Slavoj Žižek on quantum history and the end of the past

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Apr 21, 2026

Slavoj Žižek, Hegelian philosopher and Lacanian psychoanalyst known for provocative cultural critique, discusses quantum incompleteness as an ontological claim. He connects quantum ideas to materialism, history, and politics. Short takes explore how the present can retroactively reshape the past, the rise of soft fascism, and what meaningful political action looks like amid uncertainty.

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INSIGHT

Reality Is Ontologically Incomplete

Quantum mechanics shows incompleteness is ontological, not just epistemic, meaning reality itself lacks a fully available totality.
Žižek cites Niels Bohr and Heisenberg to argue our knowledge limitations are part of material reality, defining his 'true materialism'.

INSIGHT

All Totalizations Are Situated

Every totalization emerges from a specific viewpoint and we cannot step outside it to get a God-like overview.
Žižek frames this as a materialist acceptance that our knowledge limitations make us part of reality's structure.

INSIGHT

Subjectivity Forms Through The Other

Human subjectivity emerges only through encounters with other subjectivities, not isolated cognition.
Žižek uses Hegel, Freud and Lacan to reject individualist cognitive models and emphasize social mediation and ideology.

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Does the past even exist anymore?

Quantum mechanics has long unsettled our understanding of matter and measurement. But what if its implications reach further — into history, politics, and the very structure of reality itself? If the present can retroactively reshape the past it emerged from, what does that mean for how we act, how we remember, and how we govern?

These are not merely theoretical puzzles. In a world where liberal democracy appears to be fracturing, where AI and climate change defy traditional political categories, and where new authoritarian currents are emerging from thinkers like Curtis Yarvin in the West and Wang Huning in the East, the question of whether reality offers any coherent ground for political action has never felt more urgent.

Few thinkers are willing to hold all of this together at once — to move from Niels Bohr to Stalinism, from Lacanian psychoanalysis to the collapse of the political centre, without flinching. Slavoj Žižek does precisely that. In his new book Quantum History: A New Materialist Philosophy (Bloomsbury, 2025), Žižek argues that incompleteness is not a failure of knowledge but a feature of existence itself — and that this demands an entirely new way of thinking about history and politics.

Slavoj Žižek is a Hegelian philosopher, Lacanian psychoanalyst, and one of the most provocative intellectuals of our time. Hosted by Omari Edwards.

Read the full transcript of this conversation at IAI News: https://iai.tv/articles/slavoj-zizek-on-quantum-history-and-the-end-of-the-past-auid-3437

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