from "Against the Populist Temptation"

Slavoj Žižek

http://www.lacan.com/zizpopulism.htm

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What, then, is Europe's predicament today? Europe lies in the great pincers between America on the one side and China on the other. America and China, seen metaphysically, are both the same: the same hopeless frenzy of unchained technology and of the rootless organization of the average man. When the farthest corner of the globe has been conquered technically and can be exploited economically; when any incident you like, in any place you like, at any time you like, becomes accessible as fast as you like; when, through the TV "live coverage," you can simultaneously "experience" a battle in Iraqi desert and an opera performance in Beijing; when, in a global digital network, time is nothing but speed, instantaneity, and simultaneity; when a winner in reality TV-show counts as the great man of a people; then, yes, there still looms like a specter over all this uproar the question: what for? - where to? - and what then? [25]

There is thus a need, among us, Europeans, for what Heidegger called Auseinandersetzung (interpretive confrontation) with others as well as with Europe's own past in all its scope, from its Ancient and Judeo-Christian roots to the recently deceased Welfare-State idea. Europe is today split between the so-called Anglo-Saxon model - accept the "modernization" (adaptation to the rules of the new global order) - and the French-German model - save as much as possible of the "old European" welfare-state. Although opposed, these two options are the two side of the same coin, and our true is neither to return to any idealized form of the past - these models are clearly exhausted -, nor to convince Europeans that, if we are to survive as a world power, we should as fast as possible accommodate ourselves to the recent trends of globalization. Nor is the task what is arguably the worst option, the search for a "creative synthesis" between European traditions of globalization, with the aim to get something one is tempted to call "globalization with a European face."

Every crisis is in itself an instigation for a new beginning; every collapse of short-term strategic and pragmatic measures (for financial reorganization of the Union, etc.) a blessing in disguise, an opportunity to rethink the very foundations. What we need is a retrieval-through-repetition (Wieder-Holung): through a critical confrontation with the entire European tradition, one should repeat the question "What is Europe?", or, rather, "What does it mean for us to be Europeans?", and thus formulate a new inception. The task is difficult, it compels us to take a great risk of stepping into the unknown - yet its only alternative is slow decay, the gradual transformation of Europe into what Greece was for the mature Roman Empire, a destination for nostalgic cultural tourism with no effective relevance. [26]

And - a further point apropos which we should risk the hypothesis that Heidegger was right, although not in the sense he meant it - what if democracy is not the answer to this predicament? In his Notes Towards a Definition of Culture, the great conservative T.S.Eliot remarked that there are moments when the only choice is the one between sectarianism and non-belief, when the only way to keep a religion alive is to perform a sectarian split from its main corpse. This is our only chance today: only by means of a "sectarian split" from the standard European legacy, by cutting ourselves off the decaying corpse of the old Europe, can we keep the renewed European legacy alive. Such a split should render problematic the very premises that we tend to accept as our destiny, as non-negotiable data of our predicament - the phenomenon usually designated as the global New World Order and the need, through "modernization," to accommodate ourselves to it. To put it bluntly, if the emerging New World Order is the non-negotiable frame for all of us, then Europe is lost, so the ONLY solution for Europe is to take the risk and BREAK this spell of our destiny. NOTHING should be accepted as inviolable in this new foundation, neither the need for economic "modernization" nor the most sacred liberal and democratic fetishes.

So although the French and Dutch NO is not sustained by a coherent and detailed alternate vision, it at least clears the space for it, opening up a void which demands to be filled in with new projects - in contrast to the pro-Constitution stance which effectively precludes thinking, presenting us with an administrative-political fait accompli. The message of the French NO to all of us who care for Europe is: no, anonymous experts whose merchandise is sold to us in a brightly-colored liberal-multiculturalist package, will not prevent us from THINKING. It is time for us, citizens of Europe, to become aware that we have to make a properly POLITICAL decision of what we want. No enlightened administrator will do the job for us.
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