Slavoj Žižek: Don't act. Think about it. Think big

Don't act. Think about it.
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Philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek has a problem with the PC movement. While he doesn't subscribe to the right's paranoid view that the politically correct among us are "bad people who want to destroy the American way of life," he nevertheless thinks they are causing damage. Žižek wonders if censoring our expression actually responds to racial tensions – or if it simply gives rise to a more polite form of racism (or sexism, or religious and political differences)? Tolerance began to work against its own agenda, becoming a condescending insult to those who think differently than you, a way of erasing and compartmentalizing differences rather than listening and connecting. Žižek recommends that we add a healthy dose of obscenity and humor to our interactions with each other to make them more authentic. Covering up racism with kinder words doesn't eradicate it, but laughing at everyone's differences – in the right way – can unite a world of "others". Slavoj Žižek's most recent book is Refugees, terror and other troubles with neighbors: against double blackmail
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SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK:

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. He is Professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, and Senior Researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His books include Living at the End of Times, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, In Defense of Lost Causes, four volumes of Essential Žižek, and Event: A Philosophical Journey Through a Concept.

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Žižek received his Ph.D. in philosophy in Ljubljana studying psychoanalysis. He has been called "the Elvis of philosophy" and an "academic rock star". His work calls for a return to the Cartesian subject and German ideology, particularly the works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. Slavoj Žižek's work draws inspiration from the works of Jacques Lacan, directing his theory towards modern political and philosophical questions, finding in his work the potential for liberatory politics. But by addressing these thinkers and these schools of thought, he hopes to bring out new potentials of thought and self-reflexivity. It also calls for a return to the spirit of the revolutionary potential of Lenin and Karl Marx.
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TRANSCRIPTION:

Slavoj Žižek: I know there is a lot of sexual harassment, racism, etc. in our lives and I have no doubt that the majority of people who promote political correctness sincerely mean it. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying, in the sense of right-wing paranoia, that these are evil people who want to destroy the American way of life, I'm just saying that their way of approaching the problem is that instead of solving it, The predominant effect is simply to keep it under control and allow the real problem, racism, sexism, to survive in a more covert version and so on. For example, I always like this extreme example. Take racist jokes. Yes, they operate in a racist way, but for me the real overcoming of racism is not to ban racist jokes, but to establish a social, not even just a social change, a new society, but even such change of atmosphere so that we can tell exactly the same jokes without seeming racist. When you are simply in a real relationship of equality, respect and so on, sometimes dirty jokes, even gently racist jokes made in a non-racist way, by that I mean that you include yourself and that you make fun of you and whatnot, they are amazing. I think your American term is “icebreaker.”

// Because it's easy to be non-racist in this politically correct way oh I respect your food, your national identities, no. When does real contact with another occur? I contend that it is very difficult to achieve this without a little exchange of obscenity. It works in a wonderful way. So I pretend for me and the ideal post-racist situation is let's say I'm Indian and you're African American. We tell dirty jokes about ourselves all the time, but in such a way that we just laugh and the more we tell them, the more friends we become. For what? Because that’s how we really resolved the tension of racism. What I fear, coming back now to your question, with political correctness, is that it will be one of…

For the full transcript, see https://bigthink.com/videos/dont-act-just-think/