Slavoj Zizek: Short Survey

When were you happiest?

Z:A few times when I looked forward to a happy moment or remembered it - never when it was happening.

What is your greatest fear?

Z:To awaken after death - that’s why I want to be burned immediately.

What is your earliest memory?

Z:My mother naked. Disgusting.

Which living person do you most admire, and why?

Z:Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the twice-deposed president of Haiti. He is a model of what can be done for the people even in a desperate situation.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

Z:Indifference to the plights of others.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?

Z:Their sleazy readiness to offer me help when I don’t need or want it.

What was your most embarrassing moment?

Z:Standing naked in front of a woman before making love.

Aside from a property, what’s the most expensive thing you’ve bought?

Z:The new German edition of the collected works of Hegel.

What is your most treasured possession?

Z:See the previous answer.

What makes you depressed?

Z:Seeing stupid people happy.

What do you most dislike about your appearance?

Z:That it makes me appear the way I really am.

What is your most unappealing habit?

Z:The ridiculously excessive tics of my hands while I talk.

What would be your fancy dress costume of choice?

Z:A mask of myself on my face, so people would think I am not myself but someone pretending to be me.

What is your guiltiest pleasure?

Z:Watching embarrassingly pathetic movies such as The Sound Of Music.

What do you owe your parents?

Z:Nothing, I hope. I didn’t spend a minute bemoaning their death.

To whom would you most like to say sorry, and why?

Z:To my sons, for not being a good enough father.

What does love feel like?

Z:Like a great misfortune, a monstrous parasite, a permanent state of emergency that ruins all small pleasures.

What or who is the love of your life?

Z:Philosophy. I secretly think reality exists so we can speculate about it.

What is your favourite smell?

Z:Nature in decay, like rotten trees.

Have you ever said ‘I love you’ and not meant it?

Z:All the time. When I really love someone, I can only show it by making aggressive and bad-taste remarks.

Which living person do you most despise, and why?

Z:Medical doctors who assist torturers.

What is the worst job you’ve done?

Z:Teaching. I hate students, they are (as all people) mostly stupid and boring.

What has been your biggest disappointment?

Z:What Alain Badiou calls the ‘obscure disaster’ of the 20th century: the catastrophic failure of communism.

If you could edit your past, what would you change?

Z:My birth. I agree with Sophocles: the greatest luck is not to have been born - but, as the joke goes on, very few people succeed in it.

If you could go back in time, where would you go?

Z:To Germany in the early 19th century, to follow a university course by Hegel.

How do you relax?

Z:Listening again and again to Wagner.

How often do you have sex?

Z:It depends what one means by sex. If it’s the usual masturbation with a living partner, I try not to have it at all.

What is the closest you’ve come to death?

Z:When I had a mild heart attack. I started to hate my body: it refused to do its duty to serve me blindly.

What single thing would improve the quality of your life?

Z:To avoid senility.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?

Z:The chapters where I develop what I think is a good interpretation of Hegel.

What is the most important lesson life has taught you?

Z:That life is a stupid, meaningless thing that has nothing to teach you.

Tell us a secret.

Z:Communism will win.