Slavoj Zizek - Israel, Palestine & the Future 

Contextualizing something doesn't mean relativizing it!!!! That is brilliantly said. ❤❤❤

"Gulag for life!" - Slavoj Zizek I need a poster of this.

Thank you for bringing up Assange. We must demand his freedom.

"Precisely.....and so on and so on"....... Legend 😂

Slavoj Žižek explains why we need the philosophy (as an art of radical questioning) today.

We live in a time where collective people have had enough, but are still unable to dream reaching for the most reactive and simplest of solutions to having enough. This is a dangerous combination.

Profound thoughts between sniffles. Thank you Zizek, love ya!

There is no freedom without self discipline. That sums it all up for me.

Just started the video, but it becomes undeniable, that Zizek will be a future reference for soberness.

49:35 *contextualization is not relativization* “People claim I’m relativizing what Hamas did in the south of Israel. No. Contextualizing something doesn’t mean to relativize it-it means to see the ground out of which a thing like this was possible to emerge.”

This speech by Zizek reminded me of a curious episode that happened to me that I like to reflect on, but that I hadn't told anyone about yet. Around the end of the pandemic, I decided to stop by a shopping mall before returning home. I wanted to do something special: have my favorite coffee at a Coffee Shop I used to go to. Sitting in front of the cash register, I was enjoying my coffee when a man approached with his 3 year old daughter. He stood in line to order something at the Coffee Shop, the little girl turned to me and smiled. The little girl was holding two huge colorful lollipops, one in each hand. Then she did something unimaginable that caught my attention. Instead of licking the lollipops, she started trying to fit the handle of one inside the handle of the other. Because of the pandemic slaughter promoted by the Bolsonaro government and the bad economic effects that the pandemic had on my life, I was a little depressed. Watching the girl, an unpleasant thought occurred to me. "This girl will manage to drop one or both lollipops on the floor and start crying. When she does, her father will be angry. This little family tragedy will ruin the coffee moment that I'm enjoying." Seconds after I had this sad thought, after several failed attempts and some adorable faces of frustration, the little girl finally managed to fit the handle of one lollipop inside the handle of the other. As she did so, she gave such a captivating smile of happiness that I immediately felt ashamed for having been so pessimistic. She then undid what she had done, just before her father grabbed her arm and took her to one of the tables in the Coffee Shop. He didn't see anything that happened. That little feat turned into the secret I share with that little girl I don't know and will probably never meet again. Here are the reflections that that episode has suggested to me to this day. The little girl's motivation for acting that way was probably natural curiosity "Can I do that?" She obviously wasn't worried about the outcome her experience would have on me. The lesson she learned and celebrated with a smile was "Yes, I can do this!" The lesson she gave me was "Wow... My primary mistake in imagining a different outcome was projecting onto that little girl unpleasant feelings that I felt myself and that had nothing to do with what was really happening." The radiant happiness expressed by the girl in accomplishing something she wanted to do (something incidentally very different from what we imagine a child should do with lollipops) is something that makes me think. We may well consider that everything in the world is lost and that the tragic future is inevitable, but small incidents like the one I witnessed and narrated here irrefutably prove that perhaps things can happen differently. It doesn't really matter how we imagine things are or will be, the space for hope for new happy experiences arises whenever children enter this world. Perhaps the thoughtful and pessimistic Zizek needs to witness something like what I witnessed. The question is: When something unexpected occurs, will Zizek be able to look up and openly observe and appreciate what is happening in front of his eyes here and now instead of continuing to project into the future things from the distant past that already occurred in a different place?

ZiZek should have a dialogue with Norman Finkelstein about Palestine and Isreal.

This is a key point, because it allows any kind of manipulation: Define "terrorist" if you are sincere and truthfull. Using double standards when the term is used is a proof of dishonesty and hypocrisy...

I just love this dude so much

😂😂😂😂 when you fall in love you retrospectively create the reasons. Absolute genius

Recognise: The man does not care about whether it's recorded or not, whether it's over time limit or not. Still truly underappreciated, even with all the glowing introductions.

wow, what a person! truly a great one of our time

I liked how Zizek did not go along with the interviewer in mocking Jordan Peterson. That was gentlemanly. I'm not a JP fan. That's the point; we should be civil. I wanted to hear more about that conversation after the debate, but the interviewer wanted to get his jokes out. He did the same with his dumb "autocorrect" line right after Zizek made a profound point, and it didn't even fit what Z said.

The answers to his lightning round questions are some of his best, he really works really well when given strict time constraints

Zizek put peterson in rehab lol

This philosopher is so correct as I changed my brain by myself because I knew the past would be failure if the people do not change how they think and organize our entire society but only a few see many centuries in the future because the failures that already occurred the soul must strive for only life not death. I never feared death only humans that had lost their humanity for the "other".

I think it finally clicked for me is when Zizek states that the way we criticize the system is a part of the system. It's what the Matrix actually represents if anything

Truthful insight wisdom lets live our life

Freedom as self-discipline goes back to Pythagoras

Genius. I have read all his books, and I am still studying his thought.

It's 20 years at least that there is no more future.

God bless u all love you blessing give us

I feel like people make the colonial argument because it is driven in our head that the holocaust is the only singular crime while negating the evils and details of colonialism in American education. It’s a reaction.

@16:22 it's the Golden Rule, he's 100% right, in social justice people have different causes. And when we meet I've come to realize that if you don't give a sh1t about other peoples causes, they won't give a sh1t about yours

I just need to say hi to all of you, the insights are telling of the people listening. Salut 👋

"The only way to open a path to a different future is to rewrite the past differently"

"God is how you deal with others." Beautiful. Lots of opinions from examples.

Zizek in top form. Hope to have him on the pod one day

Thanks!

"I claim.... and so on and so on!"

Very insightful man. Though I remain strongly opposed to the naïve endorsement for additional globalization, it was a great listen and interesting perspective

From 1:16:30 onwards are the most beautiful things I heard anyone say about Serbia. Thank you Slavoj Zizek.

My god, we need Slavoj in discussion with a comedian. He's begging to for some unserious seriousness

If one is living in the future now & looking @ the present now what are the possibilities of observing past suffering as already happened in another time? It sure is being discussed.

Just Brilliant !

Brilliant last words!

I think my favored term for all of this is The Polycrisis. Entering the medieval modern period, or the counter enlightenment?

FANTASTIC !!!!!!!!!! A UNIQUE PERSON!!!!!!!!!!!!! VERY; VERY IMPORTANT, MORE THAN IMPORTANT, CRUCIAL !

Thank you for speaking out 🍉

i am in awe witnessing this profound human.

After so many decades, so many acts, what is there left to say ?

I loved the talk and listening zizek is adding an awesome unpredictable point of view to so many themes. The only part I’m worried is in his celebration that we’re prepared for “new regulations” so if his ideas win, they are the only truth. That’s quite arrogant and dangerous.

Can someone clarify? Who was the first hero? I went back 4 times but could never get it. Thanks.

good that you are speaking much - stay sharp and on the subject ps.: #juhu #selfcritique

Word on the street is, there is no future.

Definition of right side of history

what did the siberian audience member say to him at 1:05:01 in some language that stopped Zizek in his tracks? sounded very abrupt

Brilliant , truth, blatant honestly!

Good Lord 💔

41:59 This part summarizes the entire talk

I am 90s kid. Similar to my generation and my parents remembering the Woodstock geneariton as lovely, peaceful our children and grandchildren will remember this era as the era of conflicts, crisis and wars. And it only looks worse from what I understood from Zizek and other futurists.

When is from?

Zizek on point as always, could do without the hosts interjections

How elegant is the letter Ž. Also Š and Č.

I was at a party in the 1980's and they needed more booze. So me (still sober cos i was late) and one of the hosts drove to the offee to get some. On the way back he said he had read an academic paper titled: the influence of T. S. Eliot on Shakespeare. At the time I figured he had started partying some hours before I had got there. i came across a similar view in a documentary on cosmology on TV that the direction of causation in epistemology was from the present to the past. its theme in lots of time travel movies, but their it generates a kind of contradiction or paradox. Which to me suggests some kind of transcendental argument as a limit to what the present can do to the past. there is a reading of Kant's so called transcendental argument in the Refutation of Idealism part of the Critique of Pure Reason. According to Johnathan Bennett in his "Kant's Analytic"(1966ish) the argument means that reflection and knowledge of even one own inner mental states presupposes, as a "condition of its possibility" that facts in the past are "given" and cannot be made contingent, or otherwise, or denied, because it would mean we would not even have knowledge of the present and our first person inner mental states. Thus Kant is saying that even the idealists and sceptics about the external world: solipsists like Descartes and Berkley, begin their argument by accepting as given at least the reality of their present inner mental states, and so Kant is just pointing out "to them" that they unknowingly must assume, or better, are assuming, unknowingly, a realism about external fixity the facts of the past. That is facts that are immune to reinterpretation and revision. Back in the day i tried to use this sort of argument against Foucault's "historical a priori" such that what is politically possible in the present is not complete freedom, but limited by historical facts in the past, that make policy possible in the present. This goes against interpreters and praxiteers of Foucault, who consider that from the present all pasty event can be seen as contingent and changeable now. Thus, for example, contemporary post Colonial work, around justice and reparations for events in the past imagine that justice can happen now as a compensation for say bad laws and structures and policy in the past. One argument from Derrida i think claims that the foundations of justice are brutal facts say of who won a war and formed a State and legal system. that origins of justice are just historical chance events that could have been otherwise. this is now used to delegitimise the legal system now, on the basis of the past fact not being jsut but rather the outcomes of forces. The idea is then that we can help our selves to moves within our framework of justice to question the past and compensate now, but of course they simultaneously need the schema of justice now to make that move , but the move in fact denies, or seeks to change the very origin of justice in fact which the present schema of justice rests on. Derrida might also be claiming that since past events of justice have no ground in justice so then revolution now is no different than the brutal determining justice schema set up in the past. one point is that there is a confusion between cause or material cause from past to future and the Space of reasons now as Wilfred Sellers put it in Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. indeed Sellars claimed this to be an Hegelian position of his. We cannot materially cause now and justifiable change in the law as changes in the laws are imbedded in a space of laws and material cause in in the different Space of laws of nature from legal revision in the Space of reasons. The transcendental argument turns on categories or symmetries necessities continuity of laws over time, and the kind of radical breaks that compensatory justice requires disrupt the symmetry and continuity conditions of possible policy now. That is it generates the problem of the non recognition of general whole legitimacy eg justice is now split, since the continuity condition is broken. Schmitt seems to have seen this as a paradox that the sovereign is outside the law can act beyond the laws space a kind of theology of sovereignty where the sovereign like a transcendent God is outside of the world but can see and act in the world like a miracle but not against the laws of nature but the moral order its self. At the opposite end account is just that have and custom before the law preserves the continuity ie no necessity or symmetry or categories are required only empirical facts pertaining to models like hysteresis in physical and material sciences. Kant of course with his transcendental argument is neither proposing a transcendent sovereign or a world only of contingent and free habit and custom. I too more recently have turned to view that i have now found in Cybernetics and systems theory from Habermas notions of legitimacy crisis. eg you might be unwittingly sawing off the branch you are sitting on. you will know because not everybody will recognise the new notion of justice and legitimacy.

“Gulag! Gulag for life!” lmaoooooo

The linguistic difference outlined here seems to work as well in Spanish; FUTURO versus PORVENIR.

Queen Kristina from Sweden ! :)

Always positive Zizek. Haha!

Like Zizek I don't fully understand why Chomsky dislikes him either. It conjures up that classic rivalry and clash of the styles between continental and anal philosophers

A future is not The truth to our future

Jean-Pierre Dupuy. Kohei Saito. David Graeber.

@43:57 honestly would have to disagree with with bernie sanders representing a "silent majority" especially after his response to the israel genocide of palestinan children

When a state is created on blood,murder and displaced people and stolen land ,no it doesn't have a right to exist as a state or defend itself at the expense of others,everyone has a right to exist but not to displace others to exist.

A brilliant mind, slightly losing it now and then, but always feast to the brain to listen to. I wonder why he never talks about Lula, though, and disagree with his disdain for anarchism. But his analysis of the Israel-Hamas conflict and the silliness of antisemitism is perfect.

i love his boots

Zizek braucht immer länger, um zur Aussage zu kommen. Gegen den Schluss wird er wieder stark: Freedom is Beauty!

He seems like he's doing better in terms of his OCD. Good for him. What did he do? It's a big improvement. A little jelly.

I was playing cards with my girlfriend listening to this and lost. Because it is so interesting to follow.

More important question to ask...."Where is Balkan?"

Thank you Slavoj.

This guy is good... I wish someone with better charisma and communication would pick up some of his talking points. Not trying to insult him, he is very interesting, I just see his information as not easy for most ppl to pickup on.

I'd be afraid to meet Zizek because I would do nothing but embarrass myself.

Johnny Rotten said it first.

Did Zizek just arrive at bolo'bolo??? 32:09

The sound is weak.

I have been genuinely shocked by the sheer volume of Anti-Palestine racism to surface since all this happened. But to show it by supporting IDF, Mossad, and Israel's government is wild.

“…the trains to gulag will be full.”

He has so much to say and he want to tell what he knows. He is an indispensable person.

Zizek is a counterrevolutionary. His objective function is to discourage class solidarity! I'm not saying that to insult him, but to warn to audience.

1:06:51 Comrade Stalin moment

he asks for us not to compare the horror of holocaust with the horror of gaza massacre, then he describes the n4zis doing in detail what israel is doing now in plain sight.

Which works of Marx is he talking about at 1:10:15? The analysis about 48 revolution?

"I will not get lost in examples... For example" Rick james vibes Legend

when did Slavoj Zizek become Winston Churchill

What a pleasure to listen to Slavoj!

We need Zizek's application of the Hegelian contemplative tradition more than ever, as society becomes polarized between competing reified, superficial, actionist ideologies.

heroes of the 21st century - Drug Slavoj!!!

the only problem is netanjahu, he support and finances hamas to have excuse to destroy gaza

Why am I left with the suspicion that each profoundly severe admonition here is packaged to allow one to immediately forget it? And even worse - that if one were to take them seriously it would invariably end in a more undeniable form of ruin?

To me this is bordering into bad faith by Slavoj, I mean to presuppose that all of a sudden people are conflating the liberation of the colonized with the dismissal of past genocides because of the ongoing struggle for decolonization is totally baseless and paints people as only being dichotomous and not having an ounce of nuance in their bodies. Unless he's just projecting how he himself thinks which... WOW

28:20 ‘Kayzer’, or ‘Imperator’ in old and modern Turkish. ‘Sultan’ is a layer of Islamization used in Turkish political ideology. Much love to you Zizék from Istanbul Turkey 🇹🇷 ♥️ 🇹🇷 ♥️ 🧿

Slavoj is like the Canary of the Ideologic coalmine! Keeping facism in it's place - out in the open, where we can see the vulgar impulse for what it is and have a laugh about it while we keep it nicely fenced in. I fear the days where his sniffling mad ramblings about the abject will no longer keep us humble about our existence anymore. Thank f 3 points off for the internet and YT, if I couldn't listen to these things, I would never have got the info, because I don't have the stamina for the books.

You've got to be a committed member of the proletariat to endure all that slobber spit and the rest

Audio too low