The last week of August Slavoj Zizek and Mladen Dolar visited Russia with a series of lectures and seminars. They were invited by »Chto Delat?« (»What is to be done?«), the group of Russian intellectuals and artists, who combain in their practice theory, art and political activism. This visit was organized as a summer educational program, open for everyone, and produced a lot of interest and extremely heated debates. Oxana Timofeeva, a part of »Chto Delat?« and a main organizer of this educational program, asked Slavoj Zizek for questions, seemingly from withing Russian current political context. This dialog is a kind of postscriptum to Zizek's Russian trip.
O.T. In one of your papers you refer to China, where, if you really hate someone, the curse to fling at them is: “May you live in interesting times!” We are now in Russia definitely living in «interesting times», when the entire society basically transforms into opposition toward the state power, and the variety of positions are sharing a certain «common ground», which consists of a kind of cultural confrontation. There is a huge demand for a dialog between, for example, our traditional liberal intelligencia and a younger generation of political left. What do you think about possible perspective of such a dialog? Does it make sense at all? It seems that we have an enemy in common, a personalised autocratic state power, but I think, for a real dialog, this is not enough, one needs something else.
S.Z. In his Notes Towards a Definition of Culture, the great conservative T.S. Eliot remarked that there are moments when the only choice is the one between heresy and non-belief, that is to say, when the only way to keep a religion alive is to perform a sectarian split from its main corpse. This is our position today with regard to liberal democracy: only a new “heresy” (represented by the radical Left) can save what is worth saving in liberal democracy: democracy, trust in people, egalitarian solidarity… The only alternative is “capitalism with Asian values” (which, of course, has nothing to do with Asia, but all with the clear and present tendency of contemporary capitalism to suspend democracy).