The Courage of Hopelessness

In these troubled times, even the most pessimistic diagnosis of our future ends with an uplifting hint that things might not be as bad as all that, that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Yet, argues Slavoj Žižek, it is only when we have admitted to ourselves that our situation is completely hopeless – that the light at the end of the tunnel is in fact the headlight of a train approaching us from the opposite direction – that fundamental change can be brought about. Surveying the various challenges in the world today, from mass migration and geopolitical tensions to terrorism, the explosion of rightist populism and the emergence of new radical politics – all of which, in their own way, express the impasses of global capitalism – Žižek explores whether there still remains the possibility for genuine change. Today, he proposes, the only true question is, or should be, this: do we endorse the predominant acceptance of capitalism as a fact of human nature, or does today’s capitalism contain strong enough antagonisms to prevent its infinite reproduction? Can we, he asks, move beyond the failure of socialism, and beyond the current wave of populist rage, and initiate radical change before the train hits?

About the Speaker

Slavoj Žižek is a Hegelian philosopher, Lacanian psychoanalyst, and political activist. He is international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at The University of London, UK, and Eminent Scholar at Kyung Hee University, Korea. He is the author of numerous books on dialectical materialism, critique of ideology and art, including Living in the End Times, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, Trouble in Paradise and, most recently, Against the Double Blackmail.

About the Moderator
Dr. Alex Taek-Gwang Lee is a cultural critic and professor in Kyung Hee University, Republic of Korea. He obtained MA in philosophy from University of Warwick and PhD in Cultural Theory from The University of Sheffield. His publications include The Idea of Communism 3 with Slavoj Zizek, Theory After Althusserianism, Futurism, The Obscene Fantasy of Korean Culture, Nationalism as a Sublime Object, Deleuze as a Theatre of Philosophy, This Is What Is Called Cultural Criticism, The Impressionists, and Framing a Witch.