[Extract. Appeared in New Left Review I/225, September-October 1997] Those who still remember the good old days of Socialist Realism, are well aware of the key role played by the notion of the ‘typical’: truly progressive literature should depict ‘typical heroes Read more…
Geert Lovink: Let’s speak about the role of intellectuals. Before 1989, there was a strange relationship among intellectuals and those in power in Eastern Europe. Both bureaucrats and dissidents had some sort of relationship with politics. Even now, this is Read more…
I would like to begin with an almost narcissistic reflection. Why do I resort so often to examples from popular culture? The simple answer is in order to avoid a kind of jargon, and to achieve the greatest possible clarity, Read more…
Geert Lovink: You have been to Japan. What’s your opinion on the technological culture in this country? Slavoj Zizek: First I must say that I don’t have my own positive theory about Japan. What I do have, as every Western Read more…
For many long years in left-wing (and not only left-wing) mythology the State appeared as the original source of Evil, as a living dead sponging off the body of the community. The repressive, particularly ideological machinery of the State was Read more…
[Extract. Appeared in New Left Review I/202, November-December 1993] Why speak about courtly love (amour courtois) today, in the age of permissiveness, when sexual encounter is often nothing more than a ‘quickie’ in some dark corner of an office? The impression Read more…
Jacques Lacan is responsible for saying, “there is no sexual relation.” This should not make lovers too upset, for in fact, Love is what we have to make up for the Relation that is missing. Eros would be the potential Read more…
The world today is more and more marked by the frontier separating its insiders from its outsiders, between the “developed” – those to whom human rights, social security and the like apply – and the others, the excluded. The main Read more…
Zizek: Yes, but my point is that prohibition is masked as this kind of universal, objective, knowledge statement. This is for me today’s Spinozist world, especially in the United States. For example, every can, every package, is full of information. Read more…
[Extract. Appeared in New Left Review I/183, September-October 1990] Why is the West so fascinated by the recent events in Eastern Europe? The answer seems obvious: what fascinates the Western gaze is the re-invention of democracy.It is as if democracy, Read more…
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