/lit/ - Literature

https://spectator.us/like-about-coronavirus-slavoj-zizek/

>‘OK, can do it, but I am ill (NOT the virus).’

>With that, the interview is set: an hour on the phone with Slavoj Žižek.

>As I thanked Žižek for his time, he stresses, ‘Don’t expect too much. It’s not the virus, but…how do I put this, I have a lot of symptoms of the virus, but hopefully not the virus.’

>‘I’ve had these symptoms for years,’ he noted. ‘You know I’m sneezing all the time, and so on.’

>We are meant to discuss Žižek’s upcoming book of essays, A Left That Dares to Speak Its Name, which the 70-year-old says is an easier read than the majority of the books he has written in the past five decades.

>But Žižek is far more eager to talk about the COVID-19 coronavirus.

>‘Europe is approaching a perfect storm,’ he says, before asking whether I’d seen ‘that stupid movie about that fishing boat?’

>‘The movie with George Clooney. It was called The Perfect Storm. You know what’s the definition of “perfect storm”? When calamities, like a tornado here and storm there, unite and then their unification multiplies their effect,’ he explained. ‘I think that Europe is now approaching a perfect storm.’

>One of those calamities, according to Žižek, is the coronavirus.

>‘I don’t get it, even what’s happening here. All official proclamations begin with, “No cause for panic, don’t panic”, and then all that they tell you is reasons to panic,’ he said, before noting that both the health and economic consequences of the coronavirus could cause severe damage to Europe.

>‘If you add to this a possible new wave of refugees you get the perfect storm, and I think that Europe is so weakened that it will not be able to react in a unified way, and that’s what I mean when I say coronavirus gives a new chance to communism,’ he said. ‘Of course, I don’t mean the old-style communism. By communism, I mean simply what the World Health Organization is saying. We should mobilize, coordinate, and so on…like, my God, this is a dangerous situation. They’re saying this country lacks masks, respirators, and so on. We should treat this as a war. Some kind of European coordination…maybe even wartime mobilization. It can be done, and it can even boost productivity.

>‘What I mean is that it is possible to keep the good sides of capitalism, but nonetheless, through a coordinated state, social effort to mobilize. Not just with coronavirus, this is needed with other ecological crises, refugees and so on.’