Slavoj Žižek: "Violence" | Talks @ Google

The Authors@Google program was pleased to welcome Slavoj Žižek to Google's New York office to discuss his book, "Violence: Six Sideways Reflections ".



Violence, Žižek states, takes three forms--subjective (crime, terror), objective (racism, hate-speech, discrimination), and systemic (the catastrophic effects of economic and political systems)--and often one form of violence blunts our ability to see the others, raising complicated questions.

Does the advent of capitalism and, indeed, civilization cause more violence than it prevents? Is there violence in the simple idea of "the neighbour"? And could the appropriate form of action against violence today simply be to contemplate, to think?

Violence: Six Sideways Reflections

Beginning with these and other equally contemplative questions, Žižek discusses the inherent violence of globalization, capitalism, fundamentalism, and language, in a work that will confirm his standing as one of our most erudite and incendiary modern thinkers.


Reading Žižek – Where to Start?