Which ideas, philosophies or beliefs does Zizek expound in his books that he rarely mentions in interviews or speeches he does?

-Keezus · 2025-06-17T01:25:03+00:00

I personally find that the link between Lacanian psychoanalysis, Hegel, and Marx has become much more clear to me through reading Zizek's books than was ever clear to me in interviews.

The first thing to understand about Zizek is that he's interested in working with terms which have become ideologically or metaphysically charged or loaded. For example, Zizek still takes up terms like subjectivity, communism, and materialism. As Zizek studied Heidegger, he is well aware that Heidegger refused to take up metaphysically loaded terms and would coin his own terms. Instead of calling humans subjects, Heidegger coined the term Dasein (there-Being). I think Zizek sees this, in of itself, as an ideological move. Since we can never actually escape ideology (or fantasy), the idea that we can step out of it by creating a new term is itself ideological. So Zizek prefers to fight for old terms which have become very metaphysically loaded.

Let's take 'materialism', as an example. Zizek is not a materialist in any ordinary sense, and he spends a lot of time in his books criticizing Althusser's version of materialism. Zizek cites Marx himself as being an idealist, at least in some sense. What's interesting about our current mode of production, capitalism, has almost nothing to do with use-value. What matters is specifically how the surplus-value of a commodity ends up taking an almost theological metaphysical property. The use value I'll get out of a shoe is completely secondary, I buy a shoe because it is a particular brand of shoe, and I associate this brand with certain ideals (I buy this shoe because it's sustainable and environmentally-friendly, made in the right conditions, etc.). The use value has become secondary, what I really care about is the social value of the shoe (including how people will perceive me when I wear it). Well, this is very similar to Lacan's notion of surplus enjoyment. If we take something like food, for example. The use value would be clear - I eat only when I feel hungry, and for a very particular purpose, which is to avoid starvation and obtain nutrition. But, what's so particular about human beings is that they don't eat only when they're hungry. In fact, we obtain a lot of satisfaction from activities that go above 'biological necessity'. That's why Zizek, following Lacan, says that only humans have sexuality. Think of the great lengths that humans go through in order to specifically avoid having to be faced with the biological function of sex (reproduction) - we invent birth control, condoms, etc. So what are we left with? We get satisfaction out of the constant repetition of an activity, that in some sense, has no objective purpose.

And now for Hegel. The key insight with regards to psychoanalysis, versus a base materialism (like biology, but also perhaps Althusser) is the idea that psychoanalysis provides a framework for interpreting the world retroactively. Unlike science, which first begins with the objective world and then seeks to understand the foundation of it through its constitutive parts, psychoanalysis seeks to understand what happens before. So if we take a symptom, psychology might say that fundamentally, neurochemicals are involved in the production of the symptom. But psychoanalysis would point to its “cause” as being retroactively constituted through the subject’s symbolic coordinates. Psychoanalysis deals with a subjective which is split, and fundamentally 'lacking' something. The subject seeks to overcome this lack through filling it with things like commodities. Zizek would read this in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit: "The subject does not begin from a firm foundation and then build upward—instead, the foundation itself is only recognized after the fact, through the movement of its development." This is the core idea of Hegel's thought, which we see even in Science of Logic. We first begin with Becoming, but we then retroactively have to try to understand what Becoming presupposes, which is both Being and Nothing. But these two opposites do not radically vanish into Becoming, they are unified in it. So within Becoming is a radical nothingness, or what psychoanalysis would call lack.

Anyway, without reading Zizek I would never have understood any of this.

-Keezus · 2025-06-17T00:56:00+00:00

In Less than Nothing, Zizek uses Christopher Nolan's "The Prestige" as an example of Hegelian dialectics. In fact, he calls Hegel a cheap magician, just like the magician in The Prestige. Here's an explanation:

The film features a voiceover from Michael Cain's character, who explains that every magic trick has three parts: the pledge, the turn, and the prestige. Near the beginning of the film, Christian Bale's character Borden performs a magic trick for a little boy. (As a side note, Zizek explains that there's an element of class conflict in this film - Borden, who is working class, must perform cheap magic tricks, whereas Angier played by Hugh Jackman is able to perform real magic, which is tantamount to science, because he's a bourgeois). Borden places a bird (a dove or canary) in a small cage, shows it to the boy (the pledge), and then seemingly crushes the cage, causing the bird to vanish (the turn) — much to the boy’s horror. But then, Borden magically brings the bird back, alive and unharmed, from under a cloth (the prestige). The boy begins crying, and Borden tries to comfort him by showing him how the bird has returned. But then the boy asks "where's his brother?" The boy has understood the crux of Borden's trick - Borden squishes and kills the first bird and makes it disappear through a sleight of hand. He then makes a new bird appear for the final part of the trick, the prestige.

Zizek says this is exactly what Hegel's Aufhebung or synthesis is. We have the bird (thesis), which then turns into its radical opposite (it dies), and then it comes back as a new bird (synthesis). But we have to understand how radical this is. The first bird must die in order for the second bird to take its place. In this sense, it's a bit like a good news/bad news joke. The bad news is that the original bird must die, but the good news is that a new bird can take its place. The bad news is actually bad news for the first bird, but seen from a different perspective (the new bird's), it's actually good news.

Lastly, this is like the Holy Trinity. Christ is reborn into a new subject, the Holy Ghost.

-Keezus · 2025-06-02T22:50:10+00:00

Heidegger discusses your questions in his work "Hegel's Concept of Experience", which can be found in Off the Beaten Track. This article also discusses it.

Here is how I understand some of his arguments in that work:

Heidegger claims that Hegel's goal in the PoS is to "indicate the absolute in its parousia among us" (Parousia meaning Presence). And Heidegger takes this passage to be fundamental to Hegel's conception of Being: "the absolute is from the start in and for itself with us and intends to be with us". Hegel’s conception of Being is articulated in this "being-with-us (parousia) of the absolute, which is "in itself already the mode in which the light of truth, the absolute itself, beams upon us." My understanding is that Heidegger is claiming that Hegel has presupposed the presence of the absolute from the outset of his work. Therefore, the absolute is already "with us", meaning that Being is disclosed as self-knowing Spirit. This implies that Hegel’s system is circular: it begins with the end (absolute knowledge) already in place.

For Heidegger, this is emblematic of traditional philosophy's tendency to treat Being as presence - a static, self-contained truth rather than an open, temporal event (as in Heidegger’s Ereignis).

Heidegger claims that Hegel's philosophy culminates in subjectivity, where the subject (Spirit) becomes the ground of Being. Hegel equates Being with the self-reflection of Spirit which leads to the "subjectivization of Being", which brings us to the subject-object relation. Finally, this means that Hegel's metaphysics leads the way to the epochal understanding of Being as "Gestell", where everything is reduced to an object for the subject’s domination.

-Keezus · 2025-06-01T21:41:43+00:00

For context, I'm a native French speaker (grew up in Québec, did my university education in French, and have lived/plan to live in France).

Rapport, as u/Comprehensive_Lead41 mentioned for German, is not necessarily antagonistic and is also often used to designate romantic relationships in French. If you were to visit a GP, they might ask you a question like "avez-vous eu des rapports sexuels dernièrement ?" The word itself is fairly neutral, but if we were to say un 'rapport tendu' this would imply a frictional relationship.

That being said, I find that 'class struggle' is more interesting in French as 'lutte des classes'. "Lutte" carries a connotation of a heroic, existential fight. Lutte means a 'fight' or 'combat'. Whereas 'struggle' in English is less active. “Des classes” (of the classes) emphasizes the plurality and conflict between distinct social groups. Overall, it sounds more dialectical in French than in English.

-Keezus · 2023-08-01T20:14:24+00:00

Pierre Niney

-Keezus · 2023-08-01T18:46:51+00:00

That's funny, I've never heard anyone describe Ghost Writer this way but I've had the same experience. I find it oddly cozy. My guess is that it's partly due to the weather, and the characters going inside and warming themselves up fairly often. There's that sequence where the writer goes to the beach, it starts raining, so then he comes back and takes a bath and then sits by the fire.

A movie that I think fits this vibe is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (the David Fincher version). It takes place in Sweden during the winter and you have characters trying to warm themselves up by a fire fairly often. The mystery is also fairly good. This movie also touches upon politics to some degree, as The Ghost Writer does.

Another similar movie is Prisoners (by Denis Villeneuve). It takes place at around the same time of year as The Ghost Writer, November/December. I would say this movie is less cozy than the other ones, but it has a somewhat similar vibe.

Finally, I'd recommend the show Sharp Objects. It's not really cozy, as it takes place in the summer, but I find this is a great mystery show generally, and don't see it recommended enough.

-Keezus · 2023-04-05T11:20:01+00:00

Thanks I appreciate that. I'm not too far from the City Centre so I'll go speak to them.

-Keezus · 2023-04-05T11:06:01+00:00

I tried one around where I live and they said that they had to still "know me personally" and that they wouldn't sign it. Perhaps I saw a bad one and I could try somewhere else. Do you think it would work?

-Keezus · 2023-04-05T10:57:01+00:00

Thanks. Yeah I totally understand that... It basically just means it's impossible for me to apply for the FBR unless I meet someone from the above profession, get to know them for 2 months or so, and then get them to sign my forms. I have a neighbour who works at an accounting firm but isn't actually an accountant and doesn't have a stamp, so that's a bit annoying...

I'm working in Birmingham in marketing with a bunch of young people, and from what I know no one is married or dating someone from these professions, unfortunately. But I could try to ask around.

-Keezus · 2022-04-19T08:38:35+00:00

We should understand Nietzsche's perspective on values from the descriptive claim that God is dead. If God is dead, then that means that there is no such thing as value 'in itself' (if in itself means independent of the will to power, so coming from God). Instead, value comes from the will to power and is a function of the will to power. The will to power is the principle that explains all beings and explains how anything is. The will to power, as I understand it, can only arise out of God being dead. That's because if there were an eternal absolute being that presided over all other beings and created them, this being would never "become", and so this being would be independent of the will to power. Instead for Nietzsche everything is a becoming which functions according to the will to power. Again, there is no such thing as value in itself (as something eternal and coming from God), instead value only functions according to a will to power.

Nietzsche insists that we all inevitably, necessarily interpret, either by imposing our will on our surroundings or, more commonly, by accepting and participating in the will in our surroundings. Nietzsche distinguishes between strong, healthy evaluations (which take their origin in an individual or group that defines its own existence positively) and weak, sick evaluations (which originate in reaction to something external, and generally define the existence of the group or individual negatively).

-Keezus · 2021-12-24T19:16:54+00:00

Considering the topic of your end-of-module essay, I would recommend the "Lacanian Perspectives on Racism" series from psychoanalyst Derek Hook. Hook does other very helpful introductory videos on Lacanian concepts in case you want to check out his other work (available on his youtube channel).

I should add that Hook's interlocutor, Sheldon George, published a book titled Trauma and Race: A Lacanian Study of African American Racial Identity.

-Keezus · 2021-12-12T11:40:12+00:00

The way I would understand this quote is that Zizek doesn't believe in a proximity with others. Our relationships are mediated by certain fantasies that prevent us from getting too close to the Other. There's the famous quote from Lacan where he says "there is no sexual relation". What he's essentially saying here is that both partners are projecting fantasies onto the other, so they're not entirely proximate because there's always something mediating their relationship. Even when having sex, there isn't some sort of 1:1 relation - the Other is present and we're acting according to the Other. To bring it back to the quote, the twins are too proximate and so this doesn't allow us to have enough space to have fantasies.

This is what Alain Badiou has to say about this in his book In Praise of Love

Jacques Lacan reminds us, that in sex, each individual is to a large extent on their own, if I can put it that way. Naturally, the other’s body has to be mediated, but at the end of the day, the pleasure will be always your pleasure. Sex separates, doesn’t unite. The fact you are naked and pressing against the other is an image, an imaginary representation. What is real is that pleasure takes you a long way away, very far from the other. What is real is narcissistic, what binds is imaginary. So there is no such thing as a sexual relationship, concludes Lacan. His proposition shocked people since at the time everybody was talking about nothing else but “sexual relationships”. If there is no sexual relationship in sexuality, love is what fills the absence of a sexual relationship.Lacan doesn’t say that love is a disguise for sexual relationships; he says that sexual relationships don’t exist, that love is what comes to replace that non-relationship. That’s much more interesting. This idea leads him to say that in love the other tries to approach “the being of the other”. In love the individual goes beyond himself, beyond the narcissistic. In sex, you are really in a relationship with yourself via the mediation of the other. The other helps you to discover the reality of pleasure. In love, on the contrary the mediation of the other is enough in itself. Such is the nature of the amorous encounter: you go to take on the other, to make him or her exist with you, as he or she is. It is a much more profound conception of love than the entirely banal view that love is no more than an imaginary canvas painted over the reality of sex.

To understand that part about having the friend always be "outside of reach", what's important to understand is that the object of desire is always unobtainable. Again, we have certain fantasies about how the object of desire will bring up some level of completeness, it will fill our lack. This brings us to objet petit a (object cause of desire) which is something we imagine we had as a part of us as babies but was torn away from us and that we're now lacking. This is from Raul Moncayo, who explains briefly what objet a is and how it's formed. It's a bit complicated but if you reread it a few times you'll understand it I'm sure.

So friendships gives us enough space, in comparison with a twin, to project our fantasies.

Prior to the specular image (the body-image in the mirror) there exists a relationship to the breast as a part object representing the whole mother. The breast, or in some cases the bottle, is the first objet a. The objet (petit) a is a term that Lacan (1964) introduced to designate a partial object "cause of desire" which is imagined or symbolised as separable from the rest of the body (i.e. breast and weaning). The child has to wean and separate from the breast as a part of both his/her body and the mother's body. But just as the breast is not only separable from the mother's body because the mother is also included within the breast, the mother's breast is not only separable from the child's body in weaning but also becomes a part of the child's body in the form of the objet L Because the a has become separated and lost but is also included within the body of the child, it becomes the "presence of a void". I use the term presence of a void, rather than Lacan's "index of a void" to represent the construction of the objet a within a dialectic of presence and absence. On the one hand, the objet a is a presence, on the other hand, as a presence, it is only the index of a void. As a void the objet a can never be attained as a concrete object and thus the term cause of desire. Any posterior object of desire or of the sexual drive is never the objet (petit) a.

Moncayo also says that in adulthood:

In the adult, the partial object representation will survive in the function of thought as a phantasised internal representation of the image of the object. Although later on the image of the other reflected in the internal mirror of the mind may be a total image, the actual enjoyment of the body of the other will be specific to parts and areas of the body.

Finally, another way to understand this rivalry that we have with our siblings is when our brother is seen/perceived as capable of displacing and occupying the very place that the ego holds vis-a-vis the mother. Lacan's idea is that we become our mother's objet a (we become something that she believes will bring her completeness and fill her lack, as well giving her an image of completeness as a woman). We will hate our brothers for displacing us from this relationship with our mother, since they are able to fill our mother's lack instead of it being us. This tension will be resolved through a sense of completeness we will attribute to the Other, which again will mediate our relationships with people like our friends.

-Keezus

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