Archive of Living in the End Times
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Smashing the Spinning Plates – Slavoj Žižek and Syriza
In a recent piece for In These Times Slavoj Žižek reflects on the outcome of the Greek elections on the 17th of June, analysing how Syriza, the radical left coalition, came close to smashing the entire set of the European Union’s crockery. Dismissing the EU’s austerity measures as nonsense, Žižek says:
So why does Brussels impose these plans? What matters in contemporary capitalism is that agents act upon their putative beliefs about future prospects, regardless of whether they really believe in those prospects. And, as we also all know, the true aim of these rescue measures is not to save Greece, but to save the European banks.
To illustrate the mistake of enacting austerity measures as the main strategy to combat the crisis, Paul Krugman often compares them to the medieval cure of blood-letting. That’s a nice metaphor that should be radicalized even further. The European financial doctors, who are themselves not sure about how the medicine works, are using the Greeks as test rabbits and letting their blood, not the blood of their own countries. There is no blood-letting for the great German and French banks—on the contrary, they are getting continuous and enormous transfusions.
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Žižek Featured in The Onion —We Fill in the Blanks
The Onion Weekender recently featured our in-house champion of castration anxiety:
The answers are here. We interns scoured our Žižek backlist to uncover his hints for YOU.
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"Democracy must be reinvented"—Žižek on Occupy & the Arab Spring
Slavoj Zizek in an interview for Germany's Deutsche Welle television, talking about Occupy, communism and the need for a reinvention of democracy.
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Slavoj Žižek on the Occupy movement for Al Jazeera— videos and transcript
Slavoj Žižek has been interviewed by Al Jazeera to give his unique perspective on the tumultuous changes happening in the world financial and political systems. In an extensive conversation with Tom Ackerman, Žižek discussed the Arab Spring, London Riots and the Occupy movement, as well as the various financial and political crises across the world from Europe to India. Throughout the discussion, Žižek explored the themes of violence across the political spectrum and his irresistible desire to provoke friends and enemies alike.
Visit Al Jazeera to view the interview in situ.
Žižek also visited St Marks bookshop to discuss his views on the Occupy Wall Street protest.
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Shooting Žižek—and the winner is...
We're delighted to announce that the winner of the Shooting Žižek short film competition is...
Jamie Jones & Liam Saint Pierre, for The Last Capitalist.