When Zizek was talking about the four threats posed by capitalism that would create an apocalyptic scenario, I couldn’t help but think – why would a revolution be any different than that? Why would the overthrowing of this incredibly flawed system lead anywhere different? He often spoke about how we must begin from the beginning again...
What I’m getting at is that his four threats: ecological catastrophe, private property, scientific developments, and new forms of apartheid (like slums) are of course, terrifying. I think however that we are attracted to these things – just as Zizek is himself attracted to violent revolution, to the destruction of a system, we too are attracted to that very same sort of violence. Aren’t those four threats in a way almost like having a violent revolution, but without the need for a human uprising? It’s the result of self-destructive capitalism that things will eventually change, and has nothing to do with us “fighting against the system” or something.
I wanted to talk about all of these separately, but only briefly, and state why I think we’re attracted to them. Ecological catastrophe is something that seems at once removed and an immediate danger: global warming is happening, and we’re attacked with that information on a daily basis; yet, we go on with our lives as if nothing is happening. Isn’t it possible that we aren’t reacting not out of laziness, but out of an unconscious desire for something like this to happen? I am hopefully not sounding incredibly crazy when I say that.
I don’t want to talk much about private property, but with increasing privatization and mechanization of our lives, we are going to destroy ourselves in a very real way. There is an interesting freedom though, in the thought of being completely transformed into a machine. Perhaps we could be programmed to behave more humanely than we usually behave (I think our behaviour does have much more to do with the situation than our inherent “goodness/badness”) and this makes me think of the creatures in District 9 who were still persons regardless of their actual material compositions. However, I also think there is much beauty to be found in our flaws and etcetc... Zizek spoke of how we would be turning into substanceless substances, but I’m not so sure that this is the case. Again though, I think we have a desire to escape/destroy ourselves by turning ourselves into machines – we do not even have to change our physical compositions. I think it’s happening already: when I take public transportation or listening to the politically correct conversations of other people, I can tell that most of them are already dead. I’m not saying I’m much better... and this is both repulsive and fascinating to me. I have to admit, I am at least somewhat attracted to an entire world that consists of self-absorbed individuals who are robot-like (think American Psycho) while I still find myself yearning for some idealized form of social interaction and understanding that is becoming an increasingly rare thing to find.
So much rambling about this... Anyways. Finally, the last one mentioned is where he was talking about how capitalism would result in the ever-increasing differences between the rich vs poor, so much so that we would have (to an even greater extent) a minority of the incredibly rich and well-off in a segregated section of the world, while the rest of it is starving, diseased, and barely able to survive. I think that this might be the downfall of capitalism, but only if those starving were not so poorly off that they had no way to organize themselves/did not hold onto any ideas of being able to achieve something higher or move up in the system/etcetc, though in this extreme version I think that they would have given up all hope of achieving a change.
For me, I don’t really know where to take that last one, except that it’s the one that disturbs me the most... today for an English class my prof compared something else we were reading to a cruise line that is bound for Haiti/is already in Haiti and is going to some safe, tranquil part only a few miles away from all of the people still buried under rubble/displaced/and so on and the imagery of this makes me incredibly sick.. I told my mom this today, and she asked “why would it be different if the people vacationed elsewhere?” and I don’t have a real answer for her. I don’t think the solution is to feel incredibly responsible for what happened or any sort of white guilt, but at the same time, deciding to go there for vacation is really, really sickening for me. It makes me think of some tour guide being like “over here on the left we have all of these poor people dying... and on the right, we have some American tourists with money who are enjoying life and acting as if nothing horrible is happening at all” and yes.
I wanted to make more Zizek comments, he is very fun to read. I will stop though. I love his social critiques, I am probably a bit young to be reading him but that doesn’t really matter. Everyone starts somewhere I guess. I could never embrace Marxism in any sense besides an apologetic Leftist stance that Zizek absolutely despises.
Wednesday 27 January 2010
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- Nina and Sofia
- We are two strangers who happened to become friends over the distance between the UK and Canada, by posting videos online (check website) discussing various issues of a somewhat existential nature.
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3 comments:
hi, i watched your critique of Zizek in youtube.
I am not replying neither to defend him or to support you. I just have a few observations.
capitalism with a human face, something very similar was proposed during the civil war, in the south the slave oweners said look we treat the slaves nicely, we feed them, house them, you on the contrary just want to exploit them. However we all know how horrible is to be a slave. Moreover, even today, in this century there have been and can still be found cases of slavery in the western world, very in secret of curse, and it was reported as horrible etc, but that is the effect of the change, the change from slavery to capitalism was a necessary one, it was not a just one, or a good one, it was a necessary one, so today slavery is the rarity and not the rule.
One of the problems we face as species is the shortness our existence, which most of the time makes us see life primarily through our sole experience, thus one ask oneself, well i am born in a not so bad city or country, things are a bit difficult, but if i resist and work hard i will make it, etc. However the reality of the system surpases our experience, when the system starts to show the signs of its incapacity to cope with the needs of humanity, its erratic behaviour becomes more and more palpable to the people, and to study it and to try to change it becomes innevitable.
Now lets not get confused, it is almost innevitable for the majority to ask themselves the question, why are things the way they are? and for those to try to change it, yet that does not mean that revolution is innevitable, however the option of no action is to horrible, it is for this reason that the coordination of a movement to change it is necessary, this has been the reality in the past, with previous, now dead economic systems, and as production becomes more complex and now globalized, the more complex is also to organize people, meaning it is no longer a national battle, or a regional battle, it is a war of ideas worldwide, with of course, differences from place to place.
The violence of revolution is a complex phenomena, first of all, all the violence we know about the past, it is always carefully repeated over and over, and its reality twisted and rewritten by those in power, always trying to cover up for the daily violence of the present system, more people die of hunger needlessly worldwide today than ever before, that is just a small example of the ever growing problems of capitalism which do not respond to the humanity or ethics of the people involved in perpetrating this particular problem. Second about violence, is that as you may know the violence is something to be expected by those that have grown sick from benefitting from the system, i say that probably the most sick people are those that cannot picture themselves without all this economic power, and i say sick as in being totally under the control of capitalism and not the other way around. Thus their violent response to any attempt at changing the system. So violence always starts at the other end. Also, as history has shown, humanity must be prepared to do everything for the sake of its survival, i believe than when the individual is determined and secure of the purpose of his actions, death becomes a small price to pay, is enough to read the memoires of the french women during the revolution, they would say that the posibility of being executed in the struggle was just the small price every revolutionary has to pay, or "the little piece of lead" as they called it. Having said that of course every revolutionary wants to change the system without blood, but is it possible? when the police, the army and all the weapons are on the other side? surely one must try to change those around, but one must be prepared for the worse.
i think of violence in revolution, as the fear one has when going through personal challenges in life, like love, respect, aceptance, adulthood, etc. imagine if we all said, oh adulthood no, i am ok as a child, why change, leave me alone. One cannot look at the other side and ignore society, and the results of doing so are the well known cases of terrible psicho-social characters, even small psicological tragedies in our lives are the product of unattended issues in our past.
Now imagine if the very process, thrugh which the human relates to the world, that is the economic system, is left unchecked even at the face of catastrophe. Of course one can hide oneself in a coccon, and become cinic and nihilistic about the world, but is this a choice everyone have? or an opportunity very few can run to.
Capitalism does not have a humane face, not because we don't work hard to do so, but because it is against the very nature of the system, it is impossible for laws that are at its core to be bent, or avoided, it is as trying to make a lion a vegetarian, the lion may try to eat vegetables ou thrw at him for a while, only if its in a cage and with no choice, but at the first opportunity its nature will command him. Capitalism may provide properity for a few, but it is always fewer and fewer people, at the expense of now not only the majority but the ecology itself included, so it is no longer my future that is in danger, but that of the very foundation of life, a balanced and safe ecology. What was granted to to the cavemen, now it has become a privilege to modern man, even with all the technlogy in place to make the world a place to live in total confort and in harmony with nature and not to suffer needlessly.
And here of course i am sure that the word utopia already has hit the front of your brains. Utopia is to believe that humanity will prevail in a world where capitalism does whatever it likes, utopia is to believe that profits will stop cncentrating in less and less hands, that the number of jobless will revert, that humanity will continue its path of war after war for capital and markets, safely, naturally, that there is no danger of killing our own specie, that is utopia. What is utopic about persuing your own interests, you do it everyday, it is not a question of whether is possible to change the world, radically, since we have done before in the past and with our own lives, it is a question of how.
we are all brn in different conditions, different families, we develop different ideas and tastes on how to live ur lives and that is the beauty of the human being, however in order to preserve and t cherish our differences we must act together and defend the very foundation of our life which is common to everyone, the basics of life must be secure to everyone or they will never be secure for no one.
i like this post and the comments, here's mine:
zizek, in the marxist convention video, makes the following claim - to be a revolutionary today, you must at a minimum accept that capitalism's inherent flaws will not be able to support our way of life (one in which freedom is protected/cherished). and this is to me also the minimum requirement to understand much of zizek's thought. in a way he is converting his readers into a new generation of believers. believers, not in him, but in a future without capitalism, a new political project (tentatively titled communism).
the notion of conversion itself is a topic he talks about often. he claims (and i agree) that one cannot see the truth of a situation until one has already taken a side. objective truth exists, he claims, but it is only accessible through an engaged subjective position. this is also his criticism of today's multiculturalism, that it is a form of ideology which masks the true antagonisms (like the ones mentioned above). his analysis of recent apocalyptic films is useful here: movies like day after tomorrow, 2012, avatar, terminator, etc. reveal that we're more apt to believe in the end of the world than in a modest change in our activities. in other words, we cannot think of life without capitalism, as your first question suggests.
if you look through his lectures, you'll see that most of the time he is talking about ideology. before, i was curious on why zizek spent so much time going on about movies instead of setting a new (communist) agenda. but now i realize, and keep realizing, that it is a kind of psychoanalytic treatment to bring to light the truth (that we still breathe ideology). lacan is integral to his method (but fortunately not his style), and tells us that if we are to have a real, substantial revolution, it must first occur in the unconscious.
this is tricky, but zizek has a phd in tricky. first we should realize the ways in which we are complicit, the ways in which we are hypocrites, our evasions and disavowals. only then will we think a new way.
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