{"id":7651,"date":"2020-03-15T18:27:23","date_gmt":"2020-03-15T18:27:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=7651"},"modified":"2020-03-15T18:27:23","modified_gmt":"2020-03-15T18:27:23","slug":"public-intellectual-series-slavoj-zizek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2020\/03\/15\/public-intellectual-series-slavoj-zizek\/","title":{"rendered":"Public Intellectual Series: Slavoj \u017di\u017eek"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>No picture of the modern world is complete without a Marxist analysis. The fundamental point \u2013 even for anyone who is not a fellow traveller \u2013 is that a materialist analysis of capitalism\u2019s inherent instability is essentially correct, and now more relevant than ever.<\/p>\n<p>The problem has always been around how a post-capitalist society emerges without savage bloodletting and numbing totalitarianism. The bearded figure scribbling away in the British Museum would no doubt have been horrified by the barbarous regimes \u2013 from Lenin to Kim Jong-Il \u2013 that have laid claim to his legacy.<\/p>\n<p>Slavoj \u017di\u017eek is perhaps the best known representative and synthesiser of contemporary Marxist theory. Anyone who has viewed his films <em>The Pervert\u2019s Guide to Ideology<\/em> (2009) or <em>The Pervert\u2019s Guide to Cinema<\/em> (2012) can only marvel at how this middle-aged, slovenly Slovenian Marxist is taken so seriously. Despite the spittle that pours involuntarily out of his mouth as he expostulates, it seems his ideas are judged on merit; albeit a somewhat comedic appearance has probably made him seem less of a \u2018danger\u2019 \u2013 especially when set against a straight-backed sparring partner such as Jordan Peterson \u2013 and \u2018Ted-Talkily\u2019 acceptable.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Marxism: Zizek\/Peterson:  Official Video\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/lsWndfzuOc4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u017di\u017eek is a complex political thinker, noted for his observations on ideology. Yet his writing is dense, often impenetrable, and even, at times, frankly nonsensical. Sadly, the content can be obscure, and the ideas often wildly over-stated, though recent books have seen him curb this tendency, leading to greater traction. With age he has mellowed, or at least he has become far more coherent in his critique of the late capitalism disaster movie unfolding before our eyes.<\/p>\n<p>His thought processes are, nevertheless, eminently contestable. Former Irish President Mary McAleese \u2013 who lectured me \u2013 always despised recklessness, as do I, but in a different sense. It is intellectual recklessness I hold in low regard. \u017di\u017eek is full of it, at least in terms of his wilder statements calling for insurrection.<\/p>\n<p>\u017di\u017eek argues that the widespread belief that our world is post-ideological is an \u2018arch-ideological\u2019 fantasy. Today, he asserts, ideology entails what people impute to others, whether left or right.<\/p>\n<p>This demonization of others, and the exclusion of outsiders, is indeed very much to the fore in his recent writings, and in our end of day\u2019s capitalist order. Tribalism, nationalism and the targeting of non-nationals and immigrants is an endemic feature of our time.<\/p>\n<p>For a subject to adhere to an ideology he argues, he must have been presented with it, and accepted it as true and <em>right<\/em> \u2013 such that anyone sensible should believe in it. In a seminal text, <em>The Sublime Object of Ideology<\/em> (1989) \u017di\u017eek claims that ideology has not disappeared, but has come into its own, and because of its success, it has been dismissed as non-existent. Or should it be that ideology has been internalised?<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Ideological Disidentification<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u017di\u017eek also puts forward the idea of \u2018ideological cynicism.\u2019 Ideology today is not as it was for the proletariat for \u2018they do not know it, but they are doing it.\u2019 He disagrees that for ideology to be effective it has to effectively brainwash people, as Marx contended in his famous religion being the opium of the people assessment; rather \u017di\u017eek contends that a successful ideology always permits a critical distance towards that ideology \u2013 this he terms \u2018ideological disidentification\u2019; saying: \u2018I know well that (for example) Bob Hawke \/ Bill Clinton \/ the Party \/ the market do not always act justly, but I still act as though I did not know that this is the case.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Or perhaps it should be said that behaviour has been modified or controlled, and widespread passivity makes it is irrelevant what we do in a spectator democracy. In effect, we are irrelevant to changing any of this, as the supporters of Bernie Sanders are finding out.<\/p>\n<p>\u017di\u017eek points to a \u2018big O other\u2019, who legitimates control through \u2018God\u2019 or \u2018the Party\u2019. In <em>The Sublime Object of Ideology<\/em>, (1989) he argues that such important or rallying political terms are \u2018master signifiers,\u2019 even though they are \u2018signifiers without a signified\u2019, i.e. words which do not refer to any clear and distinct concept or demonstrable object. Thus, they induce control and a false sense of belonging, but are meaningless.<\/p>\n<p>This claim of \u017di\u017eek\u2019s is related to two other ideas:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><em>That subjects are always divided between their conscious and unconscious beliefs towards political authority;<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em> That subjects do not know what their beliefs are that leaves them open to domination and control.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><strong><em>Jouissance<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u017di\u017eek further contends, following the critical theorist Louis Althusser, that ideology is embedded in our everyday lives. In particular, he uses the term <em>jouissance<\/em> to describe transgressive pleasure that we derive from the master signifiers, such as \u2018nation\u2019 or \u2018people,\u2019 through cultural products as sports, music, alcohol,\u00a0 drugs, festivals, or films.<\/p>\n<p>Another central idea in \u017di\u017eek\u2019s initial political philosophy is that any regime only secure a sense of collective identity if their governing ideologies afford subjects an understanding of how these relate to what exceeds, supplements or challenges its identity. Or, in layman\u2019s terms, bread and circuses is the glue that binds identities \u2013 \u2018Football\u2019s Coming Home\u2019 to quote Baddiel and Skinner.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Baddiel &amp; Skinner &amp; Lightning Seeds - Three Lions (Football&#039;s Coming Home) (Official Video)\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RJqimlFcJsM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u017di\u017eek adopts the term \u2018ideological fantasy\u2019 for the deepest framework of belief that structures how political subjects, and\/or a political community, come to terms with what exceeds its norms and boundaries. He identifies Law with the Freudian ego ideal.<\/p>\n<p>But \u017di\u017eek argues that, in order to be effective, a regime\u2019s explicit Laws must also harbour and conceal a darker underside \u2013 a set of more or less unspoken rules which, far from simply repressing <em>jouissance<\/em>, implicate subjects in a guilty enjoyment in repression itself, which \u017di\u017eek likens to the \u2018pleasure in pain\u2019 associated with the experience of Kant\u2019s sublime.<\/p>\n<p>\u017di\u017eek\u2019s final position about the sublime objects of political regimes\u2019 ideologies is that these belief-inspiring objects represent the many ways in which the subject misrecognises its own active capacity to challenge existing laws, and to found new laws altogether.<\/p>\n<p>He repeatedly argues that the most uncanny or abysmal aspect of the world today is the subject\u2019s own active subjectivity \u2013 explaining his repeated citation of the Eastern saying \u2018Thou Art That\u2019. It is, finally, the singularity of the subject\u2019s own active agency that leads to subjects\u2019 recourse to fantasies concerning the sublime objects of their regime\u2019s ideologies.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Like a Thief in Broad Daylight<\/em> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u017di\u017eek\u2019s technical term for the process whereby we recognise how the sublime objects of political regimes\u2019 ideologies are, like Marx\u2019s commodities,\u00a0 fetishised objects \u2013 concealing from subjects their own political agency \u2013 is \u2018traversing of the fantasy.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Traversing the fantasy, for \u017di\u017eek, is the political subject\u2019s deepest form of self-recognition, and the basis for his own radical political position, or defence of the possibility of such positions.<\/p>\n<p>\u017di\u017eek also references Alain Badiou, who argues for an elevation or an insurrection. \u017di\u017eek also seeks a form of Jacobin army, the intellectual irresponsibility of which needs to be emphasised. Even if these ideas are metaphorical the extremism provides ample ammunition to right-wing critics, who argue he condones or even approves of terrorist methods.<\/p>\n<p>Sadly, in more recent times, the Marxist left has been self-sabotaging, and the cause of its own downfall. They have also had their good arguments stolen and mangled by the right.<\/p>\n<p>Yet it seems that radical Marxists are at last growing up and that the post-modernist wing is grappling with its self-contradicting, and implicit approval, of a valueless universe.<\/p>\n<p>In his recent book <em>Like a Thief in Broad Daylight<\/em> (2016) \u017di\u017eek distils many of the abstruse elements of his ideas into manageable and helpful commentaries that have a broader base of appeal. The ethical political order, notwithstanding Habermasean attempts at a reconstituted normalization, have collapsed, he argues.<\/p>\n<p>Freedom of choice is an illusion in a world of disinformation, plummeting educational standards, short-terms contracts, imposed services and privatization. Any alleged freedom we have arrives in a narrow spectrum of choices, subtly imposed upon us through social influencers and technological nudges controlling choices. Or as John Gray put it in <em>The Soul of The Marionette<\/em> (2015) \u2018we are forced to live as if we are free.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u017di\u017eek and others have demonstrated the sinister developments within late capitalism. Including how a rent for profit model means most of us on low salaries serve undeserving sponsors, leading many into the informal market or the black market by violence or the violence of regulation \u2013 as David Graeber explores in his epochal work <em>Debt: the First 5000 Years<\/em> (2015).<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-7657 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Debtthefirst500years-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"608\" height=\"608\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Other disturbing trends are in evidence, Roberto Saviona in <em>Zero, Zero, Zero<\/em> (2015) through a sustained analysis of drug cartels, shows how the corporate model of Mafiosi loyalty has been exported into law firms. The lines between legitimate and illegitimate capitalism are thus blurred to a point of near non-existence.<\/p>\n<p>The \u2018woke\u2019 left cannot escape blame for failing to identify the socio-economic issues that really count in peoples lives. Pseudo-feminism plays a class game, marginalizing lower class men as harassers and even demonizing migrants. Indulgence of victimhood has created the abuse excuse.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>The Wretched of the Earth<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_7658\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7658\" style=\"width: 139px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-7658\" src=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Frantz_Fanon-221x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"139\" height=\"188\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7658\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Frantz Fanon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u017di\u017eek is quite critical of the great post-colonial Marxist Frantz Fanon and his seminal text <em>The Wretched of the Earth<\/em> (1961). But Fanon was surely right in identifying a colonial order wherein, \u2018the people\u2019s property and the people\u2019s sovereignty are to be stripped from them.\u2019 The <em>Untermensch<\/em> were obliged to pay the debts of the occupying powers, which is now the international model of austerity.<\/p>\n<p>\u017di\u017eek argues that our society of depoliticized and compliant sheep invite disaster. He references the film <em>Blade Runner<\/em> (1980), which is a useful cultural trope as the older replicants \u2013 baby boomers \u2013 now need to let go of their accumulated wealth and power. Generation X are at least conscious of false memory syndrome or implanted hopes, and some have the wherewithal to do something about it and no longer settle for being victims. So despite the victim excuse, Fanon and \u017di\u017eek have much in common in their analysis.<\/p>\n<p>The reality is that the analysis of Fanon is now in place across the world. The elite or the corporatocracy are a gang, and what amounts to a mafia is running the planet like a colony.<\/p>\n<p>So the slovenly Slovenian has hit the <em>zeitgeist<\/em>, and now interacts with more common sense than was evident in his wilder pronouncements of the past. But unfortunately it appears as if the lunatics have already taken over the asylum, and to an increasingly docile audience what he is saying will appear mad, a point that his appearance would appear to affirm.<\/p>\n<p>Or at the very least his ideas will be packaged by Facebook, so he plays a bit part in the drift or acceleration into the abyss that we must resist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No picture of the modern world is complete without a Marxist analysis. The fundamental point \u2013 even for anyone who is not a fellow traveller \u2013 is that a materialist analysis of capitalism\u2019s inherent instability is essentially correct, and now more relevant than ever. The problem has always been around how a post-capitalist society emerges [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":7653,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[43,366,3488,4306,4953,5043,5529,5944,7908,8449,9225,9226,9283,9293,9345,10290],"class_list":["post-7651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history-2","tag-arch-ideological-fantasy","tag-alain-badiou","tag-frantz-fanon","tag-ideological-disidentification","tag-john-gray","tag-jouissance","tag-like-a-thief-in-broad-daylight","tag-marxist-analysis","tag-roberto-saviona","tag-slavoj-zizek","tag-the-perverts-guide-to-cinema","tag-the-perverts-guide-to-ideology","tag-the-soul-of-the-marionette","tag-the-sublime-object-of-ideology","tag-the-wretched-of-the-earth","tag-zero"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}