A Big Piece of the Reel - Slavoj Zizek and Cornel West

"A Big Piece of the Reel" features the extraordinary debate between Slavoj Zizek and Cornel West at Princeton University Thursday, November 17th 2005.

Slavoj Zizek is a Lacanian Marxist sociologist, psychoanalyst, philosopher, and cultural critic. He received a Doctor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Ljubljana and studied psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII with Jacques-Alain Miller and François Regnault. Since 2005, Žižek has been a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.


Cornel West is an American philosopher, author, critic, pastor, and civil rights activist. West currently serves as the Class of 1943 University Professor at Princeton University, where he teaches in the Center for African American Studies and in the department of Religion.
http://www.princeton.edu/africanamericanstudies/people/faculty/core/#comp0000450fdbb700000000d37cc1
http://www.princeton.edu/~ideology/zizek.htm

This fascinating exchange between the two towering public intellectuals, clocking in at 138 minutes, has good video quality and perfect audio. Zizek opens with a lecture on politics, religion, film, social issues, and other taboo subjects with stunning brilliance. Then, while seated almost uncomfortably close together, West responds to his points while raising his own. Both eccentric gentlemen give an entertaining and insightful commentary, fueled by their commanding stage presence and quirky personalities. A Q&A with the audience follows.

Track 1: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY DEBATE (138 min.)
Chapters:
1. With our fingers crossed
2. The end of the affair
3. Is it to laugh at the other
4. Does the chicken know?
5. God was forsaken from God
6. Rid of the duty to love
7. The institutional unconscious
8. Ways of which we talk traumatic
9. God was our fantasy
10. Too lazy to be thirsty
11. Kingdom of fake innocence
12. The gap between me and God is God himself
13. Transpose the debate in terms of knowledge

Track 2: SLAVOJ ZIZEK (extra footage, 10 min.)
Chapters:
1. Geographical limit between Balkan and Central Europe (a clip from when he was working for a television station)
2. Why The Sound of Music is racist
3. Burning Speech (while giving a lecture, someone keeps pulling the fire alarm to disrupt his speech on Marxism)
4. On vegetarians
5. Love is Evil (Small scene from ZIZEK!)


Track 2: CORNEL WEST (extra footage, 21 min.
Chapters:
1. On Obama as President elect
2. Interview with Tavis Smiley (Part One)
3. Interview with Tavis Smiley (Part Two)