lecture on Lacan

Is There a Method to the Syrian Madness?

On radical-emancipatory movements and false rationales for war.

BY SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK

http://inthesetimes.com/article/15591/is_there_a_method_to_syrian_madness/

[...]

As I have written before, we all remember President Obama's smiling face, full of hope and trust, when he repeatedly delivered the motto of his first campaign, “Yes, we can!”—we can get rid of the cynicism of the Bush era and bring justice and welfare to the American people. Now that the United States is backing off its push to attack Syria, we can imagine peace protesters shouting at President Barack Obama: “How can you advocate another military intervention?” Obama the reluctant warrior looks back at them and murmurs perplexed: “Can I? Should I?”

And this time, he is right to second-guess himself. All that was false in the idea and practice of humanitarian interventions explodes in a condensed form apropos Syria. OK, there is a bad dictator who is (allegedly) using poisonous gases against the population of his own state. But who is opposing his regime? It seems that whatever remained of the democratic-secular resistance is now more or less drowned in the mess of fundamentalist Islamist groups supported by Turkey and Saudi Arabia, with a strong presence of al-Qaeda in the shadows.

As for Assad, his Syria at least pretends to be a secular state, so no wonder that Christian and other minorities now tend to take his side against the Sunni rebels. In short, we are dealing with an obscure conflict, vaguely resembling the Libyan revolt against Gaddafi. There are no clear political stakes, no signs of a broad emancipatory-democratic coalition, just a complex network of religious and ethnic alliances overdetermined by the influence of superpowers (the United States and Western Europe on the one side, Russia and China on the other). In such conditions, any direct military intervention means political madness with incalculable risks. What if radical Islamists take over after Assad’s fall? Will the United States repeat their Afghanistan mistake of arming the future al-Qaeda and Taliban cadres? What if the U.S. missiles or bombs land on Syria’s stockpile of Sarin gas weapons? After the attack, then what?

In such a messy situation, military intervention can only be justified by a short-term, self-destructive opportunism. The moral outrage evoked to provide a rational cover for the compulsion-to-intervene—“We cannot allow the use of poisonous gases on civil population!”—is a such a sham, it doesn’t even take itself seriously. As we now know, the United States more than tolerated the use of poisonous gases against the Iranian army by Saddam Hussein. During the Iraq-Iran war of 1980-1988, the United States sided with the Iraqis to quell Iranian influence in the Gulf, despite being well aware of Iraq’s liberal use of mustard and tear gas, according to declassified government reports. The United States even secretly supplied Iraq with satellite images of Iranian battlefield weaknesses to aid in the targeting of Iranian troops. Where were moral concerns then?

The situation in Syria should be compared to the one in Egypt. Now that the Egyptian Army has broken the stalemate and cleansed the public space of the Islamist protesters, the result is hundreds, maybe thousands, of dead. One should take a step back and focus on the absent third party in the ongoing conflict: the explosion of heterogeneous organizations (of students, women, workers) in which civil society began to articulate its interests outside the scope of state and religious institutions. This vast network of new social forms is the principal gain of the Arab Spring, independent of big political changes like the Army’s coup against the Muslim Brotherhood government or the Assad regime’s war with Islamist extremists. It goes deeper than the religious/liberal divide. (And even in the case of clearly fundamentalist movements, one should be careful not to miss their social component.)

The only way for the civil-democratic protester—in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya or Syria—to avoid being sidestepped by religious fundamentalists is by adopting a much more radical agenda of social and economic emancipation.

And this brings us back to Syria: The ongoing struggle there is ultimately a false one, a struggle towards which one should remain indifferent. The only thing to keep in mind is that this pseudo-struggle thrives because of the absent Third, a strong radical-emancipatory opposition whose elements were clearly perceptible in Egypt.

As we used to say almost half a century ago, one doesn’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. In Egypt’s case, I’ve argued, it blows toward Iran—and in Syria, it blows toward Afghanistan. Even if Assad somehow wins and stabilizes the situation, his victory will probably breed an explosion similar to the Taliban revolution that will sweep over Syria in a couple of years. What can save us from this prospect is only the radicalization of the struggle for freedom and democracy into a struggle for social and economic justice.

So what is happening in Syria these days? Nothing really special, except that China is one step closer to becoming the world’s new superpower while her competitors are eagerly weakening each other.

[...]

The Event, Ljubljana

http://www.e-flux.com/announcements/the-event-ljubljana/

The Event 23 September–20 November 2011

The 29th Biennial of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana29gbljubljana.wordpress.com

List of exhibited artists and projects: Ant Farm, Oreet Ashery, Bababa International, Robert Barry, Nina Beier & Marie Lund, Jerzy Bereś, Karmelo Bermejo, Anna Berndtson, Conny Blom, János Borsos, Tania Bruguera, Graciela Carnevale, Anetta Mona Chişa & Lucia Tkáčová, Marcus Coates, Brody Condon, Alain Della Negra & Kaori Kinoshita, Marco Evaristti, Terry Fox, Dora García, Félix González-Torres, Núria Güell, Manuel Hartmann, Alfredo Jaar, Jaša, Enrique Ježik, Regina José Galindo, San Keller, Daniel Knorr, Božena Končić Badurina, Gregor Kregar, Siniša Labrović, Liz Magic Laser, Marcello Maloberti, Teresa Margolles, Kris Martin, Dalibor Martinis, Dane Mitchell, Shana Moulton, Kusum Normoyle, OHO Group / The Šempas Family / Milenko Matanović / David Nez / Marko Pogačnik, Once is Nothing (Presentation of an exhibition curated by Mária Hlavajová and Charles Esche as part of the 2008 Brussels Biennial), Serkan Özkaya, Kim Paton, Mark Požlep, Praxis (Brainard & Delia Carey), Public Movement, Franc Purg & Sara Heitlinger, Sal Randolph, Maruša Sagadin, Hans Schabus, Santiago Sierra, Mladen Stropnik, Sz.A.F., Tan Ting, Unguarded Money (Presentation of an action carried out in Budapest in 1956 by Miklós Erdély his friends, and members of the Hungarian Writers Union), Matej Andraž Vogrinčič, Wang Jin, Anna Witt 

The art event—the central theme of the 29th Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana—experienced a remarkable development in the twentieth century and today appears as a privileged medium. It is employed as a medium by a broad range of various figures from the contemporary art world in a broad spectrum of different forms.

At the exhibition, which seeks above all to present as fully as possible the energy and vitality of the current trend of art events, a selection of such events are presented in four different groups based on themes that are typical for contemporary art: violence, generosity, emptiness, and the search for the sacred and ritualistic. These topics were selected, among other reasons, because the events that thematize them also meet the requirement that they are not something new, neither in terms of their artistic iconographic motifs nor in terms of actual human or social practice. Events in which we can with impunity partake in violence, in “shamanistic” violence to oneself, in Dionysian or absurdist ritual, or in the establishment of an idyllic communitas that shares a common meal are, indeed, activities that have been practiced and even depicted for millennia.

In the exhibition, as well as in an extensive programme of artistic and theoretical events, the Biennial poses the questions: Why and how has the event become a suitable vehicle for a variety of artistic purposes, poetics, and content? Is the choice of this medium a response to specific impulses and voids in our “desacralized” everyday existence? And also, what are the potential dangers of such a development, given that it is happening more and more in the completely formalized framework of art institutions, which in recent decades not only house and exhibit contemporary art, but also commission and produce it. Thus they have become commissioners of contemporary art of a similar type and scope as were once the aristocracy and the church.

Symposium: The Event as a Privileged Medium in the Contemporary Art World An international symposium will address specific “targeted” questions about the ideological significance of the profusion of events in contemporary art institutions. A varied cast of anthropologists, philosophers, historians, and art historians have been invited to participate.

The following speakers have been announced: Luisa Accati, Beatrice von Bismarck, Thomas Fillitz, Dario Gamboni, Werner Hanak-Lettner, Nathalie Heinich, Bojana Kunst, Henrietta L. Moore, Michael Newman, Robert Pfaller, Renata Salecl, Roger Sansi-Roca.

Friday, 4 November, 11 p.m.–7 p.m. Saturday, 5 November, 10 a.m.–2:30 p.m. Location: the auditorium of the Museum of Modern Art (Moderna galerija), Cankarjeva 15, Ljubljana.

Admission is free. The symposium will be broadcast live on the website. For detail information on the Symposium and the Biennial please visit 29gbljubljana.wordpress.com.

The curator of the 29th Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana is Beti Žerovc. Venues of the 29th Biennial of Graphic Arts: International Centre of Graphic Arts, Museum of Modern Art, Jakopič Gallery, Gallery of Cankarjev dom, exhibition sites on Gosposvetska cesta 12 and Vošnjakova ulica 4.

Viewing hours: Tuesday–Sunday, 10 am–6 pm.

Organizer: Mednarodni grafični likovni center / International Centre of Graphic Arts Grad Tivoli, Pod turnom 3, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia, tel. + 386 (0)1 2413 800, www.mglc-lj.si 

Press contact: Lili Šturm: tel. + 386 (0)1 2413 818, lili.sturm@mglc-lj.si

EcoLogic Studio Unveils Interactive New Structure

BY DALE EISINGER | SEP 8, 2013

http://www.complex.com/art-design/2013/09/ecologic-studio-interactive-structure

How often is it that Slavoj Zizek, the radical Slovene philosopher, gets cited in sculpture and green design these days? At least once, by the multi-faceted ecoLogic Studio, on their new project, meta-Follies for the Metropolitan Landscape. Responding to Zizek's call for a "new terrifying form of abstract materialism," the design collective has created this vaguely terrifying pavilion that's hard to pin down: is it sculpture, commentary, interactive art? Whatever it is, it's beautiful. 

EcoLogic used algorythmic, organic methods in the initial design. The concept behind these incubator-like clusters has to do with a narrative the studio developed, about seekers of the sustainable forgoing their search for refuge and instead taking up residence in this "shanty" version. Made recycled materials , embedded with hundreds of reactive piezeo buzzers. It's a heady, high-concept piece. Here's how the makers describe it, in part:

"[...] within this paradigm aesthetic codes are redefined; the beauty of nature, the proportion of the classic and the idealization of the early ecologists are substituted by the abstraction of digital meta-fields, of mathematical minimal paths, which define an algorithmic manual for the assemblage of new material systems made of processed industrial waste, post-consumer recycled plastic, bundles of electrical wires, solar photovoltaic cells and cheap reused Chinese sound kits.

Such an improbable assemblage of ‘urban trash’ is pushed to the limit and engineered to reveal a new Eden, a new aesthetic, spatial and behavioral milieu, a new urban eco-language."

It will soon go on view at the FRAC Centre in Oreleans, France. 

Syria is a pseudo-struggle

The ongoing struggle we see is a false one, lacking the kind of radical-emancipatory opposition clearly perceptible in Egypt

Slavoj Žižek

theguardian.com, Friday 6 September 2013 08.42 EDT

[...]

All that was false in the idea and practice of humanitarian interventions exploded in a condensed form apropos Syria. OK, there is a bad dictator who is (allegedly) using poisonous gas against the population of his own state – but who is opposing his regime? It seems that whatever remained of the democratic-secular resistance is now more or less drowned in the mess of fundamentalist Islamist groups supported by Turkey and Saudi Arabia, with a strong presence of al-Qaida in the shadows.

As to Bashar al-Assad, his Syria at least pretended to be a secular state, so no wonder Christian and other minorities now tend to take his side against the Sunni rebels. In short, we are dealing with an obscure conflict, vaguely resembling the Libyan revolt against Colonel Gaddafi – there are no clear political stakes, no signs of a broad emancipatory-democratic coalition, just a complex network of religious and ethnic alliances overdetermined by the influence of superpowers (US and western Europe on the one side, Russia and China on the other). In such conditions, any direct military intervention means political madness with incalculable risks – say, what if radical Islamists take over after Assad's fall? So will the US repeat their Afghanistan mistake of arming the future al-Qaida and Taliban cadres?

In such a messy situation, military intervention can only be justified by a short-term self-destructive opportunism. The moral outrage evoked to provide a rational cover for the compulsion-to-intervene ("We cannot allow the use of poisonous gas on civil population!") is fake. Faced with a weird ethics that justifies taking the side of one fundamentalist-criminal group against another, one cannot but sympathise with Ron Paul's reaction to John McCain's advocacy of strong intervention: "With politicians like these, who needs terrorists?"

The situation in Syria should be compared with the one in Egypt. Now that the Egyptian army has decided to break the stalemate and cleanse the public space of the Islamist protesters, and the result is hundreds, maybe thousands, of dead, one should take a step back and focus on the absent third party in the ongoing conflict: where are the agents of the Tahrir Square protests from two years ago? Is their role now not weirdly similar to the role of Muslim Brotherhood back then – that of the surprised impassive observers? With the military coup in Egypt, it seems as if the circle has somehow closed: the protesters who toppled Mubarak, demanding democracy, passively supported a military coup d'etat which abolished democracy … what is going on?

The most common reading was proposed, among others, by Francis Fukuyama: the protest movement that toppled Mubarak was predominantly the revolt of the educated middle class, with the poor workers and farmers reduced to the role of (sympathetic) observers. But once the gates of democracy were open, the Muslim Brotherhood, whose social base is the poor majority, won democratic elections and formed a government dominated by Muslim fundamentalists, so that, understandably, the original core of secular protesters turned against them and was ready to endorse even a military coup as a way to stop them.

But such a simplified vision ignores a key feature of the protest movement: the explosion of heterogeneous organisations (of students, women and workers) in which civil society began to articulate its interests outside the scope of state and religious institutions. This vast network of new social units, much more than the overthrow of Mubarak, is the principal gain of the Arab spring; it is an ongoing process, independent of big political changes like the coup; it goes deeper than the religious/liberal divide.

Even in the case of clearly fundamentalist movements, one should be careful not to miss their social component. The Taliban are regularly presented as a fundamentalist Islamist group enforcing with terror its rule – however, when, in the spring of 2009, they took over the Swat valley in Pakistan, the New York Times reported that they engineered "a class revolt that exploits profound fissures between a small group of wealthy landlords and their landless tenants". If, however, by "taking advantage" of the farmers' plight, the Taliban "[raised] alarm about the risks to Pakistan, which remains largely feudal", what prevented liberal democrats in Pakistan as well as the US from similarly "taking advantage" of this plight and trying to help the landless farmers? The sad implication of this omission is that the feudal forces in Pakistan are the "natural ally" of the liberal democracy … The only way for the civil-democratic protesters to avoid being sidestepped by religious fundamentalists is thus to adopt a much more radical agenda of social and economic emancipation.

And this brings us back to Syria: the ongoing struggle there is ultimately a false one. The only thing to keep in mind is that this pseudo-struggle thrives because of the absent third, a strong radical-emancipatory opposition whose elements were clearly perceptible in Egypt. As we used to say almost half a century ago, one doesn't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows in Syria: towards Afghanistan. Even if Assad somehow wins and stabilises the situation, his victory will probably breed an explosion similar to the Taliban revolution which will sweep over Syria in a couple of years. What can save us from this prospect is only the radicalisation of the struggle for freedom and democracy into a struggle for social and economic justice.

So what is happening in Syria these days? Nothing really special, except that China is one step closer to becoming the world's new superpower while its competitors are eagerly weakening each other.

October: Ten Days That Shook the World - Sergei M. Eisenstein