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TOLERANCE AS AN IDEOLOGICAL CATEGORYSlavoj Zizek
The Culturalization of Politics
Why are today so many problems perceived as problems ofintolerance, not as problems of inequality, exploitation,injustice? Why is the proposed remedy tolerance, notemancipation, political struggle, even armed struggle? Theimmediate answer is the liberal multiculturalist’s basicideological operation: the “culturalization of politics” -political differences, differences conditioned by politicalinequality, economic exploitation, etc., arenaturalized/neutralized into “cultural” differences,different “ways of life,” which are something given,something that cannot be overcome, but merely “tolerated.”To this, of course, one should answer in Benjaminian terms:
from culturalization of politics to politicization of culture
. The cause of this culturalization is the retreat,failure, of direct political solutions (Welfare State,socialist projects, etc.). Tolerance is their post-political
ersatz
:“The retreat from more substantive visions of justiceheralded by the promulgation of tolerance today is part ofa more general depoliticization of citizenship and powerand retreat from political life itself. The cultivation oftolerance as a political end implicitly constitutes arejection of politics as a domain in which conflict can beproductively articulated and addressed, a domain inwhichcitizens can be transformed by their participation.“
Perhaps, nothing expresses better the inconsistency of thepost-political liberal project than its implicitparadoxical identification of culture and nature, the twotraditional opposites: culture itself is naturalized,posited as something given. (The idea of culture as “secondnature” is, of course, an old one.) It was, of course,Samuel Huntington who proposed the most successful formulaof this “culturalization of politics” by locating the mainsource of today’s conflicts into the “clash ofcivilizations,” what one is tempted to call theHuntington's disease of our time – as he put it, after theend of the Cold War, the “iron curtain of ideology” hasbeen replaced by the “velvet curtain of culture.”
Huntington’s dark vision of the “clash of civilizations”may appear to be the very opposite of Francis Fukuyama’sbright prospect of the End of History in the guise of aworld-wide liberal democracy: what can be more differentfrom Fukuyama's pseudo-Hegelian idea of the »end ofhistory« (the final Formula of the best possible socialorder was found in capitalist liberal democracy, there isnow no space for further conceptual progress, there arejust empirical obstacles to be overcome
), than Huntington's»clash of civilizations« as the main political struggle inthe XXIst century?
The »clash of civilizations« IS politicsat the »end of history.«
Contemporary liberalism forms a complex network ofideologies, institutional and non-institutional practices;however, underlying this multiplicity is a basic oppositionon which the entire liberal vision relies, the oppositionbetween those who are ruled by culture, totally determinedby the life-world into which they were born, and those whomerely “enjoy” their culture, who are elevated above it,free to choose their culture. This brings us to the nextparadox: the ultimate source of barbarism is cultureitself, one’s direct identification with a particularculture which renders one intolerant towards othercultures. The basic opposition is thus related to theopposite between collective and individual: culture is bydefinition collective and particular, parochial, exclusiveof other cultures, while – next paradox – it is theindividual who is universal, the site of universality,insofar as s/he extricates itself from and elevates itselfabove its particular culture. Since, however, everyindividual has to be somehow “particularized,” it has todwell in a particular life-world, the only way to resolvethis deadlock is to split the individual into universal andparticular, public and private (where “private” covers boththe “safe haven” of family
and
the non-state public sphereof civil society (economy)). In liberalism, culturesurvives, but as privatized: as way of life, a set ofbeliefs and practices, not the public network of norms andrules. Culture is thus literally transubstantiated: thesame sets of beliefs and practices change from the bindingpower of a collective into an expression of personal andprivate idiosyncrasies.Insofar as culture itself is the source of barbarismand intolerance, the inevitable conclusion is that the onlyway to overcome intolerance and violence is to extricatethe core of subject’s being, its universal essence, fromculture: in its core, the subject has to be
kulturlos
.
(This, incidentally, gives a new twist to Joseph Goebbels’sinfamous formula “when I hear the word culture, I reach formy gun” – but not when I hear the word civilization.) WendyBrown problematizes this liberal notion on a multitude oflevels:* First, it is not truly universal,
kulturlos
. Since,in our societies, a sexualized division of labor stillpredominates which confers a male twist on basic liberalcategories (autonomy, public activity, competition), andrelegates women to the private sphere of family solidarity,etc., liberalism itself, in its opposition of private andpublic, harbors male dominance. Furthermore, it is only themodern Western capitalist culture for which autonomy,individual freedom, etc., stand higher than collectivesolidarity, connection, responsibility for dependentothers, the duty to respect the customs of one’s community- again, liberalism itself privileges a certain culture,the modern Western one.* Brown’s second line of attack concerns the freedomof choice – here, also, liberalism shows a strong bias. Itshows intolerance when individuals of other cultures arenot given freedom of choice (cliterodectomy, childbrideship, infanticide, polygamy, family rape…); however,it ignores the tremendous pressure which, for example,compels women in our liberal society to undergo plasticsurgery, cosmetic implants, Botox injections, etc., inorder to remain competitive on the sex market.* Finally, there are all the self-referring paradoxescentered on the impasse of tolerating intolerance.Liberalist multiculturalism preaches tolerance betweencultures, while making it clear that true tolerance isfully possible only in the individualist Western culture,and thus legitimizes even military interventions as anextreme mode of fighting the other’s intolerance – some USfeminists supported the US occupation of Afghanistan andIraq as a form of helping the women in these countries…However, Brown tries to get too much mileage from thisself-referential paradox which a radical liberal wouldsimply assume without any inconsistency: if I believe inindividual choice and tolerance of different cultures, OFCOURSE this obliges me to be “intolerant” towards cultureswhich prevent choice and tolerance. Brown makes it easyhere with focusing on today’s anti-Islamism – but whatabout, say, the struggle against Nazism? Is it not also a“paradox” that the allied block fought a brutal war againstFascism on behalf of tolerance and peace? So what? Thereare limits to tolerance, and to be tolerant towards
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Zizek_Tolerance as an Ideological Category
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