[http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/08/201183113418599933.html]
I think this is pretty good and it diagnoses something I've thought for a while, that there is a limit to how far radical European intellectuals like Zizek and Adam Curtis can go, and its boundaries are delineated by their ties to 20th century European history and their fundamental belief in 'politics' as such. Zizek is at odds with the idea of a completely decentralized, non-ideological way of looking at the world as the basis for new progressive forms of social organization emerging out of the various youth revolutions and protests. There's something, and I cant put my finger on it, which accounts for the affinities between the adamant silence and refusal to make demands at the center of the violence at the heart of the London riots and the Occupy movement as well as the refusal for the movements to coalesce around leaders. I think it has something to do with the ostensibly democratic systems out of which these two events have emerged where having agendas and demands are associated with a paralyzing and ultimately corrupt party politics which have consistently failed them but also the ability of various forces in these systems to co-opt revolutionary talking points.
[http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/08/201183113418599933.html]
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/10/dream_on.html]
I found that article a bit too romantic to be honest. I find the idea of anarchism and non-hierarchical organisation to be by far the most illusory conception of politics I could imagine. It either imagines a non-relation between individuals or imagines social relations "freed" from the field of power. It is all very easy to protest in a "democratic" way - it is much harder to run all of society in the same way.
ReplyDeleteI think the idea of social relations without the field of power is similar to all the puritan ideas that miss the point that social relations are nothing but the field of power. And I think that's where the difference emerges because zizek (who strongly supports the non-demanding nature of the protests) acknowledges this and affirms strengthening social relations per se (duty, restraint, diligence, obligation).
The fact of the matter is that OWS etc do not in any way disrupt the ongoing flow of capital. I definitely think that there is value in undemanding protest in order to resist, to negate and open a space for real debate. Ultimately however some sort of concrete reality must emerge. Otherwise (and this is what I think will really happen) it reminds me of the
Kafka story about the leopards who break into the temple every week until eventually they just make it part of the ritual service.
I just don't think this article is accurate in asserting that Zizek is not alive to this issue. I do not think it is for him a qn of being "stuck" in old politics, I think it is genuine informed belief.
zizek here:
ReplyDelete[http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/783]
and i think the idea a grass roots emergence of social organisation, while being aided by new technology, misses the fact that everything new starts out that way and then powers of domination do emerge. so all systems are dynamic and thus a contestable space emerges in order to keep it in check (ie social relations are theoretically supposed to have the power to keeping a certain "balance" to society) - in any event old "politics" is one aspect of this dynamic contestable space and in the last 10-20 years that space has collapsed.
ReplyDeleteI think everybody already knows and understands that the danger of occupy movements and such will be co-opted, I think everyone involved in the movements perceives it as their greatest threat and that what they are doing is deliberately positioning themselves in such a way as that it cannot be assimilated or 'naturalized'. To be honest, I don't know so much about anarchism, but I really respect David Graeber, and if he had something to do with putting the protests together in the initial phases I think their ostensible 'political' silence is a conscious strategy not to fall back into something old. I mean, the question constantly being put to Zizek, if we accept his premise that we need to start imagining that there is an alternative to capital, is what do you propose to fill that space? Zizek clearly rejects 20th Century communism but does he really imagine that a more just path can be negotiated by re inscribing the antagonistic relationship between the right and the left and doing the 'work' of democracy from there? I like the sentiment of the Dabashi piece because it is Utopian and it comes from somewhere other than Europe or the West, isnt it time, from an anthropological perspective, to try a form of social organization that doesn't come from the West? Whether it be capitalism with Asian values, some form of quasi Islamic/secular state which the Arabs are proposing, or something really exciting if its true that the roots of the Occupy movement, at least in its consensus making direct democracy character are derived from Graebers ethnographic work in Madagascar fed through 90's anarchist political action. (on that note, Graeber is the most unlikely anarchist ever, he sounds like a high school geography teacher)
ReplyDelete[http://www.imposemagazine.com/bytes/transcript-slavoj-zizek-at-st-marks-bookshop]
ReplyDeleteAlright, I take some of it back. The problem is listening to what Zizek says through the media, he tends to do his standup act and repeat the same anecdotes over and over again to different situations where you can always see the punchline coming. But I get it, that's his act, what he does for bread.