Pluth, E., (2018). Lacanian Anti-Humanism and Freedom. In B. Thakur., & J. Dickstein (Eds.), Lacan and the Nonhuman (pp. 121-134). The Palgrave Lacan Series. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-63817-1_7
Again, what needs to be emphasized about full speech is its antihumanism—how it does not fit into the humanist expressive paradigm and the notion of the full presence to oneself. The humanist subject is surprised and bothered by what happens in a moment of full speech (one could say that it produces only the ‘split’ subject); one would have to imagine full speech as something like the voice of the Other emerging from oneself in a pure form—a voice that is Other but of course ‘more you than you.’
it is an ‘Other discourse’ that speaks; therefore full speech is more like a formation of the unconscious, more like a slip of the tongue or a parapraxis, than a moment of authenticity and fully self-conscious resoluteness.
Žižek April 2021
Interview with Bloomberg.com
Gamestop on the stock market, a certain logic on the one hand, a vision of a truly populist capitalism, everybody can join and play the stock market. It’s the counterpoint of experts. Algorithm that proposes investments, does slightly better job than a human financial analyst. But what is so attractive is that the big revolution of Gamestop, randomly, we just want to shock the market, the enigmatic character of our act. It was a reaction to expert knowledge. As Hegel says a certain tendency turns into its opposite. For example capitalism and democracy, China has strong capitalism and is an authoritarian power.
The very gesture of arbitrarily deciding something. COVID-19, global warming will demand from us some kind of communism. What I mean is some kind of social control. Limit the market. Look at Biden $1 Trillion 900 Billion dollars. You can’t defend this using a capitalist explanation. New president of Bolivia. She was a radical leftist and moderate conservative, not the Chavez/Castro story. I’m a moderately conservative communist here.
The magic of capitalism is this eternal postponement. There is no natural limit, ecology yes but not capitalism. This is a strength of capitalism, a progressive society should retain this element of incredible plasticity, that the markets don’t reflect at all the production sphere. Neolithic age, the stage from nomadic to agriculture. Me-Too, LGBTQ+, this is a destructive creative power of capitalism, is changing our Neolithic base. We should not go backwards to some modest agricultural farming communities. No we should go the end. Embrace the chaos of capitalism.
Poland, Hungary, Slovenia is the new Axis of Evil in Europe. Money is virtual. WWII, spending money, there was no settlement of accounts, so these conservatives that say you can’t spend money as you like, yes you can! There are points in politics where unity must go through radical division and then you build a new unity, but I don’t think Biden will be able to do this. Today it’s crucial to think in broader terms, the COVID has made clear, not just precarious workers, health workers, but also new forms of colonization, its not classical exploitation. Indigenous communities, not formally exploited, they are ecological proletarians, global companies are ruining the environment.
Microsoft and Amazon, you can’t say they are exploited, there is a new period of the privatization of the commons. We have to now go through the big tech companies, that they collect the rent by controlling the commons.
Aristocracy of workers, judges, public servants, lawyers, police. To be able to go on strike today, is a very privileged position. But we can’t return to nostalgic notion of the working class.
The solution isn’t commodify everything in a more just way. But instead move towards more equitable way to dispense out community goods. I never liked the moralist approach, appeal to egoist interests to approach problems collectively. Tell a homeowner a safer community improves your living standard as well.
If we don’t do something now, in 10 years (its’ not yet here) we rationally know it, but we don’t believe it. The PANDEMIC did hit us, it may awaken us a little bit. We need something like pandemic to wake us up. First 2 weeks, then 2 months, then half a year, Fauci saying all this. Maybe this disorientation will awaken us a little bit.
we are doing things so that nothing will really change. We’re still at that level.