Žižek audio of his talk given in June 2012 and there is a video of Žižek in conversation with Jonathan Derbyshire June 12 2012
This following is based on his talk June 15.
On Butler’s Performativity
Yes I agree, but this precisely IS the reality of the Cartesian subject. We experience ourselves as an abstract subjectivity where all our concrete embodiments are perceived as something ultimately contingent. Marx was very clear about this which is why he always emphasized the ambiguous character of the bourgeois order: which is of course the order of alienation and so on but at the same time an order creating the conditions for liberation. Namely, let’s take Descartes with his Cogito: It is precisely because Descartes saw the CORE OF THE SUBJECT abstraction I think therefore I am, in abstraction from all my particular features he was able in a wonderful way I know a formula of radical multicultural openness. It’s not enough just to be patronizingly open to others every arrogant Eurocentric can do this. Descartes says something else: he says when I was young, when I encountered people from other cultures I perceived their manners as stupid ridiculous and so on, but then I started to ask myself a question, what if from their standpoint our own particular are no less stupid and ridiculous and so on. This is quite a redemptive feature of modernity. YOU ACCEPT the relativity, historical contingency of YOUR OWN CULTURE. Of course, things are not as simple as that. This UNIVERSALITY is not a pure universality, it is a universality grounded in a concrete bourgeois constellation. But we must remember nevertheless for Marx it is this, the reduction of the subject to UNIVERSALITY and for Marx this is what defines PROLETARIAT. The Proletarian position is SUBJECTIVITY WITHOUT SUBSTANCE. As a worker all the result of your work is taken, you are reduced to abstract labour force,
This abstraction is at the same time a medium for freedom, it creates this position outside of substantial determinations you know, you are created by this and by that.
What is the Lesson: Marx emphasizes this: IT is NOT enough when creating bourgeois ideology … no no no idealism is wrong, we are always in material reality, suffering people working hard, exploiting NO! this is a form of ideology. I did take my son, to stock exchange and showed him what ideology is, you get free leaflets, people wrongly think stock exchange is abstract, but its really about concrete people exchange and so on … Marx says NO. We should avoid this DIRECT MATERIALISM.
On Commodity Fetishism: A commodity appears at the first glance as a simple object out there, nothing mysterious, it is ONLY THE THEORETICAL analysis which discovers THEOLOGICAL SPIRITUAL mysteries of a commodity. MARX IS NOT saying in ordinary life we are dealing with mystifications etc. Marx says almost the opposite, in our ordinary experience we think we are dealing with
In other words, that the world of commodities is a Hegelian world, he is not describing our wrong perception he is describing social reality. When Marx proposes as a formula of ideology:
They don’t know what they are doing but they are doing it.
It’s not that we are doing one thing and we misperceive it
NO. Marx knew very well, a concrete bourgeois subject is not a Hegelian, but but British nominalist, only concrete objects, no abstraction, it is only in his market action that he acts in a theological way. Your theological presuppositions, theology of the market, commodity fetishism, it is not in your awareness, but in your social interaction.
Lacan says the true formula of atheism is not “God is dead” but “God is unconscious.”
even if we are subjects of capitalism, we don’t believe, we are cynical. But BELIEF IS EMBODIED in our very SOCIAL PRACTICES.
You see a teenager, he think his father is a stupid jerk. He is right. But nonetheless, when you see this same teenager interacting with his father you will see a mixture of fear, respect, even love and so on. One thing is what he thinks, “My father is a jerk” but unconsciously he has a much more traumatized affectionate relationship with his father.
On the one hand our reality is cynical, nominalist on the other ideology and financial speculations, even if we experience ourselves as cynical atheists, we practice religion, TRUST IN THE MARKET. Did you notice how we can make fun of prosopopoeia, when objects can speak. In the early operas, you still have abstract concepts appearing as persons, poetry appears and sings, with psychological realism this becomes impossible. In Bertolt Brecht this prosopopoeia returns. This prosopopoeia returns with a vengeance, although we all know MARKET does NOT EXIST, it is not a subject, all there is we concrete individuals interacting, but this is NOT what we are saying, MARKETS expressed their doubt about these measures, MARKETS are not satisified, they will demand more sacrifice, what you effectively say is more important than what you want to say.
It is not that you say something, but you mean something else. The true SYMBOLIC cheating, you think you are just pretending to do something ha ha, I’m just pretending, but you don’t know that what you experience as a mask is the truth, and the inner distance you have towards it is a lie.
When you do something, this is the usual way we dupe ourselves through hypocrisy, no your inner life is a joke, what you think is a mask, the truth is what you do, the truth is out there. Marx and Freud, the unconscious truth is not, I go deep in myself, no the TRUTH IS OUT THERE, in the social relations and so on.
COMMODITY FETISHISM: An ideological formation, perverted spiritualism. An ideology that is the very core of the economic infrastructure. An objectively necessary illusion. It is an illusion that is embodied in social relations themselves. So even if you don’t believe in it subjectively, you still practice it.
It strangely persists even after you denounce it, you may grasp it as an illusion but it still persists. The mystery of the mask, then I pulled the mask off, look its still your stupid dad, then I put the mask on again and he was afraid, he knew it was me behind, a mask is never simply a mask, There is more truth in the mask.
Individual capitalists are the carriers of social roles, we can play the game, this humanist idea, we should not be reduced to our social roles, there is so much more depth in me, I love flowers etc. I can’t be reduced to a mask. THIS IS IDEOLOGY.
We are not monsters Israel soldiers, we are ordinary people, we have fear like you, we have ordinary feelings. This abstract pacifism. War is horrible, nonsensical killing. Yeah we are all human. Ok. Brecht precisely in a vulgar anti-psychological way, to reduce figures to masks, abstract social roles. A guy comes on stage, Hi I am a journalist, I am corrupted by bourgeoisie to exploit worker etc. There is a truth in it. In your personal experience all your psychological depth trauma is not your truth. YOUR TRUTH IS WHAT YOUR DOING OUT THERE
Lesson of Hegel: The structural necessity of illusion. Illusion constitutes reality. IF YOU TAKE AWAY THE ILLUSION REALITY ITSELF DISINTEGRATES.
The reality is the opposite one. Male chauvanist bonding, screw, get laid, but then in our cloud, one guy I like to do it on the forest, or on the beach, or reading a book and getting it from behind, I’ don’t care I’m reading my book. Freud is not vulgar pan-sexualism, what we are thinking about when we are doing that. There is no sexual relationship, even in the most passionate love, there is still NO complete coincidence or identity. You always need a fantasy, you are never alone, a certain fantasy scenario must be present. THIS WAS CLEAR TO MARX. This is why commodity fetishism is not an ideology. Commodity fetishm is not something in superstructure, an effect of the economic, it is something that makes consistent and livable the production process.