October 8, 2010
the decaffeinated Other
Good ole’ Zizek, always shit stirring:
Progressive liberals are, of course, horrified by such populist racism. However, a closer look reveals how their multicultural tolerance and respect of differences share with those who oppose immigration the need to keep others at a proper distance. “The others are OK, I respect them,” the liberals say, “but they must not intrude too much on my own space. The moment they do, they harass me – I fully support affirmative action, but I am in no way ready to listen to loud rap music.” What is increasingly emerging as the central human right in late-capitalist societies is the right not to be harassed, which is the right to be kept at a safe distance from others. A terrorist whose deadly plans should be prevented belongs in Guantánamo, the empty zone exempted from the rule of law; a fundamentalist ideologist should be silenced because he spreads hatred. Such people are toxic subjects who disturb my peace.
On today’s market, we find a whole series of products deprived of their malignant property: coffee without caffeine, cream without fat, beer without alcohol. And the list goes on: what about virtual sex as sex without sex? The Colin Powell doctrine of warfare with no casualties (on our side, of course) as warfare without warfare? The contemporary redefinition of politics as the art of expert administration as politics without politics? This leads us to today’s tolerant liberal multiculturalism as an experience of the Other deprived of its Otherness – the decaffeinated Other.
Slavoj Zizek, if you are not familiar, is a rather atypical thinker.
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This type of ‘acceptable’ racism is more and more common in the UK, especially with the conservatives in power. At its heart is the idea that ‘we’ can’t afford to take in any more of ‘them’ (except when they are talented doctors or scientists that we need…). We have come to regard Britain as a fortress we have to defend, even though most people don’t really have a sense of Britishness any more. The argument is always disguised as ‘we are just facing up to the realities of Britain’s overpopulation’. Now, the world is overpopulated, but restricting the free movement of people doesn’t reduce population rates of itself. It really is the return of tribalism, motivated by a fear of the outside and trying to regain a sense of identity.
this is confusing, Andrew.
Zizek is confusing, but he always gets me to think.
no, that’s not what I meant.
I’m not following then.
He projects neo-fascist ideology onto a progressive mentality but the examples he provides are conservative: Guantanamo, Colin Powell. Then he pads his argument with a made up quote and allusions to non-alcholic beer. This is D’Souza all over again. It makes me sad if this is what passes for intellectualism among conservatives.
Zizek is actually socialist (like, the real kind).
regardless.
It makes me sad if this is what passes for intellectualism among any group.
That’s not really how I read it at all. He analyzes the fault of far-right anti-immigration movements in Europe, then makes notice of some of a strain of thinking in progressive liberalism that wants to respect, then pulls a deconstructive move (in the technical Derridean sense) and notices that “respect” implies a sort of distancing which itself applies to the same sort of distancing the far right does. Zizek, as I know of his thought, wants to push past traditional progressive liberalism to something more humanizing.
This RSA video begins to parse the sort of humanizing, through the lens of charity in capitialism, I think he wants to push for. You needn’t agree with perspective, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t worth watching. Zizek is definitely a crazy thinker who I mostly don’t agree with, but he frames ideas in ways make me look at them differently.
Andrew, the only thing I would be able to say in response is what I already said: he projects neo-fascisct thought onto a progressive ideology then uses conservatives and conservative policies, a made up quote, and non-alcoholic beer to make his point. That isn’t intellectualism, regardless of his aims.
I haven’t read the entire article, but the posted excerpt makes reference to Progressive liberals’…multicultural tolerance and respect of differences share with those who oppose immigration the need to keep others at a proper distance. “The others are OK, I respect them,” the liberals say, “but they must not intrude too much on my own space. The moment they do, they harass me – I fully support affirmative action, but I am in no way ready to listen to loud rap music.
I don’t know of a single “progressive liberal” with this attitude, so it’s difficult for me to understand the basis of his argument. The whole thing seems forced.
I read the article before I commented.
Well, we’ll have to agree to disagree on that point then. I think the various forms of Neo-Conservatism have similar programmatic failures that Progressive Liberalism does, if only because they both stemmed from the same questions of the political discourse. And I think Zizek’s analysis is spot on (a more detailed version of his thoughts can be found here). It’s his solutions that I am not so sure about it.
Okay, I read the entire article, and realize that I’ve read several things by Zizek and have seen him interviewed. My take on him is that he operates from a base of confrontation; he sees the very act of making controversial statements as somehow useful in making others examine their own thoughts. Others, of course–not himself. Fuck him.
That’s because he’s a modern Hegelian with a Derridean streak. It kinda goes with the territory. And I personally think that calling him unreflective is unfair.
You’re right–I have no idea whether or not he’s reflective, except to the extent that his constantly shifting views suggest that he’s more interested in stirring the pot than in looking closely at the ideas he feels no compunction about publishing.
He is sort of the consummate Continental philosopher that way, every idea is politicized and politics is motivated by power, so everything must be questioned and decentered. He comes from a long tradition of European shit stirrers, Derrida being one of them.
Derrida was a shit stirrer who based his stirring on his own philosophical grounds. Zizek stirs other peoples’ shit. I’d say that’s a pretty important distinction, shit-wise.
After I read this article I found myself thinking that Zizek was describing Sharon Angle’s hope to fuck over hispanics while not completely eliminating them from her voting base. The old soft shoe. So the whole bit about progressives struck me as something typical of such thinkers: never give anybody a safe place to stand–keep them all off balance all the time and one’s own stock goes up. This leads to some bizarre arguments and examples, as Deron has pointed out. What Zizek is arguing about progressives may be reduced to the simple logical observation that the making of a distinction is the breaking of a continuum. But since this is true of any distinction being made, how is it accurate to claim that the “practice” reveals something distinct about progressives? A person’s advocacy of tolerance never precludes a valuing of one’s personal space, and if I were to single out a political ideology likely to feel that tolerance is a threat to such space–it would not be a progressive ideology.
That’s not how I read Derrida at all, but I am far from an expert on the subject. All my contemporary philosophical training is haphazard and self-taught.
I’m not an expert, either, Andrew, but I’ve read/studied a fair amount of Derrida and other philosophers. Derrida developed his method of deconstruction and applied it to various disciplines, so he was certainly stirring the shit. But he wasn’t jumping all over the societal spectrum just looking for bases of controversy–he was testing the limits of his own methodology.
I like to select animal avatars for people. Derrida is a weasel. I guess I’m a badger.
I’m pretty sure you’re an otter, Daryl. We can talk about it later.
I’m an elephant. We all know that.
The thing with Zizek is that I view him as a guy who is coming out of old school Marxism, so everything in Western society insofar as it is connected to capitalism and consumerism is fair game. Derrida may have been testing the limits of his methodology and Zizek applying it, but that doesn’t devalue either project. Both are necessary.
I also imagine that Zizek is looking to eat and pay rent (hence his broad writing on a plurality of subjects) and it would be interesting to hear his self-critique on his own habits insofar as they are bound by western capitalism.
Incidentally, have you seen The Perverts Guide to Cinema? It’s really wild.
Oh! I want to be an elephant too!
“Derrida may have been testing the limits of his methodology and Zizek applying it, but that doesn’t devalue either project. Both are necessary.” This begs the question a bit, don’t you think? I have always found a quirky irony residing in the examination of culturally determined utterances that erase the author–presented by an author not averse to grinning when invited to speak.
Nope, but I’ll put it in the queue.
There’s an interesting documentary that I’m too lazy to look up in which Zizek appears, and if I recall correctly, in it he discusses his own tendency to do all manner of things for money. Was it Zizek who did the copy for the Abercrombie & Fitch ad? (Or was that that other French philosopher I always want to call Lumiere? Raciere? I really need to get my references straight.)
I keep trying to post comments and work at the same time. I’ll be back to this later when I can concentrate on it. If I made stupid mistakes above, somebody please edit!
Richard Seymour on how Zizek gets it wrong in this piece.
Another sad version of this sort of thinking is found in the writings of Walter Benn Michaels, who sets up a strawman version of feminism and anti-racism to argue that efforts towards “diversity” are getting in the way of equality.
On the flaws with Walter Benn Michaels, from a left perspective, see here:
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2010/09/glenn-beck-of-contrarian-left.html
http://pink-scare.blogspot.com/2010/09/wbm-strikes-again.html
http://blog.voyou.org/2009/11/26/the-neoliberalism-of-walter-benn-michaels/
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2009/08/racism-and-american-class-system.html
One really important thing about this latest piece from Zizek is just how Anti-Semitic it is. Qlipoth calls it out. (Warning: Qlipoth is a group blog of furious anti-racist feminists who in fury sometimes write in styles rather incoherent. Scroll down to “So today Zizz offers his signature fare” to get to the quite clear expression of the main point.)
I’d love to have a discussion about whether the various forms of Neo-Conservatism have similar programmatic failures that Progressive Liberalism does, but Zezik doesn’t make that point. The post-structuralist discussion is a smoke screen. There is a difference between tricksterism and hucksterism, and only one of them is present here.
I honestly don’t think Zizek cares about the politics he’s discussing here (hence the oddly convoluted attributions). That’s what I find so insidious about him and his ilk–his concern is with his own brand of rhetorical inquiry, not with the substance of the conversation. If you catch him in an unsupportable position, he’ll just slither onto another tack. Like Buffalo Bill when he slithers out of the kitchen while Jody Foster is questioning him.
I agree.
In order to defend Zizek, we have to pretend that he is making a political point or providing an object lesson in the philosophy of what is knowable. I felt Andrew was trying to suggest he was doing one or the other, depending on the moment, and that presumption gets us nowhere.
Yes–as in the science of theology.
Thank you, jannon. Looks like I have some good reading ahead of me this weekend.
the science of theology. that’s a keeper.
Who said that?
Oh. Daryl said it. I need to drink some more.
Ugh.
[...] Andrew’s Žižek post had me thinking all weekend about Tricksters and Hucksters. I would like to compile a list, with, perhaps, Not Sure as a third category. Here’s a quick stab, and if you disagree, and think one or the other should be in a different category, I think the overlap will be good. [...]
…he’s a modern Hegelian with a Derridean streak…
…a guy who is coming out of old school Marxism…
Um, kinda, not so much…Hegel, yes, also post-Hegel, and, bonus!, anti-Hegel when he’s on a Lenin binge. A little late Derrida, maybe, but just a little. Old school Marxism, no. Zizek’s a post-Althusser Marxist, a new skol Marxist, and, doh, a Lacanian. Lots of Lacan. Mostly Lacan. I’d say the current iteration of Zizek is: Lacanian Marxist via Althusser with a neon Lenin halo.
…I think the various forms of Neo-Conservatism have similar programmatic failures that Progressive Liberalism does, if only because they both stemmed from the same questions of the political discourse. And I think Zizek’s analysis is spot on…
I’ve read maybe a tenth of Zizek and only half-heartedly follow his career but I’m pretty sure that even when he’s writing newspaper op/ed pieces his frame of reference isn’t the same as, oh, Jonah Goldberg’s. Zizek is sometimes insightful about the New Left, multiculturalism, populism, and neo-conservatives and he frequently sets up ideological Venn diagrams to amusing effect but I don’t think he is saying, or even juggling just for effect, what you think he might be saying. Deron and Richard Seymour’s comments are, I’d say, on target.
…Was it Zizek who did the copy for the Abercrombie & Fitch ad?…
Yes.