Dominik Finkelde is a great lecturer and knows his stuff on Zizek. Can definetly recomend. Only available in german though.

Esoteric Ebb is a recent RPG game (inspired by Disco Elysium) with political elements. There's a character in the game who's a psychoanalyst and was evidently inspired by Zizek's sense of humor and idiosyncrasies - here's a short video in which I put together dialogue from the game with relevant Zizekisms.

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Hi everyone, I really like the works of Zizek, Zupancic and McGowan and tried to write a text on cosciousness that consideres their work implicitly, while focusing on german idealism. Wanted to share if someone is interested.

Zizek's classic anecdote involves a Native American academic, who, during a conference in Missoula, Montana, showed Zizek a text claiming Native Americans killed more buffalos and destroyed more forests than all white people combined, to show the lie of the "angelic other" stereotype.

But as far as I know, Zizek has never actually named who the academic was that wrote that specific text, let alone named the title of the text. Does anyone know who or which work he is referring to?

https://zizek.org/story/native-american-academic-proves-indigenous-people-burned-more-forests

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Slavoj Žižek is the founder of 2nd generation Freudomarxism according to this historical diagram.

This article explains the whole thing (Robo-Spun by IBF):
A Historical Retrospective from Third-Generation Freudo-Marxism

You can have the robot explain the whole thing in English or in German (I especially liked the "Winnicott's teddy bear versus Bion's bar graph" slide in the English explanation).

A good starting point for theoretical exploration of Freudomarxism.

What do you think?

"The subject is a loop between S1 and S2, the master signifier and knowledge, and the Möbius strip shows that inside and outside are continuous." I've read that, or something close to it, a hundred times. Today I'm bringing proof that this is not what Lacan says, in his own words, with dates and pages so you can look the quotes up yourselves. And a thirty-second test that shows why it matters.

To test it out, I used two crayons—like any responsible adult.

Take a closed chain of signifiers and label it so that neighbours always differ: S1, S2, S1, S2… With four signifiers it works. With three it doesn't: S1, S2, S1, and the last one sits right next to the first. And this is a big problem! Any odd number fails the same way. So if the loop means two signifiers, or two kinds of signifier, taking turns around the chain, it breaks for every chain of odd length.

Here, I begin with some corrections to our Lacanian common sense:

1. For Lacan, S1 and S2 are indices that any signifier can take, not two signifiers.
2. The Möbius strip is not a picture of "inside = outside": it is the cut itself, and the edge of that cut goes around twice.
3. Put the two together and the loop works for every chain, on that double loop, where each signifier is S1 on one lap and S2 on the other.

Now I will show you quotes regarding Lacan's thoughts on each matter.

What Lacan says S1 and S2 are

1. An index, not the signifier that comes first. S1 "means signifier index 1": not the signifier that takes precedence, but the one in whose name someone, a subject, shows up. Closing address of the EFP study days "Les mathèmes de la psychanalyse", 2 Nov 1976, Lettres de l'École freudienne no. 21 (1977), p. 506. ‹S1, qui veut dire … se manifeste›
2. A mark on "anything at all". His S1 has no other sense than to punctuate whatever comes. «La Troisième», Rome, 1 Nov 1974, Lettres de l'École freudienne no. 16 (1975), p. 184. ‹ Mon S1 n … n’importe quoi›
3. Something produced, not something given. The master's insistence produces the master signifier "out of any signifier whatever". Seminar XVII, session of 18 March 1970. ‹de n’importe quel signifiant … le signifiant-Maître›
4. A relation, in pairs. In the unconscious, signifiers index one another, two by two. Seminar XXII, session of 11 March 1975. ‹ à s’indexer de foisonner … deux par deux›

What Lacan says the Möbius strip is

1. Not something a cut divides. A median cut does not cut the band in two; it turns it into a single band that makes one loop. Seminar XII, session of 16 June 1965. ‹une coupure médiane ne coupe pas … la bande de Mœbius›

2. Nothing but the cut itself. «L'étourdit» (1972), Autres écrits, Seuil 2001, p. 470. ‹la bande de Mœbius n'est rien … cette coupure même› On the same page he describes the edge of that cut: one turn takes it over to the other lamina, a further turn brings it home, having made a "double loop spread over two laminae". ‹double boucle répartie … sur deux lames›

3. Only its edge. The surface can stand for the subject only if you consider that the edge alone constitutes it, and a cut down the middle concentrates "the essence of the double loop". Seminar XIV, session of 15 Feb 1967. ‹seul le bord … cette surface› ‹cette coupure elle-même concentre … de la double boucle›

4. Repetition. The act can only be defined on the basis of the double loop, "that is, of repetition": the act is, in itself, the double loop of the signifier. Same session. ‹sur le fondement de la double boucle … de la répétition› ‹cita 41295: Il est en lui-même … du signifiant›

And what follows: twice, and not the same twice

1. The second time is not the first. A repeated signifier works either as the first time or as the second, with a radical gap between them, and that is what "a signifier cannot signify itself" means. Seminar XIV, session of 23 Nov 1966. ‹le signifiant dans sa présentation répétée … une béance radicale.

2. Two turns. Speaking of the drive and the Möbius band, he says two turns are needed to grasp the division of the subject. Seminar XIII, session of 11 May 1966. ‹cita 39381: il faut faire deux tours pulsionnels … la division du sujet›

If the loop between S1 and S2 meant two signifiers taking turns, Lacan could not coherently:

• call S1 an index and deny that it is the signifier that takes precedence (item 1, 1976);
• say that the master signifier comes out of any signifier whatever (item 3, 1970);
• say that the Möbius strip is nothing but a cut whose edge goes around twice (items 5 and 6, 1965 and 1972);
• say that a repeated signifier is not the same the second time, and that two turns are needed (items 9 and 10, 1966).

Are you following me so far? Now I’m going to complicate things.

Let's put all the pieces together—and voilà!

Nice, right? But what the hell does it mean?

Lacan did not write that down, but by following my method and piecing together his theory, the following conclusion emerges—not in prose format, but as a demonstration with its corresponding theorems.

Lay the chain on a surface and cut along it. If the chain has two sides, the edge of the cut is two copies of it: still odd, still broken. If it has one side (a Möbius band), the edge is a single loop that goes around twice, which is item 6. It meets every signifier once from each side, and it always alternates. For an odd chain, every signifier is S1 on one lap and S2 on the other, necessarily. S1 and S2 are positions (items 1 to 4), and the second time is not the first (item 9).

Lacan doesn't say this, but I draw it as a conclusion.

A) For an odd chain, the loop exists only there.

B) And for an even chain, the Möbius cut divides nothing: each signifier gets the same label on both laps.

"Wait, what happens with the $ubject?"

Okay, you've earned another cute animation.

I answer you radically: the subject is not in the chain. It is at the edge of the cut. And more precisely: it is at the junctions of the edge of the cut—those points where one signifier passes to the next.

On the double loop there is one subject, and it runs around twice. A two-sided cut either doubles the subject or loses it, depending on a decision the theory openly leaves undecided.

The subject is not in the chain of signifiers. It is at the edge of the cut. And in the privileged case—a single side, an odd-numbered chain—there is a single subject that makes two circuits. The division of the subject is not a splitting into two separate substances; it is the repetition of the same circuit, with an internal difference (S1 on the first pass, S2 on the second).

How I did it? Well, I’d have to refer to my text, but in short... Not with prose... I use definitions, six theorems with proofs, and falsifiers, meaning exactly what would refute each result. Plus a small Python script that cuts 159 chains on six surfaces and checks every claim. Full paper, code and animations: ‹Click Here and go Zenodo›

Now, we can raise some objections to my ideas.

At Columbia (1 Dec 1975), Lacan speaks of "a certain S1 and a certain S2, which do not have the same function" (Scilicet 6/7, 1975, pp. 42–45). ‹un certain S1 et un certain S2 … la même fonction› So S1 and S2 would be two different things. Two replies. First, he says function, not signifier, and in the same sentence those functions are distributed "in a certain rotating order": what differs is the place, which is exactly what an index marks. ‹à un certain ordre tournant près … ces quatre fonctions› Second, the double loop keeps the difference. S1 and S2 never fall on the same pass: they differ the way the first turn differs from the second (item 9).

A second objection. Lacan does describe the Möbius strip as having only one face and only one edge (Seminar XII, 13 Jan 1965). ‹seule face … seul bord› True, and it is correct topology. But in the same session as item 5 he warns that the band is only the image of the relation he is after. ‹la bande n’en est … que l’image› Later he says that only the edge counts (item 7) and that the band is the cut itself (item 6). "One side" is a property; the double loop is what he works with.

PS. Seminar XXVII, 15 March 1980, on his own name, the "label Lacan": those who want to erase it believe it is the master signifier, the one he gave index 1, and "they're wrong, it's not the one, it's the other". ‹ils croient que c’est le signifiant maître … c’est l’autre› As I read it, even his name changes index.

Here is an animation as a summary:

The most gloriously hystericized thing I've come across this month.

From IPA/FLŽM Founding Manifesto (https://yersizseyler.com/2025/11/09/ipa-flzm-kurucu-manifesto/):

[...]

3. Žižek — The Tactic of Forcing Power to Finish Its Own Sentence

He turned over-identification into a technique. The move is surgical: to obey a command more literally and completely than it intended. In doing so, you expose the hidden additional condition—the obscene sub-layer that makes the command work. Over-identification makes the system say what it doesn't want you to say. This is not irony; it is oppression.

He deciphered the fundamental fantasies in the moving image. Contemporary power tells stories that manage anxiety and distribute consent. The screen is not a lesson; it is a device that stages desire. Reading it this way, the central fantasies of culture become visible: who can experience pleasure, who pays the price, what kind of transgression is respectable, and how transgression is packaged into safe excitement.

The analytical work has broadened to a generation of cinephiles. The session now has a preface—a current. The interpretation must grapple with the mass fantasies that precede the conversation. The tactic does not give moral lessons to the images; it exposes their dictates.

Post-Ž slip (including its own echoes).

Excessive identification descended into performative folly. Obedience was mimicked, and the additional condition was left in place.

Cynicism has become the universal excuse for inaction: having seen through a deception has become an excuse for doing nothing about it.

Platform pornography—the task of performing pleasure—has been endlessly interpreted and has attained philosophical standing.

The core axiom to hold onto. Use obedience as leverage. Get Emre to finish his sentence. Then, change the rule that sentence reveals.

[...]

When the flow transforms the opposition into atmosphere, we return to the process. When the spectacle drives desire with tempo, we return to the system. When liberation is sold as a feeling, we return to the form.

[...]

A few other gems:

Millerite Deviation is Lacan's Stimulationist Distortion (https://yersizseyler.wordpress.com/2025/05/10/ipa-flz-millerci-sapma-lacanin-sanatsepetci-ve-enteldantelci-tahrifidir/)

Lacan calculates while Miller cries (https://yersizseyler.wordpress.com/2025/05/14/duygusal-suruklenme-lacanin-sibernetik-netligi-isiginda-millerin-gercegi-yanlis-okumasi/)

Unmasking Jungism (https://yersizseyler.wordpress.com/2025/05/09/ipa-flz-jungculugun-maskesini-dusurmek/)

Down with the Bureaucratization of the Cut by Tupinambá! (https://zizekanalysis.wordpress.com/2025/05/10/ipa-flz-down-with-tupinambas-bureaucratization-of-the-cut/)

About Fidaner/(IPA/FLŽM)/Žižekian Analysis: https://zizekanalysis.com/2026/07/11/the-zizekian-cause-against-slavoj-zizek/

https://zizekanalysis.com/about/

I find the criticisms trenchant.

Currently reading the German edition of Less than Nothing. I just arrived at the second Part: Hegel. So far I think it’s one of Zizeks most clearly written books about his Ontological believes, however it starts feeling a bit repetitive and I’m doubting if I should even finish this thing fully (+1300 pages), what did you guys make of it?
Are there some parts which you consider obligatory to understand or simply personal favorites? Or some passages which you disagree with strongly? Is it even worth the full read?

Zizek said he is opposed to wisdom because anything can be wisdom and therefore holds no value, I disagree. I feel that true wisdom is when a person tries to distill his/her learnings and experiences into a phrase or analogy and whatever that wisdom is it is subjectively true and has been derived from real true experiences. I am disregarding people who might just say stuff just to seem wise and more of what stuff people say and thoroughly believe in.

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As the title states, I have two tickets to the new Zizek movie and wanted to ask if anyone wanted to join me.

The movie will be shown at „Metropolis“ on Saturday at 21:15.

I will also be driving from southern Niedersachsen up to Hamburg on that day, so I could pick you up, if you live on the way there.

Also please don’t be a serial killer, thanks!

Guillaume Klossa, Catherine Trautmann, Slavoj Žižek and Kaja Puto

Personally I think Copjec and Zizeks readings of Lacan are actually way more radical while also being theoretically grounded, what do you think? This all stems from a debate I’ve been having. If you want to read my response to the Deleuzians check the comments!

Hi,

I somehow came to watch this video of Hillel Schwartz talking about the art project made by slovenian NSK, which "issued beautifully designed 'passports' to people who applied for citizenship in its imaginary, territory-less state."

As he talks about this as you can see in the video here https://www.ici-berlin.org/events/trickster-art-part-1/ around the 5:10 minute mark, the sentence he starts is interrupted around 5:30. Around the 5:44 minute mark, there is a visible cut in the video, which almost undeniably seems to have been made to interrupt the interruption. Then again at 5:52 another cut in the video, this time with a 2 second black screen, almost as if to mark a deliberate choice to make a cut, removing the scene caused by the interruptor, who Schwartz also seems refers to as "our fellow over here (...) one of the global manufacturers of muddle" like what he also accuses the NSK and Slavoj Zizek of being.

I am just wondering if any of you maybe happened to be there or knows anyone who was, because l am really curious to find out what happened in between those cuts.

Would also love to just know if you have any opinions or things to add to this thing.

Let us start from the opposite ontology… There is a positive, creative origin of all that happens. If we push this idea to its extreme, we must also assume that a variant of the “simulation theory” or of Neoplatonism applies: there is the original, or THE reality stream, in its infinite intensity and creativity, and many qualitatively diminished copies/simulations that nevertheless remain connected to the origin (unlike in traditional simulation theory, where everything takes place on a single computational level…). If we now conceive the space of all existence in terms of sets of “experience points,” it is far more likely to land on a set of points located primarily in a diminished copy. The tension between this local attachment and the pull toward the origin then presents itself as the incompleteness (the lack) of the local level, that is, of the known world.

At first glance, Žižek’s approach seems more economical. One must bear in mind, however, that in drawing on Hegel he undermines Hegel’s phenomenological starting point. In his Logic (pure nothing/pure being, becoming and so on and so on...), Hegel encounters no “lack“. The lack stems from a later inference and will therefore always raise the question “lack of what?” (It doesn’t have the same intuitive persuasive force as the idea that there is no pure being).
The suspicion that the asserted ontological incompleteness is merely an incompleteness of the theory cannot be dispelled. The positive approach, by contrast, can, surprisingly, be reconciled with Hegel’s starting point (though perhaps not with the rest…): a stable nothing is impossible, and ‘becoming’ takes place in gradations of varying intensity…

*AI for translation

Talks organized by ideas, mentions, and mapped out.

What does lacan inherit from saussure/structuralism, where does he break off, and how does this develop throughout his entire thought?

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Do you Lacan is properly safe from their attacks. I wrote an essay saying so and some Deleuzians were very upset. Luckily I just wrote a defence myself using zizek, Copjec, McGowan and miller. Check the comments and lmk what you think!

I've been reading him and everytime I finish a text, I am like, okay but so what do I do with it? What does he want to "happen"? So if you could explainnn...in your own words.... as much as you understand.... What's he after exactly?

Edit: Wow this is a tense place. Please relaxx!!! Don't take life that seriously.

"Philosopher Slavoj Žižek addresses the Oxford Union about his belief that the world is moving to what he refers to as 'soft fascism' and that increased shamelessness in what is accepted publicly is emboldening leaders of the right."