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A lecture by Slavoj Zizek about freedom and domination, and the relationship between capitalism, consumerism and fundamentalism
Slought is pleased to announce the release of "A Lacanian Plea for Fundamentalism," a lecture by Slavoj Zizek on September 18, 2000. In his presentation, Zizek will address the role of religion and ideology in Western capitalism and raise questions about idealism and resistance. He will explore how the logic of consumerism is inherently a logic of domination, and explain the role of excessive desire, envy, consumption, and self-objectivation in contemporary life. Arguing that both cyberspace and virtuality are marked by similar tendencies, Zizek will suggest that freedom is possible not through self-discovery but rather through the mystery of otherness.
This event has been organized by Aaron Levy, Gregory Flaxman and Carmen Lamas as part of the interdisciplinary "Theorizing" series. From 1999-2002, the Theorizing series at Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennyslvania has showcased notable developments in theory, continental philosophy, and cultural criticism. Nearly thirty events have featured architects, theorists and critics such as Daniel Libeskind, Slavoj Zizek, Joseph Masheck, Catherine Liu, Dorothea Olkowski, and Eduardo Cadava--many of whom continue to participate in ongoing Slought programming. As discursive exchanges addressing contemporary issues, these events continue to influence the subsequent direction of Slought.
Slavoj Zizek was born in Ljubljana, capital of Slovenia in the former Yugoslavia, in 1949. He obtained doctorates in philosophy and psychoanalysis from Ljubljana and Paris respectively, and has held the post of Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Studies in Ljubljana since the 1970s. His many books include The Sublime Object of Ideology, Looking Awry, Tarrying with the Negative, The Indivisible Remainder, and The Plague of Fantasies, The Ticklish Subject, and, in regards to this presentation, The Fragile Absolute: Or, Whythe Christian Legacy is Worth Fighting For. He has also edited several volumes including his 1992 classic, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lacan (but were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock). He has taught invarious American universities and lectured worldwide. Zizek uses popular culture to explain the theories of Jacques Lacan and the theories of Jacques Lacan to explain politics and popular culture. He was politically active in Slovenia during the 80s, and a candidate for the presidency of the Republic of Slovenia in 1990. He is the founder and president of the Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis, Ljubljana.
"In a proper revolutionary breakthrough, the utopian future is neither simply fully realized, present, nor simplyevoked as a distant promise which justified present violence -it is rather as if, in a unique suspension of temporality, in the short-circuit between the present and the future, we are — as if by Grace — for a brief time allowed to act AS IF the utopian future is (not yet fully here, but) already at hand, just there to be grabbed.
Revolution is not experienced as a present hardship we have to endure for the happiness and freedom of thefuture generations, but as the present hardship over which this future happiness and freedom already cast their shadow — in it, we already are free while fighting for freedom, we already are happy while fighting for happiness, no matter how difficult the circumstances.
Revolution is not a Merleau-Pontian wager, an act suspended in the futur anterieur, to be legitimized or delegitimized by the long term outcome of the present acts; it is as it were its own ontological proof, an immediate index of its own truth."
-- From Slavoj Zizek, Repeating Lenin (1997)
