Zizek interview: How I rethink depression, communism &apocalypse during pandemic
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- Опубліковано 15 чер 2020
- So, yes, I interviewed Slavoj Zizek 齐泽克 (again) in the middle of the quarantine. A very different experience compared to one year ago when I interviewed him for the first time.
The thing that strikes me most, is actually not his thoughts - as a philosopher - on big jargons like communism/capitalism/populism/etc. Instead, it's his daily experience - as a 71 years old man - during a pandemic, when himself is considered as a part of risky group.
He shared with me, in this 47 mins conversation, his feelings, concerns and even depression. How overwhelmed he was when reading daily news, how desperate he was to just get a diabetes doctor appointment during the lockdown. He asked whether have I personally experienced any sort of racism in Europe because of the virus, and he was sad that the pandemic exposed enormous inequality all over the world.
Check it out if you're interested in the human side of "the most dangerous philosopher in the west".
Follow me on Twitter: @qingww and on Weibo: @声几又石
"Are you in Berlin?"
"I am in Amsterdam"
"Oooooh my gott!"
@zxc zxcv the dutch are neoliberal shills, leaving the pandemic to the market, like in the UK or the US
@@pbjyellowstudent and always have been!
This is Slavoj, he is never going to get the camera right. Just go on.
Anyway … his looks are less interesting than what he has to say.
Its ok (enough) to LISTEN
@@KarlDMarx maybe for you ;)
just go on and so on and so on
That how you know is degree is legit
I pray for his health. I want this man to live forever.👌
✊
Zizek lived, Zizek Lives, Zizek Lives Forever
The fact that Dr. Zizek can't get the camera framing right is a metaphor for his extensive and complex body of academic work. You can never get the full picture, you just get parts of it and eventually piece everything together in your mind after a while, and when you thought that you finally got the full picture, you had to piece everything together again. Very deep stuff.
That's a good one! I might have to quote you!
Or that he's just a boomer
You should get in advertising or English criticism. It's all a bunch of fanciful simile and metaphor relation that remains, for now, an unmolested bit of culture and art.
Bravo!
we live in a sandwich bag
when you asked him to lower the camera, and then that face with the tongue sticking out appears cracked me up haha
Isn't he just adorable? I really love him. Distracted genious
You know that slavoj is a real professor when he cant get the computer camera right
It depresses me that Slavoj is depressed. I wish uncle Slavoj wasn't depressed. Really appreciated this interview Qing - have subbed.
It's a bad sign when he's depressed.
Slavoj is probably always depressed. Imagine having vast knowledge and wake up every day to analyze the current geopolitical situation
Boško Pils yeah politics rots the brain, he’d feel better if he didn’t have to analyse this shit
depression is simply a symptom of leftism
@@prevara5162 indeed and leftism is just a symptom of capitalism...
IS MY FACE OKAY NOW?
Good work Qing Wang. In these chaotic times, I really enjoy a good Zizek interview.
Somehow this feels more like Qing Wang talking on skype with her stepfather over the weekend to catch up. It feels so 'domestic' somehow. But do not mistake me, it is nonetheless a good interview.
Do not be afraid. He says this just to provoke you.
Damn.. I'm listening that Atheist album right now
He just needs human connection ❤️
The opening confession is really touching. Thanks for being so sincere and truthful , above all else, Slavoj!
Thank you Qing. I enjoy your interviews with Slavoj
A lovely interview Qing Wang - thank you. Prof Zizek is such a great character - a caricaturist dream!
great questions! you are obviously well read on zizek's philosophy. additionally, i really appreciate the concern you show for his health and wellbeing. great video.
@Phoenix explain the necessity for government intervention in the market place (i.e. bank bailouts, gov't buying stocks, repo manipulations) with this 'darwinism' you speak of. there is nothing natural about the way our economy maintains itself.
Her questions scratch the surface of the depths Zizek could go. He didn't once say Hegel or Lacan and so on and so on...
This is so personal. Thank you, Qing
Qing Wang is a wonderful interviewer! Thank you Qing Wang for setting up the interview! Your questions are wonderful and keep the conversation flowing.
He seems much more relaxed than usual, maybe it’s the crowds he usually speaks to that bring out the tics
What a great interview! Great work Qing Wang! Looking forward to check out other interviews you've done.
12:40 He said "you will laugh" and immediately she did so.
its called anticipation.
she's far too nice to deny his request
Probably the sweetest interview i've seen with slavoj
I love Zizek because he can be so vulnerable.
Zizek's face when he adjusts his monitor, is the same face I make when I'm practicing scales... and this makes me feel good.
Thank you so much for this dose of sanity, I think Zizek is correct about people going out to restaurants or parks out of despair, not knowing if things will ever go back to ‘normal’ or perhaps get worse. I should also take his advice and check the news just twice a day
"Still alive" 😂
Hilarious.
Very good interview skills Qing Wang!
another great interview!
Thanks, You both!
This is nice ♥
13:47 that reminds me too much of Zarathustra
- "Yesterday towards evening there spake unto me MY STILLEST HOUR"
- "When thou hearest this clock strike the hours at midnight, then thinkest thou between one and twelve thereon"
Slavoy Zizek as usual digresses from one point to the other, but, in doing so links the local to the global & seems quite well informed at his age & his underlying medical conditions, including the tics which seem minimal in this interview. He again argues, that society can't rely on market alone, need community participation and state influence in protecting basic services and the most vulnerable. What he says seem based on what is unfolding in reality, while being cautious about predictions, overall, a good positive interview, but, with a sense of caution, worry and hope regarding the future...
Thanks. Good work!
很感谢你的采访。
Beautiful reporter. Very professional.
Beautiful W.🌷🌷
王磬谢谢你！
really appriciated.
Zizek is really depressed. :) Thank You for this interview!
And come to Croatia :D
Like all Slovenes do!
Long live, Sir!
Good interview! Thank you
Thanks a lot for this live, Qing.
Excelente!
What else is wisdom but a fragment of the real taken to the beyond and given to wisdom; what else is wisdom but imbibing the knowledge of wisdom and partaking in it's sanctimony.
Your interviews are super cool Qing.
Thanks qing.. i like when you always ask question about marriage or domestic relation..
great interviewer!
Thank you a lot! Wish you well, from Brazil!
I just woke up....didnt want to, but at least I have this to watch
I just wanna say Qing Wang is one of the best journalists i've ever seen doing an interview.
沙发，先来点个赞
Great interview, good questions asked and zizek's response were satisfying. I kind of wish he didn't have a bombastic tone and not interrupt you. Thank for sharing this video
Thank you professor Zizeck and Quing Wang. Excellent interview. Much needed hearing a nonpolitical none medical point of view.
And I hope you keep well during pandemic. I watch cat cartoon or cat images for anti deppresant watering my plants and listening to your speech. Please take good care.
I fucking loved it! Thank you for this
谢谢制作🙏
Thank you for this interview, great work!
Please more convo's with chinese fam!!! It's all love. Let's help them out. Let's work together to create a beautiful world
Is not "the camera game" a metaphor of the Joker character or does it expressing the importance of ideas rather than visibility?
So interesting points that touched by the Professor.
So on pandemic and so on so on
Hope Zizek and is health problems will be ok !
"This Is The New World. And In The New World You Can Be Whoever The **** You Want." -- From Westworld
8 people around one table....Bosnians living in Slovenia :D
ZIZEK ZABEEEEE!!!
Had the interviewer appreciated in admiration the third element "the painting in the background", she wouldn't have had to repeatedly ask Zizek to focus the camera.
Slavoj, i want to help you make society better.
3:35 they're debating doing the same "vacation voucher" idea in the US - Republican senator proposed giving taxpayers *$4,000 each* in vacation bux (couples would get $8,000 in vacation tax credits, plus $500 per kid).
I don’t know about Zizek’s tendency to redefine communism in very neutered ways. I mean “the state violating market principles?...” The state violates market principles on a daily basis even in neoliberalism. Sometimes protectionist policies are more profitable than unregulated free-trade ones; that’s a violation of market principles. Sometimes subsidies & bailouts are more profitable than allowing your corporation to fail without them. That’s a violation of market principles. And if he meant “violating market principles *on behalf of/in the interests of workers*,” that essentially describes all social democracy, including what meager social democratic programs we have even in the neoliberal US. Providing social security, public housing, Medicare- all of this is in violation of market principles. Socialism & communism are best understood in materialist terms, as modes of production (& in the case of communism, distribution) & sets of social/material relations... I feel that, perhaps as a result of untempered Hegelianism, perhaps for other reasons, Zizek here is leaning too far away from any rigorous, grounded understanding of these concepts/goals & is simply treating communism as some kind of attitude- pretty much the same way right-wingers do when they say socialism just means “the government doing things.” I don’t know why Zizek is so insistent on clinging to the term “communism” when that isn’t really what he’s describing- if he believes that some kind of New Deal social democracy which will provide for people’s basic needs within more or less the current set of social relations is what we need, at least in the short-term, then that’s fine; he should just say that... But I think it muddies the water & clouds the long-term direction & horizon of the left to redefine communism- what is supposed to be the rational end-point of socio-economic development- to just be something so ambiguous & non-revolutionary. It reminds me of those who conceptualize socialism not in clear, materialist terms- as the abolition of the class divide between worker & capitalist- but as some wishy-washy transitionary phase where the government does things purportedly on behalf of the working class... But in Zizek’s case, I have to wonder if it’s just because of the propensity he has always shown towards saying things in the most controversial way we can, to get a rise out of people... That’s the only really coherent reason I can come up with for why someone as intelligent as him would be rebranding what amounts to the same kind of basic social democracy that Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn have prompted as not only being *socialism,* but being *communism.* Even if in that system the state was conscripting people (as it did in the so-called “war communism” of the early USSR), nothing about that would actually fundamentally alter the social relations at the heart of the economic or political system... It would still just be a ruling class who owns/controls the economy providing some minimum standard of living/guarantee of survival to the working class.
I have insomnia exactly why Emil Cioran has insomnia and, I am loosing my intelligence everyday I do not sleep well. This has been going on for about a year. It’s funny how Slavoj said that he likes to go to sleep because he gets to stop existing whereas I and Emil Cioran do not like to sleep because we stop existing. He is more of a humble less egocentric individual like me and Cioran . But, insomnia I believe makes this egocentric attitude even worse because insomnia completely destroys your life horribly for many different reasons. I got really interested in politics as I have insomnia so, it sucks how I am struggling to grasp on to abstract concepts because of my sleep deprived brain. It frustrates me so much how I wasted my potential doing nothing except playing guitar during the period of my life that I slept well; and, I’m obsessed with watching Slavoj videos and, I hope that if I sleep good again I will be back to my normal state and maybe even smarter since I am now way more knowledgeable but, just more stupid because of the insomnia. I understood your comment fairly well and, this is a good point. But I also do not understand why Slavoj cannot try to implement these ideas himself into government somehow if he isn’t already. Sorry for my random comment but I hope it interests you. I’m not even studying to be a philosopher I’m studying to be an environmental scientist.
@Matthew Fodell : I agree with what you said about the conceptual muddling the water by Zizek... I guess the word communism has historical, cultural and identity-like connotations with him that he cannot avoid. He used to go further to support Robespierre's radical reflexes by writing prefaces for Virtue and Terror for instance... I guess there is an interesting oscillatory "dialectic" of liberalism and communism in Zizek's mind, and it's a problematic that should already be risen in numerous interviews and talks given by him. But most people prefer to join them to "laugh" at his jokes! Even if we lose hope about the audiences, what about the moderators or academics though? Does the whole situation not reflect the current society's confusion and "madness", anyway?
@@turtlegaming8458
Zizek mentioned his changed sleeping/wakening perceptions small symptoms/signs of him becoming slightly depressed.
Wuppie62 well, I hope you understood my comment because I am drunk off insomnia so, it’s not coherent or grammatically correct. But, Slavoj said he likes to sleep because he gets too disappear which could mean that he’s depressed with life or himself. On the other hand, I can’t sleep because I hate disappearing so, what does that make me? I believe I’m more in love with myself because I hate the thought of going unconscious. I do not like it which is why I hate sleeping. I love existing and being conscious too much whereas Slavoj is more humble. There is a Romanian philosopher named Emil Cioran who talks about insomnia and, I found him after searching up my reasons for having insomnia and, I was surprised a famous intellectual had insomnia for the exact same reasons as me but, I realized there had to be one since I considered myself smart. Emil Cioran elaborated and created a formula for why he has insomnia; he has insomnia for the same reasons as I had insomnia but, he just had more time and brain power to accurately describe his reasons better than I ever could.This confirmed that my perceptions and ideas about sleep weren’t that stupid or crazy since a famous intellectual had it too; and, it made me feel better about myself and also made me question my intellect. But, sleep deprivation completely turned me into an idiot. I’m now an academic moron who doesn’t even have common sense. It’s very sad how much I’ve degraded. I used to make music and now my music is horrible. I’m jealous of so many people including slavoj for being able to sleep because he has his life put together in this way and reads academic work and is able to do it because he sleeps. Sleep deprivation is horrible. It’s all because of obsession and refusal to stop being conscious of yourself . I sound like such a crazy idiot lol but, it’s true. Hopefully if I sleep well again I can look back on these crazy times and reflect on them but, I think I’m permanently an idiot. I think I was also always an idiot too. I have mental problems 😂. I hate that I have to use fancy words and sound smart but, I can’t help it.
@@turtlegaming8458 This is a Buddhist problem, then. You can't sleep because you're hung-up on dharmas, (your self-consciousness, experience of living, etc) which renders you incapable of fully engaging with said dharmas (in fact, with life at large) The only solution is nirvana, that is, letting go of the hung-up, letting go of the fixation, the obsession with these dharmas, so that you can fully engage with them in a free-spirited way again.
think of it like this, if you keep chewing the same piece of food in your mouth because it tastes so good, you will never be able to swallow it and then continue eating your plate. You need to let go of the fixation with that good taste so that you can swallow and continue eating, and finally digest it all.
...
As we can see clearly: Zizek isn´t a digital native...! Some problems with the Camera-position (maybe on the lap).
Laptop? The top for the lap? The gadget for the womb? Is Zizek right?
anyone know what painting is hanging behind slavoj?
I know - it's an ugly painting
This interview should be 3 hour larger. Let de old depressed talk girl
Thank you very much for this interview Qing Wang. I am just wondering, are Zizek's works well-known in China?
I bet it's all banned sadly
Quiet
@@matejbb Qing Wang did this interview for a Chinese media though...
Tom MacMillan He has lectured at Tsinghua University in Beijing and at other places I believe. I remember when I lived in Beijing seeing translations of his books in bookshops. But this was a while back.
It is not banned yet the Chinese leftists do not like him
Slovenia sounds very similar to Mexico. Although Mexico has no money to reactivate turism.
Beauty and the Beast
😂
I was called paranoid also. I was told to take off my mask in my doctor's office because they told me that the nurse has to see my face so that she will not give the wrong medicine to me, and she told me that I have to keep my mask off, that it was not enough for her to seem me for a few minutes only. Even though this area had no ventilation and the guy in line in from of me had a coughing fit. The nurses had no masks and kept making jokes about me, but then to make things worse they said I also have to remove my hat! All winter I was allowed to wear a hat but now that there's a PANDEMIC, I have to basically remove all protection BECAUSE there's a pandemic, and because the nurses wanted to torment me because I was afraid of it.
37:10 yes but they also expected others to descend into barbarism-just like the gas panics, toilet paper panics. The madness was triggered by the thoughts of what the “other” might do..
i burst out laughing when he first lowered his camera
hahah judging by the look of his hair, Zizek seems to have woke up from bed 5 minutes before the interview.
I think his styling example was Einstein.
Although I will add that the US society has been restructured but not for the better. The two parties hate each other even more, and people are even more individualistic. So that dream I have of communal culture in the US seems farther away then ever.
It's too late to do anything about mass-surveillance and we don't have to worry because Zizek isn't "afraid of this kind of control". This crisis has shown that what we actually need are individuals that can be trusted to take the right precautions without force and mass-surveillance. I think people need to grow an imagination: according to which side they are on, people think markets (with lots of state intervention) are the solution or else a continued bloating of the state. Markets are not in themselves destructive and evil. It is the fact that corporations operate under perverse incentives and have no responsibility for the true costs of their business that is the problem (ie privatised profits and socialised costs). We need to make the people with the money responsible for cleaning up their own mess. Making the market system work in this way is actually how we socialise our economies. UBI would only leave the market as it is while separating even more people from the workings of the economy.
That hair
really good video
but I feel like Zizek has been falling off recently a little bit
@@benmuller5618 he is all about politics right now. Good old hegel is taking a backseat
She thinkin "Oh my god wish I never asked" 😁
Our way of life was the cause of this crisis and since the system is falling, people are suffering. Therefore they want to return to their way of living. We are doomed.
Zizek: "Is my face ok now ? " Chineese lady: "Ammmm...."
Cheer him up, will you?
Check out the Global Dimming Paradox. Dim Mak Punch.
So does he not believe in the socialization of private property? In true Zizek fashion, his position is confusing to me. He seems to argue for some kind of social democracy (?
haah Zizek`s camera drives me dizzy
yo
Slavoj, does the news depress you honey?
Zizek is the weird uncle of Philosophy.
be carefull in amsterdam.....;)
I wish that Zizek would stop saying communism and use a better word to describe what he's saying.
I wish Slavoj Zizek would watch Joe Rogan with Bret Weinstein.
He did say he enjoys sleep
Zizek isn’t even advocating for communism anymore. #cancelled
Does he consider Xi Jinping to be the savior of the global 99 percent?
he's far below his usual wit on this matter.
I'm sure his points are insightful but my mind starts blocking his arguments as soon as I start listening to "schshhsh" instead of words.
西方当代最后几个了。。。
Zizek should open his third eye, he'd go through this times differently, bit easier when you're not plugged in 3d matrix strictly and see things from different perspective.
He'd rather get a third testicle.
Oh yes, your incense that was produced by 7 years olds in Bangladesh for 5 cents an hour is certainly the highest form of enlightenment one can reach amid a pandemic. Keep doing your little yoga exercises and drinking your matcha tea as if consumption of Eastern spirituality and health food products are key to reaching nirvana . 😂
No one stands in Zizeks way if he wants to volunteer to work the fields.
Simple life inside tightly connected family communities, bounded by necessity and traditions is called church, not communism.
One thing generally help against depression, communism and apocalypse, go out and stay fit as much as you can, don't worry so much about others and don't get over stocked with toilet paper.