Slavoj Žižek

Published on Nov 26, 2012
‪http://www.egs.edu/

Slavoj Žižek, philosopher and author, 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. 2012. Slavoj Žižek.

Slavoj Žižek, Ph.D., (born March 21, 1949), is a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and a returning faculty member of the European Graduate School. He has also been a visiting professor at a number of American Universities (Columbia, Princeton, New School for Social Research, New York University, University of Michigan). Slavoj Žižek recieved his Ph.D. in Philosophy in Ljubljana studying Psychoanalysis. He also studied at the University of Paris. Slavoj Žižek is a cultural critic, philosopher and film theorist who is internationally known for his innovative interpretations of Hegel, Marx and Jacques Lacan. Slavoj Žižek has been called the 'Elvis Presley' of philosophy as well as an 'academic rock star.'

Slavoj Žižek is the author of The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), For They Know Not What They Do (1991), Looking Awry: an Introduction to Jacques Lacan Through Popular Culture (1991), Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lacan (But Were Afraid To Ask Hitchcock) (1992), Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan In Hollywood And Out (1992), Tarrying With The Negative (1993), Mapping Ideology (1994), The Indivisible Remainder (1996), The Plague of Fantasies (1997), The Abyss Of Freedom (1997), The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology (1999), Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left (with Judith Butler and Ernesto Laclau) (2000), The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime, On David Lynch's Lost Highway (2000), The Fragile Absolute or Why the Christian Legacy is Worth Fighting For (2000), On Belief (2001), The Fright of Real Tears (2001), Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? (2001), The Puppet and the Dwarf (2003), Organs Without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences (2003), Iraq The Borrowed Kettle (2004) Violence (2008), First As Tragedy, Then As Farce (2009), Living in the End Times (2010), Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism (2012), and most recently, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously (2012).

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Slavoj Žižek: Hipster Quackery

Let us start repeating the title’s ad hominem: Žižek is not much more than an entertainer. As a philosopher, he ends up looking more like a con artist. Nevertheless, the combining factors which led him to fame are not limited to his charisma and charming emotional sleight of hand with audience expectations. The main thing to blame is the pervasive leniency on the general field we usually call “liberal arts” that the Sokal hoax has so aptly revealed. Lacan has said his writings shouldn’t be understood through reason, but read as if engaging an enlightening effect similar to that of mystical texts. The obscurantist strategy seems to be ever recurrent epiphanies through apophenia and the steady presentation of cognitive dissonances in order to produce a simulacrum of religious experience. Thus the existential emptiness and spiritual expectation of the listener are filled up by the endless and circular confabulation over a “twilight jargon” (a doublespeak that many times seeks to mean exactly the opposite of what would explicitly signify) and incestuously intimate references to, in the past, psychoanalytic jargon or philosophy itself, and from the 90’s onward, pop culture in particular.

The effect is a mixture of an in-joke with plain gibberish on the overall meaning of the whole presentation/book/”system” in which the lack of epistemological basis may seem, at first, quite liberating. Obscurantism is essentially a falsification of what would be profound—and that explains not only its fascination, but its tragedy.

Emptiness and steroids pumped capitalism 

Even considering D. T. Suzuki’s relevance, Žižek’s criticism more or less about zen militarism is ok-ish. It is good because it presents a historically true facet of Buddhism (Buddhist militarism, samurai ethics and aesthetics hanging over the Buddhist milieu, etc.) and also a bit of contemplation on what “emptiness” could mean, or be mistaken for. He mentions that nowadays, where the stock market might be controlled by algorithms, and where everything is so virtual, Buddhism is the de facto ontology (he could say it better: non-ontology, or “nontology”) that best works with the mind of the broker/businessman that has to deal with all this volatility. This comes through as a Marxist criticism, but together with a compliment, as with Žižek it often does. (He also mentions Steve Jobs, whose connections with Buddhism and oriental philosophy can’t really be seen as more than a brief curiosity. It may be relevant for the perspective of Buddhism in the popular imagination that he seems to try to target, but not much more.) Žižek’s original criticism is that Buddhism has replaced socialism as the engagement focus for the low-brow and middle-to-high-class folks: and as a matter of fact, as a religion, Marxism does seem to be inferior to Buddhism. Marxists should actually enjoy a statement like this, shouldn’t they? (Yet we know Marxism replaces a religious yearning, in the same way Lacan cunningly uses this yearning…) Even so, His Holiness the Dalai Lama himself, exiled by Maoists and an activist for a population raped (culturally, economically, and physically) by the Chinese confucio-marxism, claims to be himself a socialist! Buddhism has competitiveness as one of the 5 main poisons of the mind, also called afflictive emotions (indifference, attachment, aversion, competitiveness and self-satisfying fake contentment, best known as ignorance, desire, anger, envy and pride), and we can have a million good things about capitalism, yet Buddhism will never be able to condone its conservative nucleus of exploitation and unbridled competitiveness, much less the self-serving and individualistic absolute focus on efficiency (of society, of market, of personal goals, etc.) and the ensuing shortsightedness it entails. Actually advertisement, one of the main features of capitalism (the so much discussed “free speech of capital”) is completely antithetical to Buddhist mind training. If Buddhists would have a say on policy, they would surely limit invasive advertisement (which could be very easily proved to be all advertisement). It grabs you attention and tires to entrap your mind—and Buddhism is the foremost system on attention economy. We can have a discussion on Buddhist and free speech, maybe this is not such an easy topic for Buddhism, but when it comes to free speech of capital, I think it would just be a big no. Any mechanisms to limit the relentless chatter of money in our lives sound in fact quite Buddhist. Equality also means equal voice from all, not more from big money and about money, and for money. If we could say Buddhists don't have anything against money per se, they for sure have something to say against the influence of money's on mind and society. Also, on the issue of fastness and volatility: if you just strive after trying to fit any other time or aesthetic to Buddhism, you might be able to find a way to combine the practice with the times. Of course Buddhism works good when things are fast and don’t seem real, solid. But when they are really slow and solid, Buddhism is more revolutionary: this may be even more attractive. One thing that might arise from these considerations is the idea that volatility (of markets, of anything else) might be something that pleases the practitioner. But not at all, what seem best conducive to most Buddhist practices are slow, stable environments. It is quite absurd to try to pigeonhole Buddhism for the times, since it has spanned 2600 years and lots of different cultures. When things are difficult, degenerate, compassion is stronger; when things are easy, a true golden age, with slow and stable settings such as old India, then other qualities, such as discipline and systematic study seem to be easy. Buddhism is quite adaptable. It is a narrow view that creates the illusion of some kind of Buddhist hype or surge in the early 00’s, related to external conditions or not, that Žižek seems to be (still) reacting to. If Buddhist teachers are right, Buddhism will take another two to three hundred years to really settle in the West. Also, to say that Buddhism doesn’t condone capitalism doesn’t mean Buddhism isn’t able to penetrate any environment, in particular those in which there is lots of suffering, lots of potential for transformation, and lots of raw energy in the form of mundane power and money. The Buddhist practitioner is confronted all the time with the idea that all great Bodhisattvas (exactly those Žižek considers to be altogether wrong in their lack of psychoanalytic … lack?) penetrate all degraded mind landscapes to help beings trapped in those conditions. Thus we can have “secret agents” on all levels: crypto-animals (animals which in fact are Bodhisattvas), crypto-prostitutes, crypto-stock-brokers, and so on. I believe Žižek would find irony in that too, but the fact is that, between the few viable actions and the perfect action, the Buddhist practitioner follows what is called “skillful means”: something not unlike McGyver, where the gum and the explosives to be disarmed are one or two poisons on our minds, and a brief and small benefit towards someone else, on our work desk, wherever that may be. We work on what is workable, we use whatever we can use. Buddhism is a recycling of attitudes, ideas, concepts, situations. Nothing needs to be rejected altogether: the poisonous plant might be found to have a medicinal property if only the labs do the research. There is the possibility of myriad political and revolutionary engagements based on the chock of Buddhism and confusion. Like a network of causes and effects, it does produce effective chances in the many worlds beings are functioning in.

http://tzal.org/slavoj-iek-hipster-quackery/