The other day, I came across a really interesting video of Slavoj Žižek talking about feminism. f you’re familiar with Žižek, you know his talks are a wild ride—philosophy, humor, and cultural critique all rolled into one. This particular video didn’t disappoint, as he managed to connect feminism, the unconscious, and a story about ordering coffee. It’s the kind of intellectual chaos that leaves you pondering long after the video ends.
It left me thinking long after I finished watching, so I wanted to share the main idea with you and see what you think.
Žižek begins by talking about who we are as “subjects.” But instead of describing us as full of rich inner personalities, he describes the subject as a kind of empty space—a frame shaped by our relationships, society, and the symbolic world around us. Even if technology advanced to the point where a machine could read all our thoughts, this core sense of being—the “subject”—would remain intact, existing in what he calls the unconscious.
Then, in true Žižek fashion, he uses a joke to illustrate his point. Imagine someone orders coffee without cream, but the café only has milk. The waiter offers coffee without milk instead. The waiter says, “We don’t have cream, so would you like coffee without milk instead?” At first, it seems like wordplay—after all, plain coffee is plain coffee, right? But Žižek argues that the symbolic framing (“without cream” vs. “without milk”) changes the meaning entirely. It’s about what’s missing and how we frame it.
Here’s where feminism comes in. Žižek suggests that a radical shift in feminist thought occurred when women moved from focusing on individual deprivations—like lack of money or being treated poorly by their husbands—to seeing the bigger picture. The issue wasn’t just these specific problems but the entire patriarchal system that defined women’s roles in society. It’s not about cream or milk, so to speak; it’s about questioning the structure of the café menu.
He credits feminist thinker Judith Butler for helping articulate this shift. While Žižek admits he doesn’t always see eye-to-eye with her, he appreciates her emphasis on looking beyond surface-level problems to understand the deeper symbolic structures at play.
This is the focus of Žižek’s point: feminism isn’t just about fixing specific inequalities or problems—it’s about challenging the entire system that creates those problems in the first place. It’s a bigger, more radical way of looking at things. And honestly, it’s also a reminder of how much framing and perspective matter in everything we do.
So, next time you sip your coffee (with or without cream), think about the framing of your own life. What systems shape the way you experience the world? And what would it mean to question them?
Just some food for thought.
