A Conversation with Slavoj Zizek
FM staff writer Tara Raghuveer ’14 and contributing writer Bradley G. Bolman ’15 discuss the Occupy movement, pop culture, and modern academia with Slavoj Zizek.
When Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek visited Harvard for a lecture on the ontology of sexual difference last October, FM staff writer Tara Raghuveer ’14 and contributing writer Bradley G. Bolman ’15 sat down to discuss the Occupy movement, pop culture, and modern academia.
Fifteen Minutes: What is the role of academia at an institution like Harvard in the current global crisis?
Slavoj Žižek: What is crucial and also I think—especially today, when we have some kind of re-emergence of at least some kind of practical spirit, protest, and so on—one of the dangers I see amongst some radical academia circles is this mistrust in theory, you know, saying, “Who needs fat books on Hegel and logic? My god, they have to act!”
No, I think quite on the contrary. More than ever, today it’s crucial to emphasize that on the one hand, yes, every empirical example undermines theory. There are no full examples. But, point two, this does not mean that we should turn the examples against theory. At the same time, there is no exception. There are no examples outside theories. Every example of a theory is an indication of the inner split dynamics of the theory itself, and here dialectics begins, and so on....
Don’t fall into the trap of feeling guilty, especially if you have the luck of studying in such a rich place. All this bullshit like, “Somalian children are starving....” No! Somalian children are not starving because you have a good time here. There are others who are much more guilty. Rather, use the opportunity. Society will need more and more intellectual work. It’s this topic of intellectuals being privileged—this is typical petty-bourgeois manipulation to make you feel guilty. You know who told me the best story? The British Marxist, Terry Eagleton. He told me that 20 or 30 years ago he saw a big British Marxist figure, Eric Hobsbawm, the historian, giving a talk to ordinary workers in a factory. Hobsbawm wanted to appear popular, not elitist, so he started by saying to the workers, “Listen, I’m not here to teach you. I am here to exchange experiences. I will probably learn more from you than you will from me.” Then he got the answer of a lifetime. One ordinary worker interrupted him and said, “Fuck off! You are privileged to study, to know. You are here to teach us! Yes, we should learn from you! Don’t give us this bullshit, ‘We all know the same.’ You are elite in the sense that you were privileged to learn and to know a lot. So of course we should learn from you. Don’t play this false egalitarianism.”
Again, I think there is a certain strategy today even more, and I speak so bitterly about it because in Europe they are approaching it. I think Europe is approaching some kind of intellectual suicide in the sense that higher education is becoming more and more streamlined. They are talking the same way communists were talking 40 years ago when they wanted to crush intellectual life. They claimed that intellectuals are too abstract in their ivory towers; they are not dealing with real problems; we need education so that it will help real people—real societies’ problems. And then, again, in a debate I had in France, some high politician made it clear what he thinks and he said...in that time in France there were those demonstrations in Paris, the car burnings. He said, “Look, cars are burning in the suburbs of Paris: We don’t need your abstract Marxist theories. We need psychologists to tell us how to control the mob. We need urban planners to tell us how to organize the suburbs to make demonstrations difficult.”
But this is a job for experts, and the whole point of being intellectual today is to be more than an expert. Experts are doing what? They are solving problems formulated by others. You know, if a politician comes to you, “Fuck it! Cars are burning! Tell me what’s the psychological mechanism, how do we dominate it?” No, an intellectual asks a totally different question: “What are the roots? Is the system guilty?” An intellectual, before answering a question, changes the question. He starts with, “But is this the right way to formulate the question?”
FM: You spoke at Occupy Wall Street a few months ago. What is your personal involvement with the Occupy Wall Street movement, and what do you think the protests signify?
SZ: None. My personal involvement was some guy who was connected with it, and he told me, “Would you go there, come there?” And I said, “Okay. Why not?” Then the same guy told me,“Be careful, because microphones are prohibited, you know, it’s this echoing, repeating.” So my friend told me, frankly, to be demagogic: “Just try to be as much as possible effective, short, slow,” and so on, and that was it. I didn’t even drop my work.
What does [Occupy] mean? Then they tell you, “Oh, Wall Street should work for the Main Street, not the opposite,” but the problem is not this. The problem is that the system stated that there is no Main Street without Wall Street. That is to say that banking and credits are absolutely crucial for the system to function today. That is why I understand Obama when—two years ago you know when the first, I think it was, $750 billion and a bit more—it was simply blackmail and it was not possible to say no because that’s how the system functions. If Wall Street were to break down, everything would break. We should think more radically. So again, the formula “Give money to Main Street and not to Wall Street” is ruined. That is to say, all these honest, hardworking people who do their jobs cannot find work now. Think how to change that. Think how to change [the] mechanisms of that. We are no longer dealing with short-term crises like in 2008.
FM: Why do you believe that the Right and the Left in America have failed to provide answers to the problems of inequality and the crises they predict?
