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 SERIESon 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 plussomething 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&…

Alright, welcome back to Žižek & So On, this week continues our NEW SERIES on the systematic aspects of Žižek’s thought as we work through some of his foundational texts together.

To follow along with the series head over to our PATREON where you can listen to all our other interviews, episodes, and SHORT SESSIONS!

In this episode we’re taking a look at Žižek’s work on race, racism, anti-racism, concrete universality, and symbolic suicide through the work of Zahi Zalloua and we’re joined by Tim Bryar and Dimitri.

The European Graduate School are running a Leading Thinkers Course on Žižek 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 have an episode on some of Žižek’s earliest work from way back in 1968, twenty years before the publication the Sublime Object of Ideology, and his Masters Thesis from 1976 Znak, Označitelj, Pismo which we take a look at with the help of Mladen Dolar.

See you in Paris,

Ž&…

Alright, welcome back to Žižek & So On, this week is the beginning of a NEW SERIES we’re doing on the systematic aspects of Žižek’s thought as we work through some of his foundational texts.

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. Thanks to everyone who has reached out recently, we really appreciate it.

For this first episode we’re taking a look back at Žižek’s first book in English, the Sublime Object of Ideology, and Frank Ruda’s lecture on it . We’re joined by Dim and Tim Bryar to work through it with us and we're talking ideology, the curious incident of the Laclau that didn’t preface, the homology between Freud and Marx, and objective illusions.

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 have an episode on Zero Point, Zahi Zalloua, and Three Fragments on Suicide as a Political Factor!

See you in Paris,

Ž&…

Alright, today’s episode is part of our SERIES on Žižek’s Quantum History and we’re taking a look at superpositions and enlightened doomsaying.

How does Žižek's work on Quantum Physics relate to his political work? Was Žižek just "wrong" about the pandemic? At the level of factual truth, maybe.

What is Enlightened Doomsaying? To prevent the end, do we have to act as if it has already happened? Does the collapse of the wave function come first? Is history just a "premiere" that retroactively creates its own rehearsals? Why do we fail to prevent catastrophes we already know are coming?

We’re discussing War Communism, the Doomsday Clock, and why "knowing" isn't the same as "believing" through the work of Slavoj Žižek, Agon Hamza, Alenka Zupančič, and Jean-Pierre Dupuy, where subjective truth often requires the form of factual untruth.

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.

Up next we’re continuing the series...with some special guests!

See you in Paris,

Ž&...

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEKis back on the show to talk about his new book Quantum History: A New Materialist Philosophy.

We’re talking Quantum Variations, Superposition, Wave Collapse, Catastrophe, & So On.

Thank you to everyone for supporting our project and keeping us going. The series on Quantum History will continue with some more interviews and episodes with some great guests who have been working on all of these things and we’re looking forward to it!

SUPPORT US ON PATREON!

See you in Paris,

Ž&…

Alright, welcome back to Žižek & So On, we’re beginning our new series on Quantum Physics in the work of Slavoj Žižek and for this week we have a SHORT SESSION taking a look at some of the work leading up to Žižek’s Quantum History. 

What does it mean for history to progress if every forward movement leaves something broken behind? Can a crushed possibility haunt the present? How does retroactivity work when Žižek is talking about QUANTUM HISTORY, is everything up for grabs?

Where are all the dead birds?

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.

Up next we’re talking superpositions…with some special guests!

See you in Paris,
Ž&...

Alright, Tim is stuck in the freezer again and we have TWO NEW EPISODES with good friend of the show and one half of the Why Theory Podcast with Todd McGowan, RYAN ENGLEY.

Head over to PATREON to support the show and get access to all our other interviews, short sessions, and more!

We’re talking canned laughter, the history of television and the aesthetics of television, memory, and forgetting.

LISTEN TO EPISODE ONE HERE!

LISTEN TO EPISODE TWO...HERE!

Up next we have a series of episodes for Žižek’s forthcoming book QUANTUM HISTORY!

See you in Paris,

Ž&…

Alright, welcome back to Žižek & So On, Tim is still away staring at the dot and this week we have PART ONE of our interview with good friend of the show and one half of the Why Theory Podcast with Todd McGowan, Ryan Engley!

We're talking canned laughter, the history of television, the aesthetics of television, memory, and forgetting.

Up next we have some episodes for Žižek’s forthcoming book QUANTUM HISTORY!

See you in Paris,

Ž&…

Alright, this week is PART ONE of our conversation with returning guest and friend of the show MATTHEW FLISFEDER author of Algorithmic Desire toward a New Structuralist Theory of Social Media. and his latest book The Hysterical Sublime: Humanism in the Age of Post-Human Capitalism. 

Matt is professor of Rhetoric & Communications at the University of Winnipeg and in this episode we’re talking about Slavoj Žižek’s Eurocentrism, concrete universality in his work, why universality appears from the split within the particular, Žižek’s holographic history (choices-not-chosen and the fantasies they generate), super-anthropocentrism and dialectical humanism, Althusser’s theoretical anti-humanism vs. practical humanism, degrowth vs. building the infrastructures we actually need, and how geoengineering fixes demand global coordination with real legal form and so on and so on.

Stay tuned for PART TWO out next!

See you in Paris,

Ž&…

⁠BUY THE ALBUM HERE! ⁠

Alright, this week we’re drinking the blood from Oedipus’s eyes with returning guest and friend of the show, the great Russell Sbriglia to talk about his new album ⁠Critique of Pure Desire⁠ which, according to Ryan Engley, sounds like if King Crimson were throwing an Eyes Wide Shut party.

The album is a psychedelic mix of philosophy, psychoanalysis, literature, and film through Slavoj Žižek, Lacan, Hegel, Hitchcock, Melville, Antigone, Hamlet, Poe, Blade Runner, Chopin, La Jetée…and even features guest vocals from Žižek himself.

We’re talking the critique of pure desire, the strange logic of retroactivity, failed interpellations, hysterics, the split within the law, and future histories…

Russ is Associate Professor of English at Seton Hall, co-editor with Slavoj of Subject Lessons, editor of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Literature but Were Afraid to Ask Žižek, and the band Misconstruity.

Big thanks to Russ — and if you’re quick, the first two listeners to email zizekandsoon@gmail.com will get a copy of the album.

And yes, Tim is still away…last I heard he reckoned that he’s being followed by a chorus of old men who keep lamenting his decisions and spoiling the plot of his life…however I want to take this chance to say that Tim’s first book has just been published with Palgrave: A Lacanian-Hegelian Perspective on Peace and Conflict Studies. It’s now out in the world and you should all check it out.

Congrats, Tim.

Extra fish-head soup for you!

⁠GET TIM'S BOOK HERE!⁠

See you in Paris,

Ž&…

Alright, Michael Downs⁠ is with us again and Todd is back to talk more about his new book The Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Lacan. 

Listen to PART ONE HERE!

We’re talking why the master signifier and the quilting point shouldn't be used interchangeably, the crucial difference between das Ding and objet petit a, and Lacan's three big missteps with the four discourses, sexuation, and the sinthome.

We get into gambling theory, the "Joy Machine" at airports, Yahoo's gambling origins, whether we're living through a decline of symbolic efficiency or just more superego pressure, and why AI might be the ultimate big other.

Shared fantasy, traversing the fantasy, and the impossibility of the sexual relationship…what does this have to do with Escape (The Piña Colada Song)”?

Support us on ⁠PATREON⁠ for Discord access, extra episodes, and our SHORT SESSIONS series.

See you in Paris, 

Ž&...

Alright this week we’re back and joined by Michael Downsto talk with longtime friend of the show Todd McGowan about his brand new book The Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Lacan.

This is a book a lot of us have wanted for a long time!

McGowan's book on Lacan demonstrates yet again how right Lacan was when he insisted that people who are not clinical analysts can also be full members of his school. It's not that we philosophers should learn from clinicians - clinicians can learn from us what they are doing. Finally, someone dared to state openly the obvious truth: like all anti-philosophers from Kant onwards, Lacan is also and foremost a philosopher!

- Slavoj Žižek

Is Lacan a philosopher? Is Lacan a dialectical thinker?

In PART ONE of the interview with Todd we’re talking Lacan’s turn to the nonrelationand the Borromean knot and how it marks a break from his dialectical thought, and why you should skip the Écrits entirely and read the seminars instead.

We trace Lacan’s philosophical project through Kant and Hegel, explore Lacan's theory of the subject, Žižek’s quantum history, the Copenhagen interpretation, and Sean Carroll as a Deleuzean physicist.

Support us on PATREON and get access to our Discord, interviews, extra episodes each month, and our SHORT SESSIONS series for $5/month.⁠⁠⁠

PART TWO of the interview will be out next!

See you in Paris,
Ž&...

Alright this is a PATREON PREVIEW & this week we’re back again with our series on Slavoj Žižek’s Against Progress with PART TWO of the long-awaited conversation with theorist and friend of the show Michael Downs, author of the Dangerous Maybe Blog on Medium and his new book Capital Vs Timenergy: A Žižekian Critique of Nick Land to discuss Žižek’s essay Accelerationism.

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE!

We’re talking Lacan’s theory of language and the co-evolution of the brain and the Big Other, Žižek’s dialectical method, the difference between Land’s and Žižek’s conceptions of the death drive, Cute Accelerationism and so on and so on. 

See you in Paris,

Ž&...

Also check out Pods Against Tomorrow hosted by Hugh Manon Professor of Screen Studies at Clark University and Abe Doubleday-Bush where they reinvestigate the noir genre one film at a time. I joined them the other day to discuss Joseph Losey and Dalton Trumbo's down-and-dirty 1951 cult noir, THE PROWLER. Which you can listen to...HERE!

Alright this week we’re continuing our series on Slavoj Žižek’s Against Progress with another long-awaited conversation with theorist and friend of the show Michael Downs, author of the Dangerous Maybe Blog on Mediumand his new book Capital Vs Timenergy: A Žižekian Critique of Nick Land to discuss Žižek’s essay Accelerationism.

Is Žižek an Accelerationist?

In PART ONE of our conversation we’re talking accelerationism and degrowth, all things Nick Land, cyber-positivity, forced choices, the zero point of modernity, and get into the CCRU, cute accelerationism, AI as metaphysical horror, the barred and unbarred Big Other, Providence, techno-Telos, face tentacles, vinyl records, and the Lacanian subject.

⁠⁠Support us on PATREON and get access to our Discord, interviews, extra episodes each month, and our SHORT SESSIONS series for $5/month.⁠⁠

See you in Paris,
Ž&...

Alright, this week Tim is shopping for two birds that look alike and we’re joined by friend of the podcast Jack Black whose latest book is The Psychosis of Race: A Lacanian Approach to Racism and Racializationand we’re talking through Žižek’s new book Against Progress. 

What becomes of squashed birds? We’re talking Slavoj Žižek’s work on quantum physics, collapsed wave functions, fetishistic splits, retroactive redemption, disavowal, Jack’s mother’s poetic swearing, and whether the only real option is one that starts again. And again. And again. 

Support us on PATREON for more episodes, interviews, SHORT SESSIONS and our DISCORD.

Big thanks to Jack and as always… 

See you in Paris,

Ž&...

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE!

Alright, we’re back with another Patreon SHORT SESSION and this week Tim is at the shops buying a Tickle Me Elmo and we’re taking a look at some aspects of laughter in a few different ways.

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.

So what’s so ticklish about the ticklish subject? Can it tickle itself?

We’re talking Žižek’s totalitarian laughter, Adam Phillips on the erotic grammar of tickling, Trump as the David Brent of Empire, Romanian orphanages and Rhesus monkeys, and the dialectic of cringe and tickling.

Whatever you do, don’t google "competitive tickling".

Check out Aaron Schuster's piece on tickling here.

Jamil Khader's RELOADING LAUGHTER: ŽIŽEK AND A THEORY OF COMEDY

See you in Paris,

Ž&...

Alright, this week Tim is still away and certainly not obsessed with Anomancy a truth procedure which involves reading the folds and wrinkles of someones anus to discover profound insights into health, love, and destiny…he is rather off the wagon only to run someone down and will be back soon.

In the meantime we’re talking to Alfie Bown author of Post-Comedy which is Alfie's latest book in the same series as Mladen Dolar, Alenka Zupancic, Helen Rollins and many others.

Get a copy of Post-Comedy here!

We’re talking anxiety, ideology, the form of comedy today, and the ontology of laughter.

We’re getting into the disappearance of the laugh track, cringe comedy, crowd work & platform capitalism, the politics of offence, didactic humour, and how since comedy is surprises, if you're intending to make somebody laugh and they don’t laugh...that’s funny too.

See you in Paris,

Ž&...

LOL

Also, check out the new series on Little Hans by Kate Merritt and Manuel Gabbert which you can find on YouTube and the Everyday Analysis page as well as all everything else going on at @everydayanalysis

To listen to the FULL EPISODE head to our PATREON

Alright, we’re back from the LACK Conference at Otterbein University and Tim’s still at the airport screaming that the queue is the destination. Great to see so many friends— Jack Black, Neo Winter Scott, Jon Hegglund, Matthew Flisfeder, Clint Burnham, Katherine Everitt, Todd McGowan, Anna Kornbluh, Russell Sbriglia, Ryan Engley, Derek Hook, Mikey Downs and the crew…too many to name and of course, Žižek himself.

In this SHORT SESSION, we’re diving into the extended version of my LACK presentation The Shit of History: No Fickle Matter—a theory of waste in capitalism as structural, not accidental.

We’re talking Adrian Johnston’s coprophagic capitalism, Slavoj Žižek’s violence typology, offshore detention, DOGE, plastic recycling, human waste, and James Mcann’s public toilet analysis.

Big thanks to our PATREONS for the ongoing support and to James Donald Forbes McCann!

You can find his special here! ...or find him on YouTube and everywhere else.

⁠Support us on PATREON and get access to our Discord, interviews, extra episodes each month, and our SHORT SESSIONS series for $5/month.⁠

See you in Paris,

Ž&…

Alright, while Tim's busy making two minute noodles we're speaking with Helen Rollins!

Check out her website here!

Helen is a filmmaker, academic, and writer from Northern Ireland who writes and lectures on film and psychoanalysis. Her latest book, Psychocinema, was published in 2024 in the Theory Redux series.

We’re talking the le non-duped err and messy bedrooms, the Gaze, the Master’s Discourse, the form of cinema, the politics of film as an industry today, and why film itself is a psychoanalytic experience. 

And here’s an endorsement from Slavoj Žižek for Helen’s new book…

“Helen Rollins’ Psychocinema does something that is very rare: it aims at changing the very frame of how cinema and psychoanalysis are related. Rollins shows that viewing a film is in itself a psychoanalytic experience, the effect of film on the viewer is that of psychoanalysis on the analysand. 

Watching a film confronts us with the truth of our desire in all its inconsistencies, with the lack that sustains this desire. This ground-breaking thesis is demonstrated by dozens of illustrious examples, and they make the book not only insanely readable but also an important contribution to today’s politics of emancipation.

I didn’t dare even to imagine that a book like Psychocinema could exist. But miracles happen, and Rollins’s book is one of them.”

Thanks Helen!

See you in Paris, 

Ž&...

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE!

Alright, we’re back with a new PATREON EPISODE while Tim's still on an island painting a face on a volleyball & we're taking another look at Todd McGowan's new book Pure Excess.

Capitalism promises things beyond their usefulness, the enjoyment of a useless excess, an excess which is presented as pure when it is necessarily impure — there is always a hidden sacrifice.

We're talking Jackie Kennedy's fake pearl necklace selling for $200,000, Paper Water and the Resnick's, Trump's Air Rights, and why we can't have McDonalds at home. 

Big thanks to our ⁠PATREONS⁠ for the ongoing support!

⁠⁠Support us on PATREON and get access to our Discord, interviews, extra episodes each month and our new SHORT SESSIONS series for $5 a month!⁠⁠

See you in Paris, 

Ž&…

Alright, welcome back to Žižek and So On this time we’re talking again with old mate Todd McGowan. This was recorded on Valentines Day 2025 and Tim was busy shopping for eggs.

We’re diving into Todd’s new book Pure Excess: Capitalism and the Commodity to talk inutility and the promise of pure excess in the commodity form. Why can’t we have McDonalds at home? What is capitalism’s magic trick, and where are the dead birds? 

Up next we’ve got an episode dedicated solely to Todd’s book staging a series of examples to explore the theoretical underpinnings of the book. 

SUPPORT THE PODCAST HERE to access our Discord, more interviews, more episodes and our SHORT SESSIONS!

See you in Paris,

Ž&…

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE!

Alright, we’re back for 2025 with a new PATREON episode and while Tim's drinking margaritas on a beach somewhere we’re talking Binocular rivalry, the authorlessness of AI, the Dead Internet Theory, Mr Beast…and what happens when a Rabbi, Businessman, and a poor ordinary Jew talk to God.

This is PART TWO in our series on Mladen Dola’rs Rumorsthrough Zizek's recent comments on psychoanalysis, and the strange logic of knowledge in the age of information overload.

Can we know too much? Is the production of knowledge necessarily good? What’s the difference between rumour and conspiracy? Is it a conspiracy or platform capitalism functioning smoothly?

Thanks to our PATREONS for another year of the show! 

⁠Support us on PATREON and get access to our Discord, interviews, extra episodes each month and our new SHORT SESSIONS series for $5 a month!⁠

See you in Paris,

Ž&…

Alright...as you know Slavoj Žižek and Mladen Dolar are the founding members of the Ljubljana School of Psychoanalysis with Alenka Zupančič as part of their Troika, and this week we have our first episode of a new series we're doing on Mladen Dolar's upcoming book Rumors as part of the Theory Redux editions with Polity Press.

A little birdie told me that Tim is busy moving house and we're talking the general rumorization of society from Socrates to Trump, Franz Kafka's the Trial, Lacan's ethology, JD Vance and his couch, Castaways, and Cindy Crawford.

A lot of people are talking about it!

Thanks to everyone for all of the support and apologies for the episode delay...rumors abound!

SUPPORT THE PODCAST HERE - for more episodes, interviews, SHORT SESSIONS and our Discord!

See You in Paris!

Ž&...

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE!

Alright, this is a PATREON PREVIEW and we're back with the wonderful PETER ROLLINS talking Donald Trump's Sharpie & the rise of Obscene Masters, Paul Tillich, Simone Weil, Badiou and fidelity to an Event, Religion as a truth procedure, Jordan Peterson and Richard Dawkins, and of course...Seamus gambling with God.

LISTEN TO THE FIRST PART OF OUR INTERVIEW WITH PETER HERE!

Big thanks to Peter and all of you over the years who have asked us to have a chat with him and we look forward to doing it again!

Stay tuned because we have a few very exciting guests before the end of the year...

Support us on PATREON and get access to our Discord, interviews, extra episodes each month and our new SHORT SESSIONS series for $5 a month!

See you in Paris!

Ž&...

Alright, we’ve got some Good News…God is Dead!

But does he know he’s dead?

This week is PART ONEwith the wonderful PETER ROLLINS and we’re talking Death of God theology; belief, knowledge, and Faith. We get into Christian Atheism, Peter’s Church of the Contradiction, and why Nothing Lives, Nothing Binds, & Nothing Saves.

What does Bigfoot have to do with ontological incompleteness & Slavoj Žižek’s work on Quantum Physics? Why is Atheism not Atheist enough?

Big thanks to all of you over the years who have asked us to have a chat with Peter…

To hear more with Peter head over to our PATREON for PART TWO next week and access to our discord, all our other patreon episodes, interviews and SHORT SESSIONS!

See you in Paris!

Ž&...

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE!

Alright, we're on our season break & here is the fourth episode of our new PATREON series SHORT SESSIONS and we’re talking Donald Trump, Freud's Totem & Taboo, and Todd McGowan's End of Dissatisfaction. This week it's cannibalism, the Unabomber, societies of prohibition, societies of enjoyment, and of course...the horror of incest. 

Spooky stuff to think about after Halloween.

Who ate the last cannibal?

Big thanks to our Patreon @moonraker1 for the episode request, and if any of you out there have an idea for an episode email us at zizekandsoon@gmail.com 

…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…

SUPPORT US ON PATREON!

See you in Paris,

Enjoy!

Alright, we’re ⁠Living in the End Times⁠ and this is the FOURTH and FINAL episode in our series on The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, or as Žižek sometimes puts it, the Four Riders of the Apocalypse.

So far in our series we’ve taken a look at the economy focussing on intellectual property, the biogenetic revolution, nature and the ideology of ecology, and today we’ll look at the fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, the one Žižek locates in the space of the global commons of humanity,  what he describes as the explosive growth of social division or new forms of apartheid, new walls and slums...

Žižek says we are approaching a whole series of critical points, and the question is: can the global liberal democratic system – the capitalist system – deal with them or not?

A special thank you to everyone who has been reaching out to us about this new series, it's been much appreciated!

See you in Paris!

Ž&…

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE!

Alright, we’re ⁠Living in the End Times⁠, and this is the fourth and final episode in our series on The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, or as Žižek sometimes puts it, the Four Riders of the Apocalypse.

So far in our series we’ve taken a look at the economy focussing on intellectual property, the biogenetic revolution, nature and the ideology of ecology, and today we’ll look at the fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, the one Žižek locates in the space of the global commons of humanity,  what he describes as the explosive growth of social division or new forms of apartheid, new walls and slums...

Žižek says we are approaching a whole series of critical points, and the question is: can the global liberal democratic system – the capitalist system – deal with them or not?

A special thank you to everyone who has been reaching out to us about this new series, it's been much appreciated!

After this we're taking a season break for two weeks but there'll still be some PATREON episodes! 

See you in Paris!

Ž&…

Alright, we’re ⁠Living in the End Times⁠!

The commons of our culture has been captured and this is the third episode in a series we’re doing on The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, or as Žižek sometimes puts it, the Four Riders of the Apocalypse. 

This week we’re talking Nature & Ecology. Does Nature exist? Can you eat plastic ice cream? 

Žižek says we are approaching a whole series of critical points, and the question is: can the global liberal democratic system – the capitalist system – deal with them or not?

See you in Paris!

Ž&…

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE!

Alright, here's another PATREON EPISODE PREVIEW

This week we’re talking Spies for the People, Whistleblowers, Wikileaks, Julian Assange, and the Logic of the Bomb.

Slavoj Žižek asks, "Did WikiLeaks open our eyes to the illusion of freedom?"

Was the only surprising thing about the WikiLeaks revelations that they contain no surprises? Or did we learn exactly what we expected to learn?

The real disturbance was at the level of appearances: we can no longer pretend we don’t know what everyone knows we know…

Alenka Zupančič says that “Knowledge thus adopts a new and different role: it is no longer simply something to be disavowed but - paradoxically - something that can help us disavow (the real of this same knowledge).“

So what happens when someone yells THEATRE in a crowded fire? Why doesn’t revelation necessarily liberate? Is Julian Assange an Antingone figure? 

What does Norm Mcdonald have to tell us about the register of truth in the public domain?

Thanks to our Patreon @tarryingwiththenegative for this weeks episode idea!

See you in Paris!

Ž&...

Bring Me My Philips Mental Jacket!

Alright, we’re ⁠Living in the End Times⁠, the commons of our nature has been captured and this is the second episode in our series on The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, or as Žižek sometimes puts it, the Four Riders of the Apocalypse.

This week we’re talking biogenetics!

Žižek says we are approaching a whole series of critical points, and the question is: can the global liberal democratic system – the capitalist system – deal with them or not?

⁠SUPPORT US ON PATREON!⁠

See you in Paris!

Ž&…

LISTEN HERE!

Alright, this is the third episode of our new Patreon series SHORT SESSIONS and we’re taking a look at one of Slavoj Žižek’s most recent Substacks “The Uses & Misuses of Neurotheology”.

We’re talking Out-of-Body experiences, LSD & dolphins, non-consensual encounters with dimethyltryptamine crocodiles, and climate controlled neurological dystopias.

Big thanks to our Patreon @cassandrandranoid for the episode request!

UP NEXT IS THE SECOND EPISODE IN OUR FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE SERIES: BIOGENETICS!

See you in Paris!

Alright, we’re Living in the End Times, the commons of our culture has been captured and this is the first episode in a series we’re doing on The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, or as Žižek sometimes puts it, the Four Riders of the Apocalypse.

This week we’re talking intellectual property and the economy.

Žižek says we are approaching a whole series of critical points, and the question is: can the global liberal democratic system – the capitalist system – deal with them or not?

SUPPORT US ON PATREON!

See you in Paris!

Ž&…

Alright, we’re back again with ADRIAN JOHNSTON to discuss more of his book INFINITE GREED: THE INHUMAN SELFISHNESS OF CAPITAL.

FULL EPISODE ON OUR PATREON HERE!

Adrian takes us through some of the shifts in Freud’s positions on Marxism and this insistence on negativity as history’s “real motor”. Are we worth our weight in gold? What is the link between infinite greed and philanthropy? How do we account for the shift in leftist concerns along identitarian lines with the seemingly repressed exception of class differences? How to shift it? What can be done about this curious case of theoretical amnesia? Are we still within capitalism or not? Are we techno-feudal, post-capital? What is Adrian’s position on the claim that we have moved beyond capitalism today? Stick around for some updates at the end about his new co-written debate book with Slavoj Žižek that is in the works. Thanks for all your support, up next we have a brand new series on Slavoj Žižek’s Living in the End Times and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse!

Alright, you've been asking for it, and here it is... Adrian Johnston is back talking about his new book INFINITE GREED: THE INHUMAN SELFISHNESS OF CAPITAL.

If you want more episodes and to support our project head to PATREON!

Adrian says, “The capitalist socioeconomic system in its entirety thus resembles a person who shoves his own head up his own ass precisely in order to eat his own shit, or a snake that swallows its own tail specifically so as to consume its own feces.”

That’s right, we’re talking Marxian enjoyment as it corresponds to Lacanian pleasure, and Marxian enrichment as it corresponds to Lacanian enjoyment.

We all know by now that Marx created the symptom, but did he also create the Drive? Is selfishness essential to capitalism? Why did Marxism move away from economism? Are we technofeudal, neo-feudal, or post-capital? Where the hell are we? Find out as we go down the toilet with Adrian.

STAY TUNED FOR PART TWO!

Enjoy!

Alright, we’re back…plumbing the depths of psychoanalytic marxism! This week we discuss Slavoj Žižek’s Scatology through Adrian Johnston’s most recent bookInfinite Greed: The Inhuman Selfishness of Capital.

Jacques Lacan points out that we are born between urine and faeces, and that man is the only animal for whom waste disposal is a problem. What is the relationship between money and waste? Freud points out this strange coincidence of the highest form (gold) and the lowest (shit), so why is shit a gift that keeps on giving? What does all of this have to do with Japanese hamburgers & Marx? 

We’re talking the political and libidinal economy of shit from the Scatalogical Rites of Nations & the Interpretation of Dreams to Uncut Gems, Cool Runnings, & Laporte’s History of Shit. 

SUPPORT OUR WORK ON PATREON FOR MORE EPISODES AND INTERVIEWS!

Up next we have two interviews with Adrian Johnston, & we’ll see you in Paris. 

Aufhebung(hole)!

Alright, Todd McGowan is back again on the podcast to talk more about his most recent book Embracing Alienation: Why We Shouldn't Try to Find Ourselves.

⁠TO HEAR OUR FIRST CONVERSATION WITH TODD ABOUT HIS NEW BOOK YOU CAN LISTEN HERE!⁠

⁠⁠You can also listen to our episode on Alienation as a concept in Żižek's work here!⁠⁠

Are there good and bad forms of alienation? We're talking the politics of non-belonging, alienation in cinema, the defence of lost causes, Friends and the failure of beginnings and the impossibility of endings, Lacan's debt to Jean Paul Sartre, identitarian politics, and Slavoj Žižek.

⁠⁠SUPPORT OUR PROJECT ON PATREON!⁠⁠

Up next we have a new SHORT SESSION on Žižek's recent Substack which you can find here!

Enjoy!

Alright this week Todd McGowan is back on the podcast to talk about his most recent book Embracing Alienation Why We Shouldn't Try to Find Ourselves.

SUPPORT OUR PROJECT ON PATREON!

You can also listen to our episode on Alienation as a concept in Żižek's work here!

The subject is divided from itself even in the form in which it is completely at home...so in this first episode we're talking the status of alienation in our current context of serial crisis and what Anna Kornbluh describes as cultural immediacy.

What does a politics of alienation have to say about ‘the day after’ or how would it look in the day after? What is the significance of place and community? Why is the violence of the death drive and its self-sabotage the first emancipation that subsequently establishes the pattern for all later political acts of emancipation?

We also get into Žižek's ontology & fate, determinism, and the forced choice of alienation.

Part two will be out next week...

Enjoy!

Alright, we’re back…LET'S GET ALIENATED! This is a PATREON PREVIEWof this weeks episode where we discuss Todd McGowan's latest book Embracing Alienation: Why We Shouldn’t Try to Find Ourselves.

TO LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE SUPPORT OUR PROJECT ON PATREON!

We’re talking the Politics of Alienation, Separation, What’s in a Name, Failing with Style, Toy Story, & so on…

Up next is our two part interview with Todd...so stick around!

More info on Todd's book here!

See you in Paris.

Enjoy!

Exciting news! For the first time Bloomsbury has published a book length overview and guide to Slavoj Žižek's 1989 text The Sublime Object of Ideology and we're talking with it's author Rafael Winkler about his reading of Slavoj Žižek's famous text.

Rafael is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He’s the author of Žižek’s The Sublime Object of Ideology: A Reader’s Guide (London: Bloomsbury, 2024), Philosophy of Finitude: Heidegger, Levinas, and Nietzsche (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), Identity and Difference (ed.) (London and New York: Routledge, 2018), Phenomenology and Naturalism (ed.) (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), and Identity and Difference: Contemporary Debates on the Self (ed.) (London: Palgrave, 2016)

More on the book from Bloomsbury.

First published in 1989, The Sublime Object of Ideology was Žižek's breakthrough work, and is still regarded by many as his masterpiece. It was an iconoclastic reinvention of ideology critique that introduced the English-speaking world to Žižek's scorching brand of cultural and philosophical commentary and the multifaceted ways in which he explained it. Tying together concepts from aesthetics, psychoanalytic theory, cultural studies and the philosophy of belief, it changed the face of contemporary commentary and remains the underpinning of much of his subsequent thinking.
This compelling guide introduces all of the influential thinkers and foundational concepts which Žižek draws on to create this seminal work. Grounding the text's many and varied references in the work of Peter Sloterdijk, Saul Kripke, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Immanuel Kant and G.W.F. Hegel, amongst others, helps students who are encountering this mercurial writer for the first time to understand the philosophical context of his early explorations. Each of Žižek's key arguments are unpacked and laid out, alongside an invaluable account of how The Sublime Object of Ideologyimpacted the critical terrain on which it landed.

Enjoy!

Alright, this week on our PATREON we’re talking Fantasy & reading from Slavoj Žižek’s Plague of Fantasies. It’s coffin pillows, being there at your own conception, roguish reporters, and the most famous blanket in cinema. 

HEAD TO OUR PATREON TO LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE!

PATREON.COM/ZIZEKANDSOON

Next week we have Rafael Winkler on to discuss the new Bloomsbury Reader’s Guide to Žižek’s Sublime Object of Ideology.

Enjoy being dead,

and we’ll see you in Paris.

Alright, we’re trying something different, a brand new monthly – or thereabouts – PATREON series on the podcast called SHORT SESSIONS…This week we're talking disaster films and the 2024 Netflix American adult animated apocalyptic comedy drama Carol & The End of the World.

Is it subversive to NOT enjoy the end of the world? Through the usual suspects like Alenka Zupančič and Slavoj Žižek we discuss the ongoing Serial Crisis, Whistleblowers, the Biden v Trump debate, Bartleby Politics, Disavowal, the Production of Community, the Popular Attachment to Catastrophe...and why you should tell your loved ones you hate them when you're going to die in a plane crash.

Big thanks to our Patreon @shitforbrains for the episode request, and if any of you out there have an idea for an episode email us at zizekandsoon@gmail.com 

…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…

SUPPORT US ON PATREON!

See you in Paris,

Enjoy!

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE!

Welcome back...is it the Same Shit on a Different Day or Different Shit on the Same Day? This is PART TWO of our interview with ALENKA ZUPANČIČ on the undeadness of crisis, adaptation, Boredom, Bartleby Politics, the Right Words at the Right Time, Masters, Żiżek’s Frankfurt Book Fair Speech, Whistleblowers & Julian Assange, and if we can still Handle the Truth!

LISTEN TO PART ONE HERE!

Big thanks to all our PATREONS for their support, up next we have some really big interviews and so on and so on.

Enjoy!

Alright, the End is Near and this week we're talking with Alenka Zupančič about her latest book Disavowal with Polity Press that came out this week.

In this first installment we're talking serial crisis, the Fire Within the Fire, knowledge, belief, deception, and the indispensability of concrete analysis.

HEAD TO OUR PATREON TO HEAR THE SECOND PART OF OUR INTERVIEW!

See you in Paris.

Enjoy!

Support the podcast on PATREON and LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE!

Alright, the podcast is back for a new season. Don’t wake up! This episode we’re talking Alenka Zupanċič’s latest book Disavowal. Father, can't you see that I'm burning? What is disavowal and why does it function differently today? We’re talking knowing, fear, nightmares, and deception. Catastrophe, serial crisis, immediacy, alienation, and the apocalypse.

Next week we’re talking to Alenka, let us know if you have any questions for us to ask.

A big thank you to everyone who has supported us over the last few years and we have a lot of big interviews and episodes coming up!

GET THE BOOK HERE!

See you in Paris.

Enjoy!

This week we're joined by Slavoj Zizek! We discuss his new book, Christian Atheism, Judith Butler, the mafia, and where to find a good diner in New York.

To support the podcast and gain access to many more episodes, join our Patreon Enjoy!

This week, the second half of our conversation with Mladen Dolar. We talk about the early days of the Ljubljana school, the structuralist revolution, the choice to read Hegel through Lacan, and the Frankfurt school. Mladen was there for it all.

Thank you to all our Patrons!

Up next we have our interview with Slavoj Žižek from our time with him in New York.

Listen to the first interview we had with Mladen here!

This week, the second half of our conversation with Mladen Dolar. We talk about the early days of the Ljubljana school, the structuralist revolution, the choice to read Hegel through Lacan, and the Frankfurt school. Mladen was there for it all.

For access our full conversation and to support the show, join our Patreon!

Thank you to all our Patrons! More to come soon. Make sure you book your spot in the upcoming Zizek events in New York in early April!

Enjoy!

This week, we present the third episode in our series of interviews with the Troika — after Slavoj Žižek, and Alenka Zupančič . We’re speaking with Mladen Dolar, Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Philosophy, at the University of Ljubljana.

Dolar is the co-founder of what has become known as ‘the Ljubljana School’. His principal areas of research are psychoanalysis, modern French philosophy, German Idealism, and art theory. He has lectured extensively at universities in the US and across Europe, and he is the author of over a hundred papers in scholarly journals and volume collections. Apart from ten books in Slovene, his book publications include most notably A Voice and Nothing More and Opera’s Second Death.

We’re talking the voice, May 68, the early days in Ljubljana, Lacan, rumours and gossip, what’s in a name, and the decline of paternal authority.   

For access to many more episodes, join our PATREON!  

Thanks Mladen!

This week, the fellas are back with Anna Kornbluh. When we spoke with Alenka Zupančič recently, she told us we should interview Anna about her new book Immediacy Or, The style of Too Late Capitalism. So we did! We’re talking mediation, the negative, Van Gogh immersive experiences, Sartre, Žižek’s early work on film, and the end of futurity. Enjoy!

This week, the fellas are back with Anna Kornbluh. When we spoke with Alenka Zupančičrecently, she told us we should interview Anna about her new book Immediacy, or The style of Too Late Capitalism. So we did!  

We’re talking mediation, the negative, Van Gogh immersive experiences, Sartre, Žižek’s early work on film, and the end of futurity.

This is a PATREON preview of our 90 minute interview, for the full episode and to SUPPORT the podcast LISTEN HERE! Our next interview is with MLADEN DOLAR... Enjoy!

This week, the fellas scroll through Zizek's new substack. Tying together three articles, we move from 'tech talk' (Elon Musk, Apple Vision, the profound suffering of microchimpanzees), to a Zizekian theory of sexuality, and finally to the fine art of smoking (and other surplus enjoyments). To stay up to date and access many more episodes, join our Patreon (we'll be speaking to Anna Kornbluh and Mladen Dolar very soon!)

Zizek's Substack articles:

ELON MUSK RUINED MY SEX LIFE

NOTES TOWARDS A HEGELIAN SYSTEM OF SEXUALITY

SMOKING CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS

⁠FULL EPISODE HERE

This is an excerpt from this week's Patreon episode. We're talking the inherent transgression of the law. Michael buys tickets for the big apple, Peter is freezing in a field, and Will reviews Stalker and the Third Man.

Enjoy!

Please consider supporting us on Patreon for access to extra episodes and the ongoing production of the show!

Move your Buridan's Ass!

This is an UNLOCKED PATREON episode demanded by the listeners wherein the fellas discuss Žižek's new book on Freedom. They touch on the freedom of philosophy, the philosophy of freedom, the pitfalls of Anarchism, Wittgenstein, Sartre, and Canadian Thanksgiving.

Support the podcast on our ⁠PATREON for all of our Patreon episodes, interviews, reading groups and so on.

Enjoy!

FULL EPISODE HERE

This week the gang are talking Mladen Dolar’s “On Rumours, Gossip and Related Matters” from Objective Fictions as we prepare for the big interview!  

Mladen Dolar is a Slovenian philosopher, psychoanalyst, cultural theorist, and film critic. He is one third of the Troika with Alenka Zupančič and Slavoj Žižek and the co-founder, together with Slavoj Žižek of the Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis

Rumours brought down old mate Socrates and there’s one going round that the big Other doesn’t exist.   

In the beginning there was – not the Word, logos, as in the Bible, not the act, as with Faust – in the beginning, there was a rumour.   

Will combats 5G with a Feng Shui mirror, Michael covers his windows in aluminium foil, and Peter defends himself against the metric system.   

Enjoy!

It's 2024 and we’re back! We're talking what happens when you mean one thing but say amother. What role do jokes have throughout Žižek's work? This week we’re taking a look at Žižek’s Jokes via Todd McGowan, Jamil Khader, and Broderick Chow. In pod news, the final jewel of our Ljubljana crown…we’re talking to Mladen Dolar! Keep an eye out for upcoming episodes on his work as we prep for the interview. Thank you to everyone for being with us over the last four years, support us on Patreon to keep the Žižek & So On Podcast going!

Read along: Broderick Chow, Alenka Zupancic, Zizek's Jokes

-Enjoy!

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE!⁠

That's right, we're talking Godzilla Minus One this week. Also, the fall, the good, Schindler's List, Lacan and his (Hegelian) concept of empty speech, and what's new in the movies. Thanks everyone!Enjoy!

This is a preview of this week's episode. For full access, please think about joining our ⁠Patreon⁠!

This week, the fellas are back discussing Alenka Zupančič's Problemi essay, 'Lying on the Couch'. How does the psychoanalytic framework allow us to make sense of culture and lying, what is the asymmetry of a truth and a lie, and what did we think of the new Beatles song? Mike is hot (again), Will has moved (again), and Peter kind of liked Killers of the Flower Moon. Enjoy!

For access to many more episodes, check out our ⁠PATREON!⁠ Thank you to all of our Patrons! See you again soon

Alright, we’re back with another UNLOCKED ⁠PATREON⁠ episode and we’re talking ⁠Jacques Derrida⁠, the difference between parallax and différance, How To? with John Wilson, Krzysztof Kieślowski, documentary and fiction cinema, a deconstruction of Smash Mouth’s All Star, and the (w)hole in the picture. 

Thank you to all of our Patreons, we have our interview with Alenka Zupančič coming up soon!

Enjoy!

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE!

This week the fellas discuss Zizek's new book on Freedom. They touch on the freedom of philosophy, the pitfalls of anarchism, Wittgenstein, Sartre, and Canadian Thanksgiving. Enjoy!

This is a preview of this week's episode. For full access, please think about joining our Patreon!

Žižek & So On Podcast LISTEN: https://www.tinyurl.com/zizekpodcasts This is PART TWO of our interview with Slavoj Žižek for the official book launch with Bloomsbury Publishing of Žižek’s latest book Freedom: A Disease Without A Cure. We’re talking the the wired brain, the Opium wars, freedom and politics, quantum physics and determinism, fate and the role of Subject, concrete and abstract freedoms, the ontology of sex, and why we need an authentic master today.

Thanks to Bloomsbury and all our new Patreons, next up we’re speaking with Alenka Zupančič.

Purchase the book here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/freedom-9781350357129/

Enjoy!

Žižek & So On Podcast

Today we’re speaking with Slavoj Žižek for PART ONE of the official book launch with Bloomsbury Publishing of Žižek’s latest book Freedom: A Disease Without A Cure. 

For PART TWO join our Patreon, where you can hear it now! 

On this episode, we’re talking freedom, knowledge as a fetish, global warming, why the struggle for freedom is always the struggle for what freedom means, Jean Paul Sartre, Wittgenstein, Foucault, Kant and Hegel, contingency and necessity, and the strange temporality of freedom.

We’re also about to start our READING GROUP on Freedom: A Disease Without A Cure in our Discord which you can sign up for through our Patreon!

Thanks to Bloomsbury and all our Patreons, next up we’re speaking with Alenka Zupančič.

Purchase the book here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/freedom-9781350357129/

Enjoy!

Unlocked from our patreon: this week, we're joined again by Jack Black, Associate Professor of Culture, Media, and Sport at Sheffield Hallam University. We're talking football, melancholy, and English football anthems. How does football, or 'soccer', serve as an emblematic example of the Freudian/Žižekian concept of drive? Jack explains!

For access to many more interviews and other episodes, check out our PATREON! Thank you to all of our Patrons, we have some VERY SPECIAL guests coming up, so stick around.  

Enjoy!

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE!

This week, we're joined again by Jack Black, Associate Professor of Culture, Media, and Sport at Sheffield Hallam University. We're talking football, melancholy, and English football anthems. How does football, or 'soccer', serve as an emblematic example of the Freudian/Žižekian concept of drive? Jack explains!

For access to the full episode, and access to many more interviews, check out our PATREON! Thank you to all of our Patrons, we have some VERY SPECIAL guests coming up, so stick around.  

Enjoy!

Alright, it's our 100th episode and we're talking masks. From Jim Carrey's The Mask to the Kardashians it's an important concept that crops up throughout Žižek's work where he emphasises that the truth is in your mask, the truth is in what you are doing. The intimate stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves, are usually a fake...

We're running the official book launch with Bloomsbury Publishing for Žižek's new book Freedom: A Disease Without A Cure in early October with an interview, events...and some special guests over the following few weeks!

Thankyou to everyone for listening over the last 100 episodes, support us on Patreon to keep the Žižek & So On Podcast going!

Enjoy!

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE!

Alright, we’re back with another PATREON episode and we’re talking Jacques Derrida, the difference between parallax and différance, How To? with John Wilson, Krzysztof Kieślowski, documentary and fiction cinema, a deconstruction of Smash Mouth’s All Star, and the (w)hole in the picture.

Thank you to all of our Patreons, we have some VERY SPECIAL guests coming up, so stick around.  

Enjoy!

FULL EPISODE HERE

This is a PREVIEW for PART TWO of our conversation with professor RUSSELL SBRIGLIA and we're talking Lacanian theory and Moby Dick, the Kantian and Hegelian Sublime, Master Signifier and the Thing, the Whiteness of the Whale, and Orca attacks. 

We have some big interviews coming up and some

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS.

Thank you to all of our PATREONS and everyone who listens and supports us.

Enjoy!

Part 1 of our interview with Russell Sbriglia on his book Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Literature but Were Afraid to Ask Žižek.

We're talking Lacanian psychoanalysis as a way to interpret literature, Žižek's bad taste in novels, toilets, the object from inner space, why Beckett is better than Joyce, and what Tony Soprano's major was.

Join our ⁠Patreon⁠ for extra episodes, and the back catalogue of dozens of extra episodes.

Buy Russell's book here!

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE!

This week, since everyone else is, we're talking Barbie and Oppenheimer. We talk the role of fantasy in ideology, and the culture war as a distraction from class antagonism. Along the way we chat about Indiana Jones, Paul Verhoeven, and Michael's favourite Australian actors.

Thanks for listening!

⁠zizekandsoon⁠

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE!

This is a PREVIEW of PART TWO of our conversation with Adrian Johnston, you can hear the whole thing and support us on our Patreon getting access to all of our Patreon episodes, the Discord and our courses.

The gang is back for the final part of our conversation with Adrian Johnston. It's a big one!

We're talking Žižek's relationship with Kant, Schelling and Hegel, the Roberts (Pippin and Brandom), Quantum Physics, the genesis of subjectivity, materialism, Catherine Malabou and Plasticity, nature, biology and neuroscience, cognitive science, Badiou, Althusser and Spinoza.

Big thanks to our Patreons for all of your support! Got some cool things coming up over the next few months, so stay tuned!

⁠zizekandsoon⁠

It’s summer and the fellas are back! Today we're talking with Adrian Johnston, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of New Mexico.

In this first part of a series we’re talking the philosophical foundations of Žižek’s work, the equivalence between negativity and Death Drive at the core of Žižek’s theory of subjectivity, Transcendental Materialism, and Johnston’s efforts toward changing the reception of Žižek’s work.

Adrian has published and co-edited a number of books notably his essential trio on Slavoj Žižek in “Žižek’s Ontology”, “Badiou, Žižek, and Political Transformations: The Cadence of Change”, and “A New German Idealism” and his groundbreaking work in the Prolegomena series and soon to be published"Infinite Greed: Money, Marxism, Psychoanalysis". 

To ⁠LISTEN⁠ to ⁠PART TWO⁠ of our interview head to our ⁠PATREON⁠ where you can gain access to all of our previous episodes, interviews, courses, and the Discord community and our Reading Groups.

Enjoy!

⁠zizekandsoon.com⁠

In this wide-ranging second part of our interview, Ryan talks Seinfeld, Peep Show, Sartre and seriality, Batman, Barbie, and Tom Cruise. This is where the conversation really gets going, folks. Don’t miss it!

Join our ⁠Patreon⁠ for 2 extra episodes per month, and the back catalogue of dozens of extra episodes.

Subscribers can also sign up for our brand new reading group on Lacan's Seminar XI - The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. $5/month! You will also get access to our Discord server, a thriving community of Zizekians.

⁠YOUTUBE⁠

⁠INSTAGRAM⁠

⁠WEBSITE

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE!

In this wide-ranging second part of our interview, Ryan talks Seinfeld, Peep Show, Sartre and seriality, Batman, Barbie, and Tom Cruise. This is where the conversation really gets going, folks. Don’t miss it!

Join our Patreon for 2 extra episodes per month, and the back catalogue of dozens of extra episodes. Subscribers can also sign up for our brand new reading group on Lacan's Seminar XI - The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. $5/month! You will also get access to our Discord server, a thriving community of Zizekians.

YOUTUBE

INSTAGRAM

WEBSITE

This week, the fellas speak to Media Professor Ryan Engley of 'Why Theory'. We talk Freud, Lacan, the correct spelling of Todd McGowan, and how Seinfeld reveals the existential concept of seriality. Enjoy!

To support the podcast and find access to many more episodes, join our PATREON

YOUTUBE

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This week we're talking Mary Shelly, myth & monstrosity, family, Freud and Frankenstein. For this episode, we've read "History and family in Frankenstein” in Zizek's In Defense of Lost Causes. Why are stories so often posed through the motif of the family drama? Does the myth of the family distract from the real historical frame of the novel? Who coined the term capitalist realism? Is the mistake of calling the monster "Frankenstein" like calling a soda "Coke"? Enjoy!

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UNLOCKED - Ž & So On is back with part two of our conversation with Austrian philosopher, and lovely guy Robert Pfaller. We’re talking les non-duped errant, interpassivity and soccer, delegated enjoyment, cuckholds and drinking games. Will is breathing mould in Paris, Peter’s drinking coffee without cream and Michael gets bitten by a spider. Big thanks to our Patreons for all your support. We have some cool interviews and episodes lined up, stick around! 

If you missed PART ONE listen here:

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This week the fellas read through Žižek’s Looking Awry. We’re talking anamorphosis, Shakespeare, Zeno’s Paradoxes and the end of the world. Will is in the woods, Peter is at a gathering and Michael’s cat is out of the bag.

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Alright, this week we’re speaking with the Austrian philosopher Robert Pfaller, Professor of Philosophy and Cultural Theory at the University of Art and Design in Linz and a founding member of a Vienna based psychoanalysis research group. We’re talking Illusions without Owners, Interpassivity, delegated enjoyment, What Life is Worth Living For and of course the sexual practices of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Will is in Paris, Peter is enjoying live music interpassively and Michael is subject to a gag order. To hear the rest of our discussion head to ourPATREON and stay tuned for PART TWO!

Thank you to everyone for all of your support!

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This week, &... talks Hegel's influence on Lacan. Working off Zizek's Most Sublime Hysteric, the fellas find themselves in Germany, a dance club in Argentina, and experience a perfect day with Lou Reed and Pavaratti To support the podcast, join us on our PATREON

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This is a preview of a full episode available on our patreon.

Today we're talking Žižek's chapter in his book Absolute Recoil called "The Violence of the Beginning".

The reading begins with the notion that there is "nothing prior to the loss" of the sense of lost origins. Žižek then sets into play the idea of the self-alienation of spirit in the realm of translation to show the original brokenness of God Himself. We also question who the real James Bond is, hystericize Eliot's Prufrock, and discuss Emmanuel Carrere's novel The Moustache, all the while wondering—if we really meant what we said. 

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Alright, the gang is back and this week we're talking the newly published book "Žižek Responds!" where we focus on Todd McGowan's entry in the collection: "Slavoj Žižek Is Not Violent Enough". Is the violence of the death drive and its self-sabotage the first emancipation that subsequently establishes the pattern for all later political acts of emancipation? Can Will grow a moustache? Does Žižek play classical piano? Stick around to the end to hear the fellas talk about their recent meeting with Žižek, Todd McGowan & Russell Sbriglia.

We've got some very interesting interviews coming up, please support us on Patreon to keep us going!

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We continue our conversation with Dr. Flisfeder on his book "Algorithmic Desire, Toward a New Structuralist Theory of Social Media". Matt also gives us the behind the scenes scoop on the 'Debate of the Century' with Jordan Peterson.  Enjoy!

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This is part one of our interview with Dr. Matthew Flisfeder, associate professor at the University of Winnipeg, and writer of books on Žižek and film theory, postmodernism and Blade Runner, and most recently, "Algorithmic Desire, Toward a New Structuralist Theory of Social Media". 

Dr. Flisfeder taught a four month course on Žižek's book "For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor" with us which you can access through our Patreon and Discord here: FTKNWTD COURSE

Big thanks to Matt for taking the time to talk to us and stay tuned for part 2!

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This is a preview of part two of our conversation with acclaimed director Sophie Fiennes about her Pervert's Guide series. We discuss the Pervert's guide films, William Shatner, space and the abyss of freedom, as well as the recent Rockhill hit piece on Slavoj. Special thank you to Sophie Fiennes for giving us so much of her time and to everyone who has supported us over the last three years. Share the episode if you can as it really helps both the podcast and getting the final Pervert’s Guide out into the world. We have some great interviews and episodes coming up so stay tuned. Enjoy!

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