The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben said in an interview that "thought is the courage of hopelessness" ─ an insight that is especially pertinent for our historical moment, when even the most pessimistic diagnosis as a rule finishes with an uplifting hint at some version of the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. The true courage is not to imagine an alternative, but to accept the consequences of the fact that there is no clearly discernible alternative: the dream of an alternative is a sign of theoretical cowardice; it functions as a fetish that prevents us thinking through to the end the deadlock of our predicament. In short, the true courage is to admit that the light at the end of the tunnel is most likely the headlights of another train approaching us from the opposite direction. There is no better example of the need for such courage than Greece today.
When they talk about writing off part of the debt, our media present this as a measure which will hurt ordinary taxpayers, pitting the lazy and corrupt Greeks against the hard-working ordinary people in other countries. So when, back in the 2008 financial breakdown, big banks became insolvent, it was okay for the state to cover their losses by spending trillions (of taxpayer money, of course), but when a whole people finds itself in misery, the debt should be paid... read more
Exclusive: Julian Assange of WikiLeaks & Philosopher Slavoj Žižek in Conversation with Amy Goodman In one of his first public events since being held under h...
http://www.egs.edu/ Slavoj Žižek, Slovenian philosopher and cultural theorist talking about object small a, digital civilization, desire, psychoanalysis, prosthetic extension, virtual reality, projection, science, language, universality, sexuality, in relation to the authors Freud, Lacan, Kierkegaard and Hegel. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland Europe. 2012. Slavoj Žižek.
The middle class is shrinking. As the Internet has wildly expanded our options, it has, paradoxically, shrunk our horizons: as thinkers like Astra Taylor, author of The People’s Platform, warn, a generic set of crowd-pleasing blockbusters dominates more than ever.
Time magazine's 2006 "Person of the Year" award went not to Ahmadinejad, Chávez, Kim Jong-il, or any other of the usual suspects, but to "you", that is each and every one of us using or creating content on the world wide web. The cover showed a white keyboard with a mirror for a computer screen where readers can see their own reflection. To justify the choice, Time's editors cited the shift from institutions to individuals who are said to be emerging as the citizens of a new digital democracy.
There should no longer be any doubt: global capitalism is fast approaching its terminal crisis. Slavoj Žižek has identified the four horsemen of this coming ...
When my short essay on Greece after the referendum “The Courage of Hopelessness” was republished by In These Times, its title was changed into “How Alexis Tsipras and Syriza Outmaneuvered Angela Merkel and the Eurocrats”. Although I effectively think that accepting the EU terms was not a simple defeat, I am far from such an optimist view. The reversal of the NO of referendum to the YES to Brussels was a genuine devastating shock, a shattering painful catastrophe. More precisely, it was an apocalypse in both senses of the term, the usual one (catastrophe) and the original literal one (disclosure, revelation): the basic antagonism, deadlock, of the situation was clearly disclosed.
All rights and credit go to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. This lecture delivered by Slavoj Zizek on Architecture and Aesthetics discusses the ...
Philosopher Slavoj Žižek argues that our current brand of global capitalism is quickly outgrowing democracy. This leads to a bevy of social and geopolitical concerns all related to the public commons.
I originally wrote this post as a response to Paul Cockshott sharing the article “The Emergence of Benefit-driven Production” on his Facebook wall. I then adapted it into its current form.
Austerity is not “too radical”, as some leftist critics claim, but, on the contrary, too superficial, an act of avoiding the true roots of the crisis, says Slavoj Žižek.
"Slavoj Žižek answers the question, "Do you think science has replaced philosophy in discovering the bigger questions of life?" Philosophy is not dying, he says — in fact, we need it more now than ever."
In the last two decades of his life, Nelson Mandela was celebrated as a model of how to liberate a country from the colonial yoke without succumbing to the temptation of dictatorial power and anti-capitalist posturing. In short, Mandela was not Mugabe, South Africa remained a multi-party democracy with free press and a vibrant economy well-integrated into the global market and immune to hasty Socialist experiments. Now, with his death, his stature as a saintly wise man seems confirmed for eternity: there are Hollywood movies about him — he was impersonated by Morgan Freeman, who also, by the way, played the role of God in another film; rock stars and religious leaders, sportsmen and politicians from Bill Clinton to Fidel Castro are all united in his beatification.
Slavoj Žižek is regarded as one of the ideological pioneers of the Occupy movement, but he says its demands don't go far enough. Žižek sees no future for cap...
To get content containing either thought or leadership enter:
To get content containing both thought and leadership enter:
To get content containing the expression thought leadership enter:
You can enter several keywords and you can refine them whenever you want. Our suggestion engine uses more signals but entering a few keywords here will rapidly give you great content to curate.
Your new post is loading...
Scoop.it!
