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Slavoj Žižek Quotes

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Famous Slavoj Žižek Quotes

“Maybe we can use this Shakespearean triad of lunacy, lover and poet as a tool to propose a classification of events based on the Lacanian train of imaginary, Symbolic and Real: a lunatic dwells in the imaginary dimension, confusing reality and imagination; a lover identifies the beloved person with the absolute Thing in a symbolic short-circuit between signifier and signified which nonetheless maintains the gap that for ever separates them (the lover knows very well that, in reality, his or her beloved is an ordinary person with all his or her failures and weaknesses); a poet makes a phenomenon emerge against the background of the void of the Real.”

Reality
Book:Event
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“Are we all not, when we sit in the cinema, in the position of humans in The Matrix, tied to chairs, immersed in the spectacle run by a machine? However, a more appropriate allegory is that of the viewer himself: beneath the illusion that we "just look" at the perceived objects from a safe distance, freely sliding along them, there is the reality of the innumerable ties that bind us to what we perceive.”

HumansLooksRealityRunningPositionObjectsSafeIllusionMachinesDistancePerceiveCinemaTiesAppropriateChairsTiedViewersAllegoryTies That Bind
Author:Slavoj Žižek
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“The problem with kitsch is that it is all too profound, manipulating deep libidinal and ideological forces, while true art knows how to remain at the surface, how to subtract it's subject from it's deepest context of historical reality. The same goes for contemporary art, where we often encounter brutal attempts to return to the Real, to remind the spectator or reader that he is perceiving a fiction, to awaken him from a sweet dream.”

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Author:Slavoj Žižek
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“What is the Absolute? Something that appears to us in fleeting experiences--say, through the gentle smile of a beautiful woman, or even through the warm caring smile of a person who may otherwise seem ugly and rude. In such miraculous but extremely fragile moments, another dimension transpires through our reality. As such, the Absolute is easily corroded;it slips all too easily through our fingers and must be handled as carefully as a butterfly”

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Book:The Fragile Absolute Or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?
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