, whereas full acceptance of the fact that I am really there, bound by prison rules, opens up a space for true hope.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
The Fragile Absolute: Or, why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?
The minimum necessary structuring ingredient of every ideology is to distance itself from another ideology, to denounce its other as ideology.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
interview, The Believer Magazine, Jul. 2004
It is more satisfying to sacrifice oneself for the poor victim than to enable the other to overcome their victim status and perhaps become even more successful than ourselves.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
Living in the End Times