← Philosophy For Our Times
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- [00:01]
Slavoj Žižek
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. That's why, for me, one of the central beautiful notions of quantum physics is every totalization always occurs from a certain specific position, and we cannot step out of it and take a general view, as it were, from outside. This is, for me, true materialism, that you accept that your knowledge, with its limitations, makes you part of reality.
- [00:55]
Ed
Hello and welcome to Philosophy for Our Times, the podcast from the iai. I'm Ed, and with me is IAI contributing editor Amari Edwards. Amari, you've just done something that I can only describe as an act of intellectual endurance.
- [01:10]
Amari Edwards
That's definitely one way to put it. I sat down with Slavoj Zizek to discuss his new book, Quantum History, A New Materialist Philosophy. And interviewing Slavoj is a bit like trying to redirect a crowd that's already in motion. You start with quantum mechanics, and within minutes you're deep in Stalinism, psychoanalysis, the collapse of Western liberalism. And somehow he's describing himself with complete seriousness as a moderately conservative communist.
- [01:43]
Ed
Which turns out not to be a joke, right?
- [01:45]
Amari Edwards
It really doesn't. I mean, it's interesting. The core argument of his book is still genuinely radical. He's not using quantum physics as a metaphor. He's really making an ontological claim that reality itself is incomplete, not just hard to know, but fundamentally cracked. And he draws a line from that all the way to how we should understand history, politics, and the failure of the left today.
- [02:14]
Ed
And it also goes to some pretty unexpected places politically.
- [02:16]
Amari Edwards
Yeah, again, Slavowy has a very imaginative mind. We end up going from Trump to talking about Curtis Yavin and Wang Huning, the ideologist behind the Chinese Communist Party, about why liberal democracy is failing and what iek thinks a genuinely radical politics might actually look like in today's increasingly crazy times.
- [02:42]
Ed
Okay, well, we haven't actually had Donald Trump or Wang Cuning on the podcast, but we do have Curtis Yavin coming soon. But anyway, how did Zizek take to being interviewed by you?
- [02:54]
Amari Edwards
Well, by the end, he proposed that the two of us form a dual kingship, Spartan style, so I think it went pretty well. Though he also mentioned the Gulag more than once, so perhaps I shouldn't get too comfortable.
- [03:07]
Ed
Well, on that Note here is Amari Edwards in conversation with the one and only Slavoj Iek.
- [03:21]
Interviewer
Welcome, Savoy Zizek, to Philosophy for Our Times. We are also the host of the how the Light Gets in festival, where you'll be appearing the 22nd to the 25th of May 2026. Slavoj iek is a Hegelian philosopher, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, and a communist. He is international Director.
- [03:39]
Slavoj Žižek
One addition. I can explain it. You know how I define myself. I'm not kidding. Moderately conservative communist. Please, let's make this clear.
- [03:49]
Interviewer
Yeah, a moderately conservative communist. He is the International Director at the Birkbeck Institute for Humanities, University of London.
- [03:58]
Slavoj Žižek
Was still till two months ago. I was fired.
- [04:02]
Interviewer
You were fired. Well then. Breaking news at the very least.
- [04:06]
Slavoj Žižek
Who cats? Let's go on.
- [04:08]
Interviewer
But today we're here to discuss your new book, Quantum Histories, A New Materialist Philosophy. We're going to jump straight in to getting at the heart of these philosophical challenges. And you know, you. You called your new book a quantum history. So to start off, are you making an ontological claim about the universe itself, or simply using physics as a metaphor?
- [04:32]
Slavoj Žižek
No, I pretend to. At least pretend to make a strong ontological claim. And this is for me already. We touched now the very core of my understanding of quantum mechanics. We touched the very core of what bothers me. Because, you know, what is for me, the big revolution of quantum mechanics, the usual skeptical approach to reality is reality is out there. We can only gradually approach it. There are things we know, there are things we don't know. And that was, for example, Einstein's reading. You know, quantum mechanics means there must be some hidden variables. It doesn't give a complete picture. But for me, the genius of quantum mechanics is that its obvious incompleteness we cannot know everything about reality is not just epistemological, but is ontological in the sense that reality is in itself ontologically incomplete. It's very interesting how when Heisenberg got to this idea of you cannot measure, you know, the speed and the position of the particle at the same time, he still took it as epistemological limitation. But then Niels Bohr, who is nonetheless my big hero, immediately said, no, this gap, this incompleteness, has to be in reality itself. And can I just return to your starting why my obsession with quantum physics? Because I am a staunch materialist, but I think in view of what is happening today, even politically, not just socially and so on, we have to radically rethink the notion of materialism. The usual notion of materialism is that of 17th, 19th century and wrongly attributed to early Greek atomists like Democritus. The idea is that basically all these emotions, blah, blah, blah, these are just our subjective projections. What really exists out there is. Out there is empty space with some small particles, atoms, photons, however you define them. We have to get rid of it radically. We have to rethink what materialism means. I here ironically refer to Lenin, who said with every great scientific discovery, the notion of materialism had to be rethought. But my main target is Lenin, because I think that Lenin's materialism and imperial criticism is probably one of the big candidates for the worst philosophical book of all time. So just to go back, this will be interesting. I'm not losing my dread, you know. Why is this necessary? Because I wonder if you would agree with it. Don't we live in a time where it's not simply ordinary people can somehow manage with their traditional, inherited, ethical, religious, whatever systems? But then if you are a crazy philosopher, you want to speculate, you get lost. Do we not live in a unique moment where the decisions that we all have to make, for example, ecological crisis, for example, ethical problems that we are confronting when we talk about even things about abortion, economic choices, these are basically philosophical choices. We have to be philosophers. For, for example, to pick up your position on abortion, you have to adopt a certain, I cannot but call it philosophical stance. When does life begin? Does the fetus have a soul? And so on. Not to mention my favorite example, it's true horror ecology. I think that the problem with a lot of today's ecology is that it relies on old notions of nature that have to be abandoned. You know, the idea is this one, that nature is in itself, in some kind of homeostasis, reproducing itself. And then we humans, bad guys with our hubris, we ruin this. And then the implicit goal, especially of deep ecologists, it's let's return to some natural balance, Nature, the idea is, is our mother. My point is, if nature is our mother, it's a dirty bit of a mother. Because just think about our main source of energy still coal, oil. Can we even imagine what mega ecological catastrophes there had to be in nature before we humans emerged so that oil and coal came to be. So again, my problem is at all levels, up to artificial intelligence. You know why I find this debate crucial? People just focus on this. Will artificial intelligence machines be really able to think? Yeah, but what do you mean by thinking? For me, the problem is here. That's what I like about it may sound Cynical about artificial intelligence, that it's not just something out there, enigmatic, we don't know what it is. No, it confronts us with, but what really is human thinking? So again, we are in a period where science, and especially philosophy, this philosophical reflection is crucial. We are back in Socratic times. You know why I like Socrates? He is for me the one who began it all the pre Socratics, they still basically had this mythic approach. You simply presuppose the universe out there and then you ask, okay, what's the primordial stuff? Is it fire, chaos, a pair on something, Is it water or whatever? But this is still a naive cosmic approach. Reality is out there. Let's try to guess how it is structured. So Socrates does something properly philosophical when they debate, for example, honesty, justice, courage. No, he goes into this reflexive mood. What do you mean by justice? What do you mean by courage? And so on. We need this more than ever today. Stop.
- [12:42]
Interviewer
A beautiful place to stop. Because I think first I want to reconcile, I want to return to one of the things that you brought up whilst you were discussing both the ecological and the AI questions. So you were talking about these questions of value and then bringing it into Socrates and this internal term. Because at the very least it seems that this materialist philosophy that you're presupposing requires us to accept a very particular reading of quantum mechanics. One that takes it for granted that there really could be a epistemological problem. There's a limitation of our understanding. I mean, one of the reasons why Einstein and others such as Sabine Hossenfelder have argued for things such as hidden variables or super determinism, they've argued for this because it seems more likely to them that we are failing to understand the greater nature of reality. And, and actually there's some clarity out there that following cans, you just never will be able.
- [13:47]
Slavoj Žižek
Here, here. I'm sorry, trigger warning in a very respectful way, but I will put it in my style. People who advocate this low hidden variable and so on, when I will be in power, which hopefully for all of you will never happen, they get a one way ticket to gulag know, because for me the greatness of quantum mechanics is precisely in this reversal. What appears to you epistemological limitation defines the thing itself. And don't tell me this is my peculiar reading. I think, and I'm not bluffing alone. I'm in contact with people like my God. Two days ago I had a debate with Emily Adlam. I am in contact with Carlo Rovelli, Lee Smolin and so on, and they are all aware of this. For me, the problem with Einstein is that he remains a Spinozian. Basically, he says it. He says, there is no personal God. But if you look at reality scientifically, not directly engaging it from a certain distance, you see the rational beauty of how. For me, the basic point, premise of quantum mechanics is that such a position is impossible. Nature in itself doesn't allow such a totalization. That's why, for me, one of the central beautiful notions of quantum physics is precisely this idea that every totalization, like you want to have it all, the notion of hologram always occurs from a certain specific position, and we cannot step out of it and take general view, as it were, from outside. This is, for me, true materialism, that you accept that your knowledge, with its limitations, makes you part of reality.
- [16:08]
Interviewer
So I want to bring in a criticism that Graham Harmon raised of you in the recent interview I did with him.
- [16:13]
Slavoj Žižek
We have. We are good friends, which means we have this criticism for, I would say, about 15 years. Yeah, yeah.
- [16:22]
Interviewer
So Graham makes the case that what you're actually suggesting is a form of occasionalism. Actually, sorry, occasionalism. You yourself are replacing the Spinozian God which interferes rather than. Sorry, a Leibnizian God that interferes rather than allowing monads to communicate through causation and are actually just leaving that in the mind. He quite forthrightly said, no matter what you say, you are in fact just an idealist. And I want.
- [16:55]
Slavoj Žižek
What does he mean? I would like to get him more precise here. First about occasionalism. Yes. You know, occasionalism is for me the most subversive religious position. It's against any organic unity. Occasionalism means this. It's a radicalization of Descartes. Descartes got it. That the universe of our mind and material reality are ontologically at radically different levels. But he was still bothered, wrongly, I think, by this stupid problem. Where then do they interact? Because, for example, my hand is part of material reality. How does it happen then? When I think, let's move my hand, my thought somehow interacts with res extensa, with material entities. The occasionalist idea, which I think, and we should read it radically, not just as this keep paradox, you know, what's the idea of occasionalism? It's Malebranche, one of my favorite guys. His idea is that there is absolutely no link between the flow of our ideas and material realities, that God has to coordinate all the time, the two levels. I say to myself, I have to raise my hand. There is no causal connection. Here God says, ah, he thinks this. So let's move it there. Now you will say this is madness. I think that precisely as it is becoming clear, if you follow, forget about psychoanalysis, if you follow even the new, I respect them. Results of cognitivism. For example, did you meet. I would envy you if you did. The cognitivist Anil set, I think, who, who proposed a wonderful theory, which is for me very honest realist, that we don't directly perceive reality. What we perceive as reality is already profoundly influenced through our fears, desires, plans and so on. So basically he's very refined. Here we hallucinate, but these hallucinations are nonetheless controlled by the feedback that we get. All I would do here is replace hallucination with ideology. What I don't like with Amir Said is too individualist approach. No, we are not monads who interact. How does human subjectivity emerge? Here I fully take the lesson of Hegel, of Freud, Lagong. We become subjects only through an encounter of other subjectivities, which. That's crucial, which are formally a priori impenetrable to us. Without this impenetrability of the other, you don't get. You can get a digital machine, you don't get thinking. So my point is, and this brings me to the rational core of occasionalism, that the world in which we live is, I don't use the word God, of course, is structured by what Lacan calls the big Other, or let's move to pure philosophy, what somebody like Heidegger would have called, which has called epoch, in the sense of historically embedded view of reality, for example, very naive example. Modernity begins only after Renaissance. Renaissance was still for me part of the medieval thinking. Why? Because in Renaissance they didn't yet have this distinction between my subjective space, with all its fears and reality out there. In Renaissance, reality itself was full of spirits, hidden powers, and so on. Modernity for me begins by this strict distinction. Pascal is a mega modernist. He knew reality is out there, gray, infinite and so on. So this brings me to Lacanian distinction that there is always a gap between reality. Reality is controlled hallucination. It's not simply that you dream whatever you want. Because here I'm critical of Anil Seth. He too much begins with individuals. No, originally I am not individual. To come to be, I need to interact with another subjectivity. There already ideology enters, and so on. But outside this, there is something that Lacan calls real. And for me, I'm now jumping very fast because I see evil in your gaze, which means soon you will Say, chop, chop, stop. The real is the real means that our vision of reality, it's not just there is some real reality out there, that our vision of reality is always in inconsistent run or penetrated by antagonisms and so on. And I think only quantum physics is at this level.
- [23:13]
Interviewer
So I accept what you're saying. I do wonder, though, whether you have motivated this move from the accusation that, say, Graham's making that you are in fact just advocating for an idealist view, quantum mechanics to a materialistic.
- [23:31]
Slavoj Žižek
No, wait a minute, wait a minute very. I will really try. You should more be bringing, please, a black ladder and a whip. You should act more like a domina, you know, not like the benevolent one. Because, you know, what's the problem for me with this accusation? No, I know what idealism means. I know them all. There are crazy quantum physicists who claim the point of quantum physics is reality emerges only through observation. But for me, the whole point of quantum physics is that, yes, reality as we know it, our reality, which is an ideological construction, emerges only through not our individual consciousness, but, let's say, the historical space of meaning. Like, again, for modern people, reality is something totally different than from the medieval people, where reality was full of miracles and so on. But for me, the mega result of quantum physics is that precisely this reality is not all there is. There is another level which we cannot directly perceive, which is even incompatible with our inherited view of reality. That's why Richard Feynman, as you probably know better than me, likes to say, nobody can understand quantum physics. I take this seriously. It doesn't mean we are all stupid. Understanding means something very precise here. Understanding means translating something that is totally foreign to your view of reality, translating it back into reality. And for me, the idealist quantum physicists are precisely those who make the conclusion that we as observers constitute reality.
- [25:47]
Interviewer
So I think that's an interesting point to focus in on and then connect to your view of history that you built around. Because I think first, you're not seemingly advocating for a reality which can kick back, that can correct false assumptions, because. Yeah, but. But you argue that there must be a superposition. And at some point there is a whole monotony, a we must accept a power consistent logic, a paradoxical.
- [26:21]
Slavoj Žižek
I even you, in one of my books, not the last one, I even have a couple of pages that I'm not deep enough into it. I even use this. Yes, I even favorably refer to. To paraconsistent logic. That would be for me the lesson of quantum mechanics, that there is another Domain where, for example, our ordinary notions of time and space, of movement, of causality and so on, are no longer fully valid. There is a certain retroactivity, not magic, retroactivity. I'm not saying we can change the past, but we can radically change how the past appears to us. We can radically change the reality of the past, not the real Holocaust was a holocaust. I don't deny this. But I can well imagine now I go consciously into horror, that if in the next 50 years some new Islamist, anti Semitic view will prevail, Holocaust will be dismissed as okay, maybe they exaggerated a little bit, but they saw correctly the danger, and so on. So again, I think that on the contrary, real materialism begins when you a. And that's probably what Graham thinks, I'm idealist, that when you accept that observation, which should nonetheless be redefined, it's not this subjective observation. Observation in the sense of reality being included, interpreted by our approach to the world. Yeah, this is the transcendental approach. And for me, Heidegger is the greatest transcendental philosopher. Heidegger says reality in itself exists, but every approach to it is already mediated by some historical horizon. Reality meant a different thing to ancient Greeks, to medieval times, to early modernity, to us now. And I think that Heidegger remains here, but only quantum physics goes a step further and ask, but what is this in Lacanian terms, real? Real beyond our reality. And for me, this real is not simply outside. It's what I call inconsistency. Inconsistency in the sense that reality itself is not a united space of meaning. It's.
- [29:12]
Interviewer
Sorry, no. So I. I just wanted to bring it back to the quantum mechanics and your discussion of the holographic principle. Because it seems then that whilst linear history and linear interpretation of history is a myth, you are saying that there exists the events of history and then in a somewhat, some might say, trying to apply the holographic principle to this notion of history. From each perspective interacting with that history, we see a different truth.
- [29:45]
Slavoj Žižek
Yeah. I will give you an example. Surprising, but even quantum physicists with whom I debated accepted it, although it's totally foreign to them. Let's take Marx towards whom I'm critical. Marx at his worst is for me Marx of that famous preface or introduction to Critique of Political Economy, where he resumes his view, which is pure evolutionary approach. There are progressive modes of production, primitive societies, ancient despotism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, and then whatever shit is awaiting us, you know. But the way to really read Marx, I think, is in Grundrisse these are tiny moments of grievous and here I will come to hologram. He insists there is no teleology in history. Capitalism did not emerge by any deeper necessity of progress from feudalism. Marx in the crucial last chapter of Capital one on the primitive so called primitive accumulation, he says there were many contingent things. The discovery of America, Latin America, gold, enclosures of the privatization of the commons, all that stuff. And out of all this, for totally contingent reasons, not because we in the west were more developed, higher capitalism emerged, but once capitalism is here, it makes readable the entire history as pointing towards it. This is why Marx uses this term which is not teleology. Although it sounds, you know, his famous phrase that in the same way that anatomy of man he offers the key to the anatomy of apes, anatomy of capitalism provides the key for entire history. This doesn't mean all history is moving towards capitalism. It means once capitalism it's here and here is the hologram. It establish a totality which is one of the totalities other within which this. It appears that all other moments are subordinated or pointing towards it. And for me today precisely we don't. We cannot afford such a hologram. We don't know where we are.
- [32:35]
Interviewer
I think that's an interesting. I think
- [32:40]
Slavoj Žižek
interesting which I see you on the train.
- [32:45]
Interviewer
Yes, sorry, I apologize. Thought provoking. Because I think your view of collapses as this collapse of history into capitalism and somewhat out of our control, surely then but doesn't that risk turning politics into a passive observation rather than having us be an active part of the transformation? If we're just stepping into the supersess of observing and capitalism emerges, it seems like there's less of a place than with a more linear or traditionally Marxist view to then say and here is the action that will take us to what?
- [33:30]
Slavoj Žižek
Yeah, but for me precisely the results of Marxism, actual results point to the limit of this view. For, for me, although some quantum physicists even read collapse in this way we are free, we can choose the best version. But I think in quantum physics, collapse is something that cannot be planned, that emerges by chance. So I will give you precisely here an example. Yes, for traditional Maxis, their point of peak collapse will be communism. All history is pointing towards it. And of course they are open enough. If they are not stupid, dogmatic, slow, they admit that it may fail. As Rosa Luxembourg said, future will be either socialism or barbarism. But Rosa Luxembourg is for me, I don't appreciate her too much. Obviously totally wrong. If there is something we can learn from Stalinism, is that it can be both at the same time. Barbarism and a forum of socialism. So what I'm saying is that collapse is contingent. We plan to do something. This is my Hegelian pessimism. We plan to do something. And what we can be sure about is that it will go wrong. And the true revolution happens when you react to this threat to try to make things a little bit better and so on. Which is not teleology, which is precisely confronting the catastrophe. For example, for me, for leftists, I think that it's relatively easy to understand fascism. And it always bothered me in Frankfurt school how they totally ignored Stalinism. They were of course against it. But look at Habermas. If you read his works, you would almost never have guessed that till 30 years ago there was also something called East Germany. You know, he just focused on neo fascist tendencies in the west and so on. So my point is that through you have a certain vision, we are got into this. What you described as to be active, you need a vision. Yeah, but the true historical thinking begins when you become aware in one way or another that this vision already has its limitations. Back to Marx. For me, from today's perspective of ecological crisis and all this, isn't it that Marx's vision of communism was basically capitalism without capital. Marx wanted to retain the capitalist dynamic of constant expanded reproduction, but without surplus value. And this obviously didn't work, didn't materialize.
- [37:01]
Interviewer
That's what I said.
- [37:01]
Slavoj Žižek
Yeah. Yes. So you see my point here. Here I'm a Hegelian in a very precise sense. To criticize a certain view. It's not that I have an access to extra truth from outside. No, no, no. To really criticize is just to deploy bring out their non intended consequences. The most simple example from Hegel in his phenomenology. How does he criticize ascetism? Ascetic position. He said, the idea is I'm not important, I'm nobody. I should dedicate myself. But. But what is an ascetic doing? He's dealing with himself all the time worrying am I too arrogant? Too much so. The result of ascetism is basically extreme arrogance. You are dealing all the time with yourself. So again, what Hegel. Hegelian criticism is always imminent. It's not. I know what the truth is. It. Let's take seriously what you are saying and let's deploy the consequences. And I think that the job with Stalinism is not yet done here. I don't think we have a good even theory of how a madness called Stalinism which was unthinkable, could have emerged.
- [38:35]
Interviewer
Building on your point about the indecidability of or lack of determinism. We can't know what the outcomes.
- [38:45]
Slavoj Žižek
Sorry to interrupt you. No, it's not simply lack of determinism. It is that necessity itself emerges contingently. We have a space of contingency and in what, in parallel with quantum mechanics, I call collapse, something emerges which then constructs its own past as necessary. It's like simple humanist example, but for obvious reason is popular. You walk along the street, you sleep on a banana, and then a lady helps you to get up and you talk with her and it's love of your life. It was pure contingency. But once you are in this, you retroactively read your entire life as pointing to this encounter. And my point is here, that this view is not simply wrong, it's just retroactive. You know who is here? My big reference, so that I will not just quote leftists TS Eliot, when he famously says, Everybody knows this quote, that with every new work of art radically new, there is not just a difference, something new, but a new work of art changes the entire past, the entire history. It appears in new way, the reinterpretation of. Yeah, but it's more than external interpretation here. Things get. It's not time for us maybe to go in detail this. My point is, I'm coming back to my starting insight that it's not simply there was a past, and then we interpret it differently. The past was in itself incomplete, not fully ontologically constituted, allowing for different directions. Yesterday I, as an object of improvisation, I took Shakespeare's Hamlet. It's wrong to ask, but what did Shakespeare really mean? It's a contradictory play. Shakespeare didn't really know what's the meaning. And what makes a great work of art for me is not in an atemporal sense that it advocates some eternal values, insights, but that every epoch reinvents its own Shakespeare, as it were. We get romantic Shakespeare, we get early modernist Shakespeare, we get now different Shakespeare. So you see my point. The past is in itself incomplete. It allows for, like in quantum physics, for different options. So it's wrong to say that we simply interpret it in a different way? No, we should say that through this reinterpretation the past, it's a precise Hegelian formulation, retroactively becomes what it really was. It's a little bit more radical without falling into magic. So again, what you said about
- [42:12]
Amari Edwards
if
- [42:13]
Slavoj Žižek
we don't have a vision of the future, why act? Ah, here I have a Much more desperate solution that I'm developing now. I love these insights that you get even from ordinary movies. I saw you probably didn't movie which wasn't a big hit a couple of years ago. Munich, not Spielberg, Munich about negotiations 38 between Hitler and Chamberlain. And towards the end, when the deal is made, an English guy says, you see, we avoid that war. Maybe we shouldn't lose hope. Gradually think we get better. And a German guy who is here, a good guy, radically anti Nazi, who is already organizing attentat on Hitler says, no wonderful definition. He says, hope is for those who are not ready to act now and they hope that somebody else will do their job in near future. You only act in total despair. You act not because you see a bright future. You act when you don't see future. And here I like to evoke. I love this. You don't have it, but the French have it. Some other languages. My own Slovene has it. Difference between, you know, the words futur and avenir. Futur is more of the same. The way things develop now, they will become something. A veneer is something new to come. That's why for me, the motto of every progressive radical politics should be, There is no future. There is no future. Which means we cannot just go on within the coordinates of how things are now. You will say, what was this to do with our reality? Ah, look at Madame, look at Democratic Party. Democratic Party wanted to be this party.
- [44:22]
Interviewer
The status quo.
- [44:23]
Slavoj Žižek
Yeah. Over future. Which means. Yeah, it's. They are still old Fukuyama East. Although Fukuyama is now much more radical. Much more radical. Yeah. Their idea is, you know, I'll put like this. If there ever was the most disgusting spectacle that I saw, it was. You remember the inauguration of Biden when Obama. When. No Obama, sorry. When Trump lost. It was a big fake spectacle. The message was, Trump was just a strange mistake. Things are returning to normal. But there was a moment of avenir there. Who stole the show? Do you remember Bernie Sanders sitting alone? He was a veneer. And you know what gives me a certain optimism that, you know, there were a couple of photos. Images which pretended to become iconic men's. Trump hoped that he being shot. Nobody knows what really happened. And then American blah, blah, blah, that this will become the image. No, it was Bernie. Millions were fascinated by that image. Isn't this something beautiful? It means that in spite of all pessimism. Yeah. We are all manipulated and so on. Millions of people, without even knowing clearly what knew that the truth is on the side of Bernie, not the Truth in the sense of radical problem, but that a more radical cut is necessary. I will give you another example here. Almost my favorite, my happiest time. I'm not kidding. People think, oh, it's another of his postmodern jokes. Was Covid first time old bitter man. It was wonderful. You get rid of friends, you can watch old TV series and read and write. But there is a more serious reasons. Did you know this house? Even conservative politicians like Trump and here, Boris Johnson, they had to resort to measures which otherwise before would have been considered almost as communist. There were elements of this. Free rent, income, free income, everybody gets it. Like in United States, Trump had to do this, that, that every family got a check for $2,000. Okay, he was corrupted. Big companies got even more. But then Trump had to apply that law from early 50s where in a critical situation, the state can order companies to produce. It's not rule of the market. Okay, we all know this. But you know what fascinates me here? Imagine that somebody were to say to American public to do things that were done in the COVID era. Ordinary economists majority would know it's madness. If you raise taxes for 2%, everything will fall apart and so on. No, it was chaos, but nothing horrible happened economically. You know, what's the lesson? Okay, it did. Yes, well, I was good, but. But world economy recuperated and we become aware of that more international collaboration is necessary so things can be changed radically and it's not the end of the world.
- [48:09]
Interviewer
But I think importantly, just to raise a current contemporary issue, is it not the case that so much of the economic growth that we see around the world is currently being driven by one of the things you brought up earlier, AI and many people are now reporting that it is highly likely to just be a bubble. The vast majority of American growth is driven by this. Do we still not have to worry about.
- [48:36]
Slavoj Žižek
No, we have to. Absolutely. Because generally a pessimist here. But I will tell you something. That's where another provocation trigger warning if you are politically correct. That's why the left should finally take the lesson of Trump. We can learn more from they are not all idiots intelligent Trumpians than from the standard progressive liberal left. Well, you know, the wisdom of the American Democratic Party was that we shouldn't move too much of the left. We will lose the center. Trump's lesson, the lesson of his success is exactly the opposite. He radically stated his position, extreme position, and he won. And I think the guy who finally got this is Mandami. He went. His popularity is precisely because he didn't talk in this calculated way. There was a wonderful story about trigger warning by sexism will come out by the beautiful one AOC Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. You know this story. We can learn so much about from it. She discovered after the last elections that many of the people who voted for Trump federally voted locally for her. And she inquired why? And in a way the reply was false. But there is an important insight in it. The reply was that center Democrats you always feel how well calculated they are. They are afraid to offend anyone. Why you and Tremp, although on the opposite poles of political space, you. You at least appear to go to the extreme and say openly. Now I still think this is at some factual level wrong. When Trump makes his statements, it's all meat. He no longer even practices the notion of truth. He functions at the level of rumors and so on. But the lesson is nonetheless important. And Bernie Sanders first got the formula when he says Democrats should stop being worried about losing the center. The true target of Democrats should be those poor disappointed white people. Not just white, also Mexicans who otherwise would have voted for Trump. That's absolutely crucial for me. So I not. I'm not advocating here any extremism. That's another point to be noticed. Where are we today when look at Mamdani's measures. I'm sorry, but half a century ago, or a little bit more at the high point of European social democracy, this was even moderate social democracy.
- [51:49]
Interviewer
I mean, he does actively call himself a democratic socialist. Seems odd that we've lost the perspective. The Overton window has been moved so far to the right. Yeah, but I. I do wonder though, because we. We have the Mexican president who is doing such interesting radical work trying to history.
- [52:08]
Slavoj Žižek
Here I am, you see, here comes my pessimism. The tragedy of Mexico is for me, and I heard this from my Mexican friends who are definitely leftists, is that yes, she's doing nice things, blah, blah. Also, the reason I like her is that in contrast to this politically correct feminism, you know, instead of dealing with real suffering of real women, we talk how, how somebody should be called or all that stuff. No, in Mexico, feminism means real suffering of real people. But behind all this, the sad thing is that cartels are there incredibly powerful. Some president, some 10 years ago, I forgot his name of Mexico tried to do it as I as a hardliner, almost democratic. Not democratic, socialist, democratic, Stalinist. If I call booty of dance. He tried to solve this with army. Brutally. He sent army to broke the cartels. The state Lost cartels Had they discovered better arms than the army. They had so many army officers corrupted. They knew in advance where the army would attack. This is a serious problem in Mexico.
- [53:40]
Interviewer
So I. I accept the challenge. But I. I do wonder the extent to which the Mexican state is currently in a position as so many nations are. My. My cultural homeland, Jamaica.
- [53:54]
Slavoj Žižek
Ah, you are from there?
- [53:55]
Interviewer
Yes. Family?
- [53:57]
Slavoj Žižek
I made a name. Sorry for you. I mean, was it horrible storm there?
- [54:01]
Interviewer
No, the hurricane was. Is and remains quite a tragic state. Stay with you need you see. This is why.
- [54:08]
Slavoj Žižek
That's my what I mean by modernity. Conservative communists. Don't you agree that facing this new weather phenomena terrifying artificial intelligence and so on. It's absolutely necessary to establish some closer, more obligatory network of international cooperation? Things can happen here, there, where then the dilemma will be cooperation or open war.
- [54:39]
Interviewer
You advocate. Would you say you want something more like global insurance? A rather boring topic.
- [54:44]
Slavoj Žižek
Not even insurance and not. I'm not utopian. I'm not dreaming about world government in present constellation. This would lead to, don't you think? Let's be realist to unimaginable corruption. I claim you know not that, but simply obligatory forms of coverage. Let me give you an example. My good friend, Jean Pierre Dupuy D U P U Y who is the best theories of catastrophes we have today. He is between Santa Cruz and Paris. He told me he visited a couple of days. 1, 2 after Fukushima catastrophe. He visited Japan and he said how lucky they were for one day the Japanese government was in full panic. They thought they will have to evacuate 40, 50 millions of people the entire Tokyo area then. Okay, but things like that will happen now in a. I'm very naive here rational world order. It would be simply make a deal. I don't know, probably with Russia. There is enough of space in Siberia and so on. But we are not at that level. And so the earth. The problem that I see it's quite fateful. Maybe we need more catastrophes to teach us this is to impose not central world government, but more obligatory forms of international cooperation. We have to prepare for. That's why I ironically use the term war communism. We are approaching more and more different forms of emergency state. And the big problem for me is when this emergency state will explode. There is the fascist or even some worse versions, which is right wingers will establish their own gated communities and so on. Outside there will be chaos. This will be needed if we otherwise. If we look at history the way it moves now. I don't think even Trump is the predominant trend. Would you agree or not strike back. It is something that I like to call soft fascism. Not soft in the sense it's not so bad, but soft in the sense that it doesn't necessarily lead to war. It doesn't have this Nazi aggressivity of Germany. It's more like early Mussolini, Franco, Salazar. The idea is this one. You allow productive capitalism, competition and so on. But you are quite correctly afraid that this will lead to social disintegration. So you supplement it with strong authoritarian state grounded usually in some traditional nationalist ideology. I was shocked. I follow closely through my friends what goes on in China. Communist Party no longer speaks about Mao Communism. They really put their hopes into a revival of Confucianism. Look what Modi is doing. Look what Putin is doing. Putin. It's not true that he is ultra Soviet old communist. He openly says the greatest history was October Revolution. For him we have to return. That's his plan to some tsarist. The tendency that I see is towards this type of neo fascist economies. They can be pretty efficient. Some of them even, I'm not afraid to say sympathetic. For example, look at Singapore, look at Switzerland. It's incredible how their economic success is based on kind of a neo fascist, but this time almost in a good sense, organic unity. So that when there is a crisis, all social forces come together, trade unions, banks, government, and do a plan. And they have enough social solidarity to stick to follow that plan.
- [59:29]
Interviewer
So does. So does the left need a leak on you just do we need.
- [59:34]
Slavoj Žižek
Yeah, absolutely. I know. That's why I said, you see, I'm an idiot, but not an idiot in the way people usually think. I'm. If I'm a different idiot. Yeah, why not? We need a more lefty social solidarity. But you mentioned the name and here I agree with my good friend, intelligent right winger Peter Slaughterdijk. I asked him once who will be the guy from our time to whom they will be building monuments 100 years from now. He said Lichuan Yew. Not the way he did it. But I am first to admit I'm not a dreamer, that at some level capitalism works, but it has to be controlled. Those free market idiots, are they aware? I read a wonderful economic history of the United States which said that a couple of times with some electronic developments, TV and so on. One company had monopoly and only a strong state was able to break that monopoly. So to have a free market, that's the paradox. Today you need a strong state. I believe in the state. I don't believe Now I will maybe hurt you. I don't believe in these local democracies, you know, like, oh, pre representative, we meet every afternoon after work. We decide how to do education, how to do this, that, that's safe for me.
- [61:17]
Interviewer
But would you then call the Chinese communist vision?
- [61:21]
Slavoj Žižek
No, because I know there is a great temptation now among many of the left to say, okay, they are a little bit non democratic, but maybe China is the model. No, I think, I think that, you know, I didn't meet him because we don't like each other. But the key person in China is, I've written about him, Vang Huning, he's the second third person. He's their ideologist. He openly calls himself neoconservative. It's a very interesting guy. He wrote a book 20 years ago. It is a bible. There America Against America. Thirty years ago he spent two years, I think in America, United States. And he was on the one hand fascinated by economic creativity and so on, but also horrified by social disintegration. And his solution is basically soft fascist, how to, and this is always the problem of fascism, how to keep the capitalist dynamic without disruptive social events. But I don't believe in Chinese model. Not, not only for the obvious reasons, but it's really, you know, if they, it's really too dictatorial. They, if they were to be doing what they claim they are doing, that the party is a space where all opinions could be heard and so on, that would work, but it's not, you know what's for me, the truth of China. You remember every two, four years they have party congress and then the central event. Everybody's just waiting for that. At the end they announce who will be seven members of the Standing Committee of the Politburo. This is power. But there is no debate about who. One doesn't know what goes on behind the closed doors.
- [63:34]
Interviewer
Absolutely. And I wouldn't want to advocate for the adopting a Chinese model, but I, I would challenge you on two aspects. One does not lead us back to what you describe as barbarism, the sort of Stalinism that, you know, the strong state that needed to make these sorts of applications and interfere with the economy. Is that not a risk? And, and a second point of clarification and perhaps a challenge is that I've forgotten the individual's name, but I'll include it in the notes. But those studying the state of Chinese policy creation, you know, one of the major problems for China is that it can often take eight years for an individual policy because it has to Pass through every department and party policy sector. So, you know, you on the other
- [64:32]
Slavoj Žižek
hand, what Franks are telling me. Precisely because they can bypass all those democratic debates and so on. When there is an urgency, they can act very fast.
- [64:42]
Interviewer
Yes. With the health. Sorry, not health. I'm sure our Chinese sisters would tell me that I'm completely wrong about healthcare. But on the issue of baby formula, for instance, they were able to act, I think within a year and a half, two years.
- [64:58]
Slavoj Žižek
Yeah. No, no. So I'm not. Although at one point I'm. You know what's good? I think that Europe with Trump and no matter how much they fight each other, Trump and Putin are working a similar way. Their idea is this old notion of superpowers, each with their sphere and so on. Putin, we know what he wants. Trump wants Canada, Greenland, maybe even Mexico and so on. And I think that's what makes me sad that Europe lost a unique opportunity at that point with regard to Gaza, with regard to Ukraine. Europe should adopt its own policy, act as a superpower outside, not under the influence of United States and risk a closer economic link with China. Because you know what's good for us in Europe. China is far away. You know, it's not a direct threat. And it doesn't mean we follow their political model. I'm informed in detail about all the horrors that going out there. Tibet, Uyghurs, whatever you want. And for example, ecological topic. Yeah, it's popular to talk about ecology, but it's very tightly controlled. What you can say. No, I'm just saying that something very tragic that liberal democracy the way here I agree with some intelligent Trumpians like Curtis Yarwin. Don't be afraid. I don't follow him. But his here I agree again with intelligent Trumpians. His analysis of how United States are not really a democracy, but an oligarchy. Sorry, he does it better than any leftist critics. You know, shows in detail through what economic ideological mechanisms. And so United States are really an oligarchy. And I think this is my biggest pessimism. I will say now something horrible. I don't think that the reply to this is simply yeah, yeah, we need to awaken people, we need more democracy. I'm here more of a pessimist. I will say something horrible. Maybe you know it, I use it. You know this famous Lincoln saying, which incidentally Lincoln took it from another guy. It always works like this. You can cheat some of the people all the time. All the people sometime. You cannot cheat, deceive all the people all the time. What if you can Maybe. You know, I think that moments of authentic awakening are rather rare and they usually even end in catastrophe. What I really hate in leftist is you remember these moments of magic. You remember demonstration is Istanbul, 1 million people on the main scale. You remember a Syriza, 1 million of people in that Syntagma Square and so on. And the leftists who are fascinated by these big events. No, my idea is I am obsessed by this. So what? What interests me is what happens, as you say, when you are drunk the morning after four, five months later, when, When a new normality ordinarily reemerges. How do ordinary people feel the difference? I'm obsessed by that. I'm tired of this revolutionary pseudo revolutionary leftists who do, who celebrate this big event and then when things go wrong, what do they do? They retire to their academic posts and write a big theoretical book on why things, because of materialist manipulations went wrong. That's why the big problem for me, if you ask me, about horrors on which we should focus. Yes, I'm writing all the time. Gaza, Ukraine and so on. But not just Sudan. Look at if there is one place which is for me, the horror today. You must have read about it. That triangle there on the border of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand. Are we aware what is going on there? This is not marginal. They are doing what it's pure global digital exploitation. But exploitation by slaves. They kidnap people who have to work 14 to 17 hours per day. Either nice ladies trying to seduce men to give them money, or these usual digital tricks. Do you want a cheap loan? Blah, blah, blah. But do you know how much money they turn around? More than any other world economy state, just United States and China. Turn around more money and it's pure horror. You have even worse than what Varoufakis calls neo feudalism. You have neo slavery. Tens of thousands, even some people think more than hundreds of thousand people work there as slaves. And you have a certain quota, how much money you should bring. You know what happens? Isn't this terrific when you don't fill the quota? They have under quotation marks, hospitals. It's a worldwide network. Somebody needs a kidney, whatever, you get it. After they take a couple of organs, they kill you, you die. Another nightmarish problem. I read a couple of days ago. It's not enough in our media. In southern Libya, where many refugees from Sudan, Eritrea, blah blah, Congo go up, there are concentration camps, gangs there kidnap people and you know, I may appear cynical, but it shocked even me a little bit. You know how they operate, through torture. They get from you or me, whoever is imprisoned, your coordinates, your family, they especially like you if your family is already in Germany or England and have some money. And then they send to your family every week at least a video clip of how they tortured you terribly with idea. Send money or he will die. And this is not like 10 thousands of people live like that, systematically tortured. And to add insult to irony, when you die, they send the final offer to your family. Usually the price is 100,000 if you want to get the body to be sure. I mean such this is I think the dark side of today's global capitalism. So here I have some not trust. I'm not crazy about Trump, but you know, I agree with Varoufakis that with all his horrors, Trump did something that the left tried to do but failed. He did end global capitalism the way we knew it. He opened up the space for a totally new game. Which is why what we are getting today, it's very interesting is as I already mentioned, United States are now de facto of four party states. You have two old established parties, Republicans, Democrats. Then you have Trumpian populists and you have Democratic Socialists. And everything will be decided in how they will interact. For me, the darkest point that you will notice how Trump even supported Cuomo, a Democrat. So I think the only Trump already took over Republican party every it will be decided with Democratic socialists. And it's a very difficult problem. Should they build their own party or not? I think Mamdani did the right thing at this strategic moment. In a direct electoral battle between Trumpian Republicans and Democratic Socialists, Trump will still largely won. You had the same problem here with no party. Yeah, you have one big center right party. Center right it's called, as we all know, Labour Party. Then we have the crazy left. And I like this obscenity. It's like Labor Party government. I know you have Rachel Reeves and so on, but it's mostly white men. But if you want women, black women, Indians, you go to the Tory party, the Tourist party, which is also disappearing. So if, but I'm a pessimist. If Corbyn and that Muslim lady Sultan. Yeah, if they will succeed the only real election. By real election I mean actual mobilizing political visions would have been Farage versus this new, whatever you call it, new party, your party.
- [75:21]
Interviewer
So yes, today advocating Zoro Sultana on on the ballot papers up against Farage for 20.
- [75:29]
Slavoj Žižek
I am here. I'm here. Much more ambiguous. Yes, I wish them all the best. But still the way the situation is now, I don't think they can win over Faras. Because I think when really cornered, even the Blair socialists would swallow their pride Blair Labors and say okay, okay, maybe Farage is better, whatever. No, it's a very complex situation.
- [76:03]
Interviewer
And I'm afraid on that rather tragic note that we are coming to the end of this.
- [76:07]
Slavoj Žižek
But there is hope in this very confusion. Don't you agree? When the situation is confused, a true leftist find an opportunity.
- [76:17]
Interviewer
Well, as you were saying. Given. Given that we can't know what the outcome is going to be.
- [76:22]
Slavoj Žižek
This moment of disabilities risk. But despair is good for me. Despair means you are pushed to really do something. There can be all the risks involved. But we have to learn to take these risks, not to take too crazy risk. That's why I said. Remember how I defined myself? Moderately conservative, communist. Like for me maybe the ideal coalition today more than now the Labour Party is. They don't have any spirit, you know, any mobilizing force. What about a coalition between the new if they will make it Corbyn and so on Labor Party. And don't underestimate. I admire more and more some intelligent moderate conservatives. You know, left, even liberal left official like to play this game. Take some measures half radical and then not ready to assume responsibility where they fail. My, the collision I'm dreaming of is new. It's crazy idea, admit it, New labor, but to keep check on reality with intelligent conservatives. You know, from whom I learned this? Marx. Marx said that. That's why Marx praised Balzac as a writer. He said these embittered conservatives, not reactionaries. They are out finished. But these embittered conservatives have something from which every leftist should learn. They see the deadlocks of the existing situation. They are aware there is no easy way out. That's also needed more than ever today.
- [78:24]
Interviewer
Well, thank you, Slavo Zizek.
- [78:26]
Slavoj Žižek
Thank you. And it was pleasant. It was a pleasure. Because I detected immediately how we pass from quantum physics to. To these concrete problems to see this complexity and. And point to you are also aware, like me, like beware of these easy ways out. You know, that's the big lesson today. So without any hypocrisy, with all my political incorrectness, I'm saying that we would be a good political couple. Not by being respectful, but by insulting each other all the time. Including insulting ourselves, of course. The only anti racism, as I already said for me is insult everybody. Yeah, make fun of the Jews of Muslims, whatever you want, but include yourself as the main target. That's the only equality and solidarity today. So I am really grateful. It was one of the few talks where I didn't feel this usual pressure on me, you know. But aren't you going too much? Aren't you? It still did traditional leftist progressism, which brought us where we are. Would you agree with my final thought, which is that Trump is a nightmare? Yes, but Trump is a symptom of the failure of this absolutely democratic welfare state center. So this is the enemy today. We have simply parties which are not really alive, like Democrats in the United States now. They broke down. Did you see the last news? They made a compromise. They stepped back more than Trump to end the shutdown and so on.
- [80:29]
Interviewer
A lack of ideology and a lack of understanding.
- [80:32]
Slavoj Žižek
That is very important. What you are saying, with all my skepticism and so on. That's my paradox. To combine skepticism in the sense of whenever you have a project, think from the very beginning about how it may go wrong, but don't be afraid nonetheless, to make choices. That's what people are afraid today, you know, to make radical choices. So it was my pleasure. I really mean it. I imagine the two of us in power and it would be wonderful insulting each other all the time. But they would have function much better than they do now.
- [81:12]
Interviewer
I feel like if we. We would joint presidents of the Standing Committee, I think the rest of the committee would definitely send us both to the gulag in the end.
- [81:23]
Slavoj Žižek
Ah, but then we would make a secret pact with the secret police. And what if they would find. And we would be like Sparta, you know, Spartans have two kings to prevent. No? And what if we would have been there, the two kings?
- [81:47]
Amari Edwards
So that was Slavoj Iek. I want to sit with this for a moment because I think there's a temptation, especially with Slavoj, to walk away a bit dazed or entertained and mistake that for having understood what he said. And I'm still not entirely sure that I fully do. But I want to try and pull out what I think really matters from what he said, the main claim, his claim about incompleteness, not just as a philosophical flourish, but as a description of where we are today. I think we can all agree that we're living through that. I mean, you just have to take a look at the situation in Gaza, in Iran. We live in a moment where the big organizing myths, progress, liberal democracy and the arc of history bending toward justice have stopped functioning, not just because someone's disproved them, but because reality has stopped coordinating, cooperating. And Zizek's argument isn't that this crisis needs to be solved, rather it's one that we just have to live with. Reality itself can't form a coherent whole. And neither does his vision of history and neither, frankly, does his politics.
- [82:56]
Ed
Now, I've got to be honest here. I find what you just said both liberating and rather uncomfortable. Actually liberating because it means we can stop pretending that there's some master plan that we've simply lost sight of, but uncomfortable because it means every act of political commitment is in some sense a wager made without guarantees. You act and you accept in advance that it will go wrong. And the measure of seriousness is what you do after it goes wrong.
- [83:24]
Amari Edwards
What surprised me most that through his politics I expected provocation, and there was plenty of it. The gulag jokes, the praise for the Singaporean leader Lee Kuan Yew, calling himself a moderately conservative communist. But underneath the performance, there's something genuinely bleak. He doesn't think that the left today has the answers. He doesn't think the right has the answers either. He thinks that the liberal centrism really cannot hold. And his proposal, the strange coalition between socialists and intelligent conservatives, sound absurd until you realize that he's describing something very specific, a politics that takes the deadlock seriously rather than promising to dissolve it. I certainly don't agree with all of it. There's quite a good deal, which I'm sure you can hear me laughing along with. But I think there are real dangers in flirting too closely with authoritarian pragmatism, even ironically. And I think the jump from quantum mechanics to political philosophy, however brilliantly he makes it, still requires further scaffolding, shall we say. But that's why we love Slavoj for the analogies. The collapse of the wave function definitely seems to get at something that is at the heart of today's politics, that we live in uncertain times. But what I want you, the listener, to take from this conversation, and what I think is genuinely valuable about listening to Slavoj, is that this is a time not to give up, not to spend too much time doing philosophy, though you should still be tuning into philosophy for our times every Tuesday. But I think it's a time that we need to take action. We can't and we shouldn't stop. We shouldn't give up. We should not expect democracy to self correct. We can't just wait for the march of history. We need to do something now. And Slavoj, rather than perhaps giving us an answer, is calling us to give it a try. He ended by joking about the two of us as Spartan kings. I suspect in practice we'd probably last about 48 hours before 1 of us was exiled. But there's something in that image. Two people who disagree profoundly forced a Gummen together. I think that it captures exactly the kind of politics he's calling for, a shared willingness to face the mess.
- [85:48]
Ed
Well, Amari, I think you're a Spartan king, so yeah, you're welcome. Anyway, that is it for this episode of Philosophy for Our Times. If you want to read or share the written and edited version of this conversation, you can find it on IAI tv. And Zizek's latest book is Quantum History A New Materialist Philosophy. And you might find it brilliant, might find it maddening, you might find it a bit of both. And it's almost certainly both. But anyway, it's worth your time. Please do like and subscribe, comment and of course share the podcast with friends, families and sworn mortal enemies. Until next week. Take care. Bye bye.
- [86:28]
Slavoj Žižek
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