On Feb 22, 2023, Compact Magazine published an article by Slavoj Zizek titled, Wokeness is Here to Stay. In this article, Zizek makes several claims about the existence of woke and trans lobbies, exercising, somehow, power over a variety of public and private organizations and institutions. Unsurprisingly, this was controversial in left circles generally and among people who admire Zizek’s body of work and, let’s be honest, persona.

In the days and weeks following the article’s release there was a rush of activity - podcasts, essays and so on - either condemning or supporting Zizek (mostly supporting). The supportive responses used an interesting tactic encouraging people to, essentially, ignore the phrases Zizek clearly used, such as woke lobby to look deeper at the supposed Lacanian meanings behind it all.

For RC Charles Roberts and yours truly, this smelled of obfuscation and bad faith in a Sartrean sense. Both of us have enjoyed, and in various ways, learned from Zizek’s work on ideology, particularly as applied to film (which is one of the reasons Film Conversations seemed a good place to talk about this), so there was no tossing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. However, Zizek’s arguments, flimsy and offensive as they are, deserved an unequivocal response. So we each wrote an essay, analyzing and responding to Zizek’s Compact Magazine piece.  Charles’ is entitled Living the Dream: On Slavoj Zizek and Wokeness and mine is Just One More Thing: Slavoj Zizek on Wokeness. We take very different approaches which, in the conversation you’re about to hear, we’ll discuss.  I hope you enjoy it.

Links:

Wokeness is Here to Stay by Slavoj Zizek

https://compactmag.com/article/wokeness-is-here-to-stay

Living the Dream: On Slavoj Zizek and Wokeness by R.C. Roberts

https://ferocia.substack.com/p/living-the-dream-on-slavoj-zizek

Just One More Thing: Slavoj Zizek on Wokeness by Dwayne Monroe

https://ferocia.substack.com/p/just-one-more-thing-slavoj-zizek

Slavoj Zizek Vs Will Self in Dangerous Ideas

https://youtu.be/CId1iOWQUuo