Blade Runner 2049: A View of Post-Human Capitalism

Blade Runner 2049: A View of Post-Human Capitalism

How are capitalism and the prospect of post-humanity related? Usually it is posited that capitalism is (more) historical, and our humanity, inclusive of sexual difference, more basic, even ahistorical. However, what we are witnessing today is nothing less than an attempt to integrate the passage to post-humanity into capitalism. This is what the efforts of… Continue reading Blade Runner 2049: A View of Post-Human Capitalism

La La Land: A Leninist Reading

La La Land: A Leninist Reading

Among the PC reproaches to Damien Chazelle’s La La Land, the one that stands out for its sheer stupidity was that there are no gay couples in the film which takes place in LA, a city with a strong gay population… How come those PC Leftists who complain about the sub-representation of sexual and ethnic… Continue reading La La Land: A Leninist Reading

The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (transcript/subtitles)

The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (2012)

They Live (1988) I’ll give you a choice: either put on these glasses or start eating that trashcan. I already am eating from the trashcan all the time. The name of this trashcan is ideology. The material force of ideology makes me not see what I am effectively eating. It’s not only our reality which… Continue reading The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (transcript/subtitles)

Slavoj Žižek on His Favourite Plays, Interview with Liza Thompson

Slavoj Žižek on His Favourite Plays, Interview with Liza Thompson

Can you tell us a little bit about why you’ve chosen each of these plays? At first, the five plays look like a jumbled heap lacking any common feature—what could they have in common? The bitter end of the old Oedipus who cannot reconcile himself with his fate; Richard II’s descent into madness after he… Continue reading Slavoj Žižek on His Favourite Plays, Interview with Liza Thompson

Slavoj Žižek on Trump and the Republican Party

[This is an extract from Slavoj Žižek’s appearance at Left Forum on May 22nd 2016. The primary topic is Trump and the Republican Party, but he digresses among others to WikiLeaks, normalisation of torture and rape, and of course toilets. Transcript below the video.] …today. I’m sorry. I speak too long, I will start to, try… Continue reading Slavoj Žižek on Trump and the Republican Party

The Fright of Real Tears (Introduction)

The Fright of Real Tears: Krzystof Kieslowski between Theory and Post-Theory

The Strange Case of the Missing Lacanians If this book had been published twenty-five years ago, in the heyday of ‘structuralist Marxism’, its subtitle, undoubtedly, would have been ‘On Class Struggle in Cinema’. Let me begin by stating the obvious, with what in France they call une vérité de la Police’. to put it in… Continue reading The Fright of Real Tears (Introduction)

The Fright of Real Tears (Preface)

The Fright of Real Tears: Krzystof Kieslowski between Theory and Post-Theory

This book out of a series of lectures that Slavoj Zizek delivered at London’s National Film Theatre in the summer of 1998. My invitation to give these lectures had a very precise purpose. I wanted Slavoj to address the weaknesses and insularity of film studies as they had developed in the university sector over the… Continue reading The Fright of Real Tears (Preface)

The Matrix, or, the two sides of perversion

[Delivered at the Inside the Matrix: International Symposium at the Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, on October 28th 1999.] When I saw The Matrix at a local theatre in Slovenia, I had the unique opportunity of sitting close to the ideal spectator of the film – namely, to an idiot. A man in the late 20ies… Continue reading The Matrix, or, the two sides of perversion

I watch therefore I am: seven movies that teach us key philosophy lessons

I watch therefore I am: seven movies that teach us key philosophy lessons

Is the quest for good a road to evil? Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter … and Spring Kim Ki-duk’s [amazon asin=B00HMKA9JS&text=Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter … and Spring] begins with a wise Buddhist monk and a small, innocent boy, his pupil. A few years later, a young woman arrives to be healed, and chaos is unleashed: the woman and… Continue reading I watch therefore I am: seven movies that teach us key philosophy lessons

Slavoj Žižek: ‘Most of the idiots I know are academics’

Slavoj Žižek is brimming with thought. Each idea sprays out of the controversial Slovenian philosopher and cultural theorist in a jet of words. He is like a water balloon, perforated in so many areas that its content gushes out in all directions. The result is that, as an interviewer, trying to give direction to the… Continue reading Slavoj Žižek: ‘Most of the idiots I know are academics’