Tag Archives: Slavoj Žižek

Watch the controversial ceremony carefully again and look out for its emancipatory meaning COMMENT | SLAVOJ ZIZEK | Two big cultural events this summer, the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics and the release of Deadpool & Wolverine, both offer dazzling spectacles saturated by irony. But that is about all …

Pandemics, wars, and widespread ecological breakdown, and worse force us to ask that big question COMMENT | SLAVOJ ZIZEK | I fought for years with and for Julian Assange. But upon hearing that he has regained his freedom, my first thought was that he is returning to a world that looks – …

It is the psychological and cultural trait that explains the identification of people with the Palestinians COMMENT | SLAVOJ ZIZEK | These are crazy times. Biblical disturbances in nature, such as the repeated torrential rain in Dubai or the mass fish die-off in Vietnam’s overheated reservoir, seem to mirror our overheated …

Netanyahu rejects the idea of a Palestinian state and promises that Israel would control the entire region it occupies COMMENT | SLAVOJ ZIZEK | It is only April, but we already have a good candidate for photo of the year. On April 12, German police shut down a Palestine Congress that …

How poets can bring “normal” people to the point where they would enjoy sadistic spectacles COMMENT | SLAVOJ ZIZEK | When the basic pact that holds society together is crumbling, which appears to be happening worldwide, wild rumours and conspiracy theories proliferate. Even, or especially, when the message is obviously nonsensical, …

Both need his principled-pragmatism to combine fidelity to the goal with a concrete analysis of the situation COMMENT | SLAVOJ ZIZEK | It is now a century since Vladimir Lenin’s death, and more than three decades since his Bolshevik project collapsed. But while much of his political life was highly problematic …

The choice isn’t between Hamas and Israeli hardliners because these are two sides of the same coin COMMENT | SLAVOJ ZIZEK | The barbarism that Hamas has unleashed on Israel should be condemned unconditionally, with no “ifs” or “buts.” The massacres, rapes, and abductions of civilians from villages, kibbutzim, and a …

To escape politics of denial, we cannot just cling to multi-party democracy but build social consensus COMMENT | SLAVOJ ZIZEK | The wife of a drunkard is in bed with her lover when her husband unexpectedly stumbles in and climbs under the sheets. “Darling, I’m so drunk that I see six …

The biggest threat to Western democracies is the nihilism and self-indulgence in their politics COMMENT | SLAVOJ ZIZEK | Earlier this month, CNN reported that a British court has denied Wikileaks founder Julian Assange “permission to appeal an order to extradite him to the United States, where he faces criminal charges …

Why does increasing permissiveness entail increasing impotence and fragility or pleasure via pain? COMMENT | SLAVOJ ZIZEK | In a recent viral video, the Dalai Lama can be seen asking a seven-year-old boy, at a widely attended public ceremony, to give him a hug and then, “Suck my tongue.” The immediate …