Slavoj Zizek and the RSA
First As Tragedy, Then As Farce
About the speaker
Slavoj Zizek is an internationally renowned academic, psychoanalytic philosopher, documentary filmmaker and author. His often polarizing work makes him a target of both left and right, which he feels indicates that ‘just maybe I am on right path, the path of fidelity to freedom’.
The big issue
Does charity inherently prolong the problem it’s trying to solve? In this thought-provoking talk, Slavoj Zizek looks at how modern cultural capitalism is building charitable giving into even simple consumerist transactions such as buying a cup of coffee. Are we being hoodwinked into deepening the world’s problems? And is a certain type of misanthropy a better social attitude than charitable optimism?
Read the book
Are the demands of Capital even greater than the pressing problems of global warming, AIDS and access to food and clean water? Slavoj Zizek says that the proof of what has happened since 2007 is a resounding ‘Yes!’. The problems of the natural world and our society have been shunted aside to save capitalism. Can we really afford to ignore the irrationality of global capitalism any more?
