Antigram nails it:
“I agree with Zizek,” writes Jodi Dean, IJZS board member, and author most recently of the book Zizek’s Politics. “There won’t be a left politics adequate to neoliberalism until we are willing to give up its pleasures…. we will continue to remain complicit in [its] horrifying crimes… until we have the discipline to sacrifice our enjoyment of it.”
As Jodi understands it “[t]he left can’t provide strong alternatives to capitalism because it enjoys it – and because it doesn’t want to lose this enjoyment or take responsibility for denying enjoyment to others.” In other words: the task at hand for the contemporary Left is to take on, and accept, responsibility for denying enjoyment to ourselves and others.
Now, there are in fact several reasons to doubt that this curious (moral) imperative provides any kind of (political) solution. But let us stick with just one: the strictly conceptual one. As BDSM fans and puritanical Christians, amongst others, have long clearly recognized, discipline and enjoyment are deeply entwined. As Lacan might have put it, they form a Möbius strip. The essential point is: they are not opposed. From Saint Anthony to contemporary vegans, there has always been great pleasure to be had from the renunciation of pleasure, deep enjoyment to be derived from the sacrifice of enjoyment. Thus one cannot reasonably call for the former against the latter – as Zizek does in his 300 article – and thereby believe oneself to be taking a serious political position.
Read the rest here.
In a somewhat related connection, others might be interested in tracking down Postone’s Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory for an alternative perspective on these issues. This work was first suggested to me by N.Pepperell of Rough Theory, and is well worth a glance. One, among the numerious themes dealt with in this text, is the issue of Marxist criticism aiming not simply at distrubition, but at production as well. As Postone understands it, one of the central problems of traditional Marxism was the view that overturning capitalism entailed overturning a certain order of distribution, while leaving the mode of production intact. Postone contends that classical Marxists have tended to dehistoricize production, thereby failing to see how contemporary modes of production are historically contingent and therefore can be otherwise. Put crudely as time does not permit me to elaborate at the moment, we are not simply “alienated” in a particular system of distribution, but are “alienated” by the very form of capitalist production. How does all this relate? When I hear calls to give up enjoyment such as they are issuing from Jodi Dean or Zizek, I hear the thesis that somehow social change should consist in rendering our living conditions even more intolerable than they currently are. Why is this a form of social transformation that anyone should desire? To put it in crude and less than trendy-jargonistic terms, if social transformation does not lead to better work and living conditions, better, more equitable, more just, more satisfying, and more meaningful ways of relating to one another, more freedom to pursue our desires and cultivate ourselves, why should these forms of social transformation be desired at all?
I only have two objections to Antigram’s post. First, he doesn’t list Spinoza among the demystifiers of value at the end, when discussing Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx; and second I have to sign up for a Google account to post on his blog.
May 11, 2007 at 8:01 pm
Just a quick note on Marx, Freud and Nietzsche: I think that if one were to purely focus on demystifiers of values, then Spinoza may make the cut (some in the history but also most contemporary post-Nietzsche folks). But Ricoeur put these three together as the masters of suspicion because they deconstructed ethics but also selfhood as an essential quality. This is not to disagree with the importance of Spinoza but reminding why Ricoeur grouped the three together.
May 11, 2007 at 9:23 pm
LS,
I’m particularly admiring of the way this post develops towards the end:
I’m very concerned about the fantasy of voluntarily undergone misery; it seems to be a blithe reversion to Christian asceticism, and frankly has little to do with Lenin. I’ll do my best to address that in an upcoming post. Meanwhile, just a note about a slippage of terms. I’m very happy with your term “demystifier” to describe Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche. I’m much less happy with “materialist,” which is the term DM implicitly suggests. To illustrate that the will-to-power, or the libidinal drive, is the origin of valuation is not the same as materialism, or else the word has no meaning.
May 11, 2007 at 9:40 pm
Joseph, perhaps you could say a bit more about this:
To illustrate that the will-to-power, or the libidinal drive, is the origin of valuation is not the same as materialism, or else the word has no meaning.
I would say that it is materialist in the sense that it is situated in the body. I have no special attachments to Nietzsche, so I don’t have much to say about the will-to-power as a confluence of forces, but certainly libido is a materialist thesis. I think Israel expresses the materialist thesis common to Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Freud on affect well: “Spinoza’s technical term for emotion is ‘affect’ and in accordance with his stated principles he understands by ‘affect’ (affectus) ‘affections of the body by which the body’s power of acting is increased or diminished, aided or restrained, and at the same time, the ideas of these affections” (Radical Enlightenment, 236). In my view, Freud and Nietzsche can be seen as developing variants of this thesis, where ultimately it’s the brain that’s in question. I agree that Freud runs afoul later in his work with the new myth of eros and thanatos. Here I think Lacan picks up the ball, giving an account of thanatos as an emergent property that results from the infans encounter with language.
May 11, 2007 at 11:45 pm
May 11, 2007
My post on Larcal Subjects:
Zizek does not overlook the link between pleasure and the law. Nor does he call for aestheticism. Nor does he somehow say that things won’t be better if a revolution went down. In the fourth chapter of The Ticklish Subject he takes this up explicitly in reference to Badiou, whom he treats at length. What he says, in a nutshell, is this: The death drive enables one to step out of the deadlock of law and pleasure, and paves the way for new ways of being – which of course means there will be new pleasures and a new symbolic law. When Dean says that that we have to ‘give up’ what we have it’s not because it’s bad. What she’s saying is that we have to sacrifice to move ahead. To put it theoretically, it’s all the little islands of pleasure that prevent the death drive from following its course. They prevent one from remaining true to one’s desire. In the chapter of the Ticklish Subject I mentioned above, this place (Lacan’s *ate*) is the platform for new identifications and the rise of a new symbolic order (or in Badiou’s terms, a new situation based on fidelity to the Event).
And people are completely blowing the *300* review out of proportion. It only makes sense within the broader context of Zizek’s work. Everything he writes end up in a book – fully fleshed out and explained. Judging this review without a fuller knowledge of Zizek’s project is a lot like judging a movie by it’s trailer. See my post at the bottom of *the pinocchio theory* discussion of negation:
>
May 12, 2007 at 12:19 am
Hoping not to intrude – I just wanted to second (third?) the rejection of ascetic critique. I’ve always been drawn to Weber’s notion that what is most distinctive about capitalism is precisely its ascetic core. Within this framework, any discussion of overcoming capitalism is also and simultaneously a discussion of the transcendence of a particular structural asceticism – a structural asceticism that has its elective affinities with ascetic orientations on a more psychological or intersubjective level. Such affinities are one reason, I believe, that capitalism is at best ambivalent in relation to secularism – it has elements of irrational sacrifice at its core, and these elements, I think, resonate with particular kinds of religious (and oppressive secular) mystical valorisations of sacrifice…
I suspect I’m being particularly incoherent here – apologies – I’m operating on very little sleep at the moment.
May 12, 2007 at 12:37 am
I agree with dr. Zizek’s Christian ascetism. For restraining myself I get the newest BMW with an unlimited insurance policy; five vacation houses all over the globe; a young Brazilian bride; a whole prestigious Swiss university department in my honor; my name becomes a brand associated with the dutchy of Slovenia; half the American cult theory academia at my feet. I’m buying this sacrifice.
May 12, 2007 at 1:01 am
The only reason Spinoza is not on the list is because, to my shame, I know very little about him!
As regards the Google account issue, this should hopefully be solved now…
May 12, 2007 at 5:15 am
it has elements of irrational sacrifice at its core, and these elements, I think, resonate with particular kinds of religious (and oppressive secular) mystical valorisations of sacrifice…
Pepperel, good that you mention Weber, for I think the sacrifice at capitalism’s core is basically Calvinist. This is sacrifice done for the God of money, Calvinism attributes divine absolution to money; the goal is not the pleasure that money brings, but endless reproduction of money.
May 12, 2007 at 6:18 am
Dr. Sinthome would you say that the death drive is a transcendent notion? I do see a link with the Christian notion of sacrifice (at least from the perspective of Christ. Orthodoxy)in that death is an overcoming of itself. The Orthodox church also rejects the (Calvinist) notion of punishment, believing that one goes to Hell because one doesn’t see God’s omnipresent love (which is always there, never absent, never defined negatively).
May 12, 2007 at 7:14 am
Dejan, as I understand it, the term “transcendent” means “beyond” or “outside of”. Platonic forms are transcendent in the precise sense that they are outside of nature or the world of appearances such that they are unaffected by anything that takes place in creation. God, in some theologies, is understood as transcendent in that it is outside of nature, not subject to the laws of nature, and is the ultimate source of creation. The death drive does not fit this model of transcendence. In it’s Lacanian formulation, it is the result of the conjunction of the infants biological body with language, producing a lack or lost jouissance (insofar as the signifier introduces absence into plenitude) that causes the person to perpetually repeat with the aim of recapturing this lost jouissance that never existed in the first place or that they never had to begin with. Death drive can be thought in analogy to an irrational number, where no matter how far you carry out the decimal places you never reach the final digit. The relationship between the body and language is like those moments of long division where there’s always a remainder produced that can never be integrated. There is no transcendence here, simply a repeating pattern produced as a result of this conjunction that produces a certain repetition.
Dejan, as a matter of courtesy I’d like to ask you to try to limit your posts. You sometimes post three to five posts in a short span of time. This has the effect of pushing other people’s posts down the list on the recent comment box which diminishes the possibility of discussion occurring in relation to those remarks by virtue of their not being seen. This request has nothing to do with the quality of your posts, which is often fairly good. Perhaps you could try to condense your multiple posts into a single post. I find the idea of deleting posts deeply repugnant, so I’d prefer that you instead restrain yourself a bit and post your remarks in one post at any given time.
May 12, 2007 at 7:43 am
Sorry dr .Sinthome I completely forgot that people do indeed react on the comments indicator rather than the post list. I will finish up with this last remark.
In it’s Lacanian formulation, it is the result of the conjunction of the infants biological body with language, producing a lack or lost jouissance (insofar as the signifier introduces absence into plenitude) that causes the person to perpetually repeat with the aim of recapturing this lost jouissance that never existed in the first place or that they never had to begin with.
However I find that a structural parallel can be drawn, if only you replace a materialist framework with a religious one, with this Orthodox vision of sacrifice. When you commit such an act believing in God’s plenitude (agape) you aim to recapture a lost jouissance/plenitude that never existed in the first place (or its existence is based on something irratonal – faith). (I think the Orthodox vision of God is Deleuzian in that he is an absolutely positive core and it is humans who imagine lack where none actually exists: you go to Hell because you don’t see love).
Hence a properly Christian sacrifice cannot be premised on scarcity, negativity, ascetism, as it is in both Calvinism and dr. Zizek’s reading (of 300).
May 12, 2007 at 2:33 pm
[…] to cite or summarise adequately here – sketching the contours of a vibrant materialist theory, and demanding, in relation to the current discussion, that we attend seriously to the question of the impact of […]
May 13, 2007 at 12:19 am
Can someone send me a link to something that Describes Zizek’s involvment in politics during/before the Yugo war (something other than a blog, if possible)? I noticed someone posted (on Parodycentre) a link to a New Left Review piece from 1990 that they thought exemplified it, but you needed a subscription to read the peice. (In addition, they did not mention or link to the piece writen 2 years later in the same publication where Zizek claims to recant some of what he wrote.)
Anyway…Links?
Thanks,
G
May 13, 2007 at 12:41 am
I’m not sure that Zizek having a BMW/houses/bride (etc) is anything more than an ad-hominem attack. Like I don’t have a mac, a cell phone, a couple of stereos, a stack of vinyl, new clothes, a girlfriend and lots of women I flirt with…etc. Sacrifice doesn’t necessarily mean personal sacrifice as a way of causing change, where riding a used bike would run Capitalism aground. Marx didn’t want to deny people goods – he didn’t want those goods to be based on exploitation. The means of production were to stay in place and their ownership/operation was to change. “Sacrifice” in the context of this debate means as a group (or as the instigator ) and at the risk of everything you have when a chance for a revolution comes – not denying yourself chocolate cake ‘for the cause’.
But I don’t think that means to say that we should feel at ease buying stuff and getting all we can. Nowhere do I see Zizek advocating that kind of behaviour.
And is he a brand anymore than other authors just because he happens to be super-popular right now? As if Eagleton (or any big-footed intellectual) doesn’t fill lectures and travel the globe. Derrida has a documentary about him. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out all the big writers right now have a lot of stuff. Lots of people want to hear them speak!
May 13, 2007 at 3:06 am
I’m not sure that Zizek having a BMW/houses/bride (etc) is anything more than an ad-hominem attack.
Fletcher, I understand your criticism; however, unlike Derrida (I don’t know who Eagleton is), dr. Zizek is not only a philosopher, who merely wants to explain things, find the Truth and the Being, or sell books. He was and is a politician, too; he exerts influence on the British socialist party & the SWP. If I understand it correctly he is proposing a positive political project here, which is being discussed seriously by the Academia and the Party. If you accuse a politician of preaching chastity while practising obnoxious corporate hedonism himself, I don’t think it’s an ”ad hominem attack”. At least, it wouldn’t be in a proper socialist party, where personal and ethical integrity constitute a significant requirement for participation and/or membership. That I am frequently forced to resort to ad hominem parodic attacks in order to get the attention of the public is simply because very few people are interested; there is a cult-like attitude to dr. Zizek.
Here is a collection of links I gathered where dr. Zizek is talking about Serbia. You will notice that he constantly puts the blame on the late Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, trying to present the situation as if his political position caused the break-up of Yugoslavia. He never discusses the apparent fact that the Slovenian nationalist-seccessionist project pulled the country apart. He is further aligned with the view of NATO/UN forces as regards intervention in Yugoslavia, which was an imperial intervention much like the war on Iraq (in fact – nearly identical) but being portrayed as ”humanitarian intervention”. This view – which dr. Zizek held ever since The Parallax View – inadvertently spilled out through his review of 300. It has been disguised because NATO and the UN mounted an enormous demonization campaign against Serbia in support of dr. Zizek’s thesis that Milosevic (and by extension the Serbian republic) is to blame for the wars. However as you can find out from very accessible public resources, none of the charges against Serbia in this respect have been proven, either by the ICTY (Int’l Criminal Tribunal on the Former Yugoslavia), or by the ICC (Int’l Criminal Court), which recently cleared Serbia of genocide charges.If you have any further questions I will be glad to respond but the scope of this comment does not allow me to get into a lot of detail.
http://www.ntticc.or.jp/pub/ic_m…ek/ zizek_e.html
I fully support the ruling party in Slovenia. For this all my leftist friends hate me and of course the whole right wing. What the liberal democratic party did was a miracle. Five years ago we were the remainder of the new social movements, like feminist and ecological groups. At that time everybody thought that we would be vanishing mediators. We made some solidly corrupted, but good moves and now we are the strongest party. I think it was our party that saved Slovenia from the faith of the other former Yugoslav republics, where they have the one-party model. Either right wing like in Croatia or left wing like in Serbia, which hegemonized in the name of the national interest (ref. SANU memorandum). With us it’s a real diverse, pluralist scene, open towards foreigners (of course there are some critical cases). But the changes of a genuine pluralist society are not yet lost.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world…ope/ 3620395.stm
I’m not saying that the Serbs are guilty. I just repeat my old point that Yugoslavia was not over with the secession of Slovenia. It was over the moment Milosevic took over Serbia.
http://bad.eserver.org/issues/20…2/59/ zizek.html
“The Slovenians were the first to be attacked by Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbia, in the three-day war of 1990. That conflict revealed the extent of international apathy towards Milosevic’s aggressive nationalism, which has culminated in the Kosovan war. Today, Zizek lambasts ‘the interminable procrastination’ of Western governments and says that ‘I definitely support the bombing’ of Milosevic’s regime by Nato.”
(Dejan’s note: Slovenians were actually attacked by the Yugoslav federation within the Yugoslav Constitution, which allowed for the state to supress seccession with violent means if necessary – not by Milosevic’s ”aggressive nationalism”)
http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/ my…nwood_Zizek.htm
dejan | Homepage | 8 May, 05:07 | #
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May 13, 2007 at 3:42 am
I am sorry, I posted a broken link, this is the right one:
http://bad.eserver.org/issues/2002/59/zizek.html/view?searchterm=zizek
May 13, 2007 at 10:04 am
[…] once I do that successfully, I’ll return to the conversations in progress at Rough Theory, LarvalSubjects, An und fur sich, and the rest (those links go to the conversations I’m currently involved […]
May 14, 2007 at 3:14 am
[…] sacrifice upon sacrifice, drives me to the same sorts of questions expressed so eloquently at Larval Subjects: When I hear calls to give up enjoyment such as they are issuing from Jodi Dean or Zizek, I hear […]
May 14, 2007 at 3:51 am
hi Synth,
I haven’t really followed this cuz I haven’t seen the movie or read much Zizek. Still, a few thoughts. First, I don’t know who the “we” is in Jodi’s comment about the group that enjoys the pleasures of neoliberalism. Is this “we” the left as a while? A subset of the social base of the left? Does the “we” include everyone alive who is not a capitalist (etc) in the current era of neoliberal capitalism? If no, then how does the “we” relate to the implied “they” which is not the capitalists (etc)? These questions are mostly rhetorical, I suppose, as this isn’t Jodi’s blog, but my point is 1. there’s an implied flattening here rather than a recognition that the pleasures and the horrifying crimes (not enjoyed by those upon whom they are inflicted) are not distributed equally
2. at least some of those who get more horror and less pleasure are themselves (potential) agents in undermining neoliberalism, probably more so than those who get less horror than pleasure (whoever that is).
3. that is to say, the agents listed in #2 won’t be sacrificing pleasures provided specifically by neoliberalism, such that the call to sacrifice neoliberal pleasures is misplaced. That’s not to say that risk won’t be involved and that discipline won’t be required (though I prefer to say organization and accountability instead of discipline)
It’s also not clear to me who the left is, the left who is alleged to enjoy capitalism. I find some of that claim compelling, but only some of it.
Lastly, I’m under the impression that left asceticism is pretty old and, to the best of my knowledge, has never accomplished all that much. (Beyond what is involved in organization and accountability, which is only describable as asceticism by opponents.) I think this attitude was common in the new left in the US, the idea of bringing the war home and of worsening conditions causing a catastrophic wake up call to finally jolt the stupid masses into rebellion. I used to encounter this sometimes when I was doing activist stuff in Chicago – “I hope things get worse so people will finally see the horror.” To my mind insistence that the problem is that people just don’t get the reality of the situation is often a way for one to feel comforted with one’s own lack of implementable plans within one’s own sphere of influence. The “people don’t see the reality” type of utterance is often accompanied with an implication that there would be an automatic passage from people seeing the reality to being able to act effectively on that vision. It’s kind of like an episode of South Park that a friend of mine told me about:
Step 1. Collect Underpants (propagandize/criticize/etc)
Step 2. ??? (the unfolding of the historical dialectic
Step 3. Profit! (communist revolution!)
take care,
Nate
May 14, 2007 at 4:30 am
Joseph Kugelmass is having difficulty posting right now so I’ll post for him:
I have a better sense of what you’re getting at now. I think it’s worthwhile to note that Lacan does equate language with the material cause in his essay “Science and Truth” in the Ecrits. Much later, beginning around the time of Seminar 20, he will talk about the materiality of the letter. It seems to me that what you’re getting at is that relations aren’t things and language is a relational structure. Does this require us to posit something other than materialism, though? I appreciate that language can’t be reduced to brains, but I’m unwilling to adopt a position that doesn’t have room for brains and see brains as essential to what’s being accounted for her. This perhaps divides me a bit from Lacan.
May 15, 2007 at 12:06 am
Most of those links are coming up 404 and object not found… The Bad subjects worked, however…
May 15, 2007 at 6:43 am
Excuse me, something happens in the process of copying and pasting that breaks the links. I repeat them here and if you can’t get access directly, please copy and paste them in your browser.
http://www.hackworth.com/Kosova.html
http://www.antiwar.com/malic/
http://www.zianet.com/lapaz/yugo3.html
May 15, 2007 at 6:46 am
Sorry stupid me those were links related to Yugoslav politics, these are the links from Zizek:
http://www.ntticc.or.jp/pub/ic_mag/ic014/zizek/zizek_e.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world…ope/ 3620395.stm
http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/modernism/Henwood_Zizek.htm
May 15, 2007 at 5:21 pm
In this paper he lays it all out (From Lacan.com – ‘Nato-The left hand of God?’):
http://www.lacan.com/zizek-nato.htm
But I wonder if your “parodic attacks” really get the attention of the people you think are bedazzled by him. Or that he’s the only one people are bedazzled by. Derrida has a pretty good cult going by his name, and he was most certainly involved in politics – if nothing else, he was involved with a group of writers and authors from both Israel and Palestine. Badiou is also very political. And I see attacks like the ones you make against Zizek directed at Badiou. One review I read put Badiou down because he was too ‘French’ – a romantic Maoist who had a complicated sex life, who was even the more suspicious because he wrote about Christianity! That sort of attack does not foster thought, but vitriol.
You have a political aim – I can feel that. I appreciate that you’ve made Zizek’s politics explicit for me. But I don’t think you can write his work off wholesale by saying he’s not interested in the meaning of Being or in writing books, but only politics. I find it hard to believe that he writes upwards of two books a year just to justify Slovenian independence. Tossing away all his work because of that is like refusing to read Heidegger because he was a Nazi, or Hegel because Marx disagreed with his Phil. of Right. It’s not productive.
May 15, 2007 at 9:30 pm
Fletcher, you’d have to define Derrida’s and Badiou’s involvement in politics precisely; I am referring to dr. Zizek’s having a very active role in Slovenian social democracy, running for Presidency and influencing the activities of Western socialist parties. This is not just being interested in politics, or philosophizing about it; this is being a politican, practically, and my indictment is against dr. Zizek as a politician.
The issue is further complicated by the fact that, as general consensus has it, nowadays culture IS politics. For example, the 300 film is a politics. This is not the same era that Heidegger lived in. We have to redefine the criteria, I think.
What I was hoping though you would notice is that (contrary to the defence I hear from parts of the blogosphere who are still unwilling to put the issue on the table) dr. Zizek consistently, not just randomly, defends nationalist positions – from his view of Slovenian politics across his views on Israel and Kusturica, culminating now in his views of Sparta. This is explained away as ”contrarian” but people don’t seem to notice that there is a consistency in the contrarianism, too, which causes dr. Zizek to always make the same kind of ”accidental” misreading, to always mask (via dialectic negation) his supremacist views variously as liberalism, or leftism.
Today I was starting to wonder whether the very linkage between ”the decline of symbolic efficacy” and dr. Zizek’s call to some romantic Gulag, as dr. Sinthome put it, isn’t a fascist trope, since as some of my correspondents noted, fascism usually appears as a political project aimed at resolving economic and social crises by a call to ”divinated discipline”, tentatively put, where the fascist nation finds its mythic apotheosis through a disawoval of pleasure.
When a ”decline of symbolic efficacy” happened to Yugoslavia (the economic-social crisis caused by the fall of Communism), dr. Zizek’s response was an assertion of nationalism via seccession.
As for parody, the 300 film faced me with the idea that it is a powerful political weapon – something Judith Butler already sensed and which was later developed by queer theory. In fact, dr. Zizek chooses it himself and this is why I also choose that format for my own attacks. The Spartans and the Persians in the film are exaggerated gay cliches, and it is because we find that funny that the film is able to transmit fascist messages unnoticed.
I believe a similar parodic strategy was used by the Slovenian band Laibach, with whom dr. Zizek cooperated. While Laibach might have had a positive, politically transformative purpose (though it’s dubious), now we get to see how the parody can have a very negative and politically devastating consequence.
May 15, 2007 at 11:00 pm
from your Zizek link:
Threatened by Serbian nationalism, even Slovenian and Croatian nationalism preserved a respect for Titos Yugoslavia, in any case for its fundamental principle, that of the federation of equal constituent states with full sovereignty, including the right to secede. Whoever overlooks that, whoever reduces the war in Bosnia to a civil war between various “ethnic groups,” is already on the side of the Serbs. Because in no way was the difference between Milosevic and other national leaders only quantitative. No, Yugoslavia was not hovering on the edge, betrayed equally by all national “secessionists.” Its dissolution was much more a dialectical process. Those that “deserted” Yugoslavia were reacting to Serbian nationalism — that is, to those power groups that were endeavoring to liquidate Tito’s legacy. Thus the worst anti-Serbian nationalist stands closer to Tito’s legacy than the present Belgrade regime, which maintains itself, in the face of all “secessionists,” as the legitimate and legal successor of the former Yugoslavia.
It Was Serbian Aggression Alone, and Not Ethnic Conflict, That Set off the War.
It must be remembered above all that Tito constructed his federation in conscious opposition to pre-war Yugoslavia, which was based on the hegemony of the Serbs as the “founders of unity.” The Serbs were at that time the only state-building nation. After the Second World War, Tito wanted to replace this Serb-dominated Yugoslavia with a federal one, a free association of equal and sovereign states that would even have the right of secession. Milosevic’s grab for power was in contrast the attempt to rebuild pre-war Yugoslavia, and with it the hegemony of the Serbs. The various “secessionists” were reacting against this attempt at restoration. Their demands were anchored firmly in the principles of Tito’s Yugoslavia.
You see, Fletcher, it is this ”threat” of Serbian ”nationalism” that has no grounding in reality. It calls on some vague principles – pluralism, democracy, the oppression of small states (Sparta) by bigger ones… – in fact any number of truisms you could pick out of your standard neoliberal Tony Blair speech – to create, rhetorically, the impression of a threat. But even a cursory glance at Yugoslav history reveals that Serbia historically instigated all Southern Slavic federations that Slovenia joined not because it was FORCED to, but because it was seeking protection from Austro-Hungarian dominance. So this complaint against the ”threat” sounds like the whining of a masochist, who has decided to seek a better-paying Master. Dr.Zizek systematically does not provide evidence for the ”threat”. The whole thing has nothing to do with the actual Yugoslav politics.
Meanwhile dr. Zizek is abundantly relying on the West’s lack of knowledge about Yugoslavia to conveniently NOT mention that Slovenia is an ethnically homogenous state (in stark contrast to the multicultural Serbia) and that reports of nationalism and racism have haunted it for a very very long time. Here is just one recent example:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3620395.stm
Common sense already suggests that an ethnically homogenous state would be far more likely to develop a nationalist project, than a multicultural, heterogenous one.
May 16, 2007 at 7:12 am
I wasn’t suggesting that Zizek was correct when I posted this – I posted it because I figured that you would hate it! – and it will make it easier for you to post stuff for people if the occassion should arise again. I can’t say that I desagree with you either, based on my limited knowledge of the breakup of YS.
But I don’t know about calling him a politician. I’d need more dirt on his actual political involvement outside of his running for an election. But how exactly is he influincing left wing parties? Actually making policy, or by philosophizing? If people are just paying close attention to his books, is it any different than having them read his (or Badiou’s, or Derida’s) stuff?
I’m not clear what you mean by you’re comment on Heidegger and culture. I don’t think the cultural is outside of the political – but it feels like you’re trying to leave philosophizing out of your definition of political – as if we can separate Heidegger from his Nazi affiliation. I don’t think we can – that would be silly. I think it’s more usfull know it and see where his philosophy steered him in that direction. And if culture has a political effect on its audience, we have to say that philosophizing does too. Just because Badiou may not be a member of a party doesn’t mean his ideas won’t reach and affect people, just like a movie would.
And If you take Facism as arising to solve economic social crises – then how can you read 300 as fascist? There was never any mention of economic crises – Xerxes’ messengers came and told the Spartans he was going to smash them, and then they protected themselves. Perhaps this is what prompted Zizek to read discipline and sacrifice as “not necessarily fascist” – in the film it is not linked to an economic crises. The film then better resembles expansionism (Persia/US) and defence against it (Sparta/Taliban forces in Iraq). If you want to take this as Nationalism and bash it, then I’m probably with you. But calling Zizek a fascist based on this reading of the film is off the mark.
My real issue is with the wholesale trashing of the majority of Zizek’s work based on this, as if he doesn’t do any thinking outside of the political (writing about Being and the like).
May 17, 2007 at 5:36 am
Fletcher, thanks for that link; it is indeed a very good summary of his views on Yugoslavia, dispersed around several texts.
But I don’t know about calling him a politician. I’d need more dirt on his actual political involvement outside of his running for an election.
http://www.lacan.com/zizekchro.htm
Zizek does not, as he has often said, mind getting his political hands dirty. Nor did he mind becoming the Ambassador of Science for the Republic of Slovenia in 1991.
Although Zizek continues to provide informal advice to the Slovenian government, his energies over the past decade have been firmly geared towards his research…
Fletcher that he provides informal advice to the Slovenian government is new to me as well, but I would say this and missing Presidency by a narrow margin is enough to qualify him as a ”part-time politician”. I suppose this answers your other question as well, I think he is right now ”an informal advisor” to the Anglo-Saxonic left, or at least a certain portion of it as represented by the blogosphere. Besides that I know that he had an active role in the mounting of the ideological support for the Slovenian seccessionist movement, through his work with Mladina and Laibach. He was boasting in one interview, which I can’t trace right now, how he helped the resistance to the Yugoslav ”invasion” of 1991.
My real issue is with the wholesale trashing of the majority of Zizek’s work based on this,
I have not trashed the majority of Zizek’s work based on this, and I have not tried to stop people from philosophizing through Zizek either (unless you count parody as a repressive activity). I personally find his philosophy rather dubious, I think he did Lacan a disfavor by politicizing his teaching, I think he attacks Deleuze wrongly, and I think his knowledge of film (my vocation) is very limited compared to someone like, say, Steven Shaviro, especially since he favors psychoanalytic readings, but that’s just my opinion. I am not a philosopher, just a lover of philosophy, so I don’t qualify to discuss these issues seriously.
but it feels like you’re trying to leave philosophizing out of your definition of political – as if we can separate Heidegger from his Nazi affiliation.I don’t think we can – that would be silly. I think it’s more usfull know it and see where his philosophy steered him in that direction. And if culture has a political effect on its audience, we have to say that philosophizing does too.
But you told me that we may not dismiss Heidegger’s philosophy just because he was a Nazi? Now you’re saying the opposite, I am not sure I get it.
What I was aiming at with my remark on cultural politics is that in Heidegger’s time, movies were propaganda that supported politcis; nowadays they literally create politics. Again the Yugoslav example is informative, for the bombing of Serbia was ”directed” like a Hollywood movie, complete with a screenplay and an ideological happy ending (destroying the bad guy).
With this in view we might need to revise the border between philosophy and politics, especially dr. Zizek’s style of philosophy, delivered through popular culture, for it might have been blurred by the appearance of the media!
May 18, 2007 at 12:58 am
Word.
But I don’t think I contradicted myself – We can’t dismiss Heidegger as a Nazi and ignore his work, nor forget that he was involved with National Socialism when we read it. It’s dishonest to try to do either.
Was it you that posted that Yogo Doc on PC? I thought the “directed bombing” for TV was done by Muslim Militia to their own people for television cameras… is that what you meant?
What about the lack of Econ Crises in 300? Or are you just tired of harping on it?
May 18, 2007 at 5:09 am
But I don’t think I contradicted myself – We can’t dismiss Heidegger as a Nazi and ignore his work, nor forget that he was involved with National Socialism when we read it. It’s dishonest to try to do either.
Ok, well, dr. Zizek’s involvement with Slovenian Nationism is being ignored while he’s being read. WHY?
Was it you that posted that Yogo Doc on PC? I thought the “directed bombing” for TV was done by Muslim Militia to their own people for television cameras… is that what you meant?
Yes I posted it. I didn’t mean the Muslim bombing, but the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 which was an instance of ”spectacle wars” just like the Iraqi war. That war was primarily fought on television.
What about the lack of Econ Crises in 300? Or are you just tired of harping on it?
I think Zizek’s reading of 300 is important, not the film itself.
…the first concerns the story itself – it is the story a small and poor country (Greece) invaded by the army of a much larges state (Persia), at that point much more developed, and with a much more developed military technology
Dr. Zizek emphasizes ”small and poor country” here and later by invoking discipline he harps on his ”decline of symbolic efficacy” theory as well…Sparta has to defend its noble militaristic-nationalist plan against an invading Empire.
May 18, 2007 at 7:58 pm
“I agree with dr. Zizek’s Christian ascetism. For restraining myself I get the newest BMW with an unlimited insurance policy; five vacation houses all over the globe; a young Brazilian bride; a whole prestigious Swiss university department in my honor; my name becomes a brand associated with the dutchy of Slovenia; half the American cult theory academia at my feet. I’m buying this sacrifice.”
I agree, Dejan. It seems Steve Jobs was definitely right, to “think different” is to reap reward in our current capitalism. Would you feel better if Zizek renounced his material life, divorced his wife, and joined a marauding band of theorists protesting outside universities? How much of your vitriol is incited by envy?
May 18, 2007 at 10:30 pm
How much of your vitriol is incited by envy?
But it’s just amazing Subwoofer how out of my whole campaign you are only interested in the vitriol, not for example in the links I have established between dr. Zizek’s local political allegiances and his reading of 300. How much of your argument is incited by your disappointment in cultural theory and philosophy?
Question for dr. Sinthome: dr. Sinthome, what is the current consensus in the psychoanalytic academia on the origin and dynamics of homosexuality?