Against the Double Blackmail: refugees, terror and other troubles with the neighbours [Audio]

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Speaker(s): Professor Slavoj Žižek | In this talk Professor Žižek will talk about his new book, Against the Double Blackmail: Refugees, Terror and Other Troubles with the Neighbours. From within the safety of Europe Zizek argues we face two versions of ideological blackmail - open-door solidarity with refugees and drawbridge-minded protectionism. Both prolong the problem – so, confronted with this double blackmail, we find ourselves back at the great question: what is to be done? The refugee crisis offers to Europe an opportunity: a unique chance to redefine itself. The only way, argues Zizek, to truly get to the heart of one of the greatest and most urgent issues confronting Europe today is to insist on the global solidarity of the exploited and oppressed. Maybe such global solidarity is a utopia. But, he warns, if we don’t engage in it, then we are really lost. And we will deserve to be lost. Slavoj Žižek is a Hegelian philosopher, Lacanian psychoanalyst, and political activist. He is international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities and the author of numerous books on dialectical materialism, critique of ideology and art, including Less Than Nothing, Living in the End Times, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously and Trouble in Paradise. The Forum for European Philosophy (@ForumPhilosophy) is an educational charity that organises a full and varied programme of philosophy and interdisciplinary events in the UK.