Žižek And So On

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE!
Alright, welcome back to Žižek & So On. This is another PATREON EPISODE in our ongoing series on the systematic aspects of Žižek’s thought & we’re taking a look at Adrian Johnston’s critique of Slavoj Žižek.
Can you have a materialism without matter? Does a genuine dialectical materialism need a detour through theology and the mystical "Night of the World"? What happens when you try to ground the emergence of subjectivity in the bizarre realities of quantum physics?
Along the way we get into the transcendental ontological parallax, Lenin’s Materialism and Empiriocriticism, the crisis of the disappearing electron, Penrose's microtubules, and why kicking away the theological ladder might be harder than it looks.
Up next we move from the quantum void to the delegation of enjoyment with Robert Pfaller on Interpassivity.
To follow along with all the episodes in this series and to get access to all our interviews, patreon episodes, and SHORT SESSIONS support us here!
See you in Paris or the Urgrund, 
Ž&…

Alright, welcome back to Žižek & So On. This week continues our NEW SERIES on the systematic aspects of Žižek’s thought & we’re taking a look at Danny Nobus’s session on Žižek’s reading of Sophocles' Antigone.
Can a revolutionary subject ever be an isolated individual? What happens when an act suspends both public law and private family ties without any guarantees in the Big Other?
Along the way we get into Alenka Zupančič’s reading of Antigone, Bartleby politics, Žižek’s three Brechtian rewrites of the play, the structural role of the chorus, and alternative models of materialist ethics in Paul Claudel’s The Hostage and Agota Kristof’s The Notebook—where taking a bullet for someone you hate might just be the purest ethical gesture available.
What is the dialectic of contingency and necessity in Antigone's double burial? Will we get two crates of Danny’s champagne? How does a groundless act retroactively posit its own presuppositions and transforms into symbolic law?
Make sure to check out Russ Sbriglia’s new album Critique of Pure Desire here!
Up next we move from the tragic act to Žižek’s Quantum History with Adrian Johnston.
See you in Paris,
Ž&…

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE!
Alright, this week we’re back with another SHORT SESSION in our ongoing series exploring the systematic aspects of Slavoj Žižek’s thought, working alongside the European Graduate School's Leading Thinkers course.
Frank Ruda is back on the menu, and this week we’re talking Žižek’s second doctoral dissertation, The Most Sublime Hysteric: Hegel with Lacan. Why do certain contingent historical anomalies arrive "right on time"? We look awry at the bizarre historical phenomena of Kaspar Hauser and the 1898 novella Futility and ask why weren't they just a random bum and a stupid ship? 
We also take a look at Hegel’s famous essay Who Thinks Abstractly? to show why Reason isn't Understanding plus something else.
Short sessions, variable length sessions, however you wanna put it, in these episodes we’ll wrap them up because of something that is said, rather than the tyranny of the clock.
See you in Paris,
Ž&...

Alright, welcome back to Žižek & So On. This week continues our NEW SERIES on the systematic aspects of Žižek’s thought & we’re taking a look at the work of philosopher Berta M. Pérez focusing on her essay “The Courage to Hold onto a Paradox” and her book The Dialectical Gaze: Hegel with Žižek. 
Why does every apparently coherent order depend on an excluded element? 
WTF is the transcendental turn? Along the way we return to some of Žižek’s key examples: Lévi-Strauss’s divided village, Hegel’s monarch as the empty point of decision, & the strange loop of subject and substance.
The European Graduate School are running a Leading Thinkers Course on Slavoj Žižek and I know a lot of our listeners are attending the course which is exciting and a big thanks to all of you who have been reaching out to us over the course of the series so far!
The course runs for ten weeks or so with Frank Ruda, Mladen Dolar, Adrian Johnston, Robert Pfaller, Zahi Zalloua, Dany Nobus, Alenka Zupančič, Berta Perez, and at the end Žižek…on…himself….so we’re going to be doing these episodes alongside the course.
Up next we stay with Žižek’s Hegel, but move from Pérez’s account of the Dialectical Gaze to the early Žižek of The Most Sublime Hysteric with Frank Ruda.
See you in Paris,
Ž&…

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE
Alright, welcome back to Žižek & So On. This week continues our new series on the systematic aspects of Žižek’s thought, & we're bringing you another PATREON SHORT SESSION.
This episode is a special one because we managed to get a copy of Žižek’s Masters Thesis from the early 1970’s which became his second book (Znak, označitelj, pismo) published in 1976.
So once again we begin at the beginning…again, looking at repetition in Zizek’s oeuvre with his initial turn to French structuralism with the help of Mladen Dolar.
We’re talking Žizek’s thesis defence where he had to outline his relationship to Marx, why the split precedes the whole, why animals can’t wear masks, and universal signifiers today.
The European Graduate School are running a Leading Thinkers Course on Slavoj Žižek and I know a lot of our listeners are attending the course which is exciting and a big thanks to all of you who have been reaching out to us over the last few weeks of the course!
The course runs for ten weeks or so with Frank Ruda, Mladen Dolar, Adrian Johnston, Robert Pfaller, Zahi Zalloua, Dany Nobus, Alenka Zupančič, Berta Perez, and at the end Žižek…on…himself….so we’re going to be doing these episodes alongside the course.
Up next is Berta M Perez and her reading of Žiżek and the Dialectical Gaze!
Short sessions, variable length sessions, however you wanna put it, in these episodes we’ll wrap them up because of something that is said, rather than the tyranny of the clock.
See you in Paris,
Ž&…