Slavoj Žižek teaches at Kobanê University
* Photo: Anadolu Agency (AA) - Archive
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Sociologist, philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek gave a lecture on "Is Democracy Still a Choice Today?" at Kobanê University, which was officially opened in 2017. Starting at 8 p.m. yesterday (Ağril 18), the lecture was broadcast live on the university's social media accounts.
As reported by Mezopotamya Agency (MA), some of the message of Slavoj Žižek during the lecture were as follows:
Daily practice and ideology
"Kurds... You have created a utopia that actually exists with an intellectual community. You are not only a symbol of resistance, but also the symbol of establishing a new order.
"Except for some exceptions like you, the Kurdish people, humanity has intensely divided itself and there is no more liberal democracy. The task of a revolution is not only to represent people, but also to realize what people want.
"Instead of striving for what is here to work better, we should try to build a better world. Ideology is not an abstract system of values. Ideology is engraved in your daily practice. How we get married, how we eat, how we love; this is ideology.
"You cannot solve the crisis with grand elections today. While there is a certain solidarity here, elections become functional, we can oppose each other, but we come to terms within the framework of basic rules. This is not something we can imagine today.
"Liberal democracy requires a basic social contract. Something specific, as Hegel points out, is everyday traditions. This is what holds the society together. Rules, but unwritten rules. This is exactly what is resolved today, and this is what caused the crises.
"Remember when the Americans left you, you were accused by anti-imperialists of working with Americans? This is the fundamental lie embodied in your case. A basic fact does not mean that everyone should sacrifice their life for it.
'Democracy must be rebuilt'
"The basic lesson of Marxism embodied by you Kurds: In a country where there is oppression, truth is not neutral. You can only formulate the truth from the position of the most radical, the most oppressed, in that country. It is a real, interactive category.
"Democracy must be radically rebuilt. We will learn this from you. We must rethink what you mean by democracy."
About Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek is a philosopher, a researcher at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Ljubljana Faculty of Arts and international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities of the University of London. He is also Global Eminent Scholar at Kyung Hee University in Seoul and Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University.
He works in subjects including continental philosophy, psychoanalysis, political theory, cultural studies, art criticism, film criticism, Marxism, Hegelianism and theology. In 1989, Žižek published his first English-language text, entitled The Sublime Object of Ideology. In this book, he departed from traditional Marxist theory to develop a more analyzed materialist conception of ideology that drew heavily on Lacanian psychoanalysis and Hegelian idealism. His theoretical work became increasingly eclectic and political in the 1990s. (DŞ/SD)