[eDebate] "Žižek’s politics are not merely impossible but, as we have shown, potentially despotic"

[trond at umich.edu]

Interesting criticism of ?i?ek by a Professor and Ph.D. candidate at U
Nottingham published in the Australian journal /Thesis Eleven: Critical Theory
and Historical Sociology/.  A quick OCLC search revealed this journal is
carried by 19 university libraries nationwide with active CEDA/NDT programs.

The authors give reasons the notion of ?the Act? is the essence of ?i?ek?s
?project,? to use the parlance now in vogue. (I am in no position to assess the
strength of their argument on this score).  Elsewhere they give reasons why
those using Zizek who fail to embrace his logic of ?the Act? turn themselves in
his own words.  Such persons eat their critique or they eat ?i?ek's critique. 
"Not our ?i?ek" fails to provide a safe harbor.

Robinson, A. & Tormey, S. (2005). A Ticklish Subject? ?i?ek and the Future of
Left Radicalism. Thesis Eleven, No. 80, February, 94-107.

     (pp.103-105)
     "Read in a certain way, ?i?ek seems to offer a ?leftist? way out of the
postmodern cul-de-sac. In questioning the movement of left radical theory
towards identity politics, multiculturalism and radical democracy, he reminds
readers of the continued importance of the global economy and the extreme
disparities of wealth and power that characterize capitalist globalization. He
has sought, as he would put it, to think the impossible and reopen the debate
in radical theory about social transformation. His recent recovery of Lenin is
a potentially interesting development given Lenin?s importance in debates on
organization, strategy and the wars of position and of movement that radical
theory has recently eschewed in favour of abstract socio-cultural critique. He
also offers a glimpse of the dilemmas of power, violence, transformism and
betrayal that await those who take radical political action, as opposed to
those who write about it. Read in a certain way, ?i?ek points radical theory
back toward radical political practice ? towards an engagement with political
issues, radical political movements and the transformation of social relations,
an engagement we think it should never have lost in the first place. As useful
as such a reading is, this is not, we would argue, the ?i?ek who emerges on
closer examination. Regarding where radicals should proceed from ?here and
now?, his work offers little to celebrate. The relevance of a politics based on
formal structural categories instead of lived historical processes, which
measures ?radicalism? not by concrete achievements but by how abruptly one
rejects the existing symbolic order, is questionable. The concept of the Act
is, we think, metaphysical, not political, leading to a rejection of most forms
of resistance. For ?i?ek, objections to official ideologies which stop short of
an Act are ?the very form of ideology? (?i?ek, 1997a: 21), and the gap between
?complaint? and Acts is ?insurmountable? (?i?ek, 1999: 361). So protest
politics ?fits the existing power relations? and carnivals are ?a false
transgression which stabilizes the power edifice? (?i?ek, 1999: 230; 1997a:
73). This position misreads past revolutionary movements ? including the
decades-long revolutionary process in Russia ? and offers little for the
development of left strategies aiming to challenge the existing system. What
?i?ek establishes, we would argue, is a radical break between his own theory
and any effective left politics, much of which ? as we have shown ? he
peremptorially dismisses. The concept of the Act is a recipe for creating a
desert around oneself while sitting in judgement on actual political movements
which always fall short of one?s ideal criteria.
     In our view, ?i?ek is justified in advocating a transformative stance given
the structural causes of many of the issues he confronts, but he is wrong to
posit such a stance as a radical break constituted /ex nihilo/. Far from being
the disavowed supplement of capitalism, the space for thinking the not-real
which is opened by imaginaries and ?petty resistances? is, we think, a
prerequisite to building a more active resistance and, ultimately, any
substantial social transformation. As the cultural anthropologist James Scott
shows in a series of case studies, political revolutions tend to emerge through
the radicalization of existing demands and resistances ? not as pure Acts
occurring out of nothing. Even when they are incomprehensible from the
standpoint of ?normal?, conformist bystanders, they are a product of the
development of subterranean resistances and counter-hegemonies among subaltern
groups (see, for example, Scott, 1990: 179?82). This is to say that social
change does not come from nothing, but rather requires the pre-existence of a
counter-culture involving nonconformist ideas and practices. As Gramsci puts
it, before coming into existence a new society must be ?ideally active? in the
minds of those struggling for change (Gramsci, 1985: 39). The history of
resistance thus gives little reason to support ?i?ek?s politics of the Act. The
ability to Act in the manner described by ?i?ek is largely absent from the
subaltern strata. Mary Kay Letourneau (let us recall) did not transform
society; rather, her ?Act? was repressed and she was jailed. In another case
discussed by ?i?ek (2001b: 74?5), a group of Siberian miners is said to
accomplish an Act ? by getting massacred. Since Acts are not even on ?i?ek?s
terms socially effective, they cannot help the worst-off, let alone transform
society. ?i?ek?s assumption of the effectiveness of Acts thus rests on a
confusion between individual and social levels of analysis and between clinical
therapy and political action. Vaneigem eerily foresees ?i?ek?s ?Act? when he
argues against ?active nihilism?. The transition from this ?wasteland of the
suicide and the solitary killer? to revolutionary politics requires the
repetition of negation in a different register, connected to a positive project
to change the world and relying on the imaginaries ?i?ek denounces, the carnival
spirit and the ability to dream (Vaneigem, 1967 [1994]: 111). ?i?ek?s politics
are not merely impossible but, as we have shown, potentially despotic, and also
? between support for a Master, acceptance of pain and alienation, militarism
and the restoration of order ? tendentially conservative. Such a politics, if
adopted in practice, could only discredit progressive movements and further
alienate those they seek to mobilize. We would argue that a transformative
politics should be theorized instead as a process of transformation, an
a-linear, rhizomatic, multiform plurality of resistances, initiatives and,
indeed, acts which are sometimes spectacular and carnivalesque, sometimes
prefigurative, sometimes subterranean, sometimes rooted in institutional change
and reform and, under certain circumstances, directly transformative. Moreover,
we would take issue with ?i?ek?s model of the pledged group bound together by
the One who Acts as a step backwards from the de-centred character of current
left-radical politics. Nor need this decentring be seen as a weakness, as ?i?ek
insists it should. It can be seen as a strength, protecting radical politics
from self-appointed elites, transformism, infiltration, defeat through the
?neutralization? of leaders, and betrayal. In contrast with ?i?ek?s stress on
subordination, exclusivity, hierarchy and violence, the current emphasis on the
adoption of anti-authoritarian, heterogeneous, inclusive and multiform types of
activity offer a better chance of effectively overcoming the homogenizing logic
of capitalism and of winning support among wider circles of those dissatisfied
with it. Similarly, the stress on the centrality of direct action ? which
includes ludic, carnivalesque and a variety of non-violent actions ? generates
the possibility of empowerment through involvement in and support for the
myriad causes which make up the anticapitalist resistance. This resistance
stands in stark contrast to the desert of ?heroic? isolation advocated by ?i?ek
which, as Laclau puts it, is ?a prescription for political quietism and
sterility? (Butler et al., 2000: 293). ?i?ek is right that we should aim to
overcome the ?impossibilities? of capitalism, but this overcoming should
involve the active prefiguration and construction in actuality of alternative
social forms, not a simple (and actually impossible) break ? with everything
which exists ? of the kind imagined by ?i?ek. It is important that radicals
invoke ?utopias?, but in an active way, in the forms of organization,
?disorganization?, and activity adopted ? in the spaces created for resistance
and in the prefiguration of alternative economic, political and social forms.
Utopian imaginaries express what is at stake in left radicalism: that what
exists does not exist of necessity, and that the contingency of social
institutions and practices makes possible the transcendence of existing
institutions and the construction or creation of different practices, social
relations and conceptions of the world. The most ?i?ek allows radicals is the
ability to ?glimpse? utopia while enacting the reconstruction of oppression.
Radicals should go further and bring this imagined ?other place? into actual
existence. Through enacting utopia, we have the ability to bring the ?no-where?
into the ?now-here?."

Trond E. Jacobsen