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Against Progress

Book by Slavoj Žižek · 2 quotes · On Progress, Philosophy, Politics

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Against Progress Quotes

“Early in Christopher Nolan's "The Prestige", a magician performs a trick with a small bird which disappears in a cage flattened on the table. A small boy in the audience starts to cry, distraught that the bird was killed. The magician approaches him and finishes the trick, gently producing a live bird out of his hand - but the boy is not convinced, insisting that this must be another bird, the dead bird's brother. After the show, we see the magician alone, putting a dead bird squashed into the trash where many other dead birds lie. The boy was right. The trick could not be performed without violence and death, but it relies for its effectiveness upon concealing the squalid, broken residue of what has been sacrificed, disposing of it where no one who matters will see. Therein resides the basic premise of a dialectical notion of progress: when a newer higher stage arrives, there must be a squished bird somewhere.”

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