Slavoj Žižek: Trending quotes (page 5)

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Slavoj Žižek: 198   quotes 29   likes

“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 Žižek

Žižek! (2005); as Žižek notes on p. 1 of Mapping Ideology (1994), the observation that it is easier to imagine the end of the earth than the end of capitalism was originally made by Fredric Jameson.

Life , Imagination , Thinking , Change

“[A] paradox arises at the level of the subject's relationship to the community to which he belongs: the situation of the forced choice consists in the fact that the subject must freely choose the community to which he already belongs, independent of his choice - he must choose what is already given to him… The subject who thinks he can avoid this paradox and really have a free choice is a psychotic subject, one who retains a kind of distance from the symbolic order - who is not really caught in the signifying network. The totalitarian subject is closer to this psychotic position: the proof would be the status of the enemy in totalitarian distance (the Jew in Fascism, the traitor in Stalinism) - precisely the subject supposed to have made a free choice and to have freely chosen the wrong side. This is also the basic paradox of love: not only of one's country, but also of a woman or a man. If I am directly ordered to love a woman, it is clear that this does not work: in a way, love must be free. But on the other hand, if I proceed as if I really have a free choice, if I start to look around and say to myself 'Let's choose which of these women I will fall in love with,' it is clear that this also does not work, that it is not real love. The paradox of love is that it is a free choice, but a choice which never arrives in the present - it is always already made …I can only state retroactively that I've already chosen … [Stated by Kant], 'Wickedness does not simply depend upon circumstances but is an integral part of his eternal nature.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

In other words, wickedness appears to be something which is irreducibly given: the person in question can never change it, outgrow it via his ultimate moral development.
186-187
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Love , Women , Way , Communication

“This is probably the fundamental dimension of 'ideology': ideology is not simply a 'false consciousness', an illusory representation of reality, it is rather this reality itself which is already to be conceived as 'ideological' - 'ideological' is a social reality whose very existence implies the non-knowledge of its participants as to its essence -that is, the social effectivity, the very reproduction of which implies that the individuals 'do not know what they are doing'. 'Ideological is not the false consciousness of a (social) being but this being itself in so far as it is supported by "false consciousness"'. Thus we have finally reached the dimension of the symptom, because one of its possible definitions would also be 'a formation whose very consistency implies a certain non-knowledge on the part of the subject': the subject can 'enjoy his symptom' only in so far as its logic escapes him - the measure of the success of its interpretation is precisely its dissolution.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Support , Knowledge , Reality , Success

“The source of totalitarianism is a dogmatic attachment to the official word: the lack of laughter, of ironic detachment. An excessive commitment to Good may in itself become the greatest Evil: real Evil is any kind of fanatical dogmatism, especially exerted in the name of supreme Good… Consider only Mozart's Don Giovanni at the end of the opera, when he is confronted with the following choice: if he confesses his sins, he can still achieve salvation; if he persists, he will be damned forever. From this viewpoint of the pleasure principle, the proper thing to do would be to renounce his past, but he does not, he persists in his Evil, although he knows that by persisting he will be damned forever. Paradoxically, with his final choice of Evil, he acquires the status of an ethical hero - that is, of someone who is guided by fundamental principles beyond the pleasure principle and not just by the search for pleasure or material gain.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

23
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Pleasure , Search , Laughter , Evil

“The present book is thus neither The Complete Idiot's Guide to Hegel, nor is it yet another university textbook on Hegel (which is for morons, of course) it is something like The Imbecile's Guide to Hegel-Hegel for those whose IQ is somewhere close to their bodily temperature (in Celsius), as the insult goes.”

Slavoj Žižek

Introduction
Less Than Nothing (2012)

Books , Universe

“The wreck of the Titanic functions as a sublime object: a positive, material object elevated to the status of the impossible Thing. And perhaps all the effort to articulate the metaphysical meaning of the Titanic is nothing but an attempt to escape this terrifying impact of the Thing, an attempt to domesticate the Ting by reducing it to its symbolic status, by providing it with a meaning. We usually say that the fascinating presence of a Thing obscures its meaning; here, the opposite is true: the meaning obscures the terrifying impact of its presence.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

77
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Effort

“In his seminar on The Ethic of Psychoanalysis, Lacan speaks of the role of the Chorus in classical tragedy: we, the spectators, came to the theatre worried, full of everyday problems, unable to adjust without reserve to the problems of the play, that is to feel the required fears and compassions - but not problem, there is a chorus, who feels the sorrow and the compassion instead of us - or, more precisely, we feel the required emotions through the medium of the chorus: 'You are then relieved of all worries, even if you do not feel anything, the Chorus will do so in your place.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

32; quote from Lacan's Le séminaire, livre VII : L'éthique de la psychanalyse, 295
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Fear , Feeling , Problem

“With Lenin it was always a substantial commitment. I always have a certain admiration for people who are aware that somebody has to do the job. What I hate about these liberal, pseudo-left, beautiful soul academics is that they are doing what they are doing fully aware that somebody else will do the job for them.”

Slavoj Žižek

Conversations with Žižek by Slavoj Žižek and Glyn Daly (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), p. 50

Hate , People , Beauty , Soul

“Even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

161
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Dead

“The original question of desire is not directly 'What do I want?', but 'What do others want from me? What do they see in me? What am I to others?”

Slavoj Žižek

Source: The Plague of Fantasies (1997), Chapter One: The Seven Veils of Fantasy, p.9

Question

“The famous MacGuffin, the Hitchockian object, the pure pretext whose sole role is to set the story in motion but which is in itself nothing at all - the only significance of the MacGuffin lies in the fact that it has some significance for the characters - that it must seem to be of vital importance to them… - that's a MacGuffin, a pure nothing which is non the less efficient… what Lacan calls object petit a: a pure void which functions as the object cause of desire.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

183
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

“As Bertolt Brecht puts in his Threepenny Opera: What is the robbery of a bank compared to the foundation of a new bank?”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

26
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

“Memento mori should be read: don't forget to die.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

148
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Reading , Forgetting

“Daly: In a sense, would you say that the age of biogenetics/cyberspace is the age of philosophy?
Žižek: Yes, and the age of philosophy in the sense again that we are confronted more and more often with philosophical problems at an everyday level. It is not that you withdraw from daily life into a world of philosophical contemplation. On the contrary, you cannot find your way around daily life itself without answering certain philosophical questions. It is a unique time when everyone is, in a way, forced to be some kind of philosopher.”

Slavoj Žižek

Conversations with Žižek by Slavoj Žižek and Glyn Daly (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), p. 54

Life , Age , World , Way

“The force of universalism is in you Basques, not in the Spanish state”

Slavoj Žižek

Interview in ARGIA (27 June 2010) https://www.dropbox.com/s/cihuwrieedr8s1j/44101916-LAPIKO-TXOSTENAK-ZIZEK.pdf

Universe

“Confucius was not so much a philosopher 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 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 Žižek book Living in the End Times

Source: Living in the End Times (2010), Chapter One: Denial: The Liberal Utopia

Truth , Happiness

“Symbolic castration - the final moment of analysis is reached when the subject is ready to accept this fundamental loss, to consent to symbolic castration as a price to be paid for access to his desire.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

147
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Loss

“Few thinkers illustrate the contradictions of contemporary capitalism better than the Slovenian philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek.”

Slavoj Žižek

John Gray, "The Violent Visions of Slavoj Žižek". The Guardian, July 12, 2012

“In short, what the sensitive liberals want is a thus try to deprive the French Revolution of its status as the founding event of modern democracy, relegating it to a historical anomaly: there was a historical necessity to assert the modern principles of personal freedom, etc.”

Slavoj Žižek

Robespierre: Virtue and Terror (2007)

Democracy , Personality , Freedom