Slavoj Zizek Quote
What this means is that we should reject not only all manifestations of ‘alternative modernity’ (which amount to a ‘capitalism without capitalism’, without its destructive aspect), but also all attempts to rely on particular traditional life-worlds (local cultures) as potential ‘sites of resistance’ against global capitalism. The only path to freedom leads through the zero-point of the brutal loss of roots, i.e., the bringing to an end the disintegration of traditional ties set in motion by capitalism. When capitalism relies on traditional cultural roots it tries to contain its own destructive force.
Slavoj Zizek
What this means is that we should reject not only all manifestations of ‘alternative modernity’ (which amount to a ‘capitalism without capitalism’, without its destructive aspect), but also all attempts to rely on particular traditional life-worlds (local cultures) as potential ‘sites of resistance’ against global capitalism. The only path to freedom leads through the zero-point of the brutal loss of roots, i.e., the bringing to an end the disintegration of traditional ties set in motion by capitalism. When capitalism relies on traditional cultural roots it tries to contain its own destructive force.
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About Slavoj Zizek
He is the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University, professor of philosophy and psychoanalysis at the European Graduate School and senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana. He primarily works on continental philosophy (particularly Hegelianism, psychoanalysis and Marxism) and political theory, as well as film criticism and theology.
Žižek is the most famous associate of the Ljubljana School of Psychoanalysis, a group of Slovenian academics working on German idealism, Lacanian psychoanalysis, ideology critique, and media criticism. His breakthrough work was 1989's The Sublime Object of Ideology, his first book in English, which was decisive in the introduction of the Ljubljana School's thought to English-speaking audiences. He has written over 50 books in multiple languages and speaks Slovene, Serbo-Croatian, English, German, and French. The idiosyncratic style of his public appearances, frequent magazine op-eds, and academic works, characterised by the use of obscene jokes and pop cultural examples, as well as politically incorrect provocations, have gained him fame, controversy and criticism both in and outside academia.