Zizek and Us

One of my favorite books in political theory is Althusser's Machiavelli and Us. Althusser reads Machiavelli (with and through Gramsci) as particularly difficult insofar as Machiavelli presents himself as scientific and objective, yet somehow unsystematizable. Althusser writes:

...the central point where everything is tied up endlessly escapes detection. It is impossible to provide a systematic, non-contradictory and complete exposition of a theory presented strangely, in the form of fragments of a whole that has been deemed 'unfinished' (Croce), but instead seems absent--and fragments arranged in a strangely deformed space, constructed in such a fashion that it is not possible to encompass or hold them together in perfect unity.

To my mind, Althusser's point applies well to Zizek.

On the one hand, given that Zizek's upcoming book is titled The Parallax View, one might want to read this deformation (this ruptured, impossible, or forever incomplete unity) in terms of the displacement that arises when one observes an object from different positions. This reading accords nicely with Althusser's reading of Machiavelli and Gramsci insofar as Althusser emphasizes the way that the modern prince cannot be a fixed point, cannot be localized, but must be recast as mobile and in history.

On the other hand, we could also, as a start, draw from another of Althusser's points, namely, that Machiavelli is attempting to think in the conjuncture, to think in an uncertain place of contradiction wherein the meaning of any and all specific elements not only changes but can be thought in terms of relations of force and hence changed. Accordingly, as Althusser writes:

let us say that the present space of an analysis of the political conjuncture, in its very texture, comprising opposed and intermingled forces, makes sense only if it arranges or contains a certain place, a certain empty place: empty in order to be filled, empty so as to have inserted in it the action of the individual or group who will come and take a stand there, so as to rally, to constitute the forces capable of accomplishing the political task assigned by history--empty for the future.

What does this have to do with Zizek? My thesis is that Zizek should be read as thinking in the conjuncture. And, more specifically, this means that his theoretical work needs to be read in terms of this process of emptying. In his (and Hegel's) language, it means that we take seriously the work of the negative.

Such a thesis allows us to understand his key themes in terms of this emptying out in order to produce a political space that can be filled. Thus, the decline of symbolic efficiency or fact that the big Other doesn't exist reminds us that anything is possible. Similarly, Zizek's emphasis on subjective destitution, correlative to the non-existence of the big Other, eliminates any stake and/or stain that might attach a subject to existing relations or to a future already filled. At the same time, Zizek's emphasis on responsibility, on a willingness to go to the limit, indicates the political element of the action of taking a stand in an empty place, a radical and risky move insofar as it is not guaranteed in advance.

(Incidentally, this is precisely the location of John Holbo's misreading of Zizek on Brecht. Holbo thinks that Zizek replaces one ethical imperative with another. Zizek's point is that a revolutionary imperative is not ethical in the sense of being part of a general framework or worldview. Insofar as a revolution brings something new into being, radically changing the contours of what counts as right or wrong, one cannot equate the political situation of 'it is not permitted for us not to kill' as the same as an ethical duty which can deliver enjoyment (getting off on killing, say). Zizek's discussion of the Stalinist show trials also make clear that Holbo is wrong in equating killing for the sake of the revolution with utilitarian rationalism. The demand of the Party had nothing to do with reason--to say so is to posit a truth outside the Party, which itself is already to be an enemy of the Party. I should add that Holbo is also confused about the idea of a vanishing mediator, a concept Zizek takes from Jameson to refer to historical configurations that function in a specific way and then either wither away or have a change in function; the key examples are Calvinists and new social movements in the former Eastern Europe.)

That Zizek provides no guarantees does not mean that his "emptying out" is an emptying into nothing, an attempt to adopt some kind of pure or divine stance. His emptying out, then, is quite specific: an emptying out of enjoyment, the obscene enjoyment that continues to stain the law (as its hidden foundation, practical realization, or simply out of the perverse kick we get when doing our duty lets us really screw somebody else).

I say this because unlike, say, Agamben, Zizek does not abandon the law. He does not suggest or appeal to relations between people that could somehow be beyond the law. Instead, they are always within the law, necessarily so as long as we remain subjects in language, connected to others. What psychoanalysis lets him do, in other words, is refrain from idealizing relations to others in terms of animal bliss and to recognize that the universal dimension of law is what enables us to grasp the problems and deficiencies inhering in law.

To this extent, we should take Zizek's Kantianism absolutely seriously: what sort of a law can we imagine ourselves as bringing into being? As long as we imagine ourselves as concrete others, this law will be terrifying, potentially violent, a harsh enforcer at odds with our particularities. If we posit ourselves instead as symbolic others, the others of the norm, of toleration, neutrality, and fairness, our law will turn into its opposite--intolerant, partisan, cruel. Instead, we have to work through law as Real, as ourselves undignified, lacking, uncertain, incomplete, and given. We need law, but law is not everything (the Real is the symbolic in the form of non-all). With law understood as incomplete, as non-all, we have spaces for enjoyment outside the law. This is how I understand Zizek's emphasis on Christianity and the work of love: this love doesn't mean we don't need law; it means that law by itself is not enough.

In sum, it seems to me that Althusser's Machiavelli gives us insight into Zizek as Zizek takes the position of the lacanian analyst (objet petit a, excremental remainder). The point is to clear away a space, to create an opening that can be occupied (never filled). And, the conditions of this occupation require not simply an Act, but responsibility, and collectivity thought through law and love. That Zizek doesn't tell us what to think is like both Machiavelli as he tries to think something new in the conjuncture and like the analyst who of course can't tell us--the very possibility that he could is a fantasy that he could deliver enjoyment.