Bartleby in power

At the end of The Parallax View, Zizek presents Bartleby's "I prefer not to" as the key figure of a new politics, a politics that moves past "the politics of 'resistance' or 'protestation,' which parasitizes upon what it negates, to a politics which opens up a new space outside the hegemonic position and its negation."

What is involved in this position?

First, Zizek differentiates his use of Bartleby from Hardt and Negri's. He points out that Hardt and Negri consider refusal as a first move toward building something new. Zizek understands "I prefer not" not as a starting point of abstract negation byt as an "underlying principle that sustains the entire movement; far from "overcoming" it, the subsequent work of construction, rather, gives body to it."
The work of constructing a new order is sustained by the "I prefer not." He writes:

The difficulty of imagining the New is the difficulty of imagining Bartleby in power. Thus the logic of the move from superego-parallax to the Bartleby parallax is very precise: it is the move from something to nothing, from the void to its own place. ... In other words, Bartleby's gesture is what remains of the supplement to the Law when its place is emptied of all its obscene superego content.

Second, the withdrawal of Bartleby's "I prefer not" is primarily a withdrawal from resistance, from charity, and from the faux-Buddhist illusion of capital as a game. What this means for Zizek is that the refusal is a formal gesture; not one to be filled in with a specific content.

Zizek sums up the idea with Anthony Perkins (from Psycho) as the ultimate Bartleby who "couldn't even hurt a fly." He writes:

There is no violent quality in it; the violence pertains to its very immobile, inert, insistent, passive being.
    Bartleby couldn't even hurt a fly--that what makes his presence so unbearable.

How might we think about this Bartleby-parallax?

First, as another name for the discursive social link characterized by the discourse of the analyst. Here, objet petit a remains empty (unlike in the perverse discourse). So, the formal refusal is a refusal of contents.

Second, Bartleby-parallax involves violence. On the one hand, Zizek continues to emphasize that revolutionary violence is liberating in and of itself. In fact, he turns around the old adage but breaking a few eggs to say that "You can't break eggs ...without making omlets!" Nevertheless, he adds that revolutionary violence should not be confused with violent outbursts that bear witness to a more fundamental impotence. For violence to be more than a gesture to insure that nothing really changes,

"this very place should be opened up through a gesture which is thoroughly violent in its impassive refusal, through a gesture of pure withdrawal in which ... nothing will have taken place but the place itself.

Third, this impassive refusal is the other side (not the precondition of) building something new, the work of the negative.

What does this formulation offer?

One shouldn't expect a psychoanalytically informed theory to offer solace or answers; as Zizek repeats time and again, the point is not the imposition of a new Master signifier (or, contra Badiou, the introduction of new names). It's possible that this clarifies to an extent Zizek's thinking about violence--violent refusal over pointless outburst.  What is difficult, for me at least, is to think what a kind of work of building a new community rooted in "I prefer not" would look like. To this extent, the introduction of Bartleby (where Zizek before had been discussing the Pauline work of love) makes matter more opaque.

Comments

Padraig - No, no, no, no. This dialgoue with you increasingly is making me feel like I am banging my head against a brick wall. I am simply drawing attention to a formal example. I am making no positive injunction to, as you colourfully put it, "embrace hedonistic Kapitalist pornography." But perhaps I have not explained myself very well, so I will try again.

This is my claim: the EVPC wanted to think about the question of being-together. In order to do this, they began to conduct experiments on themselves and their sexual identities by beginning to make pornography movies. Since they were not doing this simply to pursue pleasure, but rather to think and explore the problem of being-together, I don't think that this can be called hedonistic. Nor, I think, can it all be called in any sense "kapitalist" since they were not selling their movies on the market, and indeed, were profoundly hostile to the idea.

Everything you have said so far, delivered in the form of a curious polemic, directed at I am not sure whom exactly, seems to me only to connect tangentially to this, at best. I am not a loss. I really don't understand what you are trying to say here. Something about smug american academics? Something about the apocalypse? Something about pornography? Something about Zizek?

[Nate]

hi CR,
It's from his Treatise of Human Nature. I found the part I was thinking of online here - http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/h/hume/david/h92t/chapter63.html

The line is "It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger."

It's in the sixth paragraph from the top, the one that begins "What may at first occur ..."

best,
Nate

[Josef K.]

Nate - Good question. I am suppose that I trying to think about this Zizekian conditional from a more Deleuzian/Foucauldian perspective, and this might not be the best way to think about it. Actually, something Padraig said which I think I may just now have perhaps deciphered: the end of the world against a simple change in the social system. What if the simple change in the social system is, in a certain way, the end of the world? At least, "a" world - isn't this what Badiou is talking about when he discusses truth procedeures in the context of how fidelity to a truth gives birth to a new world as such? The EVPC had pledged fidelity to the the truth of consensual organization? Finding themselves in a tight spot, they could have abandoned this truth for the sake of an easier resolution to the problem that faced them, but preferred not to, and thus found themselves forced to examine what the role that they wanted to play in the world actually amounted to.

[Not Given]

Hi again Josef K,

RE: Refusal

Perhaps we could return to your original example above by re-configuring it into a Formal Example [a non-existent one], thusly:

I would like to present an example where I have actually seen this at work, in the excellent photographic series of footage "Made in Abu Ghraib", transmitted by broadcast and print media throughout the world in the recent past. This example is a little weird, but I am interested in what other people might have to say about it.

These photo news reports and documentaries present the activities of a group of ingenue Marine Corp grunts and members of Special Operation Force working with Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade 25th Infantry Division Stryker Brigade Combat Team, I'm led to think, who begin to shoot pornographic photographs of themselves and their prisoners, which they then show to themselves to further enlighten their sexual identities and heighten their sense of belonging. The news footage documents their efforts making their latest pornographic photo-album. At the beginning of these news reports, one member of the group is witnessed announcing that she will be unable to participate in this photo endeavour, as she has been assigned to Black ops to scan for enemy activity down a street in Mosul for the duration that they will be shooting their photo album. At the end of the Mother Green group photo shoot, she returns, and the reunited Mother-Green-Mean-Machine collective then watch their latest photographic work together. After they view it, one member announces that a bro in CENTCOM has established an underground pornographic Abu Ghraib photo competition and suggests they should submit their own Album. Pretty much, everyone agrees, except for this one person who had been in Mosul, who had not even been in any of the photographs, and who had not been involved at all in making the Album.

A strange objection. She says that she would not feel comfortable, she does not know why, she is being irrational, she cannot explain it, but nonetheless she would not feel comfortable. Temperatures threaten to become heated before somebody wisely suggests that they convene a proper meeting to discuss this problem.

The Mother-Green Marine Corp collective, which has a policy that all decisions taken must be unanimous, threatens to break apart. This person wonders aloud whether she should leave, head on up to Falluja where Intel says they've got Condition Red. The rest of the collective refuses to agree. And eventually, after an entire day discussing things, they resolve to submit the Photographic Album to their CENTCOM bro's underground porno competition.

A fortunate coincidence one might suggest. And indeed, it certainly was - a very fundamental issue was at stake in their deliberations, related to the part that they wanted to play in the world, and this issue one might think will almost inevitably recur in the future. But the crucial point is this: faced with a situation in which they could have devolved back into the majority-vote system, they instead preferred to simply not to, and indeed, risk everything - even, indeed, their own existence as a collective, in order to try and arrive at a solution that may have proved impossible.

And is this is not what Zizek means? The revolutionary act was not the solution. Rather, it was the pure wager of simply refusing the presented, common-sense alternatives, and rather radicallly taking that refusal where it went.

This is my claim: the Marine Corp Abu Ghraib Collective wanted to think about the question of being-together. In order to do this, they began to conduct experiments on themselves, their prisoners, and their sexual identities by beginning to make pornographic photo-albums. Since they were not doing this simply to pursue pleasure, but rather to think and explore the problem of being-together, I don't think that this can be called hedonistic. Nor, I think, can it all be called in any sense "kapitalist" since they were not selling their photos on the market, and indeed, were profoundly hostile to the idea.

Will [decide to] make omelette, Will [of necessity then] break eggs - but ya can leave out the Vinegar Refusal ...

[Padraig]

Above post Was Given, but the softwarebot likes the refusnik heuristic

[josef k.]

This is rather witty, Padraig, but also rather stupid. Do I really need to tell you why? Do you not think that there is a rather important difference between experimenting on yourself, with others, with the consent of everyone involved, and experimenting, from a position of power, on others, without their consent. In other words, in short, in Padraig-World, does sex equal rape?

PS - Just as a matter of style, I would really be intrigued to find out what point you think that you are making by writing capital with the letter K. Do you think it is Klever?

[Padraig]

"Do you not think that there is a rather important difference between experimenting on yourself, with others, with the consent of everyone involved, and experimenting, from a position of power, on others, without their consent. In other words, in short, in Padraig-World, does sex equal rape?"

Consent. Ah, yes, that hairy auld "free will" chestnut "Oh, but I freely choose to be a prostitute! I freely choose to allow myself to be gratuitously mutilated. A great, profitable Career Choice." You see, its not that they don't consent, they're just not yet sufficiently Enlightened, but just a little roughing up and, shure, they'll then Get With The Programme ...

[Padraig]

"why ... capital with the letter K. Do you think it is Klever?"

Hell, its supposed to be Kryptic, which it Klearly now is hereabouts.

[josef k.]

You are an idiot.

[josef k.]

Perhaps a holy one, but this remains to be determined.

[Nate]

Josef,
It would have been funner if you'd said "Klutz" or "Klod" or "Kretin," etketera.
regards,
Nate

[josef k.]

Krackpot, Klown, Krazy...

[Padraig]

A Cafkaesque Kunt