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Nostalgic? AI art Introduction: Provocation or Gaslighting? In a widely circulated video clip in YouTube titled “Why People Were ‘Happier’ Under Communism,” Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek delivers a provocative thesis: that people in communist regimes experienced a peculiar form of psychological stability, even happiness, precisely because their lives were constrained. The following is a summary of selected moments from the video: “ The notion of happiness itself is very ambiguous and has deep implications. There was a brief period of political openness in Prague in 1968. Then, the Soviet tanks came and crushed the reforms. But here's the paradox: people often claim they were happier during that period. Because their material needs were modestly met. Maybe once a month you'd go to the supermarket and buy coffee. It wasn’t much, but there was a certain comfort in the limitations. You weren’t constantly bombarded with choices and pressure to succeed...

The Caudillo. AI art, photorealism "There is no power that does not leave a scar" — Augusto Roa Bastos (my translation) Introduction On July 31, 2025, the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador approved a constitutional reform allowing President Nayib Bukele to run indefinitely for reelection. The decision, supported by a pro-government parliamentary majority, has drawn national and international criticism for its impact on the separation of powers and institutional weakening. This recent episode revives a figure deeply rooted in the continent’s political history: the caudillo . Far from being an anomaly, the concentration of power in the hands of charismatic, paternalistic, and authoritarian leaders is part of a tradition that has marked Latin America since the 19th century. Literature has served as a relentless mirror of this reality, revealing the mechanisms of absolute power, the logic of fear, and the moral degradation produced by perpetual rule. This article analyzes...

The Debate. AI art Introduction The 2019 debate between Slavoj Žižek and Jordan Peterson, held in Toronto, was billed as a confrontation between Marxism and Capitalism. However, beyond economic systems or identity politics, one of the most revealing moments came when Žižek expressed distaste not for capitalism or ideology, but for marginality itself. Reacting to what he saw as a postmodern valorization of resistance without   real subversion of power , he remarked: “His project was never revolution but rather small resistances, marginal sites of power. And that’s precisely what I don’t like about what you call postmodernism. Let’s not even call them Marxists, but ‘revolutionaries.’ It’s this enjoyment of self-marginalization. The good thing is to be at the margin, not at the center. It almost makes me nostalgic for old Communists who at least had the honesty to say, ‘We don’t enjoy being marginal—we want to seize power.’ I find this celebration of marginality disgusting.” Thi...

The Beginning of Symbolic Thought. AI art Introduction It is often assumed that AI models, unlike human beings, are severed from the real world. They deal only in symbols, without any access to perception, experience, or meaning. This view, however, rests on a questionable assumption: that humans themselves enjoy unmediated access to reality. Charles Sanders Peirce explicitly challenges this. In his words, “We think only in signs” (Peirce, CP 5.265). For both humans and machines, access to the world is always mediated through signs. The key difference lies not in whether signs are used, but in what kind and from where they are drawn. In this article, I argue that artificial intelligences participate in a sign-based process structurally analogous to that of human thought. Peirce’s theory offers a powerful framework to understand this. While machines operate on symbols produced by human reasoning—books, speeches, libraries—these are not devoid of meaning. They are, in fact, the cu...

The Debate. AI art. Photorealism Introduction The debate between Slavoj Žižek and Jordan Peterson, held on April 19, 2019, at the Sony Centre in Toronto before more than 3,000 people (and millions of online viewers), was presented as a confrontation between capitalism and Marxism. However, one of the most contentious points was the supposed existence of a movement called postmodern neo-Marxism . Peterson argues that this trend represents a narrative continuation of Marxism within identity discourse; Žižek, on the other hand, denies any real connection to "pure" Marxism. This apparent dichotomy—Marxism versus postmodernism—reflects a reductive reading that overlooks their shared history. Thesis: Although often portrayed as irreconcilable opposites, Marxism and postmodern currents share a common genealogy. Many thinkers labeled as postmodernists emerged from the Marxist tradition and developed their critiques from within it. To deny this continuity, as Žižek does, is t...