The Fetish: A Secret to a Successful Life

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Fetishes can be very brutal, cynical, realistic. They pretend that they accept the life the way it is. Their fetish enables them to acquire a distance from what they rationally know. So on the contrary, we believe much more than we know that we believe. This category again is absolutely crucial today, today, I claim.

Radical philosopher, polymath, film star, cult icon, and author of over 30 books, Slavoj Žižek is one of the most controversial and leading contemporary public intellectuals, simultaneously acclaimed as the ‘Elvis of cultural theory’ and denounced as ‘the most dangerous philosopher in the West’. In this special lecture for Intelligence Squared from July 2011, Žižek argues that global capitalism is fast approaching its terminal crisis and that our collective responses to economic Armageddon correspond to the five stages of grief – ideological denial, explosions of anger, attempts at bargaining, followed by depression and finally acceptance of change. Referencing everything from Kafka, the "Hollywood Marxism" of Avatar, the Arab Spring and WikiLeaks, he presents a roadmap for finding a way beyond the madness.

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices