Friday, March 14, 2008

Slavoj Zizek: "Go to masturbation. Leave me alone"

Slavoj Zizek gave an in-studio interview with Amy Goodman for today's Democracy Now! program about the lectured he is scheduled to give tonight to open up this year's Left Forum gathering in New York. While talking about the various conflicting legacies of the events of 1968, he started talking about how there are apparently big masturbation gatherings going on all over the world. Here are excerpts from the transcript:

It’s the same with ’68. If you ask people today, what will you get? Ooh, that wonderful explosion of creativity, anti-bureaucratic, sexual liberation, and so on. That’s, for me, precisely the least interesting part of ’68. That’s the ’68 which was perfectly integrated into today’s ideology, self-expression and so on. So if you want to draw the line, one line from ’68, it is what, for me, as an old-fashioned guy who likes erotics but with love, is the nightmare. Today’s legacy of that ’68 is alive. And, you know, they have in California, and now it’s spreading to Europe, a terrible thing called masturbation. People gather, you masturbate publicly, you’re not allowed to touch the other, and, of course, each one has to pay some money, which goes to politically correct causes and so on. And the idea, it’s like self-expression: you are alone, but in a crowd. This kind of—this is what I don’t like...If we indulge a simple nostalgia for ’68, it means sexual revolution and all that, so I will tell to those guys, “Go to masturbation. Leave me alone.”

I didn't know that they just got masturbation over in Europe, but I'm not surprised that California sent it there.

I'd give anything to see someone ask him a question about masturbation tonight, but alas, I can't go. I'll probably be too busy masturbating.

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