Love as a Political Category: Zizek

Source: http://daily-struggles.tumblr.com/post/50765863638/slavoj-zizek-on-love-as-a-political-category

Love as a Political Category: Zizek 

This is a, somewhat loose, transcription of a talk by Slavoj Žižek given on Subversive Festival 2013, which can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b44IhiCuNw4

The majority of the text is actually, as often is the case with talks (and also writings) by Žižek, a rehash of ideas and analyses from Žižek’s books and articles (see the links I included at the end of the transcription, also see his own reference to this in the talk to his repetition of his idea of decaffeinated coffee), and, to my disappointment, the majority of the material Žižek discusses does not or only barely touches upon the subject of love. Nonetheless, put together Žižek draws some interesting connections between love, violence, spirituality, religions, modernity, capitalism and so on, and so on. 

Zizek: The One Measure of True Love Is: You Can Insult the Other

Source: http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj-zizek/articles/the-one-measure-of-true-love-is-you-can-insult-the-other/

The One Measure of True Love Is: You Can Insult the Other

Slavoj Zizek, Interviewed, By Sabine Reul And Thomas Deichmann.

I do claim that what is sold to us today as freedom is something from which this more radical dimension of freedom and democracy has been removed — in other words, the belief that basic decisions about social development are discussed or brought about involving as many as possible, a majority. In this sense, we do not have an actual experience of freedom today. Our freedoms are increasingly reduced to the freedom to choose your lifestyle.