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Wacky vladimir and the end of the twentieth century

01:48 / 22.08.02

these quotes are from a surprisingly good essay about lenin by slavoj zizek you can find here:

>>As Alain Badiou has said, whereas the 19th century was characterised by utopian or \'scientific\' projects and ideals which were to be fulfilled in the future, the 20th aimed at delivering the thing itself, at realising the longed-for New Order. The ultimate and defining experience of the 20th century was the direct experience of the real as distinct from everyday social reality -- the real, in its extreme violence, is the price to be paid for peeling off the deceiving layers of reality.<<

>>According to Badiou, the underlying premise of our post-political era, in which the administration of social affairs is replacing politics proper, is, to put it bluntly, that the 20th century did not take place. What took place in those tormented years was a monstrous futile passion, a contingent deviation, the ultimate results (and truth) of which were the Gulag and the Holocaust. The conclusion to be drawn is that attempts to change society for the Good result merely in radical Evil, the only Absolute admitted today. The way to lead our lives is therefore along the path of pragmatic compromise, cynical wisdom, awareness of our limitations, resistance to the temptation of the Absolute.

Against this attitude, fidelity to Lenin\'s legacy compels us to insist that the 20th century was not just a contingent aberration, but an explosion of emancipatory potential. The true difficulty -- and the task of authentic theory -- is to link together this explosion and its tragic outcome.<<

so what do youse reckon about that?

12:34 / 22.08.02

(Everything in quotes from Zizek's review)

Zizek's article is a prime example of revolutionary irresponsibility, and bad writing to boot.

While it might be fair to seperate "the Lenin of What is to be done?" from the later, "realistic" Lenin, seperating that later Lenin from Stalin is facile and dangerous and serves only to maintain the fiction that the Soviet Union could have turned out any different than it did. Zizek makes the egregious error here of interpreting Lenin's texts while glossing over what the man actually did. Such duplicitness is an intrinsic part of any utopian revolution. To say that author of reviewed book "rehashes all the old arguments about his [Lenin's] ruthless cruelty and indifference towards mass suffering" but then note approvingly that Lenin "eliminat[ed] not his opponents but their ideas" is to delve once again into the disembodied fantasy world of intellectuals. All effect that Lenin had on bodies is whitewashed. Apparently, revolutionaries are floating brains or something.

Zizek quotes Alain Badiou as sayingThe ultimate and defining experience of the 20th century was the direct experience of the real as distinct from everyday social reality - the real, in its extreme violence, is the price to be paid for peeling off the deceiving layers of reality, and posits that the role of "authentic theory" is against this proposition, and that instead "fidelity to Lenin's legacy" (meaning, his legacy in writing, not actions) requires an interpretation of the 20th century as merely a time of wasted potential.

Authentic theory, in my mind, is certainly about "pragmatic compromise, cynical wisdom, awareness of our limitations, resistance to the temptation of the Absolute," with these limitations a consequence of our embodiment.

Tryphena Absent

00:16 / 23.08.02

Well the link's down which would piss me off but I think the actual book that this comes from is downstairs somewhere.

I love Zizek... about three months ago I was happily listening to radio4 when a programme came on. Zizek, Pilger and Fukuyama (sp?) were in the studio discussing their separate books. Fukuyama began by discussing the continuation of history through scientific progress and moved on to social engineering through genes. Personally my first thought was that he was ripping off the film Gattaca and Donna Haraway in one long dirge. He completely discounted the advent of the genetic model through US- British competition... etc.

Zizek destroyed the man, Zizek destroys everyone because he's so damn reasonable. He explained that he felt liberal democracy was labouring under a thought ban. The ban being that the society we live in does not strive to deploy utopia. Humans can only imagine capitalism because we live within that world. However the basis for liberal government is, in part, marxism. This has to be accepted simply through the interaction with workers.
Zizek believes we should struggle against rather than tolerate what is wrong in society... liberal democracy has no victory and this is in part what his book on Lenin is trying to capture.

The most important thing to recognise about Slavoj Zizek is characterised by one thing he said that I felt really emphasised what was right about him... the victory of liberal democracy is that we, in the western world, can sympathise with third world poverty. Sympathise; There's no understanding or experience there, we are removed from the poverty, our sympathy becomes almost narcissistic.

In no way is Zizek irresponsible and he isn't really a revolutionary but he does have a handle on the present that should not be ignored. He's a theorist but there's a reality behind what he's saying about our society that Fukuyama simply does not possess. He emphasises the threat of narcissistic subjectivity and he's an idealist and that's got to be respected because damn there just aren't enough of them.

00:54 / 23.08.02

well i was more interested in what he was saying about the 20th century and after than his specific comments on lenin (although i think by 'fidelity to lenin's legacy' he means more an interest in the question 'what is to be done?', i.e. a pragmatic question as to how you overcome capital, than a specifically leninist answer to that question...)

being completely indifferent to what does or doesn't count as 'authentic theory', i am interested in the idea that contemporary politics (or post-politics) is based on denial of the 20th c and (in annoying psychoanalytic language) the foreclosure of the politics of the real. to continue the psychoanalytic metaphor, doesn't this imply an imminent (or maybe immanent) and probably catastrophic return of the real - of the horrors of the 20th century bubbling away as symptom rather than spectacular condition - is this, in fact, a description of the world today? the horror of the real, banned from capital-p Politics, merges seamlessly with the banalities of everyday life - so that, for example, internment camps become a completely acceptable fact of life for many/most Australians.

so what does that mean if, as zizek suggests, 'what is to be done' has again become an urgent question? given that lenin's answer is, at best, obviously outdated (if it was ever any good), what do we do?

01:17 / 23.08.02

seperating that later Lenin from Stalin is facile and dangerous and serves only to maintain the fiction that the Soviet Union could have turned out any different than it did

So if Lenin hadn't been succeeded by Stalin, the Soviet Union would have turned out exactly the same way anyway? Are you sure that's not facile?

02:01 / 23.08.02

Janina:

...the victory of liberal democracy is that we, in the western world, can sympathise with third world poverty. Sympathise; There's no understanding or experience there, we are removed from the poverty, our sympathy becomes almost narcissistic.

Well, this was my main problem with the review linked above; the profound lack of empathy (rather than sympathy, and the reason I chose that word is that empathy seems to me more of a bodily feeling than sympathy, which has the connotations of wishy-washy thought) that Zizek displays w/r/t to Lenin's "indifference to mass suffering." Saying that Western empathy for something like third world poverty is narcissism at its core sounds like the truth, but I don't think that gets anyone anywhere good, which IMHO is what theory should be for.

Having not read Zizek, (because I understand he has a great debt to Lacan, whose later work (basically anything that isn't merely a gloss on Freud. Topology? WTF?) I find absolutely opaque.)I don't know what remedy he puts forward to "the threat of narcissistic subjectivity." Is it a case of "by the way, we're screwed because all our representations of the other are at base narcissism" or does he have something programmatic in mind?

02:05 / 23.08.02

LLBismG, to channel Ari Fleischer for a second: "that's what we here in Washington call a hypothetical, and we don't entertain those around here."

(meaning, I don't want to get into a pissing match about the merits of Marxist-Leninist for fear that I'll sound like Martin Amis's new book. Glad you understand)

Tryphena Absent

13:37 / 23.08.02

To be honest with you I hate marxism, it's necessary and everyone should read it, but damn it's hard to connect with. I do want to say this though Zizek is concentrating on the theory behind Lenin, people all too often get weighed down with the amount of death that has taken place in communism. Just because people died does not necessarily mean that the theory is wrong it simply means that in practice something went wrong. On top of that you have to explore the idea that the theory that we work under now does also not necessarily work all that well. Where does that get us? It actually gets us to Zizek because practically every book that has ever been written about Lenin has whined on and on about the amount of deaths that he caused, don't get me wrong I had quite a lot of family killed by the fucker, it's time to take a different approach.

Recognising the narcissism that is inherent to our community is necessary, it is not widely recognised, it's about time that mainstream cultural theorists started talking about it more. Why limit that role to the therapists? Zizek's remedy, well that's a little hazy, let's say he owes a lot to a little thing called marxism in a much more modern way and leave it at that. Now excuse me I have to go read the afterword to Zizek's book.