On Slavoj Zizek

I am now more familiar with him

I was listening to an episode of Tyler Cowen’s podcast, which I enjoy, where he was interviewing the author Chuck Klosterman, who I am equally fond of. At the end of the episode, Chuck, who possesses a sort of childlike giddiness, asked Tyler what it was like to interview Slavoj Zizek. Chuck was really excited to hear about that. 

So I listened to the Slavoj Zizek episode next. 

I’ve been sort of dimly aware of Zizek for a while now; he is undeniably one of the great public intellectuals of our time, and thus someone I think anybody who is interested in public intellectuals will absorb some awareness of through cultural osmosis. But this was the first time I heard him speak for an extended period.

The initial thing that struck me about him is that he, like Chuck, is full of impish giddiness. I once read about someone who was described as “bursting with life” and I think Zizek is clearly that. He is very silly and jokey and often quite funny. He calls himself a communist, but is also aware that this is a rather preposterous thing to do, and kept making jokes about sending Tyler Cowen to the gulag, which made me laugh. He is a great ugly ogre of a man, and one thing Tyler said in his interview with Chuck was how he “hurls his whole body at you” when speaking. I couldn’t see that, but you can almost hear his physicality. He has such an intense, unique charisma.

I do not think he is very good at speaking, though. One of my gold standards for whether I like a public intellectual is whether they can clearly answer a question. I don’t think this is a terribly high standard. Slavoj Zizek cannot do this. Tyler asked him several rather straightforward questions at various times, like why he thinks Taiwan is doing better than China or why Singapore is so successful or whether he is too nostalgic, and every time Slavoj didn’t answer, he just rambled about various things. I found it a bit surprising how agreeable he was, how often he would just sort of quickly concede that Tyler was probably right, or knew more than him, and then segue into another ramble.

Slavoj Zizek seems to be an ur-example of a kind of public intellectual you see a lot these days, especially online. In that sense, his influence is apparent. He is a guy with a lot of personality and energy, who likes to talk, and who likes to talk about what he likes to talk about. He is very pleased with the idea that he is some manner of naughty dissident, and cares more about proselytizing a handful of “big ideas” than recommending public policy or following current events (the episode was recorded around the time of the 2020 Iowa caucus  and he did not know who Pete Buttigieg was). I found it interesting how Slavoj seems to regard his self-identification as a “communist” as a kind of metaphor for being a man in favor of big changes to the current order, as opposed to being a man in favor of some recognizably communist system of government — which he, a former citizen of Communist Yugoslavia, has already experienced, and hated.

To be a successful public intellectual these days, to be a guy who does the podcast and television circuit like Zizek, or a person who streams all day or makes video essays or real essays, seems to require being able to embody a certain vibe more than anything else. Traditional skills of communication, like clarity, self-control, and mastery of facts seem less important in this vibe age than being a character people believe our present era needs. In Slavoj’s case, that is being a mischievous student of the far left who dislikes the current way everything is, but is also fun and weird.

Zizek is said to be a Hegelian. Hegel was a notoriously inarticulate philosopher who popularized the idea of the “zeitgeist” — the spirit of the times. I guess that makes sense.