The Elvis of philosophy, Slavoj Zizek, has several hits and a few misses in the lecture he recently delivered at St. Mark's Bookshop...


The biggest hit concerns the void opened by the protests. In his thinking, and I agree with this thinking, it should not be closed so quickly. Meaning, we should not offer coherent answers to the question power keeps asking: What the hell do you want? For Zizek, the structure of this kind exchange is much like the one between a patriarchal husband and his hysterical wife: What do you want, woman? If she answers, it has to be on terms he can understand; if she does not answer, she is told to shut up, get over it, and let things be.

Power really wants clear demands from Occupy, it wants it to fill in the void the protests have opened, it wants to answer the demands on its own terms and continue on essentially as before but with some minor adjustments—offer support of mortgages, decrease payments for student loans, and so on. Power hates a vacuum. This is why we must prolong the void and spend more time thinking about what is wanted. Time must be on our side.