getfiscal
getfiscal
Mike Nelson here.
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One thing that Badiou and Zizek talk about is that the 20th Century was the century of the passion for the real. Passion for the real might be thought of as a comprehensive drive towards direct, unsymbolized experience. I would say that Zizek thinks that the failure of the 20th Century to produce a successful emancipatory alternative to liberal-democratic capitalism was founded on the failure of the "direct." I'll run through a few examples of this below.
A.) Stalinism (Support) - Zizek relates a story of how Brecht was by the road when a column of tanks rolled by that were headed to crush a worker's rebellion in Berlin. Brecht said (ironically) that it was this moment that he was tempted to join the Communist Party. This demonstrates the passion for the real as a sort of desire for commitment, as wanting to be part of something authentic and determined, if even brutal and visceral.
B.) Stalinism (Opposition) / Trotskyism - Brecht also said of the Moscow Trials that "the more innocent they are, the more they deserve to be shot." This is also the central idea of Arthur Koestler's book "Darkness at Noon" - that if people were opposed to Stalin, they *ought* to have been trying to overthrow him and wreck his regime, and were therefore especially "guilty" if they refused to work against Stalin. This notion of life-or-death stakes of political engagement is bound up with notions of visceral direct experience, of "taking sides."
C.) Libertarian socialism / Councilist - Zizek suggests that the obverse of Stalinism is libertarian socialist calls for "direct democracy" and unmediated political experience. That things like council communism, anarchism, libertarian-Trotskyism, cooperativist socialism and such are essentially linked to Stalinism as a sort of shadow, as an attempt to bypass "messy" state politics and to engage directly with "the people" or "the workers" as a mass. This idea of the people/workers "for itself" is connected to a passion for the real, in that this bypassing of the socialist state-party nexus was seen as a way to engage directly with reality.
D.) Terrorism - The visceral nature of seeking "direct" political/social experiences is fairly obvious in terrorist cases. For example, groups like the Red Army Faction could bypass parliamentary or trade-union channels and "directly" challenge the state by attacking people. There is something potentially suicidal in this, in that it avoids the actual struggle of organizing collective action for a "short-cut" of throwing one's body into the fray. That is, the idea that a small group of people are going to overthrow the state is unlikely, so the act of terror is basically an absurd acting out that demonstrates impotence rather than competence.
These factors do not play out in simple ways, as you can find analogues of each (and more) for a wide variety of perspectives/groups. But you can see the above four in most explosions of popular-leftist action in the past century.
Passion for the real is associated with power/violence, but impotence is a central factor. Stalinists try to impose a consensus based on their ability to cultivate one "naturally." Trotskyism is premised on a sort of incomplete oppositional status, it knows what it is against and incessantly complains but seems unable to impose any sort of power. Councilism is connected to this, it is a sort of paralysis that depends on some other subject (workers / the people) to take power "directly" in a way that never materializes efficiently. As said above, terrorists demonstrate impotence because they act in a desperate way to destroy an order which they then simply hope the disruption will cause others to act (that is, the terrorism is not actually an authentic act, only indirect). You can probably think of various blends and other subject-positions as well.
Anyway I waffle wildly between these four positions + social-democracy so "deal with it" while I think about this for a bit and maybe respond to my own self.
A.) Stalinism (Support) - Zizek relates a story of how Brecht was by the road when a column of tanks rolled by that were headed to crush a worker's rebellion in Berlin. Brecht said (ironically) that it was this moment that he was tempted to join the Communist Party. This demonstrates the passion for the real as a sort of desire for commitment, as wanting to be part of something authentic and determined, if even brutal and visceral.
B.) Stalinism (Opposition) / Trotskyism - Brecht also said of the Moscow Trials that "the more innocent they are, the more they deserve to be shot." This is also the central idea of Arthur Koestler's book "Darkness at Noon" - that if people were opposed to Stalin, they *ought* to have been trying to overthrow him and wreck his regime, and were therefore especially "guilty" if they refused to work against Stalin. This notion of life-or-death stakes of political engagement is bound up with notions of visceral direct experience, of "taking sides."
C.) Libertarian socialism / Councilist - Zizek suggests that the obverse of Stalinism is libertarian socialist calls for "direct democracy" and unmediated political experience. That things like council communism, anarchism, libertarian-Trotskyism, cooperativist socialism and such are essentially linked to Stalinism as a sort of shadow, as an attempt to bypass "messy" state politics and to engage directly with "the people" or "the workers" as a mass. This idea of the people/workers "for itself" is connected to a passion for the real, in that this bypassing of the socialist state-party nexus was seen as a way to engage directly with reality.
D.) Terrorism - The visceral nature of seeking "direct" political/social experiences is fairly obvious in terrorist cases. For example, groups like the Red Army Faction could bypass parliamentary or trade-union channels and "directly" challenge the state by attacking people. There is something potentially suicidal in this, in that it avoids the actual struggle of organizing collective action for a "short-cut" of throwing one's body into the fray. That is, the idea that a small group of people are going to overthrow the state is unlikely, so the act of terror is basically an absurd acting out that demonstrates impotence rather than competence.
These factors do not play out in simple ways, as you can find analogues of each (and more) for a wide variety of perspectives/groups. But you can see the above four in most explosions of popular-leftist action in the past century.
Passion for the real is associated with power/violence, but impotence is a central factor. Stalinists try to impose a consensus based on their ability to cultivate one "naturally." Trotskyism is premised on a sort of incomplete oppositional status, it knows what it is against and incessantly complains but seems unable to impose any sort of power. Councilism is connected to this, it is a sort of paralysis that depends on some other subject (workers / the people) to take power "directly" in a way that never materializes efficiently. As said above, terrorists demonstrate impotence because they act in a desperate way to destroy an order which they then simply hope the disruption will cause others to act (that is, the terrorism is not actually an authentic act, only indirect). You can probably think of various blends and other subject-positions as well.
Anyway I waffle wildly between these four positions + social-democracy so "deal with it" while I think about this for a bit and maybe respond to my own self.
xipe
xipe
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getfiscal posted:
Anyway I waffle wildly between these four positions + social-democracy so "deal with it" while I think about this for a bit and maybe respond to my own self.
perhaps one could fruitfully describe political set-ups in terms of attractors and phase space?
getfiscal
getfiscal
Mike Nelson here.
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i don't know what that means or if you are making fun of me but in either case i will accept it because i am a glutton for punishment
xipe
xipe
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getfiscal posted:
i don't know what that means or if you are making fun of me but in either case i will accept it because i am a glutton for punishment
not at all! its something i've been trying to get my head around myself, but i reckon describing social systems with chaos theory can be useful.
those are 4 different 'attractors', where the system is (a) going to a point (b) flipping periodically (c) evolving in a complex but ordered way (d) chaotically (thats the famous 'butterfly effect' weather thing)
i understand this only in a shallow way, but id encourage anyone to read up on it cos the scientific literature describing of these systems is amazingly rich!
its also a nice complement to deleuzian philosophy, i find.
here's a fairly dry attempt to apply it to political science anyway:
http://dev.ulb.ac.be/sciencespo/dossiers_membres/dandoy-regis/fichiers/dandoy-regis-publication18.pdf
i think describing the system's evolution as orbiting trajectories thru phase space could be handy, but i guess the first step would be laying out what that phase space is?
getfiscal
getfiscal
Mike Nelson here.
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i think an issue of resolving it into notions of space is that it becomes a metaphysical view of politics, when it might actually be contingent notions bound up with particular struggles. so the stalinist/trotskyist/anarchist/social democrat /terrorist modes might be modes particular to socialism, but irrelevant or at best translatable to other ideologies and their social-modes. they are also just strategic suggestions and don't easily correspond to actual people that well. it's more a sort of subject-position, which is very specific.
FyadorPostoevsky
FyadorPostoevsky
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i'd agree with that definition of terrorism. when you feel its the best/only option you've already become the 'bitch' of what you're trying to fight against. like our good friend anders here for example
xipe
xipe
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~heh well 'phase space' is an abstract theory space so its defo metaphysical heh~
you create it by identifying the system's characteristics; like for that weather one its heat, wind etc but for a human social system it'd be... what?
if the choice is a good one, that phase space would encompass all potential states of the system, including other ideologies and their social-modes.
also it'd be possible for the trajectory taken within that phase space to cycle between attractors corresponding to the modes you describe.
i guess if you could model things successfully it wouldnt be hugely revelatory, but it would allow you to know a lot about the system in a compact, visual way where you could start thinking how to shape its evolution.
sorry if im derailing your thread but i hope this is relevant in a different way!
you create it by identifying the system's characteristics; like for that weather one its heat, wind etc but for a human social system it'd be... what?
if the choice is a good one, that phase space would encompass all potential states of the system, including other ideologies and their social-modes.
also it'd be possible for the trajectory taken within that phase space to cycle between attractors corresponding to the modes you describe.
i guess if you could model things successfully it wouldnt be hugely revelatory, but it would allow you to know a lot about the system in a compact, visual way where you could start thinking how to shape its evolution.
sorry if im derailing your thread but i hope this is relevant in a different way!
xipe
xipe
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FyadorPostoevsky posted:
i'd agree with that definition of terrorism. when you feel its the best/only option you've already become the 'bitch' of what you're trying to fight against. like our good friend anders here for example
you could say this of the raf but not of the rz cells, who did more in the same time & place and never got caught
FyadorPostoevsky
FyadorPostoevsky
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xipe posted:FyadorPostoevsky posted:
i'd agree with that definition of terrorism. when you feel its the best/only option you've already become the 'bitch' of what you're trying to fight against. like our good friend anders here for example
you could say this of the raf but not of the rz cells, who did more in the same time & place and never got caught
israel would beg to differ 
getfiscal
getfiscal
Mike Nelson here.
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"We're prepared to die for Israel, but we can't live in it."
As others here have suggested, the situation in Israel today is one where the large social-justice movement is in absurd situation because it tends to ignore the disavowed other in Israeli society: The colonized Palestinians. This is encapsulated, in the negative, by a protestor who said, "We're prepared to die for Israel, but we can't live in it." Here the oppression of Palestinians is present as a sort of spectral element, as simply part of the many who Israel needs to worry about in security terms. So these activists are already "playing the game" of Netanyahu: They aren't looking to create a new political subject out of the oppressed among Jews and Arabs, but simply to renegotiate the terms of their oppression of Arabs.
When Lacan talks about "traversing the fantasy" he means engaging in a sort of decisive act that short-circuits the typical disavowed desires of the self and society. In Israel, it seems obvious that any real justice movement would need to focus on the web of oppression that keeps Palestinians as a subordinate people in their own land and in refugee camps across the region. Imperialism is the structural underpinning of Israeli prosperity, which exists at the expense of Arabs and others across the world.
Likewise, imperialism structures and underpins the wealth of the broader West, and it is easy to criticize Israel when it is simply a more obvious form of oppression, precisely because it exists at the heart of the mythical East-West divide. The zero-point of real activism today must be the recognition of the global wealth divide, with its associated production centered largely in Asia and resources centered in places like Africa, and looking to position oneself as an ally of the global south in this struggle. Part of this means seeing that the average American white settler sees themselves much like the Israeli Jewish settler: "We're prepared to die for America, but we can't live in it." This creates an instability in their position, and opens them up to potential disruption, but doesn't guarantee that they will build links without being forced to from without. The same person is often open to allowing the Chinese production worker or African miner to be exploited more if it reduces the cost of living.
I'm not sure what the proper political position of a person in this situation is. Obviously a disruptive, reconstitutive political act is required, but I don't know what this consists of in a situation where one wants to avoid some exposure to a simplistic violent real, which is usually an ideological error.
As others here have suggested, the situation in Israel today is one where the large social-justice movement is in absurd situation because it tends to ignore the disavowed other in Israeli society: The colonized Palestinians. This is encapsulated, in the negative, by a protestor who said, "We're prepared to die for Israel, but we can't live in it." Here the oppression of Palestinians is present as a sort of spectral element, as simply part of the many who Israel needs to worry about in security terms. So these activists are already "playing the game" of Netanyahu: They aren't looking to create a new political subject out of the oppressed among Jews and Arabs, but simply to renegotiate the terms of their oppression of Arabs.
When Lacan talks about "traversing the fantasy" he means engaging in a sort of decisive act that short-circuits the typical disavowed desires of the self and society. In Israel, it seems obvious that any real justice movement would need to focus on the web of oppression that keeps Palestinians as a subordinate people in their own land and in refugee camps across the region. Imperialism is the structural underpinning of Israeli prosperity, which exists at the expense of Arabs and others across the world.
Likewise, imperialism structures and underpins the wealth of the broader West, and it is easy to criticize Israel when it is simply a more obvious form of oppression, precisely because it exists at the heart of the mythical East-West divide. The zero-point of real activism today must be the recognition of the global wealth divide, with its associated production centered largely in Asia and resources centered in places like Africa, and looking to position oneself as an ally of the global south in this struggle. Part of this means seeing that the average American white settler sees themselves much like the Israeli Jewish settler: "We're prepared to die for America, but we can't live in it." This creates an instability in their position, and opens them up to potential disruption, but doesn't guarantee that they will build links without being forced to from without. The same person is often open to allowing the Chinese production worker or African miner to be exploited more if it reduces the cost of living.
I'm not sure what the proper political position of a person in this situation is. Obviously a disruptive, reconstitutive political act is required, but I don't know what this consists of in a situation where one wants to avoid some exposure to a simplistic violent real, which is usually an ideological error.