Unknown Knowns

"In February 2002, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld engaged in a bit of amateur philosophizing about the relationship between the known and the unknown: "There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns-the ones we don't know we don't know." For Rumsfeld, these "unknown unknowns" represent the greatest threats facing the United States. But Rumsfeld forgot to add the crucial fourth term: the unknown knowns, things we don't know that we know-which is precisely the Freudian unconscious, the "knowledge which doesn't know itself," as the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan used to say. In many ways, these unknown knowns, the disavowed beliefs and suppositions we are not even aware of adhering to, may pose an even greater threat." Zizek, Iraq's False Promises

I believe Zizek is touching on a larger question than the disavowed reasons for the current US invasion of Iraq (and the larger "war on terror").  In general terms, we ought to ask about the obscene practices we pretend not to know about (like torture), even though they form the background of our public values.

Zizek himself provides an interesting suggestion when discussing the torture at Abu Ghraib, specifically "the theatricality" of the pictures:

To anyone acquainted with the reality of the American way of life, the photos brought to mind the obscene underside of U.S. popular culture - say, the initiatory rituals of torture and humiliation one has to undergo to be accepted into a closed community. Similar photos appear at regular intervals in the U.S. press after some scandal explodes at an Army base or high school campus, when such rituals went overboard. Far too often we are treated to images of soldiers and students forced to assume humiliating poses, perform debasing gestures and suffer sadistic punishments.

The torture at Abu Ghraib was thus not simply a case of American arrogance toward a Third World people. In being submitted to the humiliating tortures, the Iraqi prisoners were effectively initiated into American culture: They got a taste of the culture's obscene underside that forms the necessary supplement to the public values of personal dignity, democracy and freedom. No wonder, then, the ritualistic humiliation of Iraqi prisoners was not an isolated case but part of a widespread practice.Zizek/ What Rumsfeld Doesn't Know
That He Knows About Abu Ghraib

As RIPope points out, we already see criticism of the victims of Hurricane Katrina.  What is already emerging from the media coverage is a general sense that those who did not leave are responsible for their own suffering, that they were "too stupid or lazy" to evacuate so why should we care.  This provides another example of what Jodi Dean has called a "culture of cruelty" - the "obscene supplement" of sadism as the subtext for American compassion.

And it also reveals a not so subtle racism in that many of those caught in the devastation are african american.  The fact that the broader community can "blame the victim" reflects a key component of ideology:  inappropriate expressions of scorn serve the purpose of binding the community together by excluding those who are most vulnerable.  It will be interesting to see in the coming days how the government, and the media respond to the crisis.  I suspect much of the coverage will focus on the looting and civil unrest, and not on the hopelessly inadequate response of the city, state, and federal agencies. (For more on the political response see John's post.)

Comments

[Amie]

Alain, thanks very much for once again posing a timely question.
Having not read the Zizek text you mention, I'd really like to know more about what he is getting at with the "fourth term", the unknown knowns, the knowledge which doesn't know itself, in the context in which he poses it. Perhaps you or Jodi or someone else would care to so so?

When I hear "unknown unknowns" and Freud, it is hard to not think of "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" where Freud in trying to explain the pleasure principle and the principle of the death drive, admits that what he has come up with is not an explanation of one by the other but rather a "relation" of two unknowns, and the one ( the death drive ) being a principle that undermines all principles!
Lest this make Freud sound like the Rumsfeld of the "there are things we dont't know we don't know", let me hasten to add that for Freud the two drives ( pleasure/death ) are not opposed...so what exactly is the knowledge we know we don't know?

[David]

Links to the Žižek articles:

http://lacan.com/zizek-iraq2.htm
http://lacan.com/zizekrumsfeld.htm

why is it when you google wmd, the first website you get is World Movement for Democracy?

[Jill Harrison]

I do not think that you need to go to Freud for "unknown knowns". I think of them more as things that some people know but leaders seem to be oblivious to.
For example, various people knew about Middle Eastern people training as pilots in the US before 9/11. This was known by some people in the US but not to the CIA or George Bush.
Another category is lessons from history where everybody knows and leaders should know that:
(1) wars in the Middle East are not a good idea,
(2) that taking over a country with 50 million people such as Vietnam or Iraq is pretty hard to do,
(3) soldiers get killed in wars,
(4) more soldiers get killed the longer the occupation lasts.
Yet this seems to be an unknown known for George W. Bush.

[Squibb]

Iraq has a population of roughly 26 million people. I call that a known known.

[Matt]

Minus roughly 650,000 recently slaughtered as they were in the way of future US military bases.

[Jill]

Sorry about the wrong population of Iraq.

I guess that was a wrongly-known known, like knowing that Iraq had WMD.