and still am today. He taught me a lot about Hegel, Lacan and a possible reinterpretation of dialectical materialism and that there is a leftist way of thinking beyond pan-European lifestyle posturing and real-life social democrats. What really shook me was his first „Pandemic“ book. Not because of the exact content and his conclusions, but because of the betrayal of his own cause. One of Žižek’s more radical theses was that the left always fails when a „revolutionary situation“ arises. When there is a moment when the cynical, anti-rationalist society of exploitation collapses and makes room for transformation. The global pandemic was such a situation, and what does Žižek do? A month after it reached the Western world?
He writes a book saying that we have no choice now, our oligarchic society based on exploitation is the only thing that can save us now. Historical materialism? Self-empowerment? Never heard of it all? I found this very disappointing. You can have that position, yes, maybe it’s true. But just giving away what you stand for? Just like that? Without discussion in the face of danger? I don’t know, it’s hard to understand.
Here now is the first interview with him that I’ve seen in a long time. And it doesn’t make it better. Is he now Platoinst? The world as an idea? Don’t you need a stupid communism attitude, if you reject the basic idea anyway? At the end, he rightly calls himself a „moderate conservative“ and what can one say, one of the cleverer sentences in this interview…
