JOSEFINA AYERZA: The
contemporary political discourse, changed by events such as the altering of
communist regular patterns, should be giving new meaning to the actual
signifiers. What speech act is involved in this context?
SLAVOJ ZIZEK: "Work
hard": a return to capitalist values. "Everybody might get rich,
including you." Let's take Thatcherism in Great Britain: what is the
Thatcherist dream? It is that by hard work you win; luck is around the corner.
Now of course the leftist Labor Party counteroffensive said that this is an
illusion, only a few of us might get rich; the majority of us won't get rich.
But they missed the point, because the identification that Thatcher's discourse
gave you was not that you would actually become rich, but, rather, the
discourse gave you the opportunity to identify yourself as the one who might
get rich next. Wealth was right around the corner...maybe.
JA: Identification is
enough for you to work hard, compete, and so on, but is it enough to succeed?
SZ: Yes, that was enough; it was even proven by sociology polls. People
actually answered that it was enough for them to live with the consciousness
that maybe if- the sheer possibility that maybe if-"okay, this year my
small business went bankrupt, but maybe next year if I work hard...maybe next
year if I try again and again, I will succeed." To identify with this
possibility is enough to succeed. For the possibility itself to bring its own
gratification, you have already to be in the Spinozist universal field of the
signifier.
JA: May we call it the possibility of a kind of jouissance, in the
Lacanian sense of the term?
SZ: Yes, it is a kind of
identification with jouissance. This signifier itself provides jouissance,
the signifying machinery itself provides Jouissance.
JA: Why would the return
to capitalist values entail the Spinozist field of the signifier?
SZ: It is only against a Spinozean background that you can have this kind of
paradox, where the possibility of satisfaction already functions in itself as
actual satisfaction, so that you don't need to pass into action. Let's say that
the conditions of possibility are related to the field.
JA: If possibility stands
for the field, what may stand for the impossible, or for the interfering
element?
SZ: What we might call the
Kantian revenge appears precisely in figures like Saddam Hussein. To put it
naively, these figures of radical evil are for me the symptom. They are the
return of the repressed. How is the enemy painted in the late capitalist
fantasy? In today's ruling ideology-in other words, in the big
media-constructing the enemy has two objectives. The first is fanatic,
irrational fundamentalism, which is of course why the West always was and still
is obsessed with Islamic fundamentalism. This fundamentalism is precisely the Kantian
revenge of radical evil. By the way, I'm not saying this has really something
to do with true Islam.
JA: What kind of evil is
Saddam, releasing petroleum in the water and killing wildlife, killing
nature?
SZ: It is a shock for the
West. It was not rational what Saddam did during the Persian Gulf War. This was
radical, almost ethical evil. In this fluid fantasy-universe of the West, the
Japanese are also sometimes painted as a kind of fanatic demonic evil. But what
bothers me is how quickly the layer of fanatic fundamentalism is deployed. I
remember a few years ago when some ecologists in California started to prevent
the cutting down of big sequoia trees. They discovered that putting long nails
into the trees made them impossible to cut. Electric saws couldn't get through
the nail and the trees were saved. The ecologists were labeled as
eco-terrorists." This makes me very suspicious.
JA: And the second
objective?
SZ: Now I come to my next thesis. It is no wonder that in philosophy, thinkers
like Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault, as well as Gilles Deleuze, were so
obsessed with Spinoza! I don't see anything very revolutionary in this return
to Spinoza. Contemporary philosophy is conscious of what we were just
discussing, that is, of the Spinozist features of contemporary society. I'm
very suspicious of the kind of ethics proposed by this universal field of the
signifier. What kind of ethics does it imply? It is an ethics basically of
non-identification. It says, let's stay free, don't identify too much, there
are multiple subject positions and you must renew your personality, don't make
any lasting commitments, don't overidentify, invent yourself anew," etc.
This would be this late Spinozist ethics.
There is nothing subversive in
this kind of ethics developed in the last two books of Foucault, proposed as a
model (The Care of the Self, The Uses of Pleasure]. I think Foucault's ethics
fit perfectly the late capitalist universal Spinozist signifier. Even in our
everyday political experiences when we construct the enemy, we depict danger as
the one who overidentifies. This is the usual way; even deconstructionists
usually formulate it like that: "The enemy does not see how every
identification is constructed."
JA: So the enemy is the
one who overidentifies?
SZ: It is a false enemy.
Basically, fundamentalists are not the danger. The crucial question is, do we
accept this narrow Spinozist universal signifying field? Is this the ultimate
reality that we have to accept, or not? Yes, for me this is the ultimate
question, the only true problem. I think the whole conflict of fundamentalism
versus nonfundatnentalism is basically a false problem. Those whom we perceive
as fundamentalists are not really it. For example, let's take the Moral
Majority preachers, usually regarded here as fundamentalists. Did you notice
how the same rule applies to them as to (Joan Copjec developed this very nicely
in October # 68) the problematic of the so-called "Teflon president,"
Ronald Reagan? You know how Reagan made a series of mistakes in his public
appearances and speeches; each time, the journals mocked him, they made the
whole list of-them. The real mystery is that not only it did not affect his
popularity adversely, it even helped it. In a way, the poor liberals thought
that by proving how wrong Reagan was, by enumerating all the mistakes, all the
gaffes, they would somehow hurt him. They did not hurt him; they helped
him.
My point is that the same
goes, at least up to a point, for the Moral Majority preachers. It is wrong to
label them as fundamentalists. Those who follow them know that this is fake.
For examples Jimmy Swaggart: again and again it is proven that he is involved
in sexual scandals; yet he still functions. That is the so-called mystery. I
would even say the same thing about David Duke. The problem is not one of, is
he really a racist or, does he really believe in anti-Semitism? These are false
questions; his position is a kind of imposture, but the point is he is even
more dangerous because of it.
JA: Because of its being his ethics ?
SZ: Yes, he is not a serious
anti-Semite. I'm not saying he's simply joking, but there is a much more
refined dialectic at world there. Let's put it this way: it's his ethics.
Fredric Jameson, in one of his articles on film, speaks of this. Fifteen years
ago we had this wave of horror movies, like The Exorcists, Jaws, etc. The
Exorcist did not rely on the simple belief in supernatural forces. Jameson's
idea was that these movies expressed a kind of nostalgia for the lost world,
where it was still naively possible to believe in devils. This is a more
refined dialectic. This is the same game David Duke is playing. Of course, we
cannot be really anti-Semitic today. Duke is a kind of nostalgic figure. His
thing is, "Wasn't it nice when it was still possible, like in Hitler's
good old days?" I'm not saying it is not dangerous; it is even more
disgusting, even more dangerous. Do you know why?
JA: Is it the same, but
with no sublime object?
SZ: There still is the symbolic in play, but again, the basic feature of
today's ideology, in correspondence with this Spinozist universality of the
signifier, is not a kind of fundamentalism, but a mixture of nostalgia and
cynicism: cynical distance, nostalgia, etc. We, as theoreticians from a
long-term political perspective, cannot accept this as the ultimate stage and
say to it "Okay, now humanity will just float in the bliss of the
universal signifier to the end." This is not the ultimate horizon; I
cannot accept this.
JA: About the Russians
emigrating to the United States and Occidental Europe, let's say that in their
own country they have been actually living something else: masses of people
working together in factories, in industries, are accustomed to have an
enormous strength as a group. Yet the Spinozist world instead keeps people at
home, dissolves the groups. What will happen when all these people have to deal
with this being at home? Are they going to like it? Since you say this is not
the ultimate stage, are we wanting to go back to the massive getting together,
to the strength of the group?
SZ: No, no, no, of course you
cannot go back. There is a crucial thing that is going around now on another
level in Eastern Europe. In Russia they are also approaching it; it is already
on the way in Poland and Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The democratic enthusiasm
is over now and we have a total depoliticization, a cynical retreat into
private life. This is the last stage of Eastern Europe now, as we saw in the
latest elections.
JA: So it is beginning to
he the same all around the world, this privacy?
SZ: Yes, but at another, far
more dangerous level. The problem with Eastern Europe is that people there
expected something else. This is why this depoliticized reaction now is
dangerous. The basic background is that what people wanted of capitalism was
strictly a contradictory desire. They wanted things. But what did the
dissolution of communism and return to capitalism mean to the everyday Eastern
European person? Eastern Europeans experienced communism as something that
disintegrated their organic unity. They experienced communism as a strange
cancerous entity that disrupted, disunited, degenerated their original family
ties, community ties, etc. Therefore, what they expect now from post-communist
society is capitalist individualism, consumer society, and so on, and at the
same time-and this is crucial-a new kind of community and solidarity.
JA: A postmodern kind of
capitalism?
SZ: This is strictly contradictory because capitalism is not this, it is
emphatically not this. And this is what I find most dangerous, this
contradictory desire. Do we have a name for the system, for a social system
that tries to accomplish precisely this? Capitalism and organic unity at the
same time: this is the most elementary definition of fascism. Fascism means
precisely this. For examples in Argentina, what was Peron's promise? That you
would have capitalism, but at the same time solidarity I think this
contradictory desire was a protofascist desire. It may sound very harsh, but
what most people spontaneously craved in Eastern Europe was not socialism with
a human face, but rather fascism with a human face. This is very dangerous.
Anti-Semitism arises at such moments. Now they are extremely disappointed. Why
didn't we get what we wanted, capitalism and organic unity at the same
time?
JA: Fascism generally has a human face.
SZ: Yes, in a way. To arrive at this, you need an enemy, you need a figure of
an enemy.
JA: The Jews or....
SZ: It doesn't have to be a Jew. It can be somebody who is constructed
according to the same logic that is at work in anti-Semitism. It is very
interesting to see how, even when the enemy is not the Jew, it is still
constructed in the same way, as some kind of foreigner.
JA: In this society, the
enemy doesn't really have a face. Crime is nowadays quite anonymous: someone
goes with a gun to McDonald's and kills seventeen people. Who was the enemy? In
earlier times, one would see the face of the enemy.
SZ: Yes, and precisely, the attraction of anti-Semitism is that it gives a face
to the enemy-at least the modern form of anti-Semitism.
JA: So the Russians want
a figure of the enemy, and they may not find the actual one clear enough?
SZ: Yes, this is what I'm
afraid of. But it does not matter if you find it or not, you construct it, you
invent it. They are already doing it.
JA: Who is the enemy then?
SZ: Usually it is the national
enemy, it is another nation.
JA: Any other nation?
SZ: Any other, but usually connected to Jews. In Yugoslavia it's usually a
combination of enemies. The standard idea is that when two big nations confront
each other-this is the typical formula of Eastern European conflict-you simply
do not put the blame directly on the other nation. You say instead that the
other nation is so bad and attacking us because behind it there is the Jew
pulling the strings. You always split the enemy. For example in Yugoslavia it
works with Serbians, with Croations, etc. You say they" were corrupted,
spoiled by the Jews, who really pulled the strings from behind. This is a nice
paradox. Even in the Soviet Union now, the hard-level Russian-nationalist
anticommunists try to explain communism itself in terms of anti-Semitism,
communism as a Jewish invention. For example, the modern Russian anti-Semites
will quickly tell you how almost all members of Lenin's Politburo were Jews. In
other words, there is a stage of spontaneous ideology in the East: putting the
blame for everything on communism is no longer the national sport. Now it is to
put the blame on the Jew, or on another nation behind communism itself. I don't
like this revival of small ethnic nations in Eastern Europe. I see a dangerous
proto-fascist potential here, a very serious possibility; I don't think it is
an illusory abstract possibility.
This first democratic
enthusiasm is now over, and people are radically disappointed and returning to
private life. It is the Spinozist machine at work. In spontaneous American
ideology, the Japanese are constructed as an enemy that functions in an almost
anti-Semitic way, because in anti-Semitism, the Jew is everywhere and nowhere;
you can never localize him. They can be hidden everywhere. They are perceived
as being all around, the ones who penetrated everything.
JA: This kind of enemy is
nevertheless identified.
SZ: But not clearly
identified. This is a crucial point of anti-Semitism in Nazi propaganda. It is
more complicated than it may appear, because in anti-Semitism fantasy space,
the Jew is not simply somebody with such-and-such a corrupted or whatever
nature. In anti-Semitism, the Jew represents a nation that has no proper
nature, has no proper character, which can mix. There is nothing horrible about
having Chinese neighborhoods, Little Italy, etc. As long as you have these
distinct entities, it's all right. The problem is that surplus element that is
everywhere and nowhere. The standard role attributed to the Jew in Europe is
here, up to a point, taken by Japanese. The second point is about the obsession
even in American media, that Japanese don't know how to enjoy properly, that
they work too much, the idea that the Japanese relationship to enjoyment is
somehow strange other than ours, not normal, disturbed. I am always struck how
in the American media they report this with regularity. Even the Japanese
government tries to teach the Japanese how to enjoy more. For example, they are
now ordered to take regular holidays.
JA: The problem is that
they enjoy their work?
SZ: This is the idea, this is the ultimate racist fantasy. And here Lacanian
psychoanalysis can teach us a lot, because the basic Lacanian idea is that the
ultimate point of racism is not this kind of (as it is usually explained) clash
of symbolic identification, cultural values, or whatever. As it was developed
by Jacques-Alain Miller in Extimite, racism ultimately concerns the Other's
relationship to enjoyment. Ultimately what bothers you in the Other is the way
he or she enjoys. And not only the obvious ways-like, for example, the
primitive, white sexual fantasies of black sexuality.
JA: What would be the
threat in the Japanese working too much?
SZ: The idea is that they work too much because they don't know how to separate
properly work and enjoyment, they perversely enjoy working too much, they have
this deprivation that is threatening to us. In Europe, this is usually
attributed to Jews. I remember once even talking to my mother. Officially she
is not anti-Semitic, but once we had some financial dealings with a neighbor of
ours who is a Jew, an older woman, and when she returned some money to us, my
mother said, "She is a very nice old lady, but did you notice the strange
way she counted the money?" I mean this, a strange idea, some kind of
special relationship to jouissance, precisely as a lack of pleasure, a
kind of deprivation, the different jouissance in what is
displeasurable, in what for us is not pleasure.
JA: The problem seems to
entail on the one hand investigation-how is the Other enjoying?-and on the
other, control over the ways of enjoyment of the Other.
SZ: Yes, because these are two
basic fantasies, which are of course the reverse of each other. The one we all
know, Jacques Lacan talked about in the late 1960s, when he predicted racism.
For Lacan, racism is a kind of revenge of the particularity in the universal
field of the signifier. Lacan's idea is that racism is a kind of reaction to
this universal field of the signifier, the only way to not be dissolved and
lost in this universality. The only way to stick out, the only support you can
find, is to stick to your particular way of enjoyment, which then involves you
in this racial paranoia, of course.
You formulate your identity on the fantasy that the Other is the one who
automatically wants to steal from you. These are the two basic fantasies: one
is that the Other wants to steal from us our precious enjoyment, usually the
fantasy behind the racist idea of David Duke-blacks, others, they want to ruin
the American way of life. The other idea, like with the Jew, is that the Other
possesses some kind of excessive and strange enjoyment, which is in itself a
threat to us. By the way, another amusing point that I developed is this idea
of how enjoyment can be stolen. In the United States, I was struck by the
series of films like Rambo, Missing in Action, etc., which are based on the
American obsession that there are still some prisoners, some Americans alive
down there in Vietnam. The hero, Rambo, saves them, brings them back. I think
the fantasy behind it is that the most precious part of America was stolen and
the hero brings it back to where it belongs. Because this "treasure"
was missing under Jimmy Carter, America was weak. If the hero brings it back,
America will be strong again.
Even in America, the most
developed country in the world, you can see how this logic of enjoyment, the
fantasy that the precious part of our enjoyment may be stolen by the Other, is
at work. Because again, it is only against this fantasy background that you can
explain the real obsession of the media, which is by the way, totally
irrational. The idea that there are some young honest Americans, still
prisoners of war, still alive down there in Vietnam, this is obviously a
totally marginal problem-even if there really are some. You cannot explain such
an obsession without this kind of fantasy scenario.
And this is again where Lacan
was in a way, to put it naively, ahead of his time, because he did already
predict this new upsurge of racism in the middle-to-late 1960s, in Television.
Lacan predicted precisely in 1968, that when the student enthusiasm ended,
there would be a new age of racism. This again indicates that the Spinozist
universal field cannot be our ultimate answer. The usual illusion is that
racism is a kind of fundamentalist remainder of the past. No it is not a
remainder from the past; it is not some remainder of old traditions to be
dissolved by progress toward an even more computerized Spinozist universe.
Instead, it is produced by modernity. What we call fundamentalisms are
precisely desperate attempts to cling to some forms of jouissance.
This article was published in Lusitania in the Fall of 1994.
Slavoj Žižek: “I am the
alternative to Jordan Peterson”
They are both Enfants
terribles of their field. And they have been fighting for a long time from
afar: the radical Marxist Slavoj Žižek and the neo-conservative psychology
professor Jordan Peterson. Now they meet in Toronto. Who will win?
René Scheu
13.4.2019, 05:30 clock
[TRANSLATED BY A STUPID
COMPUTER]
INTERVIEWER: Mr. Žižek, all
right?
SLAVOJ: Oh God, yes, we wanted
to talk. I'm just in a bit of a panic, I have to finish some manuscripts
and prepare for this stupid Toronto event.
INTERVIEWER: They meet with
Jordan Peterson, the neo-conservative mastermind of a new masculinity. Why
are you actually going into the lion's den?
SLAVOJ: Quite simply, he
provoked me, and I accepted the provocation. After all, I'm not a
coward. If you want a fight then you should get it.
INTERVIEWER: You criticized
him quite harshly in the Independent?
SLAVOJ: Right. But I did
not throw him the gauntlet. He did that.
INTERVIEWER: Let's leave the
personal. What attracts you in content in the fight?
SLAVOJ: Again, I want to place
a simple message: For people who are dissatisfied with left-liberal dogma, that
is, political correctness, identity politics, and cultural relativism, Jordan
Peterson is not the only answer. We, the good old left, are a valid alternative
here.
INTERVIEWER: The dispute
between the two of them has been ignited by the concept of cultural
Marxism. Peterson accuses Marxists like you of wanting to transform people
with new language and behavioral codes.
SLAVOJ: That I do not
laugh! Peterson's image of the enemy is clear - the politically correct,
egalitarian, superethic, resentful, and envy-driven left. Okay, there are
such people, but they are certainly not the Marxists: Marxists behave
exactly the other way round. These left-liberals are those who sustain the
capitalist order by giving it a human face!
INTERVIEWER: The politically
correct left-liberal are in your eyes - as Lenin would say - useful idiots of
the system?
SLAVOJ: Exactly. They
conceive of man as a fluid, flexible subject who can always reinvent himself -
indeed, in order to liberate himself from patriarchy. The range of
reinventions ranges from sexual orientation to careers. And the left
liberals sell that as a great freedom. Such bullshit! What they did without
realizing it is - in Marxist terms - the very core of bourgeois
subjectivity. And the left liberals can only do that because they live
well and are privileged. In contrast, ordinary people suffer because they
do not know today if they have a job tomorrow and how they can bring the family
through. Ordinary working people do not want more, but less flexibility.
INTERVIEWER: Now you almost
sound like Peterson!
SLAVOJ: For heaven's sake,
no. I am the alternative to Peterson. What I say is trivial. It
can be read in the "Communist Manifesto". It says: "The
bourgeoisie has destroyed all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic conditions."
Celebrating all the movements against the alleged patriarchy in which we still
live is pure nostalgia and only cemented the prevailing order. And that
consists, as in the past, of good old capitalists, that is, retirees with no
income. People, wake up! To put it bluntly: Political correctness,
identity politics and gender thinking are the bourgeoisie's last defense against
a much more radical, emancipatory change of system.
INTERVIEWER: They preserve
Marxist radicalism. Feminists do not make you popular with your view of
things.
SLAVOJ: At the wise
already. Genuine Marxists, just as serious feminists, never simply opposed
patriarchy, as if everything male was toxic. Max Horkheimer shows in his
study "Authority and Family" from 1936 very nicely how the paternal
role is not to be despised - on the contrary: A strong father figure can offer
young people a role model to defy the social conformism. And conversely,
it is the weak, impotent father who tends to violence and also to
totalitarianism.
INTERVIEWER: They are talking
in rage. Still, again - I'm afraid, Peterson and you are too united in
essential assessments. And for the nuances of differences and different
motivations, only a few are likely to be interested.
SLAVOJ: That's not
true. Take #MeToo. Peterson is absolutely against it, for him this is
merely an expression of a gender struggle that is going on to the detriment of
men. I see it differently. My heroine is Tarana Burke, a black
American activist who used the buzzword "Me Too" back in
2006. It was never about the mood of the affluent and the world stars in
the film business, which are disadvantaged, but the harassment and abuse of
millions of women in everyday life. In a letter she deeply regretted the
turn the #Metoo movement took in 2017. And she is right. The movement
was hijacked by crazy feminists: suddenly it was no longer about equal rights
of men and women, but men's hostility.
INTERVIEWER: Once again, you
agree in the end. Peterson is rude that men are becoming more and more
male and women more and more male. You cannot leave it that way, right?
SLAVOJ: That's way too
easy. Because what, please, should be the male and what the feminine
principle? Peterson takes care of himself by referring to Jungian
archetypes. The male means order, the female stands for the
chaotic. Not correct. There is, of course, a feminine and masculine
form of order and disorder. I think that this kind of metaphysical
psychoanalysis a la Jung is behind us.
INTERVIEWER: The point,
however, is that Peterson also relies on evolutionary biology findings.
SLAVOJ: On the other hand, I
have no objections in principle - no reasonable person can deny that there are
biological differences between men and women that partly shape their
behavior. If Peterson pulls out against those who represent sex and sexual
orientation as an object of free choice, then he is at least half
right. Because it is not that easy - and not so harmless. Man emerges
quite late in evolution and is a strange being. It is characterized by
something completely new that we still do not understand exactly - we call it
freedom. But that does not mean that every human being, so to speak, frees
himself from scratch. Whoever speaks thus is an ideologue. Referring
to your example: Of course, there are biological men who feel like a
woman, and that is a human phenomenon. At the same time, however,
this is not an absolutely free choice of the individual - it is, so to speak, a
forced free choice, which is associated with much suffering. I do not
choose my gender or my orientation as I choose my favorite cake in the
bakery. That's what many gender theorists simply do not want to understand.
INTERVIEWER: In any case, a
fundamental difference in content between you and Peterson is obvious: you want
to change the global capitalist order, and you do not do that. Peterson is
more modest - he says in one of his rules: Clean up your room first before
calling for a system change.
SLAVOJ: Everyone should first
wipe their own door, that has never hurt. But that's just not enough,
because it winds leaves and dirt of your environment in front of your
door. And do you want to eliminate the dirt of the others day in and day
out? So, your question is a wrong choice. It's not about either-or,
it's about doing both - wiping at your own door and working on the system
change.
INTERVIEWER: Their debate is
reminiscent of the coincidence between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault in
1971. Although both were determined leftists, the roles were clearly divided:
Chomsky gave the precise thinker, Foucault spoke more
conspiratorial. Which part do you strive for?
SLAVOJ: Chomsky was a
naturalist, Foucault historian, Chomsky was even farther left than Foucault at
that time. That's a wonderful paradox. Such a combination is hardly
conceivable today, and the left are now all convinced constructivists - except
for the Marxists. The debate will therefore not run along this dividing
line. Peterson and I are both outcasts. We are both cut from all
sorts of groups and have to punch through ourselves. We are both
entertainers. We both do not know what we got involved with. We will
see it on April 19th.
