The Žižek/Peterson Debate
I am reposting this from the February 21, 2022 Word Press post where I originally wrote it.
I have finally watched the entire video (1) posted by the official Jordan Peterson YouTube channel. It’s long. It’s hard to watch. Some parts were exciting. Watching two leading intellectuals debate in front of a huge public audience being live streamed for-profit like an MMA fight was a new experience for me.
There’s a Wiki page (2) on the event. Apparently, it is a for-profit kind-of-thing, managed like a battle of the bands or a b-boy dance-off. It might be symptomatic of the collapse of the university system as the center of public intellectual debate. Intellectual stars are now bigger than the universities that employ them and, as such, they need something bigger and splashier than a university to showcase their conflicts. It certainly looked different from other historical ‘super debates’ like Chomsky and Foucault (3), or any of the many debates I watched as a student. The way in which the conflict was conducted was spectacular. It’s ironic to see Peterson taking part in something that appears designed to make intellectual thought the very modern kind of spectacle that sport and competitive cooking have been turned into. Just as MMA fighters entering the ring has been turned into an exciting profit-generating spectacle, The Žižek/Peterson Debate really brought to to the fore the idea of what elements make this kind of thing into a commercial spectacle. There’s Peterson dressed like an investment banker sitting with perfect posture citing “evidence” based in published research. And on the other side of the table, there’s Žižek wearing his Wal-Mart sweater fidgeting like an agitated schizophrenic convincingly answering Peterson with stories about falling in love and chats he’s had with friends. Apparently, the debate arose because Žižek has called Peterson “pseudo-science” and stated that he would debate Peterson anytime or place. This is ironic because Noam Chomsky has made similar remarks (4) about Žižek. But in many ways, Žižek is the perfect person to deal with Peterson. He has a deep understanding of psychotherapy, which - let’s face it - is really what Peterson is trying to do. Žižek is a leading scholar of the academic Left while at the same time not having much to do with it. He’s the kind of figure that could arise only from a place that would elect a poet as their president. That kind of romantic intellectual warrior has been largely lost in North America. I’m not sure it’s even possible anymore, and I certainly don’t see Peterson as a sign of its reemergence.
Beginning around 1:39:00 in the debate, you start to see Peterson unwind. It begins with Žižek’s polite way of telling Peterson that his understanding of both Marxism and even the Communist Manifesto are limited. Around 1:55:00 Žižek gets around to that nonsensical term that Peterson has invented lumping post-modern thinking and Marxism all together. Žižek calls him on this and asks him to start naming names. Žižek asks him, in this thing that he calls post-modern neo-Marxism, where is the Marxist element in it? Then at 1:56:40 states that this is “not a rhetorical statement for politely saying you are an idiot” but that he wants to know who Peterson is talking about. Peterson replies by quoting surveys of university faculty identifying themselves as Marxists, and discussing the “recasting” of Marxism by French post-structuralists in light of the collapse of communist states. It’s clear that he doesn’t have any knowledge of what Marxists talk about today or even who any of them could be. As Žižek points out, Peterson doesn’t even seem to be able to identify what a Marxist could be and that what Peterson is really talking about is not Marxism but revolutionaries.
Peterson’s fans won’t see him as getting whacked. But they won’t know how to describe what they think represents his brilliance. That would explain their silence about the whole escapade. He just wasn’t brilliant; not at all. Much of his time was spent spinning a story about capitalism that any reasonably bright undergraduate would be able to do. He didn’t come across as well-read or well-informed. He made no amazing points that utterly floored Žižek and at times seemed unable to answer Žižek’s questions. There just wasn’t much that he said that anyone could talk about or reflect on. There was nothing profound. Nothing new. He quoted extensively from his book 12 Rules which is now old advice. He just didn’t look like a profound thinker. Did Žižek? Ya. I think he did. He called Peterson on his utter lack of knowledge about Marxism and the confusion he is spreading about social theory. He pointed out that Peterson seems hopelessly confused about ideas like happiness, ignorance, love, and affluence, and that put in these terms, capitalism is a very different thing. I can’t say he won, but he certainly came across as the more scholarly of the two.
References
Jordan Peterson Videos. (2019, April 19). Marxism: Zizek/Peterson: Official Video [Video]. YouTube.
Peterson–Žižek debate. (2023, May 31). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterson%E2%80%93%C5%BDi%C5%BEek_debate
withDefiance. (2012, December 13). *Slavoj Žižek: Why be happy when you could be interesting?* [Video]. YouTube.
McLaren, R. (2013, June 7). Noam Chomsky slams Slavoj Žižek and Jacques Lacan as purveyors of "empty posturing". Open Culture. https://www.openculture.com/2013/06/noam_chomsky_slams_zizek_and_lacan_empty_posturing.html