“If the secret core of potlatch is the reciprocity of exchange, why is this reciprocity not asserted directly, why does it assume the “mystified” form of two consecutive acts each of which is staged as a free voluntary display of… — Slavoj Žižek Copy Share
The ultimate goal of radical politics is gradually to displace the limit of social exclusions, empowering the excluded agents (sexual and ethnic minorities) by creating marginal spaces in which they can articulate and question their identity. Radical politics thus becomes an endless mocking parody and provocation, a gradual process of reidentification in which there are not final victories and ultimate… — Slavoj Žižek Copy Share
“In Kant’s description, ethical duty functions like a foreign traumatic intruder that from the outside disturbs the subject’s homeostatic balance, its unbearable pressure forcing the subject to act “beyond the pleasure principle,” ignoring the pursuit of pleasures. For Lacan, exactly the same description holds for desire, which is why enjoyment is not something that comes naturally to the subject, as… — Slavoj Žižek Copy Share
I think Kafka was right when he said that for a modern, secular, nonreligious man, state bureaucracy is the only remaining contact with the… — Slavoj Žižek Copy Share Image
“The cliche about prison life is that I am actually integrated into it, ruined by it, when my accommodation to it is so overwhelming that I can no longer stand or even imagine freedom, life outside prison, so that my release brings about a total psychic breakdown, or at least gives rise to a longing for the lost safety of… — Slavoj Žižek Copy Share
“In our quest for entertainment and instant gratification, we have become detached from the real world and its problems, contributing to the erosion of… — Slavoj Žižek Copy Share Image
The problem for us is not are our desires satisfied or not. The problem is how do we know what we desire. — Slavoj Žižek Copy Share Image
“In contrast to the situation in 1945, the world does not need the US; it is the US that needs the rest of the world” — Slavoj Žižek Copy Share Image
Those who were still able to write beautiful melodies were kitsch composers like Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky approaches true art not in his numerous beautiful melodies,… — Slavoj Žižek Copy Share Image
“as in Heinrich Heine’s (a contemporary of Kierkegaard’s) well-known saying that one should value above everything else ‘freedom, equality and crab soup’. ‘Crab soup’… — Slavoj Žižek Copy Share Image
