From the Marxist standpoint, “Communism” refers to the multiple versions of our commons (the commons of nature, the commons of our biogenetic inheritance, the commons of our intellectual substance) which are all threatened by today’s global capitalism. Perhaps the most important version of our commons is the world-wide digital grid which more and more controls and regulates our lives. How can a new emancipatory movement fight for the public control of the digital commons? In preparing and executing the October Revolution, Trotsky showed us the way when he focused on the seizure of power over the technical and material base of a state (electricity, railways, phone, etc.). How can we apply this Trotsky’s insight to our contemporary predicament?
Slavoj Žižek, Ph.D., is a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and a visiting professor at a number of American Universities (Columbia, Princeton, New School for Social Research, New York University, University of Michigan). He obtained his Ph.D. in Philosophy in Ljubljana studying Psychoanalysis. He also studied at the University of Paris. Slavoj Zizek is a Hegelian philosopher, Lacanian psychoanalyst, and Marxist social analyst. He is the author of The Indivisible Remainder, The Sublime Object of Ideology, The Metastases of Enjoyment, Looking Awry: Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture, and The Plague of Fantasies, and The Ticklish Subject. His latest publications are Disparities, and Antigone (both at Bloomsbury Press, London).
Held weekly every Monday at 6:30pm during the academic terms, Skirball Talks hosts visionaries from the worlds of politics, the arts, sciences, academia, and more. This event is free and open to the public.
Presented as part of NYU Skirball’s “On Your Marx” festival, in celebration of Karl Marx’s 200th birthday.
Co-sponsored by the NYU Department of German and Deutsches Haus at NYU.
PLEASE READ IN FULL REGARDING SEAT RESERVATIONS: RSVP does not guarantee a ticket. You can begin picking up tickets at the NYU Box Office (566 LaGuardia Pl) 2 hours prior to event. Even if you have picked up a ticket, please be aware that if you are not seated in the theater by 6:20pm, we will be opening up the theater to people in standby line. Tickets must be claimed by 6:10 pm. Unclaimed tickets will be released to those on the standby line.
The Skirball Talks series is made possible in part by a Humanities New York Action Grant and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
