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THE APPOINTMENT IN SAMARA: A

NEW USE FOR SOME OLD JOKES

Slavoj Žižek

n my past work, I used at least a dozen times the old joke about
Ia man who believes himself to be a grain of seed and is taken to
the mental institution where the doctors do their best to finally
convince him that he is not a grain but a human being. When he
is cured (convinced that he is not a grain of seed but a man) and
allowed to leave the hospital, he immediately comes back trembling
with fear - there is a chicken outside the entrance door and he is
afraid that it will eat him. “Dear fellow,” says his doctor, “you know
very well that you are not a grain of seed but a man”. “Of course I
know that,” replies the patient, “but does the chicken know it?” My
Croat friend Dejan Kršić recently sent me a corona-version of this
joke: “Hello, my friend!” “O, hello, professor! Why are you wearing
a mask? Two weeks ago you were explaining all around that masks
don’t protect against the virus?” “Yes, I know they don’t work, but
maybe the virus doesn’t know it!”
This virus version of the joke ignores a crucial fact: virus doesn’t
know anything (and also doesn’t NOT know anything) because it
doesn’t dwell in the domain of knowledge at all, it is not an Enemy
trying to destroy us – it just self-reproduces with a blind automa-
tism. Some Leftists evoke another parallel: is capital also not a virus
parasitizing on us, humans, is it also not a blind mechanism bent
on expanded self-reproduction in total indifference to our suffe-
ring? There is, however, a key difference at work here: capital is

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