http://thenewidealist.com/slavoj-zizek-event/
The New Idealist talks with
the philosopher Slavoj Žižek about love, life and his new book ‘Event’, the
second of The Penguin ‘Philosophy in Transit’ series of four books…
The book looks at some really
fundamental questions such as the role that fate plays in shaping people’s
lives. Continuing the transport theme (of the book); do you think that people’s
lives are structured like the London Underground Tube map, with each
destination defined by pre-determined steps along the way?
That’s a nice question that
I would like to pursue…namely, to try to distinguish and to reach some cultural
meaning into it between different tube networks. New York is totally
different to London. The one big difference, obviously, is that in London
probably they were already counting on war.
Probably this is the main
reason that the underground tunnels should also surface; potential places to
hide in the case of bombing or war. This is why London’s tube is so deep. New
York is just immediately beneath the ground, you can hear it and so on and so
on.
But what interests me most,
another line I wanted to pursue but it was getting too much – the book had a
certain limit in how long it was allowed to be – would have been (how) everyone
who loves the tube, the underground, knows that the greatest mystery is to know
about abandoned stations.
“There are all these myths
that maybe some people live there in tunnels who never come up.”
I read somewhere, do you
know that they think in New York in the sub-underground of Manhattan it’s
possible that in abandoned tube lines… about 3,000 people live and they have
their own entire alternate community there?
They just come up from time
to time, some of them, to steal some food, water, whatever. But basically it’s
a crazy idea, you get the idea of an alternate community down there with their
own rules and so on..
This was one line I wanted
to pursue but, again, it would have been too much…because you know the problem
was that the book had to be written in a relatively popular way,
Well, it is a very concise
book. For a philosophy book it is quite slender.
It was for my standards a
very short book, yes…on the other hand, it’s interesting. This is what
fascinated me, what I discovered through writing this book, (was) how, whatever
way we follow, whether in philosophy or simply pursuing fundamental questions,
we sooner or later stumble upon some notion of ‘event’. Like, in continental
philosophy Heidegger… in quantum physics, it’s (the) Big Bang as an event,
black hole as an event. In Christianity, Christianity is a religion of event
because it all hinges on the event of incarnation and so on.
So, this is what fascinated
me – all these different forms in which… all letters philosophy, cinema even
and so on, you stumble upon the notion of event. It’s absolutely crucial.
What do you think about all
the extreme weather events that are happening at the moment? That’s a good
example of a ‘big event’.
Not yet, it would have been
an event if it were really to change the attitude of how we relate nature and
so on. But I think it’s not yet (an) event. It’s bad weather, we are shaking,
it’s horrible but I don’t think we already accept it that something weird is happening
in nature itself.
The idea is a very simple
one here. Traditional nature, in medieval times and later, was considered a
kind of a regular repetitive system. Our idea of nature is in nature things
repeat themselves. You have seasons, day/night and so on. Nature is a kind of a
circular order.
Now, it’s clear that at all
levels, in theory but also through experience, we can less and less rely on
such a stable notion of nature. Nature is more and more in this sense
denaturalised. But I don’t think we already are at the extreme level. I think
there are still worse surprises.
“I am generally a pessimist
but, you know why, because I want to be happy.”
Not in the sadist way …If
you are a pessimist then usually, hopefully, things do not turn out as bad as
you expect so you always get small, nice surprises. ‘Oh my God, everything is
not a catastrophe you know.’
You talk about love as a key
event in a person’s life and discuss the difference between the appearance and
actuality of a person as seen through the eyes of both a cynic and a romantic.
Are you saying that a romantic idealist will project the same qualities onto
others and therefore see positive qualities whenever they appear – however
briefly – in a person?
On the other hand, I think,
that it is too simple to just approach what I project onto a person what
this
person really is. Isn’t it usually that the relationship is a more complex and
mysterious one.
Let’s say somebody really loves me and obviously projects
something, expects some goodness, some great act from me.
But isn’t it often that, to
become (the person) the other person projected this into me, I myself change; I
try to live up to the level of these expectations and so on. So it’s a much
more mysterious vicious cycle I think – vicious cycle but in a good sense.
“You know where somebody
projects something into me maybe I really become this.”
In this sense… it’s very
mysterious. OK, it’s not my reality but, in some sense, it may true. Becoming
aware of what others project onto me, I realise that there were in me some
potentials, some possibilities, that I wasn’t aware of.
It’s more complex, but
especially what makes love so mysterious to me is how, when you are in love you
see exactly the same person as before but not in the same way. You cannot
pinpoint it. You cannot say ‘this or that is the reason why I love that person’
because to see that you already have to be in love.
You also contrast that,
where a cynic would see only negative traits because that is what they are
looking for.
Yes, I think that cynicism
is today more and more the real predominant ideology. The common thing is to
say is nobody believes in any kind of ideas and so on and so on. But I think…
cynics are basically very naïve people. They underestimate the power of what
for them are weird illusions.
I think that illusions can
be extremely strong. For example Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State for
Richard Nixon, who was probably the ultimate cynicist, but precisely because of
this he was so often wrong. For example he thought the Soviet Union was here to
stay, cynically, ‘let’s make a deal with them’ and so on and so on.
This is what surprises me,
how often cynics, people who say ‘there are no higher values it’s just…usually
there are three things: ‘power, sex, money’, it is really about how often these
people are wrong. Because they underestimate the power of illusions. Illusions
are for me an extremely powerful thing.
In the book you reference
the ‘Spell of Illusions’ when discussing the concept of truth. What do you mean
by that?
What I mean there is simply
how, and here of course by truth I mean a very specific ‘truth’ – truth in
social space, always what surprises me is how, yes, you can distinguish between
truth and illusion but in order to arrive at truth you have to go through
illusion. There is no shortcut. And this I think is what basically Hegel’s
Dialectic speech is about, which… I develop in the book.
For me, Hegel is the
ultimate philosopher of the event.
You cannot directly go at
truth. In order to arrive at truth, you have to go to the end through the
illusion. I think I do repeat my old joke in the book… it’s a wonderful joke
from my youth, when I (did) military service, about a military conscript.
A guy who (wanted) to get
rid of serving or doing military service, which was compulsory at that point in
ex-Yugoslavia, faked a strange symptom (to seem) crazy, a certain compulsive
custom, whenever he entered a room with some papers on the table, documents, he
looked at all of them and just repeated ‘this is not that, this is not that,
this is not that’… then of course when he found himself on front of a medical
committee he did the same. He looked at all of the papers and repeated ‘this is
not that, this is not that, this is not that’. Then doctors said ‘this guy’s
obviously crazy’ and gave him the document stating that he is delivered from
military service. He looks at that and he says ‘this is that’. But
this obviously is that.
Event by Slavoj Žižek, the
second in Penguin’s Philosophy in Transit series by leading philosophers, is
out now in paperback.
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