I have just come across this review of Slavoj Zizek's "Welcome to the Desert of the Real," by Adam Katz of an essay on the 9/11 attacks in the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory(Vol. 3, No. 2 April 2002). I can recall reading Zizek's book when working in Canberra, but I got very little from it. Adam Katz has been more successful.
He says that Slavoj Zizek indicts the left for a failure to address the event in an adequate way:
'The predominant reaction of European, but also American Leftists was nothing less than scandalous... all imaginable stupidities were said and written" (10). Among the charges: "the US got what it deserved"; "a failure to fully solidarize with the victims".. [since this] "would mean supporting US imperialism; "in the weeks following the bombing, it reverted to the old mantra 'Give peace a chance! War does not stop violence!--a true case of hysterical precipitation, reacting to something that will not even happen in the expected form. One thing, above all, as Zizek points out, has been missing in left discourses (in The Nation, on Znet, Counter-Punch, In These Times, The Village Voice, etc.)..[is].."a concrete analysis of the new situation after the bombings, of the chances it gives to the left to propose its own interpretation of events."'
Blacburn says that:
"Given the extent of the destruction wrought by the September 11 attack it is sobering to realise that the effect aimed at is qualitatively larger, namely that of re-ordering world politics around a 'clash of civilisations', allowing the Islamic world to free itself of all infidel trammels. [The strategic aim] from the outset was to provoke the United States into a counter-reaction that would alienate Muslim opinion; to expose the hypocrisy of the hereditary and autocratic rulers of the Muslim world; to create conditions in which the forces of Islamic jihad could seize or manipulate power in one or another of the larger or more significant Muslim states."
em>"The secret of [President Bush's] strength--and his fatal flaw--may be the instinctive rapport he enjoys with those gripped by US national messianism, the idea that only the United States can tackle the really big global threats and that whatever the US does is ipso facto favourable to freedom...The imperial role is justified on the grounds that the United States has a special destiny as world leader and champion of freedom. These roles, it is believed, require Washington to meet the threat of rogue states acquiring weapons of mass destruction, to pre-empt 'global competitors', to secure sources of scarce raw materials (especially oil), and to guarantee the personal security of ordinary Americans."
"Blackburn's response is that the empire does not secure these goals, and actually makes 'blowback' more likely. He says that a
healthier US polity could dispense with the cumbersome and expensive apparatus of empire, set the scene for a broader, more pluralistic global capitalism, and promote the competence and authority of supranational agencies in the fields of disarmament, anti-terrorism and peace-keeping. But the vested interests which stand in the way of these goals are those of a bloated military-industrial complex and re-charged presidency."
And there ends Chapter 1.
So far I reckon the failure of "the left" is a beatup.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at February 13, 2005 07:09 PM | TrackBack