Quora answer: Apart from his readings of Hegel, Marx and Lacan, what original idea is Slavoj Žižek best known for?
This is a list of some ideas that are peculiar to Zizek.
Lacan is comprehensible and the source for understanding all social and cultural phenomena, and that his is the Anti-Derrida.
Lacan is really Hegel in disguise.
Lacan was not interested in Freud in the least and has nothing to do with Freudianism but was merely using that as a way to put across his Hegelian agenda.
The only philosopher worth really studying today is Hegel, why because Hegel has been Taboo. Marx got Hegel wrong and he was more radical than Marx.
The only thing worth keeping of communism is the idea of protecting the commons.
Appearances are literally everything. There is no reality underneath the appearances. There are only appearances.
Film is more real for us than daily life. We are the illusions and the characters on the silverscreen are the realities of our culture.
Film is the key art form of the twentieth century.
What ever they say, and what ever you think, the truth is the opposite. This was of course Nietzsche’s ruse.
Deleuze was an idiot. Reverse everything Deleuze said and you get closer to the truth for instance the organ without body is truer as an idea than the body without organs. Deleuze is to be reviled. This is because the interpretations of Lacan’s ideas by Deleuze are often deeper than those of Zizek.
Badou has interesting things to say, but unfortunately is a Maoist. Zizek is sure that Badiou is deeper and smarter than he is so he only finds small differences with the thoughts of Badiou so he does not draw fire from Badiou. But the truth is that Badiou is not that interesting except in as much as he exposes the falsehood of extreme positions by taking them. Furthermore, Zizek had big significant book envy of Badou until he wrote Parallax View. Being and Event though wrong is still interesting in as much as philosophers now need to master Set Theory. His second volume is wanting to do the same thing with Logic. So how ever ridiculous Badiou is he has allied himself with Logic and Math and made them more important for Continental Philosophy clearly in an attempt to beat the Analytic Philosophers at their own game.
Your subjectivity is not what you think it is. There is literally nothing to it.
The world is not what you think it is, it is even more dangerous than you imagined.
We are all basically completely messed up beyond all recovery and being ecologically, politically, racially and socially correct will not help.
Liberals need discipline, rigor, racism, and all the qualities of the right that they have abandoned.
Liberals need to embrace the necessity of a refined Terror at some level.
Extremes are to be avoided. They do not lead anywhere.
Things left of center are good, and communism even better (If at first you do not succeed, try, try again). Communism correctly understood is really at the center of the political spectrum where the greatest number of people who occupy things are at.
What is important is not occupying Wall Street but what you do when you go home. If it was just to claim you were there at Woodstock then there will be nothing to the occupy movement. Only an occupy movement that does not become popularism, does not fall into normal political categories will be successful.
When he takes over power he is going to send people to the Googlag, oops, Gulag.
His goal is not to be a philosopher King, or a genius, but just not a complete idiot, and that is the best we can strive for.