Žižek And So On

Alright, welcome back to Žižek & So On. This week continues our NEW SERIES on the systematic aspects of Žižek’s thought & we’re taking a look at the work of philosopher Berta M. Pérez focusing on her essay “The Courage to Hold onto a Paradox” and her book The Dialectical Gaze: Hegel with Žižek. Why does every apparently coherent order depend on an excluded element? WTF is the transcendental turn? Along the way we return to some of Žižek’s key examples: Lévi-Strauss’s divided village, Hegel’s monarch as the empty point of decision, & the strange loop of subject and substance.The European Graduate School are running a Leading Thinkers Course on Slavoj Žižek and I know a lot of our listeners are attending the course which is exciting and a big thanks to all of you who have been reaching out to us over the course of the series so far! The course runs for ten weeks or so with Frank Ruda, Mladen Dolar, Adrian Johnston, Robert Pfaller, Zahi Zalloua, Dany Nobus, Alenka Zupančič, Berta Perez, and at the end Žižek…on…himself….so we’re going to be doing these episodes alongside the course.Up next we stay with Žižek’s Hegel, but move from Pérez’s account of the Dialectical Gaze to the early Žižek of The Most Sublime Hysteric with Frank Ruda.See you in Paris,Ž&…

Alright this week we’re back and joined by Michael Downs to talk with longtime friend of the show Todd McGowan about his brand new book The Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Lacan.This is a book a lot of us have wanted for a long time!McGowan's book on Lacan demonstrates yet again how right Lacan was when he insisted that people who are not clinical analysts can also be full members of his school. It's not that we philosophers should learn from clinicians - clinicians can learn from us what they are doing. Finally, someone dared to state openly the obvious truth: like all anti-philosophers from Kant onwards, Lacan is also and foremost a philosopher! - Slavoj ŽižekIs Lacan a philosopher? Is Lacan a dialectical thinker?In PART ONE of the interview with Todd we’re talking Lacan’s turn to the nonrelation and the Borromean knot and how it marks a break from his dialectical thought, and why you should skip the Écrits entirely and read the seminars instead. We trace Lacan’s philosophical project through Kant and Hegel, explore Lacan's theory of the subject, Žižek’s quantum history, the Copenhagen interpretation, and Sean Carroll as a Deleuzean physicist.Support us on PATREON and get access to our Discord, interviews, extra episodes each month, and our SHORT SESSIONS series for $5/month.⁠⁠⁠PART TWO of the interview will be out next!See you in Paris,Ž&...

Alright this week we’re continuing our series on Slavoj Žižek’s Against Progress with another long-awaited conversation with theorist and friend of the show Michael Downs, author of the Dangerous Maybe Blog on Medium and his new book Capital Vs Timenergy: A Žižekian Critique of Nick Land to discuss Žižek’s essay Accelerationism.Is Žižek an Accelerationist?In PART ONE of our conversation we’re talking accelerationism and degrowth, all things Nick Land, cyber-positivity, forced choices, the zero point of modernity, and get into the CCRU, cute accelerationism, AI as metaphysical horror, the barred and unbarred Big Other, Providence, techno-Telos, face tentacles, vinyl records, and the Lacanian subject.⁠⁠Support us on PATREON and get access to our Discord, interviews, extra episodes each month, and our SHORT SESSIONS series for $5/month.⁠⁠See you in Paris,Ž&...

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE!Alright, we’re back with another Patreon SHORT SESSION and this week Tim is at the shops buying a Tickle Me Elmo and we’re taking a look at some aspects of laughter in a few different ways.SHORT SESSIONS, variable length sessions, however you wanna put it, in these episodes we’ll wrap them up because of something that is said, rather than the tyranny of the clock.So what’s so ticklish about the ticklish subject? Can it tickle itself?We’re talking Žižek’s totalitarian laughter, Adam Phillips on the erotic grammar of tickling, Trump as the David Brent of Empire, Romanian orphanages and Rhesus monkeys, and the dialectic of cringe and tickling.Whatever you do, don’t google "competitive tickling".Check out Aaron Schuster's piece on tickling here.Jamil Khader's RELOADING LAUGHTER: ŽIŽEK AND A THEORY OF COMEDYSee you in Paris,Ž&...

To listen to the FULL EPISODE head to our PATREONAlright, we’re back from the LACK Conference at Otterbein University and Tim’s still at the airport screaming that the queue is the destination. Great to see so many friends— Jack Black, Neo Winter Scott, Jon Hegglund, Matthew Flisfeder, Clint Burnham, Katherine Everitt, Todd McGowan, Anna Kornbluh, Russell Sbriglia, Ryan Engley, Derek Hook, Mikey Downs and the crew…too many to name and of course, Žižek himself.In this SHORT SESSION, we’re diving into the extended version of my LACK presentation The Shit of History: No Fickle Matter—a theory of waste in capitalism as structural, not accidental.We’re talking Adrian Johnston’s coprophagic capitalism, Slavoj Žižek’s violence typology, offshore detention, DOGE, plastic recycling, human waste, and James Mcann’s public toilet analysis.Big thanks to our PATREONS for the ongoing support and to James Donald Forbes McCann!You can find his special here! ...or find him on YouTube and everywhere else.⁠Support us on PATREON and get access to our Discord, interviews, extra episodes each month, and our SHORT SESSIONS series for $5/month.⁠See you in Paris,Ž&…

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE!Alright, we’re back with a new PATREON EPISODE while Tim's still on an island painting a face on a volleyball & we're taking another look at Todd McGowan's new book Pure Excess.Capitalism promises things beyond their usefulness, the enjoyment of a useless excess, an excess which is presented as pure when it is necessarily impure — there is always a hidden sacrifice.We're talking Jackie Kennedy's fake pearl necklace selling for $200,000, Paper Water and the Resnick's, Trump's Air Rights, and why we can't have McDonalds at home. Big thanks to our ⁠PATREONS⁠ for the ongoing support!⁠⁠Support us on PATREON and get access to our Discord, interviews, extra episodes each month and our new SHORT SESSIONS series for $5 a month!⁠⁠See you in Paris, Ž&…

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE! Alright, we’re back for 2025 with a new PATREON episode and while Tim's drinking margaritas on a beach somewhere we’re talking Binocular rivalry, the authorlessness of AI, the Dead Internet Theory, Mr Beast…and what happens when a Rabbi, Businessman, and a poor ordinary Jew talk to God. This is PART TWO in our series on Mladen Dola’rs Rumors through Zizek's recent comments on psychoanalysis, and the strange logic of knowledge in the age of information overload. Can we know too much? Is the production of knowledge necessarily good? What’s the difference between rumour and conspiracy? Is it a conspiracy or platform capitalism functioning smoothly? Thanks to our PATREONS for another year of the show! ⁠Support us on PATREON and get access to our Discord, interviews, extra episodes each month and our new SHORT SESSIONS series for $5 a month!⁠ See you in Paris, Ž&…

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE! Alright, this is a PATREON PREVIEW and we're back with the wonderful PETER ROLLINS talking Donald Trump's Sharpie & the rise of Obscene Masters, Paul Tillich, Simone Weil, Badiou and fidelity to an Event, Religion as a truth procedure, Jordan Peterson and Richard Dawkins, and of course...Seamus gambling with God. LISTEN TO THE FIRST PART OF OUR INTERVIEW WITH PETER HERE! Big thanks to Peter and all of you over the years who have asked us to have a chat with him and we look forward to doing it again! Stay tuned because we have a few very exciting guests before the end of the year... Support us on PATREON and get access to our Discord, interviews, extra episodes each month and our new SHORT SESSIONS series for $5 a month! See you in Paris! Ž&...