Slovenia’s celebrity Marxist theoretician Slavoj Žižek gained
a new and unexpected endorsement. A leading expert on interpreting philosophers
from Marx to Lacan to Hegel, Žižek is not a newcomer to Russian politics. He
has written on the war in Ukraine, calling “Putin’s foreign policy…a clear
continuation of the tsarist-Stalinist line,” but also questioning Europe’s
capacity to support “emancipatory politics” in Ukraine. Žižek also conducted a
public correspondence with Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova while she was in
prison. These prison letters, which traded views on activism and subversion,
were recently published under the title Comradely Greetings.
Žižek’s status as a leading light of the radical left and his
relationship with Pussy Riot made it all the more unexpected when Alexey
Pushkov, chair of the Duma’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, tweeted a quote from
Žižek along with a short commentary. “Fundamentalism is a reaction…to the flaw
of liberalism, and this is why it is again and again generated by liberalism,”
Pushkov tweeted, quoting Žižek. What did one of the most prominent backers of
Vladimir Putin’s adventurist foreign policy and conservative domestic politics
find so interesting in a radical theoretician? And what does this tell us about
the state of political ideas in Russia more generally?
The context of Žižek’s quote about liberalism and
fundamentalism was the killing of Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, who Pushkov has
criticized for their willingness to criticize and insult religious believers. Žižek’s
article on Charlie Hebdo, published early January in the New Statesman,
argued that liberalism was in part to blame for the type of religious
fundamentalism that leads to terrorism. Žižek’s rationale was that
fundamentalism emerges from liberalism’s refusal to embrace revolutionary
demands. “Is the rise of radical Islamism not exactly correlative to the
disappearance of the secular Left in Muslim countries,” Žižek asked, implying
that if radical leftist movements had succeeded, fundamentalism would not have
taken off. As an example, Žižek cited Pakistan’s Swat valley, arguing that the
Taliban has taken advantage of divides between landless tenants and feudal
overlords. Because Western liberals have backed the feudal forces in their
fight against extremism, Žižek argues, the conflict between landowners and
landless workers continues to breed extremism. By backing reactionary forces,
liberalism has only itself to blame.
What exactly did Pushkov find appealing in this argument? It
is unlikely that the expropriation of Pakistan’s feudal barons was at the top
of his list, nor the embrace of revolutionary politics more generally. Indeed,
Pushkov and Žižek take a very different attitude toward speech and obscenity
more generally. Where Pushkov has embraced ‘traditional’ values and crusaded
against gay rights, Zizek regularly uses obscenity to provoke his readers. The
copy of Žižek’s The Puppet and the Dwarf sitting on my bookshelf has,
on its back cover, an image of Žižek lying on a couch with a tasteless portrait
of a naked woman prominently displayed above him. Žižek is hardly a natural
ally for conservative politics in Russia.
One the one hand, one could interpret Pushkov’s citation of Žižek
as purely cynical. The enemy of my enemy is my friend—and both Pushkov and Žižek
are outspoken enemies of Western liberalism. After quoting Žižek on twitter,
Pushkov followed up by arguing that “modern liberalism has turned itself into a
fundamentalist and authoritarian ideology, seeking to fully exclude any
alternatives.” Žižek would no doubt agree.
On the level of practical politics, many have noted Russia’s
backing of both far-right and far-left parties in Europe. The Kremlin wants to
undermine the European Union, and so do the far-right and far-left. Most
analysts have concluded that this is simply a marriage of convenience.
Yet the ties between Russia’s elite and the extremes of
Europe’s political spectrum are best understood a symptom not only of the
Kremlin’s political isolation in Europe, but also its struggle to articulate a
coherent governing ideology. Putin’s Russia is against liberalism, but it does
not know what it is for. The Kremlin’s PR chiefs know how to mobilize the
population only by articulating what Russia is against: gay propaganda, colored
revolutions, criticism of Russia’s role in World War II. When the government
has tried to put forth positive visions, they have fallen flat. For example,
Vladislav Surkov’s concept of ‘sovereign democracy,’ often celebrated as the
defining ideology of Putin’s government, was abandoned because it lacked
practical substance.
Similarly, the ‘Russian world’ that Putin promised to defend
after the annexation of Crimea has been downplayed since. Perhaps the Kremlin
realizes that whipping up ethnic Russian nationalism threatens the stability of
Russia’s multi-ethnic society. Other conservative intellectuals have argued
that Russia should seek to defend and support the Orthodox faith, but such a
position is unlikely to be sustainable in a country where much of the
population is agnostic and where many other religions, notably Islam, play a
significant role.
So Russia’s government remains ideologically rudderless, with
little agreement about what it stands for, and little clarity even about the
terms of the debate. Given the country’s tumultuous last century, it makes
sense that Russians are skeptical of grand ideological visions, and the rapid
economic growth of Putin’s first decade it power made it look wise to set aside
discussion of ideas. It was only after the Bolotnaya protests in 2012 called
for Putin’s resignation and articulated a liberal vision of Russia’s future,
that the Kremlin decided it was resolutely against liberalism. It is still
searching for an alternative ideology: trying out nationalism, testing
traditionalism, experimenting with imperialism and—most recently—dabbling in Žižek.
No comments:
Post a Comment