Tavis: Tell me why.
Zizek: Because of this Malcolm X, he had an ingenious insight which was at the top of contemporary philosophy. Namely, he wasn’t playing the Hollywood game, Roots. You remember that stupid TV series? The greatest honor for you blacks’ desire is to find some tribe in Africa. Oh, I’m from there. No. Of course, Malcolm X meant by the brutality of white men, being enslaved, we were deprived of our roots and so on.
But he wrote about it. But this X paradoxically opens up a new freedom for us, all that white people want to be, not primitive tribal, but universal, creating their own space. We, black people, have a unique chance not to become, not to return to our particular [inaudible], to be more universal, emancipated than white people themselves. You see, this is the important thing for me.”
FULL EPISODE
