Ghosts, Slavoj Žižek, Miliband, Melissa Benn

Available for over a year

Anne McElvoy discusses Ibsen's Ghosts with directors Richard Eyre and Stephen Unwin, whose respective productions of the play have just opened. The drama provoked outrage when it was published in 1881 with its attack on religion, defence of free love, and subject matter of inherited syphilis. But does it speak to us now? The Labour Party has been dealing with the ghosts of its intellectual past recently. But how would the left wing politics of Ralph Miliband's generation fare in the climate of current political debate? And how do the politics of today's Shadow Cabinet compare to the thinking of the post-war New Left? Managing editor of Prospect magazine Jonathan Derbyshire and Observer columnist Nick Cohen join Anne to discuss the genealogy of left wing politics in Britain In his new film, The Pervert's guide to Ideology, the thinker and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek takes on the ideology machine of Hollywood and argues that we need to break away from it. He explains that for this to happen we first of all need to change the way we dream. Melissa Benn asks what messages we are conveying to young women today and considers what advice we should be giving our daughters to empower them for the future.