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Slavoj Žižek + Paul Holdengräber "Surveillance and whistleblowers" - International Authors' Stage

Det Kgl. Bibliotek · 133.5K views · 2014-05-19 · 1:21:00

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Overview

Slavoj Zizek and Paul Holdengraber discuss surveillance and whistleblowers at the International Authors' Stage, ranging over Snowden, Assange, Pussy Riot and humor.

On Hacker News

HN commenters call it an entertaining, complementary philosophical take on surveillance, with a funny story about jamming secret police.

Recommended by 3 HN people across 4 months · HN mentions 2014–2016

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What people said

RodericDay · 2016-09 · Recommendation

Slavoj Zizek had a great talk with a talk show host from the Netherlands precisely about this matter. [VIDEO] Fun watch imo. There's also another session between them two.

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TheSpiceIsLife · 2015-03 · Recommendation

As a complimentary perspective: For those who haven't seen it, I think Slavoj Žižek and Paul Holdengräber on "Surveillance and whistleblowers" is worth a watch. The part about surveillance starts at 21:14 so this link will take you there [VIDEO] Žižek: "The most dangerous unfreedom is the unfreedom you don't even experience, as such. If some of you are feminists ... every good feminist will tell you the first step of feminism is just to realise your situation of oppression... We need something similar here. That's the first point. The second point ... I'm a little bit sceptic about this paranoia 'ooh we are totally controlled' and so on and so on, I think we shouldn't take this too seriously. And this doesn't make the situation any easier if anything it makes it more... it [paranoia] is justified, but we should be aware, again we go in to metaphorics again the NSA the Big Eye knows everything, again the mega-machinery is extremely stupid, they don't know what they know. Do you remember, this is a very superficial anecdote ... a guy in LA was Googling the ways to kill your wife something like that, a couple days afterward the FBI brutally entered his house arrested him blah blah blah. Why? Because Google reported this to FBI. But do you know what was the result, this guy was a was one of the you know all the [TV] series CIS / police investigation, we was simply writing a scenario and wanted to check you know, and you have this again and again or form China they told me a wonde

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TheSpiceIsLife · 2014-10 · Recommendation

At this stage it has become apparent that opposing surveillance doesn't appear to be helping. It's pretty clear where this is headed, and it seems to me the only way out of it is through it and out the other side, whatever that might look like. My position on surveillance is now, and has been for a few months, what Slavoj Žižek said: "Yeah but I don't care if we are watched. Here I preach arrogance. So what, let the big 'other' watch me maybe he will learn something and be less stupid, you know, this is not my problem." If you haven't seen it this video[1] of Slavoj Žižek and Paul Holdengräber on "Surveillance and whistleblowers" at the International Authors' Stage, published earlier this year, is quite entertaining. The quote above is at 35:54. 1. [VIDEO]

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Video by Det Kgl. Bibliotek, played through YouTube.

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