Slavoj Žižek

Contemporary philosopher and leftist.

See also:

  • Masterclass: Transcendental Subjectivity, Sexual Difference, Brain Sciences (part 1, part 2)

  • A Pervert’s Guide to Ideology

    A film where Slavoj Žižek uses other films to analyze ideology. Examples from movies include The Birds, Jaws, Psycho, Taxi, and other classics.

  • Möbius Strip

    A loop with a twist in it that is non-orientable. If you were to travel from a starting point on the strip and moved the full length of the strip you would end up moving along both sides without crossing an edge.

  • Reactionary Politics Is a Dead End

    Political views based on a reaction to something else (e.g. wearing masks, anti-science, a decision) is a dead end because it says nothing about what you want from this world. The ideology is entirely dependent on the other thing to react to. In the absence of the reaction there is no substance.

  • Klein Bottle

    A non-orientable surface, a theoretical shape that doesn’t actually exist in 3D space.

  • Trump Paradox

    The media tends to focus on the amount of lying that President Trump does–you can often find headlines that quantify it to some large number. The Trump paradox is not that he lies frequently (to some extent all politicians will lie), but that he says the truth about things that are obviously bad or embarrassing for him. This ‘saying the quiet part out loud’ and immunity to repercussions is the real horror.

  • Determinate Negation

    From Hegel’s Dialectics, an object that is what it is not. Slavoj Žižek describes the concept in a joke, a person goes to a coffee stand and asks for coffee without milk. The barista says, “Sorry, we only have coffee without cream”. In reality, both are the same coffee, but they are also different because of what they are lacking (coffee, cream).

  • COVID-19 Is a Vehicle of Fantasmic Projection

    The virus and pandemic of COVID-19 serves as a container for people to project their own fears, beliefs, and ascribed meaning. For example, some take COVID-19 as a sign from Mother Nature that we are overstepping and it is some sort of balancing. These are highly irrational interpretations—viruses are by definition not a living thing—and so it is more of a vehicle for one’s ideology.

  • Nomenklatura

    The Soviet Ruling class, members of the communist party that control everything. Slavoj Žižek re-purposes this term to describe the members of a ruling political party and or the elite.