Lacanian cultural theorist interviewed by The Guardian
'"If you could edit your past, what would you change?"Slovenian cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek was interviewed by The Guardian Weekend Magazine in August of last year. The short survey of questions cuts right to the heart of things, briefly touching upon topics from teaching to communism to sex, and reveals what are sometimes fairly unsavoury answers. I'm ambivalent about Žižek and his work at the best of times; and so, I can't quite work out whether the interview presents us with a deeply ironic virtuoso, or a consummate hack. Yet despite the flaws and ommissions of his writing, as a character he plays the entertainer convincingly enough.
"My birth. I agree with Sophocles: the greatest luck is not to have been born - but, as the joke goes on, very few people succeed in it."'
Whatever your opinion happens to be, whether you love him or hate him, you can read his answers at Lacan.com
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With the quotation from the interview that heads this post, I was reminded first of Cioran's book The Trouble with Being Born, and then a quotation from a conversation with Beckett. He was asked what had caused his dismal "Oblomov" period in Paris, around the time the recent volume of letters ends:
"-I have always had the feeling that somebody inside me had been murdered. Murdered before I was born. I had to find that person and try to bring him back to life... I once went to a lecture given by Jung... He talked about one of his patients, a little girl... At the end, when the audience were filing out, Jung stood there in silence. And then he added, as if to himself, in amazement at a sudden discover: 'In fact, she had never really been born.'
-I have always had the feeling that I had never been born either."
At least here we can be sure there's no deeply ironic virtuosity.
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