LONDON DATES

October 30, 2009

Slavoj Žižek on the Myth of Natural Balance

Date / Time: Monday, 23 November 2009 / 6.45pm
Location: ICA / Tickets sold out
Click here for more information or call box office for returns on +44(0)20 7930 3647

Slavoj Žižek: Apocalyptic Times

Date / Time: Tuesday, 24 November 2009 / 2.30pm
Location: Birkbeck College / Free
Click here for more information.

First as Tragedy, [...]

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“I am a Leninist. Lenin wasn’t afraid to dirty his hands. If you can get power, grab it.”

October 29, 2009

The Times Literary Supplement called him an “intellectual rock star”. For the New York Times, he is the “Elvis of cultural theory”. And the New Yorker, wittily conflating his unfashionably intransigent left-wing politics with his taste for Hollywood classics, has dubbed him “The Marx Brother”.
Slavoj Žižek, the Slovenian philosopher and political theorist, happily colludes in these journalistic caricatures. [...]

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Hollywood Today: Report from an Ideological Frontline

October 19, 2009

Ideology in Hollywood? Let’s begin, quite arbitrarily, with Michael Apted’s Enigma (2001, scenario by Tom Stoppard, based on the novel by Robert Harris), which takes place in 1943, among the cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park working day and night to crack the German “Enigma” code. They are rejoined by Tom Jericho, a troubled working class mathematical [...]

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‘Most Dangerous Philosopher in the West’ Cut Short By Bomb Threat

October 15, 2009

Slavoj Žižek, dubbed the ‘most dangerous philosopher in the west’ by The New Republic, was rudely cut short by a bomb scare as he spoke to an audience of 800 at Cooper Union last night. Expounding on his new book, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, Žižek was forced by police to round up his talk and [...]

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“To each according to his greed” in Harper’s

October 9, 2009

The only truly surprising thing about the 2008 financial meltdown is how easily the idea was accepted that its happening was unpredictable. Recall the demonstrations that throughout the last decade regularly accompanied meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank: the protesters’ complaints encompassed not only the usual antiglobalization motifs (the growing exploitation [...]

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Event coming up in NYC!

October 9, 2009

First as Tragedy, Then as Farce
Book party / Forum
Wednesday, October 14
Co-sponsored with the Brecht Forum
Time: 7:00 pm
Location: The Cooper Union, Great Hall
Sliding scale: $10-$15
$15 admission includes a copy of Zizek’s newly-released First as Tragedy, Then as Farce
From Brecht Forum’s website: “Slavoj Žižek’s provocative prose has challenged a generation of activists and intellectuals. Now ‘the Elvis [...]

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Berlusconi in Tehran

August 28, 2009

When an authoritarian regime approaches its final crisis, but before its actual collapse, a mysterious rupture often takes place. All of a sudden, people know the game is up: they simply cease to be afraid. It isn’t just that the regime loses its legitimacy: its exercise of power is now perceived as a panic reaction, [...]

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Quiet slicing of the West Bank makes abstract prayers for peace obscene

August 28, 2009

Condemnation of ‘illegal’ settlements and violence only blurs the reality of what the Israeli state is sanctioning, day by day
The Guardian
On 2 August 2009, after cordoning off part of the Arab neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in east Jerusalem, Israeli police evicted two Palestinian families (more than 50 people) from their homes; Jewish settlers immediately moved [...]

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On the Idea of Communism

August 28, 2009

Clips from the conference:

Capitalism Today

Closing Comments
See also:
Alain Badiou, video clip
Jacques Ranciere, video clip

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Terror!

August 28, 2009

A documentary on Robespierre:

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