Slavoj Zizek — In Defence of Western Universalism

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]I think that this vision of each of us its own his her their uh way of life, we all contribute to one humanity is wrong. What gets lost is universality.

[00:00:19]Universality is not something above our particular features. Like we are all humanity, but to be cynical uh traditional Europe contribute to universality by patriarchal marriage, others contribute to universality by clitoridectomy or whatever or whatever.

[00:00:38]Universality, I think that's the lesson of modernity in a good sense.

[00:00:43]Universality is something that traversed splits from within every particular identity. That's why I oppose this pseudo-universalist ideas that we have local communities, western, eastern, whatever, which are then disturbed by this bad horror of western individualist universality, whatever.

[00:01:11]It is true, of course, I'm well aware of the destructive aspects of western universality of human rights, which are not truly universal human rights, and so on. But what I want to say is something else which is crucial.

[00:01:23]First, I dispute that something as authentic local pre-modern ways of life exists at all. I'm not saying they don't exist at all. I'm saying that by Marxist dogma, every particular ca- way of life is already cut by its own antagonism, stra- class struggle, struggle for liberation, whatever you call it, emancipatory struggle is at work in all of them. And my second point, the way to criticize western cultural imperialism should not be only to see it as the bad universality destroying local ways of life, but on the contrary, sometimes even supporting them, manipulating with them. Let me give you a wonderful example that I experienced first hand when I was in India.

[00:02:18]I learned there some strange things. Do you know that their caste system was already disintegrating in the century, I think it was 18th century, before British colonization of India. It was disintegrating. There the main book, the mega Bible of caste system, the so-called laws, legal system of Manu, some stupid divinity, whatever, uh was half forgotten. Then, when the British took over India, they made a simple intelligent discovery that it's much better for them to efficiently colonize India to maintain and even sustain, support the traditional caste system. Because in this way, again, easier to keep them under control. The idea was that if we allow too fast modernization of India, they will get proletarians with their modern demands and so on and so on. So, better to keep them in their traditional identity, and literally, in 19th century, they reprinted, propagated laws of Manu, and 19th century, the very time of British colonization of India, was the time of the revival of caste system.

[00:03:40]All intelligent colonizers were doing this.

[00:03:44]That is to say, not imposing simply Western universality, which is why India is a wonderful case.

[00:03:53]All colonizers, big British administrators, the more they were brutal in economic exploitation of India, the more they admired the incredible spiritual depth of Indian wisdom or whatever.

[00:04:10]I mean, it's wonderful to read the text of their colonizers. Like, I met a simple peasant. There was more wisdom in his simple prayer than our own corrupted Western technology and so on and so on. And it's the same all around, I claim.

[00:04:28]It's the same, for example, on the West Bank, from what I know. Do you know that you do have on the West Bank some honor killings.

[00:04:37]And what we don't read in our media is how there is, at least among Palestinians on the West Bank, a vast social movement, young people, Tamer Nafar, who has a great Palestinian rapper singer, a rock band, and so on.

[00:04:51]Protest against them. But, strangely, Israeli occupying force don't, if possible, prosecute at all honor killings, because they know it's much better for Israeli neocolonialist aims of the West Bank to keep Palestinians in their traditional mode of life. Although they complain Palestinians are primitive and so on, their entire strategy is to do this. Or, I can give you, I don't know how many other examples. To go back to my Slovene gypsy girl example. The father said, "You are threatening our way of life."

[00:05:29]Okay, I ask you brutally, what would you have done?

[00:05:33]Whose side would you take? I'm not saying even you should be a Western liberal. I'm just saying, admit the problem. And my formula is not, we in the West have the solution.

[00:05:45]It's our universal rights and so on. I'm the first to admit that there is a cultural bias on our universal rights.

[00:05:54]You know the story. They privilege a certain type of social life with individualism and so on against solidarity and so on and so on. I'm just saying the right path to do is not [snorts] to oppose our universal values to uh particular ways of life and then to choose either more authentic particular ways of life of our empty universality, but to connect our struggle here for women's rights, gay rights, economic struggle, whatever, with their struggles. That's the only option for me.

[00:06:35]To to renounce this myth of automatic authenticity of local ways of life.

[00:06:43]Let me give you before I really conclude, and believe me or not, I will conclude at some point.

[00:06:49]Let me give you a disgusting, terrifying example from Tibet.

[00:06:54]This example was given to me by a Tibetan himself, who is otherwise brutally critical of Chinese occupation, colonization, whatever of Tibet. Do you know that till '49 or even '59, because till '59, Chinese authorities left in Tibet more or less to itself the traditional Tibetan way of life. They really intervened brutally only after '59, which is why then Dalai Lama escaped to India. You know the story. But the point is this one. Do you know that till '59, Tibet, being a mountainous country, many narrow paths, there is was there a certain rule.

[00:07:37]When they walk in the opposite way over a a narrow mountain path, to people who are not on the of the same social status.

[00:07:45]Let's say a poor farmer and a Buddhist Lama monk, whatever. It was strictly ritualized. The poor guy, ordinary farmer, not only should step away, withdraw to leave to the other the free path, but even perform a certain gesture.

[00:08:06]I was given a photo of it, which is really ritualized disgusting self-humiliation.

[00:08:14]You should somehow lean down, look with your eyes up and stick your like to enact your pure worthless stupidity.

[00:08:25]And then the Chinese prohibited it in '59. And of course, the local uh Lamas and so on says brutal intrusion into our way of life and so on and so on.

[00:08:37]My point is my rule would have been the moment you have some local resistance to this, and it was.

[00:08:47]The tragedy of Tibet is that it wasn't a paradise before '49. It was the most brutal feudal system that you can imagine.

[00:08:55]>> [snorts] >> You see, my point is not we should destroy them. My point is we have a struggle, they have a struggle, connect these struggles. It can be done.

[00:09:06]It's the only way without our arrogance uh and so on and so on. In other words, I believe in universality. I think the greatest catastrophe today is that even some leftists, those who were in United Kingdom pro-Brexit and so on, believe that since European Union is just a voice of international, sorry, instrument of international global capital, the only way to protect workers' rights is a stronger nation-state and so on and so on. I totally reject this strategy.

[00:09:45]I think that the only first capitalism no longer works like that, as I already mentioned with the example of Erdogan, Russia, China. Today's capitalism is more and more from Trump to Erdogan to Putin to China to India.

[00:10:02]Global neoliberal capitalism but politically supplemented by a strong autarkic local tradition. Erdogan Muslim, Modi Hindu, Chinese their Confucian stuff, and so on. So, what I'm saying is that uh uh we should do what, for example, my authentic hero, uh Malcolm X, and I I did read his work. Malcolm X for me is not only Denzel Washington in the film.

[00:10:36]Uh He's for me a model, a true genius politically. You know why? You know why did he keep this name, Malcolm X?

[00:10:45]>> [snorts] >> X, of course, is the sign for lost roots. X means through enslavement we lost our African roots. We don't have a proper family, it's X. But his genius was that he saw in this a unique chance of liberation.

[00:11:02]X means we are potentially more universal than Europeans. We have a unique chance of developing a new universality and paradoxically, one can understand why, he found this universality in Islam.

[00:11:20]Okay, I don't agree him in this, but this basic gesture to see in what appears as the ultimate catastrophe, my god, we are deprived of our roots, a unique chance of new freedom. His solution is not the solution of those nostalgic Alex Haley roots and so on stories where oh, you look for your roots in Africa, you find a tribe where your ancestor were taken from, you found your roots. No, forget your roots. Open yourself even more brutally to universality. I think this is the [snorts] only solution. It has to be a global solution of new reinvented universality. That's why I'm so suspicious of all those who praise so-called indigenism. You know, like global bad global capitalism but look for local traditions to resist it.

[00:12:17]Listen, these local traditions can usually be perfectly integrated into global capitalism. Global capitalism is by definition multi- cultural. It needs as many as possible different cultural identities to to thrive. The only way to fight global capitalism is with new ideological, political, emancipatory uh universality.