Event Date: 17 May 2017

Room B01
Clore Management Centre
Birkbeck, University of London
Torrington Sq
London WC1E 7JL

The Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities presents:

‘You have to be stupid to see that’: Ideology in Daily Life – A Masterclass with Slavoj Zizek

Reality as Constricted Ideology

Speaker: Slavoj Žižek, Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities

Chair: Stephen Frosh, Pro-Vice-Master Birkbeck University of London

According to Giorgio Agamben,‘thought is the courage of hopelessness’ – an insight especially pertinent for our historical moment when even the most pessimist diagnostics finishes with an uplifting hint at the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. The true courage is not to see this mirage, not to imagine an alternative, but to accept the consequences of the fact that there is no discernible alternative: the dream of an alternative is a sign of theoretical cowardice, it functions as a fetish which prevents us to think to the end the deadlock of our predicament. The true courage is to admit that the light at the end of the tunnel is most likely the headlight of another train approaching us from the opposite direction, from ecological threat to a new world war.

The Masterclass will be spread over two sessions:
1. Monday 15 May, 2-4pm: Ideology as Augmented Reality
2. Wednesday 17 May, 2-4pm: Reality as Constricted Ideology