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Slavoj Žižek: When is a shark not a shark. (Patreon)

Published:
2024-06-01 22:09:16
Imported:
2026-06

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Content

Join Matt and Chris as they plunge into the heady mental universe of Slavoj Žižek, the Slovenian philosopher known for his eclectic and provocative ideas. The duo parses Žižek's 'unconventional' takes on ideology, consumerism, and revolutionary theory, peppered with his playful movie criticism of films like Jaws and a Clockwork Orange and even a few that he hasn't even watched.

We delve into snuffle-laced discussions of transgressive acts, revolutionary politics, moderate conservative communism, consumerist psychology, and musings on whether Jaws is really about a shark. Throughout all Žižek's dramatic flair is shining through, but is he actually as provocative and hated as he likes to suggest? Matt and Chris have some thoughts...

Expect to reconsider everything you thought you knew, listen to some edgy book blurbs, and finally collapse in a puddle with the deconstruction of your ideology.

Links 

Novara Media: Our World Is Coming To An End | Aaron Bastani Meets Slavoj Žižek | Downstream

The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (2012) - Slavoj Žižek

Jacobin: Žižek’s Left-Wing Case for Christian Atheism

Philosophize This- Episode #196 - The Improbable Slavoj Zizek - Pt. 1(Also, there are three other Žižek episodes in this series!)

Article on the speech Žižek gave at the Frankfurt Book Fair

Files

Comments

Lillie

👏👏

Linda Sears

Looking forward to this!

Barrett

on coke and desire: 'i did check with chatgpt...' Chris, out of curiosity is that your daily driver for an info search? Also it sounds like there was more in the source material but isn't this idea about unending desire or the desire of desire that Zizek raises a fundamental concept in Buddhism and also roughly consistent w current model of dopaminergic behaviour? Ideas in our hosts' wheelhouses that weren't raised, but perhaps I'm stretching :)

Barrett

Really stoked on this one, I've found Zizek interesting in clips but difficult to listen to at length so awesome format for longer introduction imo

Mark Olague

45 mins. into it and I have observed a lot. One: you guys are most definitely not in the humanities. Second: the documentary was a kind of a cheesy way to make Zizek’s Lacanian cultural theories accessible to a broad non-academic audience: it’s not exactly the best way to judge his theories. The intentional fallacy. I’m not sure you understand in cultural theory and literary analysis the idea that the author is the sole authority of his or her work is rejected. Just asking Spielberg what the “shark” means is beside the point (would he even know?). Everything is a “text,” bearing a system of social and cultural signs that can be interpreted. Every text is therefore “read into” to uncover the social and cultural signs or what Jameson called, “The Political Unconscious.” There is no master interpretation. Poststructuralism 101. I fear you guys might be too much the empiricists to comprehend Zizek. What I think separates Zizek’s cultural analysis from JP’s cultural speculations (beyond Zizek’s rhetorical clarity) is that Zizek’s Marxist politics are up front and center, announced beforehand. You can’t really understand his concept of ideology with understanding someone like Althusser. Zizek is moving away from classic Marxism’s conception of ideology as false consciousness. This is because Leftist at the end of the 20th Century needed a new theory to explain why people consistently supported political ideologies not in their interest, i.e. the Revolution never came. So, enter Lacan to describe the “desiring” subject and his “grammar” of desire.

Mark Olague

There are no straightforward meanings; there are only strong and weak readings of a text.

Chris Clark

I do like him but he’s almost abit David Brent sometimes. “I said to my son how dare you do your homework when there is a horror movie on Netflix” woah crazy guy! Rule breaker. Put your feet up on the desk! Screw the normies Ziz!

Mikael Heller Sahlgren

Lol that first clip really caught me of guard! Wasnt prepared for zizek eating trash

aneladgam_varelse

When Starbucks entered polish market in 2009, it was brand for hipsters/teenagers. Starbucks coffee was ungodly expensive compared to other cafes, but it offered 2 things other cafes didn’t: 1) baristas asked about your name and wrote it on cup (infinite meme potential!!!), 2) product well known from american internet, where Starbucks was some kind of fashion/personality/subculture statement. Craze slowed down in ~2015 and most people turned away from Starbucks, because it was too expensive for below avarage product. Culture started forming around Costa Coffee (good coffee, cheapest of all chain cafes, best loyality program) and Green Nero Cafe (it’s so fancy! srsly google it, when I was in UK and discovered regular Nero Cafe I was in dismay how meh everything is compared to polish Green Nero Cafe, which is fusion of international Nero Cafe with polish cafe chain)

Allan Malcolm McPherson

Oh, in case anybody took Zizek as correct on the use of "Indian"...yeah, you might find some folks that prefer that term but that going to be a niche regional/generational thing.

Robert Andrews

Nice! I'm going to have to watch the source material first. Can't believe I've never watched it before.

Roland Weber

I had seen some interviews with him on YT. Found him somewhat entertaining, also somewhat hard to listen to, but not very provocative. When I heard he'd written about the Barbie movie, I was interested. Luckily, I heard that he hadn't watched the movie before I got to read what he had written about it. When I read a movie review or critique, I want to know what the author thinks about the actual movie, not what they think about what they think the movie is about. So, yeah, I guess that was provocative after all. 🤔 Thanks for the episode, I enjoyed it! There was a bit of noise when the end music faded out, but anyone making it that far won't mind. 😄

Chomagerider

Probably a massively ignorant comment (certainly not meant as an offense) but what's the point of cultural theory and literary analysis beyond being a fun way to train your brain muscle? The author isn't the sole authority, so I guess nobody else is either ?So everything can mean anything or nothing. Who's to tell?

Tim Tripp

Wow cynicism as ideology! That resonates with me.

Nina Davies

Great episode. I, too, am please to confirm I am a slightly conservative Marxist. Just a point about the Coke is 'it' segment - If you are studying critical theory it was/perhaps still it impossible to get very far without getting your head round Lacan. People try to avoid it of course but it means you with not really engage with a massive amount of film theory, feminism and cultural theory. Levi Strauss is better with a grasp of Lacan. That doesn't mean he was right ..... but in terms of the development of a field of study it is similar to leaving out Marx. Hence why Zizek's use of Lacan is important. To use a bit of Bourdieu here - Zizek is playing a great game of tennis with the theoretical tools available. However, some people believe that the game of tennis itself is pointless!

everythingism

Does it matter whether the examples Zizek repeats are true or not? One of his most-repeated stories involves the physicist Niels Bohr, who supposedly kept a horseshoe above his door because "it works even if you don't believe in it." According to Zizek this quote represents the nature of ideology today...we follow ideology cynically but it still performs its social role. As in turns out the story seems to not actually have happened -- or at least someone else made the horseshoe quote, which was falsely attributed to Niels Bohr. https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/8387/is-the-anecdote-about-niels-bohr-keeping-a-horseshoe-on-his-door-true However I'd view these stories, as well as the film criticism, as simply jumping off points for whatever he wants to say. When Zizek talks about what the various interpretations of what the shark stands for in Jaws it's just an analogy for ideology as an empty vessel...he's not actually making any particular claim about what the shark stands for, which for all we know could just be a shark.

Mark Olague

When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ ’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.

aneladgam_varelse

Re: day after revolution My formative reading was „Democratic theory” by Giovanni Sartori, which I’ve read during 1st year in collage. One of takes that stayed with me since then is that engagement is the highest during the revolution and it’s not possible to build government/law/community on assumption the engagement will last forever. <- it’s seems kinda obvious, but many systems proposed around buzzword „community” are built on premise of constant hight engagement

Linda Sears

Your discussion of the French Revolution made me think of the movie Danton, by Andrzej Wajda. The film was made during the Polish solidarity movement, so some see parallels between the character of Danton and Lech Walesa. Matt’s view of Robespierre matches how he is presented in the film as both an idealistic true believer and a ruthless defender of ideas at the expense of the humans those ideas are supposed to protect. I’ve often thought that a revolution from within is far more likely to lead to bloody purges than one like the American Revolution, where the main enemy is further away.

Robert Andrews

Shocked... SHOCKED I was at Matthew Browne's calumny against the noble discipline that is philosophy. He says something like (I can't remember the exact words which may be more defensible) that Slavoj Zizek doesn't look for disconfirming evidence because, you know, he's a philosopher, and they're all like that, don't you know! Oh really? Well, here's a counter-example for you, Sir Karl Popper!! The guy who came up with the concept of falsifiability!

Adam Sher

I don't get Zizek. Based on this sample, it seems like he is a social and political commentator. What does he do that's so appealing? What does it mean that he's a socialist? Richard Wolf, a socialist economist, took 90 minutes on The Glenn Show to finally define it as the pursuit of an economic system that is better than what we have. That seems like a Game B type non-answer. Does Zizek have a better definition?

Emil Mi

The shtick is to believe that all symbols are real and have a teleology (sense makers love this) and then fake outrage at how these are being aubverted by a shadowy cabal (conservative types love this). In the past men (and it's mostly men) were doing this when confronted with the mysteries of nature, but since exploration has dried out we spook outselfes like young foals

Tobbe lobben

The left wing gurus are so empty and boring. So banal

aneladgam_varelse

Re: Fukushima My step-mom is radiation protection officer (in Poland), recently she told me a story about conference with specialists from Japan Atomic Energy Agency, who had speech about science communication and demystifying it radiation. According to her, people from JAEA regret that they didn’t to enough in science communication and as result they had to deal with totally overblown panic and inappropriate reactions to nuclear accident. Also land around Fukushima is safe now, but I received very technical rant that I neither remember or understood.

Joe Romel

Lmao he asked for shout-outs and I STILL didn’t get one 🤣🤣🤣

Níall

You said my name! I played it back to my very uninterested pregnant girlfriend. She's now using this as even more ammo that our first born should not take my second name, as nobody can pronounce it!

Liam McMahon

Regarding that review - I'm surprised Matt didn't get the footy show reference. He's referring to an Australian tv show about some ex-rugby players who talk about rugby and do stupid things. It's got a reputation for being a bit stupid and 'blokey.' I think his criticism wasn't attempting to dox you, he was painting a caricature of a loser like he thought you guys would be. I'm sure he's too lazy to do any real research

D

Praying for a decoding of the zizek/ Peterson debate Pleaaaase

Trees

Every time Zizek says "ideology", I can't help but hear "Ideologie".