Slavoj Žižek comes to Seoul asking unconventional questions about global problems

http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_entertainment/539796.html

By Choi Won-hyung staff reporter 　

　

Slavoj Zizek, a Slovenian cultural theorist known for his radical blend of realpolitik and pop culture, is visiting Korea this week after having been away since his 2003 appearance at the Conference of Korean Philosophers.

The first stop on his itinerary this time was a conversation with Hong Se-hwa, a noted progressive writer in Korea. The meeting coincided with the 62nd anniversary Monday of the start of the Korean War, saw Zizek talking about the current crisis in the capitalist system, and what “progressives” and “leftists” should be aiming for at such a time. He also spent two hours sharing his thoughts on the division of the Korean Peninsula and the continuity of the regime in Pyongyang.

Hong began the conversation on the topic of the recent second round of elections in Greece as a way of gauging the direction of the financial crisis in Europe. In light of the results, he asked what Zizek expected to see with the crisis in the global capitalist system.

Zizek argued that the situation in Greece, which is closely linked to Europe’s most developed economies, was a good example of the inability of even Western states to move forward from the current crisis of capitalism or sustain a welfare state.

He also voiced concern that democracy might suffer a setback from the ultimate victory of New Democracy, which supports austerity measures leveled against Greece. Zizek said that what worried him most in the crisis are the moves toward a “divorce” in the marriage between democracy and capitalism.

Although capitalism has supported democracy to date, Zizek predicted, the new model of post-neoliberal capitalism would not require it. He pointed to a global trend, and the resulting problems, of non-democratically elected “technocrats” making the important decisions in countries like Russia, Italy, and Greece.

He also took a positive view of the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA), which drew support in the election by presenting a clear choice between accepting austerity and negotiating the bailout. Zizek said that SYRIZA brought order to the Greek chaos, and that a victory for it might have opened the way for a new type of citizenship.

He argued that while the coalition failed to come to power after a below-the-belt propaganda offensive charging that they would bring “Stalinism” to Greece, its ability to increase its support levels from under 5% to between 25% and 29% by searching for a “way of surviving in the Eurozone” provided an instructive example for the rebuilding of a new left-wing party in South Korea.

Hong went on to ask about the difficulties leftists are facing around the world. He noted the South Korean example, in which the military dictatorship was brought to an end by the June 1987 democracy struggle, but the next ten years of reformist liberal administrations ended up dividing the working class and strengthening big business through intensive restructuring.

Zizek was pessimistic about the prospects, observing that the left, despite its critique of capitalism, was unable to do anything when crisis struck, and remains in a profound state of crisis. Whereas the left wing of the past believed it was enough to know what would happen and organize people who agreed with it, he argued, the current situation is one where there is no way of knowing what is going on, and the left is not asking the “big questions.”

He also said another limitation of the current left is its tacit acceptance of democracy and capitalism, with an interest on how to make things better by working within the system.

He argued that the left, rather than presenting a utopian perspective and dogma for a solution, needs to be a presence asking the question of what an be offered to people, from a perspective that problematizes a system that divides people through embracing and excluding -- what the philosopher calls the “new Apartheid.”

The important thing, he added, was not giving answers but asking the right questions.

What practical steps need to be taken to rebuild the left? According to Zizek, the question of what people really feel represents change is more important what how many people have called for the same thing. The task of the left, he added, was to look squarely at a complex reality where pragmatism is bound together with idealism.

The conversation segued into accounts of the difficulties faced by the South Korean labor movement. Hong described the occupation of a crane last year by Korean Confederation of Trade Unions member Kim Jin-suk to protest layoffs at Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction, the Hope Bus campaign to support her struggle, and the plight of layoff victims at Ssangyong Motors, who failed to draw the same level of interest from civil society despite the deaths of 22 union members in the wake of the firings.

Zizek said that helping out when the basic social system is not functioning properly is not an issue of philosophy. Like coming to the aid of someone who lies bleeding in the street, he said, helping people is a fundamental part of an ethical society that goes beyond the discussion on neoliberalism.

The philosopher showed a particular interest in the division of the peninsula and the North Korean regime. He noted that unlike other communist countries where bureaucrats dominate the system, North Korea follows a heredity succession, even going so far as to invoke supernatural phenomena.

Zizek said he was very interested in what contributed to North Korea developing such a unique system in the present day and age. He also said that despite opting for “isolation” over the years, Pyongyang was actually far more dependent on the outside, relying on food aids and focusing on establishing diplomatic relations with Washington and Tokyo.

Zizek’s visit attracted notice because he was the one who suggested it. He plans to meet with the public in seven o’clock lecture meetings at the Kyung Hee University Peace Hall on Wednesday and the Konkuk University New Millennium Hall on Thursday. He is scheduled to depart Saturday after a weeklong stay.

Why Tolerance is Not a Virtue

http://bigthink.com/postcards-from-zizek/good-thinking-is-good-questioning

For example, "Did you notice how almost automatically we tend to translate issues of sexism, racism or ethnic violence, whatever, into the terms of tolerance?" he says. But tolerance is a value shaped by a particular perspective: "We have different cultures. What can we do? We can only tolerate each other."

The question "Why can't we all just get along?" suggests a particular framework for thinking about the answer. Implicit is the idea that a solution to institutionalized racism and sexism lies in convincing the dominant group to relinquish their biases and share the power.

Never once did Martin Luther King Jr. use the word tolerance in his speeches, says Žižek. "For him (and he was right) it would have been an obscenity to say white people should learn to tolerate us more." The goal of the Civil Rights Movement was not simply appealing to liberal magnanimity, but demanding equity, including economic equity. Tolerance is a request that represents a retreat from that ambitious vision. When King marched on Washington D.C., he didn't say, "learn to live with us." He said, "We're here to cash a check":

One hundred years [after the Emancipation Proclamation], the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. 

In the "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech, delivered in solidarity with striking workers during the Memphis Sanitation Strike the day before he died, King addressed the issue of tolerance head-on, saying, 

"True peace is not merely the absence of tension. It's the presence of justice." In Memphis, he called for non-violence, but he also emphasized the importance of direct action: protest, boycotts, and challenges to the U.S. government.

What's the Significance?

Tolerance is a gift we give each other (or don't). Rights, on the other hand, are inalienable. Distinguishing between the two requires conscious thought. At stake is the difference between reaction and reason, conventional wisdom or a code of ethics. Whenever a question or an issue appears to "go without saying," it's philosophy that helps us understand what is not being said.

Tolerance is one example of conventional wisdom setting the tone for the conversation. Ecology is another. 

"It’s a terrible crisis," says Žižek, but the way we formulate it matters. We can see it "either as a pure technological problem or in this New Age way – we, humanity, are too arrogant, we are raping the mother earth, whatever, it’s already the way we perceive the question that mystifies the problem. Here philosophy enters correcting the question, enabling us to ask the right question."  

Good Thinking is Good Questioning

http://bigthink.com/ideas/44699

Slavoj Zizek: More than ever we need philosophy today.  Even the most speculative (in the sense of reflecting on itself) science has to rely on a set of automatic  presuppositions, like a scientist simply presupposes in his or her very approach to nature a set of implications of how the nature functions, what's the causality in nature and so on and so on.  And philosophy teaches us that.  Philosophy teaches us what we have to know without knowing it in order to function, even in science -- the silent presuppositions.

I claim that what is happening, for example, in quantum physics in the last 100 of years -- these things which are so daring, incredible, that we cannot include into our conscious view of reality -- that Hegel’s philosophy, with all it’s dialectical paradoxes, can be of some help here.  I claim that reading quantum physics through Hegel and vice versa is very productive.

I’m not saying -- I’m not a philosophical megalomaniac -- that philosophy can provide answers, but it can do something which maybe is even more important, you know?  As important as providing answers and a condition for it, maybe even the condition, is to ask the right question. 

There are not only wrong answers.  There are also wrong questions.  There are questions which deal with a certain real problem but the way they are formulated they effectively obfuscate, mystify, confuse the problem.  

For example, my eternal example, we have to fight of course today sexism, racism and so on.  But did you notice how almost automatically we tend to translate issues of sexism, racism or ethnic violence, whatever, into the terms of tolerance?  This, for me, doesn't go by itself.  This presupposes already a certain horizon where you naturalize the order.  We have different cultures.  What can we do?  We can only tolerate each other.  And to give you a proof how this is not self-evident: download speeches by Martin Luther King and put on search words precisely like tolerance and so on. . . . Never, he never uses them.  For him -- and he was right -- it would have been an obscenity to say white people should learn to tolerate us more, or whatever.  

You see, this would be one example, not to mention ecology.  Now, ecology may be the ruin of us all -- it’s a terrible crisis, but the way we formulate it, either as a pure technological problem or in this New Age way – we, humanity, are too arrogant, we are raping the mother earth, whatever, it’s already the way we perceive the question that mystifies the problem.  Here philosophy enters correcting the question, enabling us to ask the right question.  

Interviewed by Megan Erickson

Prisons, Privatization, Patronage

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/opinions/krugman-prisons-privatization-patronage.html?_r=1

by Paul Krugman

Over the past few days, The New York Times has published several terrifying reports about New Jersey’s system of halfway houses — privately run adjuncts to the regular system of prisons. The series is a model of investigative reporting, which everyone should read. But it should also be seen in context. The horrors described are part of a broader pattern in which essential functions of government are being both privatized and degraded.

First of all, about those halfway houses: In 2010, Chris Christie, the state’s governor — who has close personal ties to Community Education Centers, the largest operator of these facilities, and who once worked as a lobbyist for the firm — described the company’s operations as “representing the very best of the human spirit.” But The Times’s reports instead portray something closer to hell on earth — an understaffed, poorly run system, with a demoralized work force, from which the most dangerous individuals often escape to wreak havoc, while relatively mild offenders face terror and abuse at the hands of other inmates.

[…] What’s behind this drive?

You might be tempted to say that it reflects conservative belief in the magic of the marketplace, in the superiority of free-market competition over government planning. And that’s certainly the way right-wing politicians like to frame the issue.

But if you think about it even for a minute, you realize that the one thing the companies that make up the prison-industrial complex — companies like Community Education or the private-prison giant Corrections Corporation of America — are definitely not doing is competing in a free market. They are, instead, living off government contracts. There isn’t any market here, and there is, therefore, no reason to expect any magical gains in efficiency.

And, sure enough, despite many promises that prison privatization will lead to big cost savings, such savings — as a comprehensive study by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, part of the U.S. Department of Justice, concluded — “have simply not materialized.” To the extent that private prison operators do manage to save money, they do so through “reductions in staffing patterns, fringe benefits, and other labor-related costs.”

So let’s see: Privatized prisons save money by employing fewer guards and other workers, and by paying them badly. And then we get horror stories about how these prisons are run. What a surprise!

So what’s really behind the drive to privatize prisons, and just about everything else?

One answer is that privatization can serve as a stealth form of government borrowing, in which governments avoid recording upfront expenses (or even raise money by selling existing facilities) while raising their long-run costs in ways taxpayers can’t see. We hear a lot about the hidden debts that states have incurred in the form of pension liabilities; we don’t hear much about the hidden debts now being accumulated in the form of long-term contracts with private companies hired to operate prisons, schools and more.

Another answer is that privatization is a way of getting rid of public employees, who do have a habit of unionizing and tend to lean Democratic in any case.

But the main answer, surely, is to follow the money. Never mind what privatization does or doesn’t do to state budgets; think instead of what it does for both the campaign coffers and the personal finances of politicians and their friends. As more and more government functions get privatized, states become pay-to-play paradises, in which both political contributions and contracts for friends and relatives become a quid pro quo for getting government business. Are the corporations capturing the politicians, or the politicians capturing the corporations? Does it matter?

Now, someone will surely point out that nonprivatized government has its own problems of undue influence, that prison guards and teachers’ unions also have political clout, and this clout sometimes distorts public policy. Fair enough. But such influence tends to be relatively transparent. Everyone knows about those arguably excessive public pensions; it took an investigation by The Times over several months to bring the account of New Jersey’s halfway-house-hell to light.

The point, then, is that you shouldn’t imagine that what The Times discovered about prison privatization in New Jersey is an isolated instance of bad behavior. It is, instead, almost surely a glimpse of a pervasive and growing reality, of a corrupt nexus of privatization and patronage that is undermining government across much of our nation.

Ian Hamilton Grant on Hegel