I think Zizek always comes out so strong because his ideas are 'data heavy'- that is, he sees the world, and his theories a proper response to what he sees (and thus flexible). This is in contrast with a very common approach which seems to be creating intellectual theories based on presenting data which are convenient to one's own interests (in one way or another).
@polymath7 Yes, all of that is true. But the TV audience, if for the reasons you mentioned, is still not likely to be able to follow Zizek without some journalist asking these naive questions.
It's called "hardtalk" what did you expect? What do you think Zizek (who later said the interviewer was intelligent) expected? Do you ever watch Hardtalk? Because almost every episode is like this
"Then people should read more to understand what I'm saying." haha. That says it all. He's not going to be bullied by propagandist media reductionism or emotionally potent oversimplification.
@FreeBeDrug I don't think he is. I think he's asking questions that most of his viewers would ask and forcing Zizek to clarify his ideas to an audience that is not familiar with radical thought. He clearly at least has an elementary understanding of what Zizek is saying; I don't think O'Riley would even be able to get that far.
Completely of your topic and ages after your comment. The hallmark of a good autor is how well his works age, how well they can predict the future and/or explain the past. Zizek has this capacity, this talk is still relevant, he makes some "good" predictions and explains the past very clearly. To me is fascinating how he somewhat predicted the facist movement of today's politics, by saying that capitalism seems to works better without democracy. And that Venezuela would and horribly, and the eye of Sauron is now pointing there sending wave after wave of orc atacks.
The US spends $2 billion a week on Afghanistan - no amount of 'economic and stragetic interests' can cover that cost. Let us be fair and say the truth - the Coalition DOESN'T REALLY KNOW why they are in Afghanistan, and that's their worst problem.
'You have no right to' is a COMPLETELY unreasonable expression; rights are one of those very emotive terms used by the outraged when confronted with the provocative.
@pixelator30 First off, for what it is worth I think Zizek is brilliant and insightful. Part of what is so refreshing about him is his intellectual honesty and willingness to face uncomfortable truths. However, the uncomfortable truth is that despite his brilliance, Zizek did a poor job at presenting his views in a clear coherent manner here. In addition, he dominated the conversation seldom answering a question directly. Sackur was polite, challenging but polite.
"If you you put yourself in somebody's else dream, you're totally and mathematically fucked". This is Deleuze's words.Trying to convice within an arena where capitalism is idealized , is for me not only bravery but a concrete reality!!
Fascinating how he somewhat predicted the facist movement of today's politics, by saying that capitalism seems to works better without democracy. And that Venezuela would and horribly, and the eye of Sauron is now pointing there sending wave after wave of orc atacks.
Yeah, he's nothing like O'Reilly - the interviewer's basically playing devil's advocate, it's a debate format that lets the interviewee expand on their points and answer questions the viewer might have. It's kinda important when the standard narrative is being challenged, so it can't be dismissed as unchallenged preaching. Zizek gets a platform to make himself clear here - O'Reilly would just pull a bunch of gotchas and non-sequiturs and basically say 'yeah well some of us like freedom'
Unfortunately Zizek doesn't make a point without changing the subject or derailing himself or getting derailed, but I don't think the interviewer is to be blamed. Zizek is just too excited to answer everything in a few seconds. This is not him at his best.
Checkout the Unocal Pipeline that was meant to run down from landlocked Kazakhstan through Helmand province to the Indian ocean. The fact that it never got built is down to the determined resistance of the Taliban. But what really happens in Afghanistan is always linked with the West's "Great Game" with Russia. Now the Unocal Pipeline will not be built - Kazakhstan and the rest of central Asia will move back into the Russian sphere of influence.
@pixelator30 The answer seems fairly clear to me. Chomsky was polite and answered the questions asked without trying to dominate the conversation. Zizek didn't. Also, Zizek did not have a coherent answer to the question of why he called him self a communist. Just because one critiques capitalism it doesn't follow that one is a communist (as opposed to an anarchist). If you disagree then please explain what Zizek said that shows us that he is a communist (as opposed to say an anarchist).
none of these questions can be answered with a simple yes or no answer, that is why zizek has written entire books on the subject. This interviewer views things in a very baseline manner.He can't ask a question without holding his bias. its not even worse having a discussion when this happens.
@beat4battle Hahaha, I had it paused at 7:14 to say that it's as though the interviewer is completely ignoring everything he's saying, and then I saw your comment...
Everything that happens in Afghanistan is about the Great Game - i.e. the containment of Russia. Afghanistan lies between central Asia and the Straights of Hormuz. The Russians have long desired to run their gas and oil pipelines down to the Persian Gulf, however, Afghanistan stands in the way - the proverbial buffer state. This has been going on for 200 years - it used to be about keeping Russia out of India - but now its about gas and oil.
Hard talk... It is my overall impression of the interviewer why i compare him to O'Riley. Though the intent is to stimulate conversation by systematic means of inquisition, the interviewer does not seem to have an a main idea that he is trying to communicate to Zizek. Rather, like you said, the interviewer's only aim is to try to contradict everything Zizek says. Remind you of some one? But seriously, social isolation in the Middle East is a big problem...
@pixelator30 By challenging Zizek more he, in fact, reveals Zizek strength. If his intention was to make Zizek look weak, oh dear, he failed. If you want to get stronger don't turn to people who flatter your ego with easy questions - rather look for the ones that tackle your deepest beliefs!
@Dharmaserf ... it is also those same tendrils that created the poverty at the exact same time. It's a very convenient view of history that allows people to pat themselves on the back from their immensely privileged perspectives of Western, middle-class complacency and forget all the problems with capitalism.
He is doing to provoke a good interview and not to promote a plutocratic ideology. O'Riley is a zealous bully with no interest in truth. If this is the "English Bill O'Riley" it makes me very patriotic.
It's a shame that Sackur is always so confrontational and generalising, in a way, but I guess he does it for pragmatic reasons, in order to save time. With regards to Zizek, his critics simply do not see as deep as he does. He says himself that he's not some kind of a hippie leftist who dreams about a socialist paradise built on capitalism's ruins. But he highlights the very structural breaks which might one day lead to capitalism's own downfall into anarchy.
@NotHomelessAnymore I agree - he´s not so bad. But some propositions at the begining (supporter of Stalin, he should be ashamed he´s not happy..) are really stupid. But the problem is that thinkers like Zizek have problems with giving easy responds (the way they think is too complex). It´s good someone forces them to do that (he poses the question every averadge viewer wants have responded) but the problem is they do not have spare time to say what they really want to.
This clown who is interviewing him is engaged in a classic propaganda tactic: he sets Zizek up to defend a position and then perpetually cuts him off, causes a switch in topic, and then scrambles the ability to thoroughly elucidate points. Zizek is fucking up by not reading into this and continuing on with his original points.
@pixelator30 personally, i don't much care for sackur's style of argumentative, dismissive questioning, but i find he takes the same approach with most of his guests. as for this interview, i found all the questions fair, and zizek, for once, actually seemed at a loss for words
Check out the "TransAfghanistan Pipeline" on Wikipedia. Strangely enough its scheduled to be up an running by the Spring of 2014. Mission accomplished.
@ContraPoints That is damning with the faintest discernible praise. "He" is precisely the reason his audience is unfamiliar with "radical" thought to begin with. Thought simply is not the standard currency of journalism -this isn't hyperbole- and what is radical, and what is conventional wisdom, has little to do with wisdom but rather is determined far more by its distance from or proximity to concentrated wealth and power than its saleability in a true market place of ideas.
This BBC guy is getting way too much flak. He played off Zizek really way and generally organized an engaging interview between two radically different viewpoints.
I think one of the most important things about Zizek's thinking is that he can break outside the binary of captialism/communism and imagine other ways. Unfortunately the interviewer here is still entrenched in binary thinking, and it just gives for a very bad interview.
Jesus this guy looks like he still lives in his mommy's basement and hasn't showered in a week. He can lay off the cheeseburgers a bit too. Talk about a stereotypical socialist.
IMO, Zizek is an interesting philosopher but he is way too "common sense" - in the "bad way" - sometimes. Even some of his lacanian readings are not as good his friend's (Badiou). I for one do not agree with his view of left. It's not about revolution or bringing back the father in psychonalitic terms but even more it's about knowning how much the father is already within. Here, I think, we should change our view from a marxist one to a Baudrillardian one.
Stimulating questions or not, you seem to not be able to defend the view that the interviewer is still talking plutocratic ideology! Furthermore, b/c it is ideology it is hardly stimulating. The interviewer has a moderate bias against some of Zizek's liberalism. At this point, the interviewer forms his questions that try to make Zizek look like a perpetrator on the natural social order. And his condescending tone do not help his case. Zizek merely tries to articulate his own ideas.
@thetwentyfourthI trully agree with you. I hate interviews like this whereby the interviewer barricades the speaker with narrow minded questions avoiding the core of his argument and even ignoring the logical points he hears, only to hold on to the same view he had at the beginning of the interview. Small minded people who arent prone to change
Ya I'm pretty funny I guess. Some people have called me the funniest person of my generation, but I don't know about that. I'm just a guy trying to leave the world a little better than I found it. Like Jesus in a lot of ways
1:20-1:50 - Stephen Sackur is an orientalist racist. "Poverty has been in India for an aweful long time." Really? Pre-colonial India looked quite different than the romantic imagination of this nostalgic post-colonial brit's "White Hero" image of the British Raj's liberation of the "heathens". Ugh. And to take the middle-class of developing nations as a convenient example misses everything Zizek is saying here. While it is precisely the tendrils of global capital that allows for a middle-class..
@lalocejas83 I dislike the BBC and consider Tim Sebastian quite right-of-centre, but he is a good interviewer --certainly better than Paxman-- and, as a journalist, has to press his guests. See his interview with the odious hedge-fund manager Hugh Hendry who holds polar opposite views to Zizek and his style is more or less the same.
@beat4battle Oh my GOD! :D I just watched it and he looks like hes about to cry out in pain or something. Stephen Sackur seems to be more or less guided by some wierd moralism....
The interviewer is a little bit pompous, relative to how shallow an understanding of the conceptual ideas put forth by Zizek, he has. But he is no Bill O'Reilly at all... don't go for this cheap comparison.
