Let not propositions and "ideas" be the rules of your Being. The Fuhrer alone is the present and future German reality and its law. Learn to know ever more deeply: from now on every single thing demands decision, and every action responsibility. Heil Hitler!
Martin Heidegger, 1933
The on going discussion of Carl Schmitt has reminded me of another National Socialist thinker, Martin Heidegger. These thoughts also seem to coincide with recent remarks Zizek has made during his Birkbeck lectures (via Daniel at Different Maps)
I give you example of Nietzsche and Hitler - okay, I know this was vulgarization, but nonetheless - Nazi party really did legitimize themselves with his philosophy! I will say something horrible - this figure of rejuvenating provocateur, what if this was exactly Hitler? And you know what, in a certain way: this was what he was! After all, it was only after war that for the first time ever in history liberal state power accepted role of universal provider of welfare! I am not going to turn into liberal now, but this is real achievement!"
Whether Hitler can really take any credit for the post-war welfare state seems dubious. But that detail aside, the general tone of his comments remind me of some of his more troubling declarations about the necessity of revolutionary leadership:
“Liberal Democracy tends toward "rational" decisions within the limits of (what is perceived as) the possible; for more radical gestures proto - "totalitarian" charismatic structures, with a plebiscitarian logic where one "freely chooses the imposed solution," are more effective... often, one does need a Leader in order to be able to "do the impossible." The Authentic leader is literally the One who enables me to actually choose myself - subordination to him is the highest act of freedom.” (Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? Pgs 246-247)
Before I proceed any further, late me state that I am very sympathetic to many of the criticisms Zizek levies against democracy, especially as it seems to provide the ideological supplement for what Jodi Dean has called communicative capitalism. But when Zizek moves toward a description of what a true revolution looks like, he inevitably relies on the image of a ruthless (but principled) vanguard coldly implementing authentic acts of violence.
Toward the end of his most recent work, The Parallax View, he deepens his description with a subtle contrast between "the analyst" and "the totalitarian leader." The distinction rests upon the “difference between the perverse social link (in which the pervert knows what the other really wants) and the discourse of the analyst who, while occupying this place of supposed knowledge, keeps it empty:”
Here we should not be afraid to come to a radical conclusion concerning the figure of the leader: as a rule, democracy cannot reach beyond pragmatic utilitarian inertia, it cannot suspend the logic of “servicing goods”; consequently, just as there is no self-analysis, since the analytic change can occur only through the transferential relationship to the external figure of the analyst, a leader is necessary to trigger enthusiasm for a Cause, to bring about radical change in the subjective position of his followers, to “transubstantiate” their identity. (Parallax View, Pg 380)
Now there are many questions one can pose at this point: is Zizek really advocating for a version of the Fuhrer Principle? If so, clearly the ends he supports are the very opposite of the Nazis agenda - but is it enough to assert the liberatory origins of Stalinism over the fascist racism of Hitler? He quite often makes the point that fascist displays of violence aim at terrorizing the community so that “nothing will really happen,” while authentic revolutionary violence changes “the basic coordinates of a constellation.” While I agree this is a distinction worth making (and Zizek provides wonderful examples), I wonder if all successful mass movements are necessarily defined by charismatic leadership? Do such leaders merely provide a "face" or are they the real catalysts for change? Clearly one can think of several charismatic figures (Ghandi, MLK, Ceasar Chavez) whose impact was essential - but do they exhaust the limits of what is possible?
Good points, Alain. Sometimes, it seems like Zizek's politics might be best described as Daddy politics - I guess, 'perverse', which is hardly resistant or oppositional so much as deferential in its own way. And there's a lot of ambivalence about the 'empty space' - insofar as it continues to be conceived as a lack, there's an inclination to 'fill it out'.
Relatedly, you might find Ida Dominijanni's "Heiress at Twilight" of interest, the pdf here. On sexual difference, democracy, Tronti ...
In any event, I'm doubtful that any critique of democracy is possible by counterposing 'the empty space' -- which is, after all, the idealised form of citizenship and commodity-form, a purported 'neutrality' -- to that of a 'filled' subjectivity (one with definite 'values', 'Australian values', 'family values', and so on). Democracy is, methinks, the oscillation between these 'two poles' [more here].
Posted by: s0metim3s | June 23, 2006 at 12:37 AM
Angela, thanks for the kind words. And I will definitely read the links, they look interesting. I agree with you about his inclination toward "Daddy politics" - Zizek does well at debunking ideology but then falls prone to strong-man cliches. Not that I discount the importance of leadership, but there has to be more to it than that.
Posted by: Alain | June 23, 2006 at 10:44 AM
Alain,
Provocative and well posed. So, in the first cite box, Zizek says often one needs a leader. You might say sometimes, rather than often, but this does not seem to be where the core of your concern lies, if I'm reading you accurately. And, I would say that Zizek's point in the first box is, while generally rejected by so-called radical democrats, right: in black politics, one often hears concern about the absence of black leaders; it's also the case among progressives in the US that there is concern about the lack of leadership. So, the point about political leaders here is fairly well established, even if rejected by some on the left.
That said, it seems clear that Zizek does not think that all mass movements rely on charismatic leaders, that he does not think that this exhausts the limits of the possible. His discussions of change in the former East bloc (in his early writing) for example clearly illustrates radical transformation without such leaders.
To my mind, what is at stake is clearing out a space on the left that has been occluded, namely, a space of conviction, organization, and leadership. So, in Revolution at the Gates, Zizek can present the Party in the position of the Leader and Analyst. This has the advantage of being easier to see as a form than simply the Leader (although Althusser's readings of Gramsci and Machiavelli also suggest that the modern prince need not be and likely cannot be a singular person). And, why not, in today's media environment, the Leader can be emptier than ever! Bush is surely a figure filled in by ideology. Subcommandante Marcos, many say, is not one person at all but a kind of figure. I think the key here, then, is a position of transference.
Also, I disagree with Angela on the lack: the key element in Zizek's theory is not filling in the lack, which would be fantasy, but having the courage to keep it open, not to accept false fillers and totalizations. The lack is a way of recognizing the unavoidability of antagonism and the failure of any fantasy vision of this antagonism to capture it.
Posted by: Jodi | June 23, 2006 at 11:40 AM
Jodi, thank you for the thoughtful response. I agree with almost everything you say but yet I am not convinced that this is Zizek's position. And as I write this, I am immediately reminded of Kenneth's (and my own) comment at your blog recently - that at this point we both enjoy reading your articulation of his position more than Zizek's. In my opinion his rhetoric reflects a nostalgia for the "good old days" when revolutionaries were "real men," willing to do what needed to be done.
It is definitely comments like the one from his Totalitarianism book that trouble me the most. Are we really most free when we subordinate ourselves to the revolutionary leader, however this leadership is understood? And I accept he is trying to flesh out a model that works off of the analytic mechanism of transference - but this comparison has its limits, given that the therapueutic situation does not necessitate real acts of violence, or mass social unrest.
The only part of your comment I would quibble with is that Zizek does seem ambivalent about filling in the lack. When he gets caught up in discussing "really existing revolutions" he seems to accept the necessity of the fantasy for their efficacy to take hold. But I can't think of a textual example at the moment to back this up.
And thanks again Jodi. I think I might follow up on this with some of his remarks about Heidegger in the Parallax View - they also seem pertinent to the discussion.
Posted by: Alain | June 23, 2006 at 12:28 PM
Hi Alain--on efficacy of revolutions, it seems to me that Zizek's view requires that this remain unknown, suspended, that the entire theory of the Act is rooted in something like a must that takes hold without the assurance of a can.
That said, I think your worries are warranted. For a time while writing the Zizek book I considered emphasizing his language of 'bravely going to the limit,' a language that is hard to reconcile with becoming an object of the catalytic Act.
I continue to wonder whether I am wrong in thinking these emphases can be separated, and, not just with respect to Zizek but with respect to radical political change.
Also, I think you are right about massive social unrest escaping the confines of a discussion of transference. Transference comes in, perhaps, in at least three other ways: organized movement, organized rebuilding, and the retrospective interpretation of the Act.
Posted by: Jodi | June 23, 2006 at 03:16 PM
Jodi, I agree with your last point: there are elements of social movements that can be subject to transference. And I think it is a useful analytic tool for looking at how they work. I guess it comes down to what I might call the hyperbolic quality of Zizek's rhetoric, especially as it relates to violence. It really does remind me of Heidegger during the 1930's, with the romantic notions of heroic strength and courage. The difference of course is that Zizek does not embrace nationalism or the melancholic wish for rootedness.
Thanks again for your willingness to engage on this topic - I know I have a tendency to be critical.
Posted by: Alain | June 23, 2006 at 04:00 PM
I know I'm fresh off an explosion of exposure to Zen thought, and I've taken a break from playing at academic, but seriously: why isn't the pretense of holding the empty space open as lack, the courage it takes to stay in that opening and be exposed to lack, the same as filling it in by converting the lack into a substance and/or a source?
Posted by: Kenneth Rufo | June 23, 2006 at 05:39 PM
Of course, the above question just probably gets me back to an antecedent concern of mine, namely the artificial and forced distinction between the imaginary and the real that, I suspect, helps found the notion of fantasy in Zizek.
Still it does seem to me that the "courage to keep the lack open" is itself a substitution and displacement of lack, albeit in lack's name. But here, instead of a void that resists signification, lack is the very space in which one's agency to resist signification takes place; lack as procreative, I suppose. So the difference between becoming the object of the Act and "bravely going to the limit" is minute, if non-existent; they two are simply converses in the same figural construction.
Agency and, in a more subtle way, temporality, are likely the variables that force distinctions between the two formulas in Zizek, but they seem to have the same ontological character.
Posted by: Kenneth Rufo | June 23, 2006 at 06:25 PM
Jodi, I'm not sure that Zizek regards fantasy as something than can be refused, courageously or not. And I'm not sure what's meant by "false fillers". Do you mean there true ones, or that there are better and worse illusions to be distinguished?
In any case, finitude and infinitude, bodies and void, or, more specifically, difference can be rendered in ways that don't accomodate the notional pair of lack and (fantasies of) plenitude.
But more specifically here, it's telling that Zizek regards democracy as an empty place. And, having done so, the critique of democracy cannot but be worked out in the guise of plenitude, identity, the cause, etc.
Oh, and Alain, I was going to add this link to Mattick's iconoclasty. It's not so much that I think 'leadership' is necessary so much that it's a fantasy, often post factum and definitely propagandistic (partisan?).
Posted by: s0metim3s | June 24, 2006 at 12:55 AM
Christ presents an interesting example of a "charismatic leader," because his movement only really begins to have a widespread impact when he is dead. Far from seizing control of the power of the state apparatus, his power seems to stem from an execution that symbolizes his complete rejection by the state apparatus (crucifixion being reserved for revolutionaries and runaway slaves).
The "martyr effect" seems to be hard to pull off in general -- although it's cliche to say that killing the leader turns him into a martyr and risks strengthening the movement, in point of fact it's usually really really bad (if not fatal) for a movement to have its leader killed.
Posted by: Adam Kotsko | June 24, 2006 at 11:18 AM
Sometimes--Fantasy can be traversed. Also, it makes a difference whether we are talking about fundamental fantasies, the traversal of which involves subjective destitutions, or more mundane ideological fantasies that are realized through our practices.
On democracy: it's an empty place necessarily stained by a remainder; so, it can never be completely empty, it becomes stained by nationalism, capitalism, force, bureaucracy. And, these days, it's the ideological form of our attachment to Capital. I think he is right on all these counts and that it's necessary to move beyond democracy as the locus of left aspirations.
Kenneth: keeping the lack open or not filling it in is another way of noting the irreducibility of antagonism, the necessity of a remainder or excess, the way that the "world" (which can't be conceptualized per se) is non-all (not a universal held in place by an exception but a plenitude in which we are embedded but, precisely because we--subjects--are embedded in it, is ruptured, has elements of openness, etc).
On the imaginary and the Real--this is likely part of another conversation, one that I would begin with Lacan's mirror stage essay. It's likely, though, that Lacan's conceptual appartus is not useful for you and that other ones are.
Posted by: Jodi | June 24, 2006 at 11:25 AM
Jodi, I'm not sure that keeping lack open is the same as noting an irreducible antagonism, but I could be convinced of it. But regardless it seems to me that once one notes it, the lack has been displaced by its meaning - i.e., it comes to signify and thus to be resolved within the general register of the symbolic. Maybe I'll try to post about this later.
Re: Lacan, yeah, I've published this argument elsewhere, but I think the mirror stage essay installs the opposition between real and imaginary in a very tortured way, and not without requiring a metaphysics of fixed presence (through the figure of the imago). I suspect there's a homological relation between that argument and the concern I have here over the notion of fantasy on the one hand and the courage of the open lack on the other.
Posted by: Kenneth Rufo | June 24, 2006 at 12:14 PM
Kenneth, to say that there is a gap, lack, antagonism is not to signify this gap or antagonism, to render it positively or define it; rather, it's to recognize that any effort to do so will necessarily fail, be limited, fractured, disrupted, etc. For example, to say that there is fear or anxiety is not to capture or explain this fear or anxiety. Or, better, to say that sexual difference is Real is not to say that biological or gender differences capture or explain sexual difference.
To my mind, the Real makes sense as a way of designating the gap or distortion or rupture that limits the imaginary, that gives it a kind of contour that is necessarily unsatisfying.
I should add two things--one, I don't think this discussion will be terribly productive; either one finds a conceptual apparatus useful or one does not, any conceptual apparatus will have limits or gaps (I'll call this the Real); so, concepts like culture, society, economy will always come up against moments of failure. To my mind, the question then becomes whether they can help a theorist think better or more clearly about a certain matter. I've noticed that anthropologists are much more uptight about the notion of culture than others, for example.
Second matter: before I drank the Kool Aide (can I even spell it?), my biggest reservation about lacanian thought was the notion of the Real. But, then a couple of things made the concept more convincing: first, a friend, a Bosnian journalist, described an interview with a rape victim from the ethic cleansing in Kosovo. She described how the woman being interviewed was very controlled, poised, explaining very precisely the horror she had encountered. And, then she mentioned a very slight grimace of pain that flickered across the face of a member of the woman's family during the conversation. My friend described that grimace as the Real.
On a different level, it made sense to me that language can't do everything, that there are limits to, an outside, and that there is always a frustration with language, a frustration with the way it backfires and distorts; and, it seemed to me that all this frustration isn't imaginary or fantastic, that it results from limits and distortions that might as well be called Real for lack of a better term. Calling them this doesn't explain them or define them; rather, it notes the limits and ruptures in the very effort to explain or define.
Posted by: Jodi | June 25, 2006 at 01:48 PM
I agree with you, Jodi. And I'm firmly convinced of a constitutive lack at work in discourse, history, economics, politics, etc. But I think identifying that lack as a place from/in which to position one's courage is a different kettle of fish than knowing that a lack must exist because no system can suture itself to perfection. The latter treats the Real as a resistance to the symbolic, the former treats the Real as a source of resistance, and that seems qualititatively different, even opposed to the Lacanian deployment of the term.
And as far as my issue with the Real vs. the Imaginary goes, it's actually the formation of the Imaginary vis-a-vis the Real that I find problematic in Lacan's mirror stage essay. The Imaginary proper, not the Real. I think even the mirror stage address reveals the awkwardness of the construction, and I've gone ahead and posted an analysis of the mirror stage essay over at Ghost, for what it's worth, from an essay I published in a media studies journal a few years back. I don't think that the awkward and fixed presence at work in the imaginary guts psychoanalysis, by any stretch, it just means that it emerges from its own peculiar conditions, and that those conditions may not be entirely applicable to the subjects constituted in the here and now. (Fair warning, I was younger when I wrote this, and I'm not entirely fond of the flow of the prose upon looking back...)
Posted by: Kenneth Rufo | June 25, 2006 at 04:17 PM
Kenneth--I'll look at your post. For now, I don't think it's accurate to say that the lack is a place from or in which to position one's courage. Rather, what takes courage is not filling it in. So, this courage does not come from the lack. Nor is it in some way inside it. I think of it as a matter of accepting that there are no guarantees, that the results of our actions may conflict mightily with our intentions, that no theory of history or agency justifies or saves us. Even our own good will doesn't suffice--we could well be duping ourselves, enjoying our sense of courageousness or sacrifice.
So, we don't draw courage from the fact that there are no guarantees. In fact, the more I think about it, the more courage (or bravery or heroism or any of Zizek's associated rhetoric) seems off base: when we act because we must, we are catalyzed by something beyond/within us; we are an object. To describe an object as brave seems really odd. Also, would anyone describe Bartelby as brave? I doubt it.
Posted by: Jodi | June 25, 2006 at 06:01 PM
I've been reading Martha Nussbaum's work, Hiding from Humanity, lately. She uses the following quote from Winnicott in her book and in this bit from her article at The Chronicle of Higher Education:
Posted by: cynic librarian | June 26, 2006 at 11:40 AM
Is this for the privilege discussion?
Posted by: Jodi | June 26, 2006 at 12:24 PM
jodi, I think you're referring to the quote I posted? If so, I should've boldfaced the passage referring to the "father" principle, which in my mind relates to der Furherprinzip.
I think, though, that it relates just as nicely to the privilege topic.
Posted by: cynic librarian | June 26, 2006 at 12:36 PM