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January 15, 2007
I know next to nothing about Slavoj Zizek in relation to political theory. I see him as a psychoanalytically orientated cultural critic whose central concept is enjoyment (jouissance). So I was interested in this article by Jodi Dean entitled Why Žižek for Political Theory? Why indeed was my response. Dean says that Slavoj Zizek’s work is indispensable to any effort to break out of the present political impasse, an impasse in which not only English speaking and European countries are caught but which threatens the entire world. She says that the current emphasis on emphasize diversity and tolerance does not provide an adequate response to right wing fundamentalists, nationalist ideologues, and neoliberal capitalist globalizers.
This motley crew of bad guys eschews debate and respect. It throws generosity back up against the generous, forever accusing them of not being respectful and generous enough. Its capitalist wing finds ever more creative and ingenious ways to profit. Diversity becomes multiculturalism: parents can buy colorful multilingual dolls; producers can make action films with global appeal; educators can buy multicultural teaching kits designed to insure that their students are well-prepared to compete in a global economy. Likewise, democratic debate is easily capitalized: citizens seeking information are ready eyeballs for advertisers; politicians can champion the role of the Internet in keeping their constituencies connected, while telecoms, ISPs, chip, hardware, and software providers wisely nod their heads and pocket their vastly increased revenues.Against, this motley crew, generosity and tolerance won’t work.
The problem of Left political thought, then, is trying to theorize a politics that includes everything and everyone. But this isn’t politics. Politics involves division, saying “yes” to some options and “no” to others. Zizek can provide an a response.
One way Dean argues this is in terms of fantasy. Fantasy keeps our desire alive, unfulfilled, intact as desire. It explains why our enjoyment is missing, how we would have, could have, really enjoyed if only. She adds that the fantasy organization of desire underpins the ideological formation of a community.
An ideological formation is more than a set of meanings or images and more than the accumulated effects of dispersed practices. Rather, ideology takes hold of the subject at the point of the irrational excess outside the meaning or significance the ideological formation provides. This excess, nugget, or remainder marks the incompleteness of the formation and of the interpellated subject. It’s that extra sticking point, a point of fixation and enjoyment (objet petit a). Fantasies organize and explain these sticking points. They cover over the gaps in the ideological formation as they promise enjoyment (the enjoyment that has been stolen, sacrificed, or barred to the subject) and in so doing attach the subject to the group or community supposed by the ideology.
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Zizek is so boring. All that complicated linguistic complexity!!!
And besides which no amount of intellectualising makes the slightest difference. Until people (individually & collectively) decide to do things differently.
Some relevant quotes from my favourite "philosopher" which are relevant to the origins of the political dilemma we are all in and why the "right" with their worship and advocacy of the world death machine always gain the upper hand---with devastating results.
Have you read the news?
"Because present day human individuals are everywhere socially indoctrinated to be afraid of their own INHERENT life-impulse toward unity with all and All, we have the present-day world---the "late-time" (or dark epoch) of a benighted, ego-bound, and universally misled humanity. Present-day mankind is a global mass of MERE individuals, who--because they cannot freely "connect" with one another (and with Reality, or Truth, Itself)---live as slaves of their own minds and egoically separate selves. For the most part, human beings in this "late-time" are an unconscious mass, "Narcissistically" enslaved by their own egoic motives, and, inevitably, controlled by other egos who are shrewder than themselves.
In their TRUE human freedom, men and women are (naturally, and at heart) oriented toward intimately felt human unity and the Oneness of Truth (or of Reality Itself).....
..... people have assumed that the inherent unifying impulse of life is supposed to be negatively (or at least puritanically) manipulated, suppressed, and (thus) made unconscious..... As a result modern people are deeply troubled about the vital impulses of their natural lives, and about the ultimate purpose of life itself...
.... Therefore, at last, everything and everyone become emptied of Reality and Truth. The modern doctrine is that people are supposed to WORK. That is the asceticism of the common man or woman--"
The politics & "culture" of John Howard!!!!
From 1. www.dabase.net/radicpol.htm
This essay has recently been renamed REAL politics....
This theme of how this collective irresponsible unconsciousness is transmitted through time from generation to generation is discussed in this essay.
2. www.dabase.net/2armP1.htm#ch2
Which is part of a selection of essays on conscious bodily incarnation--the theme(s) that Merleau-Ponty and others tried to address.