A prominent European philosopher who argues that the Arab Spring is over simply can't fathom a new, hopeful world.
Hamid Dabashi
Slavoj Zizek's failure to understand the true nature of the upheavals across the Arab world, such as in Libya, above, can be ascribed to his 'postmodern existential angst' and lack of imagination
Just a couple of days before the fall of Tripoli to Libyan rebels, Saidj Mustapha, a prominent Algerian political scientist was asked his opinion about the Arab Spring.
He responded by outlining a number of key factors that he thought had contributed to the making of the dramatic transnational revolutions, particularly the aging leadership and the young population, mixed with the corruption of the ruling regimes, concluding that: “The young people who launched this revolution do not come from the traditional political institutions, such as political parties or military coup elites. This makes us look forward to a phase of democratic transition from an authoritarian regime to a pluralistic, democratic system.”
When he was asked to predict what would happen in Libya (this interview was conducted in Algiers on August 19, 2011, just before the Libyan rebels entered Tripoli), he gave a detailed answer, scenario-by-scenario, analysing the possibilities of (1) civil war that would split Libya like Sudan, (2) the triumph of the Transitional National Council, and (3) the nightmare of Iraq or Somalia and civil strife in which he feared that the al-Qaeda in Maghreb might be the beneficiary. In a very short interview, but still in very precise terms, Saidj Mustapha was meticulous, caring, optimistic, and above all celebratory of the Arab Spring and the new horizons of open-ended politics it had occasioned.
As the fate, or metahistorical force of events, would have it, exactly on the same day, August 19, 2011, the London Review of Books published an essay by the famous European philosopher Slavoj Zizek, frivolously titled (as is his wont), “Shoplifters of the World Unite,” in which he gave his take on the recent UK riots.
Zizek's worldless world
In this article, Zizek concurred with Alain Badiou, his French counterpart, that “we live in a social space which is increasingly experienced as ‘worldless’: in such a space, the only form protest can take is meaningless violence”. Zizek continued to suggest that “the riots should be situated in relation to another type of violence that the liberal majority today perceives as a threat to our way of life: terrorist attacks and suicide bombings”. But, he stipulated, “the difference is that, in contrast to the riots in the UK or in Paris, terrorist attacks are carried out in service of the absolute Meaning provided by religion.”
So what we have here, as Zizek saw it, defined by shoplifters and terrorists, is a “worldless” world (informed by Badiou and shoplifters) and occupied by “absolute Meaning” (suggested by Hegel and Osama bin Laden).
Zizek then turns his attention to the Arab Spring: “But weren’t the Arab uprisings a collective act of resistance that avoided the false alternative of self-destructive violence and religious fundamentalism?” This should have given the European philosopher a sign of hope in what appeared to be a worldless world filled with absolutist religious meanings thrown like grenades by terrorist Hegelians. But it did not. The European philosopher has lost all hope: “Unfortunately, the Egyptian summer of 2011 will be remembered as marking the end of revolution, a time when its emancipatory potential was suffocated.”
“The end of revolution?” So early? So early in the game and so utterly has the European philosopher lost all hope. How did he come to that conclusion? “Its gravediggers are the army and the Islamists. The contours of the pact between the army (which is Mubarak’s army) and the Islamists (who were marginalised in the early months of the upheaval but are now gaining ground) are increasingly clear: the Islamists will tolerate the army’s material privileges and in exchange will secure ideological hegemony.”
To be sure, this has by now become a cliché concern among a certain segment of Arab intellectuals too, but more as a defiant rallying cry than a metaphysical fait accompli, the air in which Zizek was delivering his ruling. There were other Arab activists and intellectuals who were even more concerned about their revolution being derailed and kidnapped by the perfectly business-suit-clad and clean shaven neoliberals, by the IMF, by the World Bank, by the NATO bombings, by American neoconservatives “helping Arabs transit to democracy”, while they put “boots on the ground” and signed with them lucrative business deals.
Zizek: out of touch
But strange that the (evidently Marxist) European philosopher had no concerns about those kinds of “suffocating” the revolution. On a previous occasion I have suggested that the distinguished European philosophers like Zizek who wish to say something about other parts of the world need to diversify among their native informers. But alas, Zizek seems not to have listened to my advice. “The losers,” he warns Europeans, “will be the pro-Western liberals, too weak - in spite of the CIA funding they are getting - to ‘promote democracy’, as well as the true agents of the spring events, the emerging secular left that has been trying to set up a network of civil society organisations, from trade unions to feminists”.
All these key confusions of Zizek - his “secular left” in particular is a giveaway - should warn him to start shopping around (with a proper credit card of course, for shoplifting is nihilistic) for better native informers. The ones he has now are no good. In a “worldless” world, filled with Absolute meanings of militant Islamists stealing revolutions like shoplifters, Zizek’s diagnosis is that “today’s left faces the problem of ‘determinate negation’: what new order should replace the old one after the uprising, when the sublime enthusiasm of the first moment is over?"
In this “worldless” world we have, it seems, a lack of organisation; yes indeed, party politics. Zizek mourns precisely where and what Saidj Mustapha celebrates. Zizek dismisses not just the UK shoplifters, the Muslim terrorists, and the Arab revolutions, but even the Spanish indignados:
In this context, the manifesto of the Spanish indignados, issued after their demonstrations in May, is revealing. The first thing that meets the eye is the pointedly apolitical tone: 'Some of us consider ourselves progressive, others conservative. Some of us are believers, some not. Some of us have clearly defined ideologies, others are apolitical, but we are all concerned and angry about the political, economic and social outlook that we see around us: corruption among politicians, businessmen, bankers, leaving us helpless, without a voice.'
They make their protest on behalf of the 'inalienable truths that we should abide by in our society: the right to housing, employment, culture, health, education, political participation, free personal development and consumer rights for a healthy and happy life'. Rejecting violence, they call for an ‘ethical revolution ... The indignados dismiss the entire political class, right and left, as corrupt and controlled by a lust for power ... And this is the fatal weakness of recent protests: they express an authentic rage which is not able to transform itself into a positive programme of sociopolitical change. They express a spirit of revolt without revolution.
So no hope in Spain either, where people are revolting without having a revolution. Is it not entirely unpredictable that the European philosopher goes back to Greece, his fictive birthplace, for solace and hope: “The situation in Greece looks more promising, probably owing to the recent tradition of progressive self-organisation (which disappeared in Spain after the fall of the Franco regime).”
But even good old Greece is not a happy scene for “the Absolute Professor” (this was Søren Kierkegaard ‘s choice term for Zizek’s idol Hegel), for “even in Greece, the protest movement displays the limits of self-organisation: protesters sustain a space of egalitarian freedom with no central authority to regulate it, a public space where all are allotted the same amount of time to speak and so on”.
This to Zizek is anarchy, lacking in revolutionary discipline, the necessary cadre of political party apparatchiks of the old Soviet sort. “When the protesters started to debate what to do next, how to move beyond mere protest, the majority consensus was that what was needed was not a new party or a direct attempt to take state power, but a movement whose aim is to exert pressure on political parties. This is clearly not enough to impose a reorganisation of social life. To do that, one needs a strong body able to reach quick decisions and to implement them with all necessary harshness."
The abyss had opened and the postmodern professor has become positively punctilious; yes, indeed, dare we say it: conservative. All it takes is a riot in London (retail therapy on steroids), a terrorist attack in New York, and a misinformed native informer of the Arab Spring in the philosopher’s company to turn the world dark and worldless, filled with Absolute fanaticism, and expose the postmodern existential angst unable to read the signs of time.
Is the Arab Spring half-full or half-empty?
Whence the difference between these two perspectives: the Arab intellectual morally invested and politically engaged, while his European counterpart morally aloof and politically pessimistic? One has everything to gain, a world to live; the other nothing to lose, having lost his world to worldlessness. The Algerian political scientist thrives on a visionary reading of a world that Zizek dismisses as already worldless. Why is Saidj Mustapha not afraid of a conspiracy between the Islamists and the generals? Why is Joseph Massad far more afraid of American neoliberals and neoconservatives than of Islamists? A world is unfolding right in front of Zizek’s eyes and he sees the world worldless, the Egyptian revolution suffocated, the Arab Spring lost. How and why is it that the Algerian intellectual celebrates precisely what the European philosopher mourns: the absence of party politics, the rise of a politics beyond clichés?
Zizek mourns worldlessness, and designates absolute Meaning as the cause of terrorism. He does not see the world that is unfolding right before him as a hopeful, purposeful, worldly, life-affirming world. This is because, just like Gaddafi, Zizek is stuck in his old ways. He cannot believe his eyes, he cannot believe what is happening to him: that his world has ended, not the world; that he (embodying a European philosophy at the losing end of its dead certainties) lives a worldless world, not the world.
Zizek and Gaddafi are identical souls, sticking to the worlds they know, militantly, the world they are losing - defiant rebels banging at the Bab Aziziyeh compound of their habitat, a world that is either theirs or it will not exits: “Après moi, le déluge.” Barely begun, Zizek dismisses the Arab Spring and then mourns the loss of idealism among the shoplifters.
It is in fact the European philosopher himself that is the gravedigger of history, having nothing to see, nothing to say, nothing to celebrate, because this history is not his history, is not History, for History has always been His, and not anyone else’s. It is quite a moment in History when the Hegelian cannot tell between signs of a disease (shoplifting and terrorism) as the thesis and the sights of a cure (the Arab Spring) as antithesis - giving it up to generals and Islamists. London riots and terrorism of one brand or another are the symptoms of a disease, of capitalism and its imperialist fighter jets running amok from the top to the bottom.
Arab Spring is the renewed ground zero of history, the sight of a world that is beginning to reveal itself, precisely at the moment when the European philosopher sees the world “worldless” because it is not his world - just like Colonel Gaddafi - a world in which he cannot imagine himself, for he has been imagining the world for everyone else. The Arab Spring is the opening horizons of a hope of emancipation, of a renewed reading of world, of worlds. But Zizek does not see it because this is not the world of his making, the visage and force of a world Hegel had delegated to pre-History, non-History. Zizek has already recited the obituary of the Arab Spring, while what appears as a worldless world to the European philosopher is a world he cannot fathom, as it is being inhabited by others he cannot not read.
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/08/201183113418599933.html
I really despise Hamid Dabashi but this article is sort of interesting. It's really stupid in some ways but I think there's some merit to it. I'm still digesting it but I figured I'd post it up and see what people thought.
babyfinland posted:
It is in fact the European philosopher himself that is the gravedigger of history, having nothing to see, nothing to say, nothing to celebrate, because this history is not his history, is not History, for History has always been His, and not anyone else’s. It is quite a moment in History when the Hegelian cannot tell between signs of a disease (shoplifting and terrorism) as the thesis and the sights of a cure (the Arab Spring) as antithesis - giving it up to generals and Islamists.
this is why al jazeera opinion pieces are even worse than their fraudulent journalism
noavbazzer posted:babyfinland posted:
It is in fact the European philosopher himself that is the gravedigger of history, having nothing to see, nothing to say, nothing to celebrate, because this history is not his history, is not History, for History has always been His, and not anyone else’s. It is quite a moment in History when the Hegelian cannot tell between signs of a disease (shoplifting and terrorism) as the thesis and the sights of a cure (the Arab Spring) as antithesis - giving it up to generals and Islamists.this is why al jazeera opinion pieces are even worse than their fraudulent journalism
"It is in fact the European philosopher himself that is the gravedigger of history, having nothing to see, nothing to say, nothing to celebrate, because this history is not his history, is not History, for History has always been His, and not anyone else’s. "
This is one of the lines I actually sort of liked
babyfinland posted:
noavbazzer posted:
babyfinland posted:
It is in fact the European philosopher himself that is the gravedigger of history, having nothing to see, nothing to say, nothing to celebrate, because this history is not his history, is not History, for History has always been His, and not anyone else’s. It is quite a moment in History when the Hegelian cannot tell between signs of a disease (shoplifting and terrorism) as the thesis and the sights of a cure (the Arab Spring) as antithesis - giving it up to generals and Islamists.
this is why al jazeera opinion pieces are even worse than their fraudulent journalism
"It is in fact the European philosopher himself that is the gravedigger of history, having nothing to see, nothing to say, nothing to celebrate, because this history is not his history, is not History, for History has always been His, and not anyone else’s. "
This is one of the lines I actually sort of liked
i feel like the prose is pretentious and he avoids engaging zizek's article with flowery stuff about how this old man doesn't understand. that might be true but i'll never know because he didn't bother saying anything substantial.
edit: the fun of zizek is he says a bunch of stuff and it all usually provides a good place to begin a discussion and some preliminary thoughts or whatever and this article didn't really do that, like it contains proto-interesting ideas to talk about maybe
Edited by noavbazzer ()
stacey posted:
sorry i couldnt read the whole article because it was really poorly written and too busy sputtering agenda to say anything compelling
yeah agreed.
babyfinland posted:noavbazzer posted:babyfinland posted:
It is in fact the European philosopher himself that is the gravedigger of history, having nothing to see, nothing to say, nothing to celebrate, because this history is not his history, is not History, for History has always been His, and not anyone else’s. It is quite a moment in History when the Hegelian cannot tell between signs of a disease (shoplifting and terrorism) as the thesis and the sights of a cure (the Arab Spring) as antithesis - giving it up to generals and Islamists.this is why al jazeera opinion pieces are even worse than their fraudulent journalism
"It is in fact the European philosopher himself that is the gravedigger of history, having nothing to see, nothing to say, nothing to celebrate, because this history is not his history, is not History, for History has always been His, and not anyone else’s. "
This is one of the lines I actually sort of liked
yea, thats a good line
https://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/aug2011/zize-a27.shtml
A right-wing rant against British youth from Slavoj ZizekBy Stefan Steinberg
27 August 2011
There was no shortage of venom on the part of the British establishment directed against the youth involved in the recent protests and riots in Great Britain. The right-wing press, particularly the Murdoch empire, anxious to distract attention from its own crimes, howled for blood, publishing mug shot photos of those it termed “riot yobs” and “thugs.”
Political cover for this campaign of state and media repression was provided by leading members of the Labour Party’s so-called “left”, like former London Mayor Ken Livingstone and the prominent black rights activist and MP Dianne Abbott. Several British and German Stalinist and ex-left organizations rushed to demonstrate their own credentials as rabid advocates of capitalist law and order policies.
The latest recruit to this campaign of political slander is the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, who has launched his own vicious attack on the youth involved in the riots. Zizek recently published an article, titled cynically “Shoplifters of the World Unite,” in the leading British literary magazine London Review of Books.
Stripped of its pseudo-sociological and post-modernist trappings, the article articulates both the contempt for and fear of the working class that is the tradition hallmark of the extreme right.
Zizek criticizes the rioters for the fact that they “had no message to deliver” and then refers to (and thoroughly distorts in the process) the German philosopher Hegel to describe the youth as “rabble … who can express their discontent only through ‘irrational’ outbursts of destructive violence.”
Zizek then goes further in his defamation of those involved in the protests. Following a passing reference to one of his ideological influences, the German-American philosopher Herbert Marcuse, Zizek proclaims: “On British streets during the unrest, what we saw was not men reduced to ‘beasts’, but the stripped-down form of the ‘beast’ produced by capitalist ideology.”
According to Zizek the mindless “beasts” who took to the streets of London, Manchester and Leeds were motivated solely by the most primitive drives, first and foremost, the urge to consume. Here Zizek cites the Polish-British sociologist and post-modernist Zygmunt Bauman, who characterized the riots as the work of “defective and disqualified consumers.”
The real target of Zizek’s wrath in his polemic are what he terms “leftist liberals” who “predictably, stuck to their mantra about social programs and integration initiatives, the neglect of which has deprived second- and third-generation immigrants of their economic and social prospects.”
For Zizek such social factors are completely irrelevant when it comes to explaining the riots. After all, as this well-paid academic notes in another place in his diatribe, “The protesters, though underprivileged and de facto socially excluded, weren’t living on the edge of starvation.”
In a nod towards his audience of former leftist radicals and disenchanted sections of academia, Zizek goes on to criticize one form of conservative reaction to the riots, represented by the Thatcherite wing of the British conservative party.
This allows him to then turn the stage over to one of the main political influences in his own political career, Joseph Stalin. The Soviet dictator, in his wisdom, Zizek tells us, would have condemned both the conservative and leftist reactions to the riots. Zizek’s positive reference to Stalin in his article is no coincidence, as we shall see.
His slanders directed against those involved in the riots continue and intensify. Not content with denouncing the youth as “rabble” and “beasts,” Zizek then goes on to draw an analogy between the riots and “terrorist attacks and suicide bombings.”
As is the case with all of his various essays on contemporary issues, Zizek seeks to strike a radical pose. In fact, the supposed philosopher has absolutely nothing new to say. Zizek’s ruminations in his essay about the all-embracing power of capitalism, and the utter subservience of the working class to the god of consumption are all old hat—notions elaborated and propagated decades ago by the Frankfurt School and the post-modernists.
As is the case with these latter theorists, Zizek has nothing to say about the politics of those parties and organizations which are traditionally associated with the working class—in the case of Britain, the Labour Party and the trade unions. Their betrayals are ignored. Instead Zizek instructs us that the rioters are “beasts” fully in the grip of capitalist ideology.
It is necessary to be quite blunt about the formulations used by Zizek in his article. When one puts aside the phony sociological verbiage, the arguments he puts forward would not be out of place in a tract produced by the extreme right of the political spectrum. This verdict is reinforced by the conclusion of his article.
Declaring that the riots will do nothing to change the political status quo, Zizek puts forward his own proposal for the type of dictatorial regime and “strong man” traditionally associated with Stalin and the Stalinist bureaucracy. What is necessary, Zizek argues, is “to impose a re-organization of social life. To do that, one needs a strong body able to reach quick decisions and to implement them with all necessary harshness.”
Who is Slavoj Zizek?
A brief resume of Zizek’s career makes clear that the authoritarian and virulently anti-working-class positions he has adopted in the London Review of Books are not accidental.
The son of hard-line Stalinist parents in former Yugoslavia, Zizek took his first post-university job in 1977 working for the Central Committee of the Slovenian League of Communists. Amongst his tasks was writing speeches for members of the Stalinist bureaucracy.
Zizek had studied philosophy as a student, specializing in the forms of western ideology which were popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Through his studies he was able to develop his first contacts with west European academic layers. Realizing in the 1980s that Tito’s so-called “third way” in Yugoslavia—aimed at maneuvering between the Stalinist bureaucracy in the east and the imperialist countries in the west—was destined to failure, Zizek joined the pro-capitalist, secessionist Liberal Democracy of Slovenia (LDS) in the late 1980s.
Zizek was no mere party foot soldier. In 1990 he was a candidate for the post of President of Slovenia, losing out narrowly to another LDS candidate. The LDS led coalition governments from 1992 to 2004 and was instrumental in implementing capitalist shock therapy economic policies in Slovenia following its secession from Yugoslavia. Zizek continued to actively support the party throughout this period.
At the same time Zizek was also able to develop his links with former leftist organizations that had drawn thoroughly pessimistic conclusions from the collapse of the eastern European Stalinist states and were increasingly accommodating themselves to capitalism and the free market. Alongside his political activities for the LDS, Zizek wrote essays in the British theoretical magazine New Left Review, whose leading staff were drawn from the ranks of the United Secretariat, which had broken with Trotskyism in 1953.
With the support of such forces Zizek was able to publish a series of essays and books, winning an audience among demoralized and cynical layers of the ex-left with his own brand of neo-Stalinist authoritarianism and cultural criticism, spiced with sexual innuendo and toilet humor.
While supporting the neo-liberal LDS, Zizek never made a secret of his continuing admiration for Stalin. In his books and essays he variously refers to “the inner greatness of Stalinism” and the “emancipatory potential” of Stalinist ideology “even at its most totalitarian.” Zizek has even defended Stalin’s policy of the forced collectivization in the late 1920s, which cost the lives of millions of Soviet peasants.
Together with his close political collaborator, the French Maoist Alain Badiou, Zizek has also publicly supported Mao’s disastrous cultural revolution.
Zizek’s open embrace of Stalinist authoritarianism (note 1), glorification of capitalism (2), dismissal of the working class (3), unabashed idealism (4) and occasional defense of figures of the extreme right (5), have proved no obstacle to organizations eager to jump on the bandwagon of this fraud and political provocateur. For the past decade the chief political sponsor of Zizek has been the state capitalist Socialist Workers Party in Britain.
Already in 2001, the leader of the SWP, Alex Callinicos, gave his imprimatur for close collaboration with the Slovenian writer. Callinicos wrote in the magazine Historical Materialism “as eloquent and original (a) writer as Zizek is a powerful and welcome recruit to the anti-capitalist struggle.” Since then Callinicos and the SWP have regularly provided a platform for Zizek at summer events held in both Britain and Germany.
Zizek’s vile tirade against those taking part in the recent British street protests should be taken as a warning: a qualitative shift is underway amongst a layer of the ex-radical middle class left. In the case of the NATO-led operation against Libya, the Pabloite United Secretariat and other ex-left organizations have openly embraced the foreign policy ambitions of the imperialist powers that conducted the war. Zizek speaks on behalf of sections of the middle class, including a host of ex-left organizations, who are increasingly alarmed by the inability of the discredited labor organizations to stifle growing popular opposition to social decline.
Zizek’s article in the London Review of Books makes clear that the British bourgeoisie can rely on the ready support of such petty-bourgeois forces in its search for new forms of authoritarian rule to impose draconian social cuts and tame the working class “beast.”
Notes:
Note 1: A Google image search using the terms Zizek and Stalin, links to a photo of Zizek lying in bed in his apartment in Ljubljana. Above his head is a portrait of Stalin.
Very interesting
a photo of Zizek lying in bed in his apartment in Ljubljana. Above his head is a portrait of Stalin.
lol
Crow posted:
Excellent Trotskyite takedown on Zizek
https://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/aug2011/zize-a27.shtml
a whiny polemic unworthy of an ice-axe
FyadorPostoevsky posted:a photo of Zizek lying in bed in his apartment in Ljubljana. Above his head is a portrait of Stalin.lol
there's also a tiny bust of stalin on his nightstand that they missed lol 
push irony to infinity and beyond
babyfinland posted:
Dabashi also places the 2009 Iranian Green Thing in the same political arena so lol it up
funnily enough in the first days of it zizek was positively jubilant, in one of those "notes toward a definition of communist culture" classes which were happening at the time he talks about how hes feeling absolutely vindicated in his belief that islam can be a progressive force
Impper posted:
is the artical itself funnier or is it funnier that ames linked to it while going like "LOL ZIZEK "
ames. the exiled is always funnier than even a trot! a first worldy social fascist & nihilist pickin up trot articles makes the trot article even funnier!
Crow posted:
Impper posted:
is the artical itself funnier or is it funnier that ames linked to it while going like "LOL ZIZEK "
ames. the exiled is always funnier than even a trot! a first worldy social fascist & nihilist pickin up trot articles makes the trot article even funnier!
agreed. oH hell yeah!
