Zizek! Page #3

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are his propositions:

The underlying logic,

not his style.

His style is a total fake, I think.

I try to forget it.

I try to repress it.

Maybe it works as a strategy.

At a certain point,

why not?

First, you have to seduce people

with obscure statements,

but I hate

this kind of approach.

I'm a total

enlightenment person.

I believe in clear statements.

And I'm for Lacan because, again,

I think, to make it very clear,

it's not that Lacan

is just bluffing

in the sense that there is

nothing behind this obscurity.

The whole point of my work

is that you can translate Lacan

into clear terms.

Well, I've just had enough of this.

Now, live from the CN8 Studios,

This is CN8 Nitebeat,

with Barry Nolan.

Jacques Lacan was

a French psychoanalyst.

He makes Freud sound

like a simple Valley girl.

Lacan's theory

of how the self works

is so complicated,

it makes my teeth hurt

to think about it.

Slavoj Zizek is a philosopher

at the University

of Ljubljana, Slovenia...

I think I said this fairly close

to the way it's pronounced...

who has written a book called

The Puppet and The Dwarf.

The book takes a look

at modern Christianity

from the viewpoint

of Lacanian psychoanalysis,

or at least that's

what I think it's about.

Welcome, Mr. Zizek.

Did I say that...

Tell me the right way.

Slavoj Zizek, but again,

I prefer it the wrong way.

It makes me paranoid

if I hear it the right way.

This is the most complicated book

I have ever tried to read.

Strange, because the goal

of the book

is, on the contrary,

to make Lacan back into someone

whom even your grandma

could understand.

Let's say you have a good

old-fashioned father.

It's Sunday afternoon.

You have to visit Grandma.

The father would...

old-fashioned totalitarian father...

will tell you, "Listen,

I don't care how you feel"...

if you are a small kid, of course...

"I don't care how you feel.

- You have to go"...

- "You're going."

"Going Grandmother

and behave there properly."

- Okay.

- That's good. You can resist.

Nothing is broken.

But let's say you have

the so-called tolerant

post-modern father.

What he will tell you

is the following:

"You know how much

your grandmother loves you,

but nonetheless, you should

only visit her

if you really want to."

Now, every child

who is not an idiot...

and they are not idiots...

know that this apparent

free choice

secretly contains an even more

stronger, much stronger order:

"Not only you have

to visit your grandmother,

but you have to like it."

I'm beginning to like this book

all the more.

That's one example

of how apparent tolerance,

choice, and so on,

can conceal a much stronger order.

So we should go back

to more like the dad that just says

"Because I said so!"

Absolutely. It's more honest.

You went to the McDonald breakfast?

This is not so ridiculous.

Look what you get.

You know, you get this

with Happy Meal.

Yeah, to make you happy.

Yeah, but this is for the kids.

I go there to make him happy.

He pretends to be happy there

not to disappoint me,

But what the hell.

The game functions.

This means that, again, you know,

I love him, but my perspective

is time, you know.

We go there, up and down,

one hour passes.

No, it's pure desperate

strategy of surviving.

- Right.

- How to pass the time

without getting

too nervous without...

and this is easy,

because he eats

and shuts up for 20 minutes

after he eats.

- What does he get nervous about?

- No, I get nervous.

Okay, this will go.

He's perplexed, as you can see.

Now he's narcissistically amused.

It's just to keep him calm,

in a non-demanding state,

so it's eating, it's this,

it's whatever, no?

Or at least negotiating.

Yesterday, he was building

some Lego castles.

He wasn't satisfied with them,

but then he gave me the role

of just collecting a certain type

of these small plastic cubes.

I start to shoot at the animals,

then... I love this one,

American Army.

You know, this one,

I bought it.

I don't know where,

but it's beautiful.

You can open it, you see?

And put soldiers in

so that then he attacks me

from there.

He destroyed this castle

that I had here.

This was his original,

but destruction is very precise.

It's incredible how you think

it's chaotic, no?

But he's the big wise guy.

He observes.

Here, he's very profane.

He wanted to have a woman

as the boss, the queen.

Then he said,

"But she will be alone.

Why not have two girls?"

This is the two girls talking.

You see, lesbian, progressive,

politically correct, no?

Two lesbians, and...

but I like this one.

Isn't this a beautiful one?

I bought it in Greece.

A kind of a nice old Roman.

Over. Let's show them all, huh?

Okay, philosophy.

This, I can do it,

at least traditionally,

in two lines, no?

Philosophy

does not solve problems.

The duty of philosophy

is not to solve problems

but to redefine problems,

to show how what we experience

as a problem

is a false problem.

If what we experience

as a problem

is a true problem,

then you don't need philosophy.

For example, let's say

that now there would be

a deadly virus

coming from out there in space,

so not in any way mediated

through our human history,

and it would threaten all of us.

We don't need, basically,

philosophy there.

We simply need good science

desperately to find...

We would desperately

need good science

to find the solution,

to stop this virus.

We don't need philosophy there,

because the threat

is a real threat, directly.

You cannot play

philosophical tricks

and say "No, this is not the"...

You know what I mean.

It's simply our life would be...

or okay, the more vulgar, even,

simpler science fiction

scenario.

It's kind of "Armageddon"

or whatever.

No, "Deep lmpact."

A big comet threatening

to hit Earth.

You don't need philosophy here.

You need... I don't know.

To be a little bit naive,

I don't know.

Strong atomic bombs

to explode, maybe.

I think it's maybe too utopian.

But you know what I mean.

I mean the threat is there,

you see.

In such a situation,

you don't need philosophy.

I don't think that philosophers

ever provided answers,

but I think this was

the greatness of philosophy,

not in this common sense

that philosophers

just ask questions and so on.

What is philosophy?

Philosophy is not

what some people think,

some crazy exercise

in absolute truth,

and then you can adopt

this skeptical attitude:

We, through scientists,

are dealing with actual,

measurable solvable problems.

Philosophers just ask stupid metaphysical

questions and so on,

play with absolute truths,

which we all know

is inaccessible.

No, I think philosophy's

a very modest discipline.

Philosophy asks

a different question,

the true philosophy.

How does a philosopher approach

the problem of freedom?

It's not "Are we free or not?"

"Is there God or not?"

It asks a simple question,

which will be called

a hermeneutic question:

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