Žižek And So On

Check out our patreon page for extra content: https://www.patreon.com/join/zizekandsoon On this episode, we talk to German philosopher Frank Ruda, senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Dundee in Scotland. Dr. Ruda is the author of a number of books, including Hegel’s Rabble, The Dash, and, the focus of today’s episode, Reading Marx—co-written with Slavoj Žižek, and Agon Hamza. We discuss Frank’s essay in the book “Marx in the Cave”—a short circuit between Plato’s myth of the cave, and Marx’s analysis of political economy. We touch on a range of topics, including the concept of an “experimental” reading of Marx, the links between emancipation and myth, Plato’s cave allegory as a depiction of the worker under capitalism, as well as the role of appearance and abstraction in understanding capitalism, the dynamics between the worker and time and freedom, the worker (un)animal, and the subject supposed to revolutionize.

On this patreon-exclusive episode, we talk about Žižek's June 22nd article "POWER, APPEARANCE, AND OBSCENITY". We touch on the topics of populism, political correctness, covid, the current protests, and object oriented ontology. To hear the full episode and to hear more content, check out our patreon: https://www.patreon.com/zizekandsoon Here's the link to the article: https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/power-appearance-and-obscenity-five-reflections/

This week, we speak to Dr. Russell Sbriglia, Assistant Professor and Director of Undergraduate Literature Studies at Seton Hall University. Our conversation orients around his new collection, “Subject Lessons”, edited with Slavoj Žižek. We talk Žižek, Hegel, subjectivity, and the “Ljubljana School’s” critique of New Materialism and Object Oriented Ontology.

This week’s episode of Žižek and So On, includes an interview with Slavoj himself, conducted on February 1st of this year. In the interview Žižek parses out what he calls the “post-modern deadlock.” This theoretical and political impasse, specific to the epoch of post modernism, is the product of a tension between what he identifies as the broad realist approach and the transcendental. In exploring this deadlock, Žižek speaks about the limits of Marx’s historical materialism, Judith Butler’s gender theory, and Lacanian psychoanalysis, each as separate examples of transhistorical ontology. Beyond this impasse, and in response to the current global situation, Žižek proposes historicizing historicism, in the practice of Hegel, so that we might see the emergence of an immanent, yet entirely new version of utopia, and that in the event of the catastrophic, there is something at work which is both potentially emancipatory, and universal.

A preview of the upcoming episode, a patreon exclusive, where Peter and Jacob discuss their interview with Eliran Bar-El; Žižek’s newest book PAN(DEM)IC; Communism and his role as the “sacrificial intellectual”.

https://www.patreon.com/join/zizekandsoon A preview for our first exclusive patreon content where we talk off the cuff on postmodernism, and upcoming guest Matt McManus' proposal for a thinking of postmodern...conservatism. The episode is our thinking-through topics relating to contemporary politics, postmodern philosophy (is it conservative?), Žižek's universalism, the pretensions of Neil deGrasse Tyson, and much more—in preparation for our conversation with Matt later this week. 

This week on Žižek and So On, the hosts talk the 1989 English publication of The Sublime Object of Ideology. Access to this complicated and great work is gained by way of the book’s title, as it denotes a synthesis of Marx, Lacan, and Hegel that allows Žižek to perform a nuanced analysis of ideology. Our reading of the book discovers in this new form of analysis, a connection between Žižek’s understanding of ideology and the ontological project at hand in his later work.

This week, on Zizek and So on, we interview Todd McGowan, professor of English at the University of Vermont. Todd’s thought centralizes on the likes of Hegel, Lacan, Freud and Marx, and he is the author of several books, most notably, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets”, and last year's “Emancipation After Hegel: Achieving a Contradictory Revolution.” His newest book “Universality and Identity Politics” is set to come out this July.    Todd also co-hosts a terrific podcast with Ryan Engley called "Why Theory?" And we encourage you guys to seek it out.   Todd spoke with us this week about the unity of Hegel and Lacan that is present in both his work and Zizek’s, about post-structuralism, the concept of contradiction, and the problem of the subject.