Slavoj Žižek - Collected Recordings

This talk considers the ways in which Marx’s notion of “surplus-value” bears on Jacques Lacan’s idea of a “surplus-enjoyment” which, rather than a simple stepping up of pleasure, designates an additional pleasure obtained by its very deferral. These insights, it will be shown, bear crucially on the relevance of Marx’s critique of political economy to our contemporary political moment. Pomona College, Los Angeles

In the Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) of Harman and his colleagues, the human subject is redefined according to the pressures of a “flat ontology” that treats all objects equally. In opposition to OOO, Žižek upholds the pivotal role of the subject as theorized in the tradition of the German philosophers Immanuel Kant, G.W. Hegel and F.W.J. Schelling and the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Slavoj Žižek and Graham Harman at SCI-Arc, Los Angeles

In New York on the last day of an American tour, absorbing the demise of Yankee Stadium and maybe of Wall Street as we thought we knew it, Zizek’s talk is a blast-furnace but not a blur. The theme through all Zizek’s gags is that the financial meltdown marks a seriously dangerous moment — dangerous not least because, as in the interpretation of 9.11, the right wing is ready to impose a narrative. And the left wing is caught without a narrative or a theory. “Today is the time for theory,” he says. “Time to withdraw and think.” A Radio Open Source Interview with Chris Lydon

In a new book, Against the Double Blackmail, in response to Europe’s refugee crisis, philosopher Slavoj Žižek argues that the left must shed its liberal taboos in favour of global, class solidarity. At a Guardian Live event, Gary Younge sat down with Žižek to discuss the immigration crisis, the response of the liberal left, and the future for Europe. This Guardian Live Event ook place on 19 April at the Emmanuel Centre, London

At Birkbeck, University of London

Part 3 of the Masterclass 23, 25 & 26.03.2016 While the global political and social situation is getting more and more explosive, emancipatory struggles are more and more hampered by ideological prejudices. This is why some ruthless clarifications are necessary. Birkbeck, University of London

Is pleasure a rotten idea, mired in negativity and lack, which should be abandoned in favor of a new concept of desire? Or is desire itself fundamentally a matter of lack, absence, and loss? This is one of the crucial issues dividing the work of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Lacan, two of the most formidable figures of postwar French thought. Debate with Aaron Schuster and Maria Aristodemou Birkbeck, University of London

Public Lecture a the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities Birkbeck, University of London

Part 3 of the Masterclass: Between Philosophy and Psychoanalysis In the entire span of his teaching, Lacan was engaged in an intense debate with philosophy and philosophers, from ancient Greek materialists to Plato, from Stoics to Thomas Acquinas, from Descartes to Spinoza, from Kant to Hegel, from Marx to Kierkegaard, from Heidegger to Kripke. It is through the reference to philosophers that Lacan deploys his fundamental concepts: transference through Plato, the Freudian subject through Descartes’s cogito, surplus-enjoyment through Marx’s surplus-value, anxiety and repetition through Kierkegaard, the ethics of psychoanalysis through Kant, etc. Birkbeck, University of London

Part 2 of the Masterclass: Between Philosophy and Psychoanalysis with a contribution from Frank Ruda Birkbeck, University of London