UFPPC (www.ufppc.org) — Digging Deeper CXII: February 8, 2010, 7:00 p.m.
Slavoj Zizek,
In Defense of Lost Causes
(London and New York: Verso, 2008;paperback 2009).
[
Thesis.
Since capitalism generatesworsening problems that limit its future,we should return to what Alain Badiou (towhom the book is dedicated) calls the"eternal Idea" of revolutionary-egalitarian Justice, supported by a philosophy of human autonomy and responsibilitygrounded in the Cartesian
cogito
,Hegelian and Heideggerian metaphysics,"democratic materialism" (Badiou again),and Lacanian psychoanalysis.]
Introduction: Causa Locuta, RomaFinita.
Breaking with the contemporaryconsensus in favor of 'weak thought,' thisbook embraces a leap of faith in favor of lost causes based on the notion (commonto Marxism and psychoanalysis) that thetruth speaks in the mode of universalitythrough the individual; it is"unashamedly committed to the'Messianic' standpoint of the struggle foruniversal emancipation" (6; 1-8).
PART I: THE STATE OF THINGSCh. 1: Happiness and Torture in theAtonal World.
Human, all toohuman.
Humanization of the other is"ideology at its purest" (12; 11-13).What is morality? "[D]oes not
every
ethics have to rely on . . . a gesture of fetishistic disavowal? Yes, every ethics—
with the exception of the ethics of psychoanalysis
which is a kind of anti-ethics"; but this is the only kind of ethicsthat can "sustain true universality" (i.e.universal singularity): for "we are 'not-allhuman'" (15-16; 17; 13-17).
Thescreen of civility.
True civility is a freeact feigned as obligation (17-21).
Pace
abstract multiculturalism, there is alwaysa
Leitkultur
(dominant culture) thatmembers of other cultures living in thatcultural space should respect (21-22).
Gift and exchange.
A Lacaniananalysis of the custom of potlatch (22-26).
Ulysses' realpolitik.
Shakespeare's
Troilus and Cressida
urgesthat order can be maintained only bysecretly violating it; similarly, ideologynot only governs closure but alsoregulates non-closure (26-29).
Theatonal world.
Postmodernism institutesan atonal world, most notably in thesexual sphere—but at the price of undermining
jouissance
(Alain Badiou); itis like fundamentalism conflatesknowledge and belief, but views the bigOther (a Lacanian authority concept) asnonexistent (30-36).
Serbsky Institute,Malibu.
An exploration of Mel Gibson'santi-Semitism and Abraham Foxman'sresponse to it (36-40).
Poland as asymptom.
There is a hidden complicitybetween the postmodern world andfundamentalism that was revealed in theMarch 2007 Olesky scandal in Poland(40-44).
Happy to torture?
Ironically,the increasingly popular biomorality thatregards happiness as aim of life justifiestorture "in order to prevent moresuffering" (44-48). Those who accepttorture as a legitimate subject for debateare in a way more dangerous than thosewho advocate it, for they undermine theHegelian "objective spirit" that sustainsmorality (48-50).
Ch. 2: The Family Myth of Ideology.
The conflict of social forces is oftenturned into a family drama in Hollywoodand elsewhere (52).
"Capitalistrealism."
Michael Crichton (52-56).
The production of the couple inHollywood...
Steven Spielberg (56-57). James Cameron's
Titanic
(57-58). WarrenBeatty's
Reds
(58-59). Chiaureli's
TheFall of Berlin
(1948) (59). Mimi Leder's
Impact
(59-61).
...and out.
FlorianHenckel von Donnersmarck's
Das Lebender Anderen (The Lives of Others)
(61-
63).
Goodbye Lenin
(63-65).
Dancer Upstairs
(65-66).
The real HollywoodLeft.
The Da Vinci Code
does criticizeChristianity, but it would be ridiculous toconsider it a "left" film (66-68). ZackSnyder's
300
is defensible from a leftperspective (68-72).
History andfamily in
Frankenstein
.
The familymyth should be reinterpreted dream-fashion as ideology (72-73). MaryShelley's
Frankenstein
is related to themonstrosity of revolution (73-81).
Aletter which
did
arrive at itsdestination.
Troilus and Cressida
again(81-82). A Lacanian analysis of Kafka'sletter to his father, approved as"undermining the family myth
fromwithin
" (81; 82-94).
Ch. 3: Radical Intellectuals, or, WhyHeidegger Took the Right Step(Albeit in the Wrong Direction) in1933.
Hiding the tree in a forest.
AG.K. Chesterton story on "philosophicalpolice" has a moral like Popper's, whowanted philosophers to keep out of politics (95-99). Zizek disagrees; manysee a Lacanian basis for democratictheory (99-102).
A domestication of Nietzsche.
A critique of Wendy Brown(102-07).
Michel Foucault and theIranian Event.
Instead of apologizingfor Foucault's error, "one should invertthe standard narrative" and regard hissupport for the 1979 Iranian Revolutionas "the best thing he ever did" because itaffirmed hope for "a new form of spiritualized political collective" bydemonstrating the reality of the"collective will of a people"; the IranianRevolution was
not
homologous with theNazi "revolution" (107, 108, 111, 114;107-17).
The trouble with Heidegger.
Zizek rejects the standard defenses of Heidegger's Nazism (117-24).
Ontological difference.
The
ontic
(i.e.what really exists) always differs fromthe
ontological
(i.e. the theorization of what really exists) (124-28).
Heidegger's smoking gun?
Hegel'sthought on the state was better thanHeidegger's (128-35).
Repetition andthe New.
The concept of "proto-fascism" is a "pseudo-concept whosefunction is to block conceptual analysis"(138; 136-39). Heidegger was right tothink that "the New can only emergethrough repetition" (140; 139-41).Heidegger's error was to look for "arevolutionary Event" in Nazism (141-42).
From Heidegger to the drive.
"Aconsensus is gradually emerging thatthere are not two, but, rather, threedistinct phases of [Heidegger's] thought":1)
Sein und Zeit
; 2) "What IsMetaphysics?"; 3) withdrawal into poetryand thought; but Zizek disputes BretDavis's interpretation of Will in thesephases, especially as it relates to "Evil"(143; 142-48).
Heidegger's "divineviolence."
Hitler's violence critiqued as"
not violent enough
" [
sic!
], "not radicalenough," because it "did not dare todisturb the basic structure of the moderncapitalist social space"; "The truecourage of an act is always the courageto accept the inexistence of the bigOther," which Hitler lacked and whichMuslim terrorists lack (151, emphasis inoriginal; 150; 151; 152; 148-53).
PART II: LESSONS FROM THE PASTCh. 4: Revolutionary Terror fromRobespierre to Mao.
"What do youwant?"
The historical legacy of the Jacobins should be embraced (157-64).
Asserting the inhuman.
"[O]ur tasktoday is precisely to reinventemancipatory terror" (174; 164-75).
Transubstantiations of Marxism.
Because Hegelian "concrete universality"is "always retroactive, so the search forthe moment when things went wrong isfutile (175-81).
The limits of Mao'sdialectics.
Much anti-capitalism istoday sublimated as "anti-imperialism"(181). A partial defense of Mao's "OnContradiction" (181-93).
Culturalrevolution and power.
Previousrevolutionary attempts have been "
not radical enough
" (195; 193-97). Today's
Chinese capitalism developed becauseMao "retreated from drawing all theconsequences of the Cultural Revolution"(210; 198-210).
Ch. 5: Stalinism Revisited, or, HowStalin Saved the Humanity of Man.The Stalinist cultural counter-revolution.
It can be argued that"Stalinism effectively saved what weunderstand as the humanity of man"(211; 211-14).
A letter which did notreach its destination (and therebyperhaps saved the world).
How? Byevading global nuclear war (214-19).
Kremlinology.
By relying on whisperedrumor, Stalinism was profound human(219-22).
From objective tosubjective guilt.
But Stalinism stillrelied on a "big Other" (the Lacaniannotion again,
le grand Autre
), as thepurge trial transcripts show (222-36).
Shostakovich in
Casablanca.
"[W]hatmakes Shostakovich's music'Stalinist' . . . is
his very distance towardsit
"; comparison to
Casablanca
(236,emphasis in original; 236-46).
TheStalinist carnival...
Stalinist terror hadan enthusiastic carnivalesque characterthat was no longer possible afterKhrushchev (246-53).
...in the films of Sergei Eisenstein.
Eisenstein's "lostabsolute masterpieces"
Bezhin Meadow
and Part III of
Ivan the Terrible
expressed"the shift in the libidinal economy fromthe Leninist revolutionary fervor to theStalinist Thermidor" (253; 253-58).
Theminimal difference.
StalinistCommunism was
slightly less bad
thanNazism (258-63).
Ch. 6: Why Populism Is (Sometimes)Good Enough in Practice, but Not inTheory.
[A rebuttal to critiques byErnesto Laclau and Yannis Stavrakakis—the book's longest chapter.] "There isalways in populism always somethingviolent" (264; 264-66).
Good enough inpractice...
The "no" votes to the EUconstitutional referendum in 2005 inFrance and the Netherlands signified apopulist "rejection of the blackmail bythe new elite," even if it did fail topresent a credible alternative (270; 266-76).
...but not good enough intheory.
Democracy is the only politicalform that institutionalizes antagonism;the protest movements of recentdecades have not been populist (276-85).
The "determining role of theeconomy": Marx with Freud.
"Politicsis . . . a name for the distance of the'economy' from itself" (291; 285-93).
Drawing the line.
Populism is merelyreactive, where as "true radical-emancipatory politics" is "active,imposing, enforcing its vision" (304; 293-304).
The act.
Zizek defends hisLacanian credentials and his knowledgeof Marxism (304-16).
The Real.
Also hisuse of the concept of negativity (316-24).
The vacuity of the politics of
jouissance
.
Like populist mobs,terrorist fundamentalists lack trueconviction (324-33).
PART III: WHAT IS TO BE DONE?Ch. 7: The Crisis of DeterminateNegation.
The Frankfurt School waspredicated on resigning oneself tocapitalism, which resignation is nowwidespread (337-39).
The humoroussuperego...
A critique of SimonCritchley's
Infinitely Demanding
(2007)(339-46).
...and its politics of resistance.
More criticism of Critchleyas too accommodating to capital (346-50).
"Goodbye Mister ResistingNomad."
Pace
Toni Negri, "Capital isnot yet purely parasitic" (350-59).
Negriin Davos.
Zizek is mordant on Negri'sattempt to oppose the Iraq war by goingto Davos (359-62). In fact, "the'American century' is over" and we areentering a multipolar world (362; 361-64).
Deleuze without Negri.
Critiqueof Deleuze (364-74).
Governance andmovements.
"Every revolution thusconsists of two different aspects: factualrevolution plus spiritual reform" (374;374-80).
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Zizek - In Defense of Lost Causes (2008) - Synopsis
Synopsis of Slavoj Zizek, In Defense of Lost Causes (London and New York: 2008; paperback 2009). -- Discussed at Digging Deeper (www.ufppc.org) on February 8, 2010.
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