Mariborchan

in a “friendly” environement,Zizek is realy at his best!

@ Mariborchan
contextual information as you required:
This colloque was hold in Paris (university Paris VIII) on january 22-23, 2010 in tribute to Daniel Bensaid who died on January the 12.
Zizek appears in the fourth section called “communist without communism” next to Michel Surya,Gaspar Tamas , Jacques Ranciere, Pierre Dardot, Samuel Johsua.(moderator: Stathis Kouvélakis)
please feel free to mail me if you need anything else

translation of 1/4

Intervention of slavoj zizek :
(to his neighbour and friend G.Tamas ): I am proud to be next to you because
Your style also has always been properly communist. Many can write in a high quality but still they do it with a absolute contempt.
Let me add my tribute a tribute to Daniel Bensaid who should have been with us today. Last time we talked together, we were arguing on 2 name,you might feel strange: Jeanne of Arc and Blaise Pascal. As far as I know today in France ,only Lepen (leader of the far right),puts the name of Jeanne of Arc on his flag. Well we must not be ashamed to re appropriate this big movement, proto-communist conducted by a severe ascetic woman. Woman cruelty must not be under estimated. For example, it is common to oppose the terrible cruel Dzejinski (who created the KGB) to Rosa Luxembourg. But Dzejinski who came from Poland, collaborated in his youth with Rosa Luxembourg, and we have found letters in which he state that he was scared of this woman, politically to hard and tough. So the first lesson: don’t leave the ground to others, we must not be a afraid to appropriate not only Jeanne of arc, but many other things who can first appear as totalitarian because of our conditionment (we are all like Pavlov’s dogs): discipline and sacrifice. Today, if you use these words, you are called, not a fascist, but a proto-fascist. Which means strictly nothing; there is no theory behind this word.
Second lesson: Pascal. This is really important for me, because Pascal was the first to think on how to stay an authentic Christian in front of modernity (science and mathematics) .He analysed very precisely the consequences of modernity. There was scepticism in him towards what was in fashions, that can be usefull to us.
Now to answer the theme of this colloque, my position is rather traditional. I think we must avoid this vulgar evolutionist question “what does Marx mean today?” Instead we must stay othodox and continue to analyse our times through the gaze of marx, with the same recession that Pascal kept for his.
What does this mean? first: we must go on and on criticizing ideology. I will now ,as a good Christian atheist , quote saint Paul, maybe the first good critic of ideologie:
“we don’t have to fight against flesh and blood but against the princes,the power,and its world of darkness”
translated in our modern language this means we don’t have to fight against humans but against the ideological force in the darkness of global capitalism .
I you need a example of how ideology works, look how each day, television speaks about Haiti. On one side you hear celebration of humanitarian help and solidarity, on the other, when Haitian are not described as poor victims, then they are described as thieves ! this is disgusting! Someone went in a deserted market and took some food without paying,after starving for five days, how terrible! This is obscene ideology, this is racisme .were all the history of Haiti disappear.

(beginning is same as 1/4; 2/4 starts at 4:44)
Take the most radical American democrat: Thomas Jefferson, who wrote this very beautiful sentence “the tree of liberty must be watered from time to time”. well, he also characterized Toussaint Louverture as a cannibal. Not to mention another social fact: earthquake is nowadays a social fact, not only in the sense that in rich and better organized countries the consequences will be less catastrophic, but also, because we enter a time in which earthquake can be itself a social fact. A dissident friend from China told me that most of Chinese geologist agree that the earthquake who happened two years ago in Sichuan could result from some forage made in the earth under these big artificial lakes. So critic of ideology is necessary today to avoid all sorts of traps. What does this mean ? I hope we will still be friend if I choose a not very popular example, because everybody is celebrating him today: Hugo Chavez .Why are we celebrating him ? I think he is the worst of European racism. As a typical leftist intellectual, as we are here also, he loves a authentic revolution, but not to close from him. It can be Cuba or Vietnam. the thing is, we must go on doing academic things here while we dream of a revolution in which authentic things happen but very far away.
I am afraid that with Chavez, it will become more and more a etatist populism,nothing to do with Morales who, I believe, is totally different. Secondly, I don’t like the way Chavez propose as a target the American empire. Of course I am not a defender of the American empire, but what about China ? It is certain now that China is a neo colonial power.
If we want to a communist today we must take seriously the thesis that we are entering a multicentrist universe. You can’t understand anything in what is happening in Congo if you don’t take notice of the imperial competition between US and China.

@isi

Thanks a lot for the translation.really appreciate it.

translation 3/4
The real ideological dream is this idea of capitalism without its destructive effect. As an European I am categorically against that because here, in Europe, we know very well, in the 20th century a big alternate project of modernity called: fascism. This is it precisely the idea, to get modernity without paying the price of class struggle and so and so….This is why, although Chavez links to Marxism and anti-capitalism, I think he dreams of a alternative modernity.
Now lets pass to the second theme “communism without history” here I want to do a paradoxal thing, I want to defend the two positions which have been severely criticized here today. First of all: “the eternal idea of communism». Well I support this idea in its entire platonic connotation. It’s not even an idea, it’s a real fact, a fact of practical reason as would have said Kant. Look at history, first revolt of slaves in the oriental empire, millenary’s revolt of farmers, Haiti, Jacobin… why am I pro-Jacobin ?, well you can say what you want against Robespierre but the Jacobin revolutionary France was the first sate to totally recognize the Haiti revolution. As you know, after, with Napoleon, it changes completely. Napoleon was so scared about the danger of this revolt of slaves, that for him, it was not enough to re-colonize them. Rather he wanted to kill them all and import new slaves.
So there is nothing naïve here: from time to time we get this explosion of the idea of communism. There is a trans-historical constancy not far from the Freudian coept of compulsive repetition. The crucial problem is: is it enough? Is the final horizon of our fight this idea of communism in the way of Becket. I refer to his nice sentence where he claims “you must act, do the gesture, fail, and act again in a way that next time you will fail better”.
NO here, I am optimist inside my pessimism, keeping close and orthodox to Marx, I believe our time is very peculiar because today, its capitalism itself who activate this dialectic of destruction, as a executor of the communist will.
We have here a real alternative. Shall we follow the path of Negri and Deleuze, something we could call “accelarationism” as if,( as Rancière noted), the post-modern development was already communist, and instead of fighting, it we should lead it to his extreme.
Is it this or what? I do not have a great answer, but I believe ,to say it in religious terms, that we approaching an apocalyptic period. Don’t think I fancy stupidities like the movie “2012”,well not 2012, but 2020 or 2030 …(laugh).
Lets speak about ecology… (someone shows him his watch) oh! this is just a technical error (laugh). Seriously, look how fast money have been found to stop the financial crisis, in comparison to the ecological crisis.(failure of Copenhagen) it is clear that capitalism cant solve the ecological problem. biogenetics, and all the new perspective coming, intellectual property ,new walls, homo saccer and so on…in front of all these we must occupy what Marx called, the proletarian position.
The proletarian position, to say it in Hegelian terms, is for me subjectivity deprived of its substance. the substance is all we have been speaking of today: the commons being more and more private. I appreciate very much the book of Catherine Malabou “les nouveaux blesses” (the new injured).she describes what she calls a post traumatic subject alike a “psychic proletarian” a subject in which the symbolic substance is destructed.
We need theory, this is crucial because some problems become visible only through theory.
The second point: I agree with what has been said here about the “Shared capacity”. but still I believe we cant escape a form of hierarchy. I was told this anecdote about (Osborn ?) the great historian. 3o years ago he visited a factory, and to be in fashion he said to the workers “I don’t know more than you do, I am here to share with you, I want to learn from you”. then a ordinary worker interrupted him and said” this is false! Are you kidding us ? you are paid to know more than us and to tell us what to do”.(applause).
When a scientific says to you “we are all equal” this is the most refined form of absolute arrogance.

Translation 4/4
We need a theory…(to the moderator:…ok give me 5 minutes more)…not so a kind of scientific theory (to the moderator: yes I hurry up- you should change your watch by the way). My leftist friends think they know were they are: global capitalism, blabla bla, the only problem would be how to mobilise people. No, I think they don’t know where they are, what kind of society we live in today? many words try to define it: risk society, postmodernism, post industrial, computers etc…those are only journalistic terms but they don’t explain exactly where we are (to moderator: yes yes, faster, of course).
Critic of ideology: media today keeps “bombing” us with big battles like fundamentalism versus liberalism. The first thing to do is to reject the terms of this struggle. It’s a false debate. Even if we accept (I don’t) the acceptation of “fundamentalism” as a islamo-fascism, we must keep in mind what Walter Benjamin said : “behind each fascism there is an aborted revolution”. This mean that in this dual fight, there is a third element missing. To say it in another way, liberalism and fundamentalism is a vicious circle, liberalism produce fundamentalism. Look how Afghanistan thirty years ago was a advanced and open country, it’s only once it has been caught in the net of global capitalism that fundamentalism emerged. I want to conclude with what is here for you the big debate: “burqua”. In Slovene language the same word ‘burqua” means a brutal joke. I am not referring of course to the true wisdom of Slovenian language, no I would be more sceptical on this side, but I think Plato was right when he wanted to chase poet out of the city. From my post-Yugoslav experience I can guaranty you, I have checked myself (Rwanda,etc.. ) behind each ethnic expurgation there is a poet!
The fact is that “burqua” hiding the whole face except a little hole for the eyes, generates here much anxiety. You know Alphonse Allais, he proposed this new version of Salome ‘s dance, so when she is naked, Erode would shout:” no no she must also take her skin off”.
The truth is here, not because the face is covered by the burqua; I am here anti-Levinas. Human face is an ideological mask, a materialised lie…this is why in psychoanalysis were the contact is really intimate, you don’t see the face. its crucial not to be face to face. So if we have the burqua in horror it is because it reveals you the secret behind the face. You can use this example to explain how racism works. So we must not fight the struggles of our enemies if they are not ours. (To the moderator: no, just a small very little detail, very quickly).
The big ideological struggle is symbolized by “Antigone” of Sophocles. Who is right? Antigone or Créon ? You have all the ideological investment here. I have the idea to write Antigone in the style of Brecht, with three versions. The first version would be the same as Sophocles: Antigone is condemned. In the second version Antigone convince Creon, so her brother has a decent funeral and as a consequence, of course, a civil war take birth, and at the end Antigone appears in blood, crying “I was made for love not for war”. fuck you!.(laugh).
The truth is that this alternative is a false one, so in my third version the chorus, instead of being this stupid peace of wisdom, organize as a comity of “salut public” they arrest both, put them in jail or condemn them to death for annoying the people with a selfish fight, and create a space of dictatorship of the people.
I will conclude (to moderator: sure I am concluding) one word on religion.
today religion ?… yes maybe…,I trust the hard emancipator kernel of Christian religion but in a very precise way. There was a very nice “wits” in Soviet Union the early 20, at the time propaganda was at its best. A great soviet propagandist dies and of course is expected in hell, but since he is a clever propagandist he convince the guard to let him rise up to paradise. A week later the devil notices that the propagandist is missing and goes up to paradise to ask the propagandist to the god. So he speaks to the god in very respectful terms: «my lord…”. Immediately, god interrupt him, because his brain has already been taken out by the propagandist, and he says to the devil: -first I am not your lord but your comrade. Secondly, are you a fool or what, don’t you know I don’t exist ? third: what have you so urgent to tell me, be quick, I don’t want to miss my next cell session of the Communist party. That’s the god we need, a god who is a comrade, with us, who’s all substance, what we call the holy spirit, would be collective and egalitarian. After, we can find him a more appropriate name like “the communist party “or “the psychoanalysis society”. (laugh)
In this way, we can…, ok a example, just a last example,.(to the moderator : ok now the brutality of the Greek dictatorship”) thank you very much.

Thanks for doing a translation isi!

please excuse my poor english
hope it’s easy to read

Hi! I have uploaded a subtitled version of this video with Isi’s translation here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCerDBQK-bM

@federico
nice work!
at the begining of 1/4 the untranslated section :I think zizek apologize for being late because not of the social crisis but for medical reason (Diabete).I am not sure enough of this to suggest a translation.

? 3 :45
Because At the time of Pascal you know there was the splendour of modernity ,science and mathematics
?5:12
Not to be in this historicist arrogance:” does Marx still mean something today ?”

part 4:4/4 ? 05:00
The true situation is that women has a face and if you imagine pulling it out, only the gaze is left,this mean woman behind a burqua is our (“prochain” = neighbour ? fellow man ?) in all its opening. This is really the unmasked face, the face without face.

I do not have diabetes (at least not yet), but I’ve finally learned that cotton socks should simply be trown away if they start to become slightly uncomfortable.

Buying new ones are so cheap. There are also cotton socks one can buy that have little or no rubber band, socks which fit the foot more comfortably.