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Wednesday, September 28, 2005
All Sorel’s Fault
Mulling over Zizek’s absurd theory of revolution and Foucault’s fascination with “the enigma of revolt” I was struck by how indebted to Sorel they both seem and with the continuing purchase in the academic literary mind of Sorelian attitudes.
Given his enormous political and literary influence in the early 20th century, and his arguable longterm legacy via the aesthetics of modernism, it’s strange how rarely you see Sorel’s name come up. I have nothing significant to say about that--blogger’s privilege--but thought I’d put in a plug for Michael Tratner’s excellent Modernism and Mass Politics: Joyce, Woolf, Eliot, Yeats--a fine work of old-fashioned intellectual history cum literary criticism. For Tratner, the influence of Le Bon and Sorel in framing the understanding of mass politics, and in driving literary innovation in response, is the main story of Anglo-American literary modernism. Seems right to me.
Comments
I discuss Sorel in a fair amount of detail in my dissertation, as is common among scholars writing about Wyndham Lewis.
I’m curious about the ties you see to Foucault and Zizek. They don’t immediately leap to mind. Does Tratner make this connection? I don’t think so.
The Sorel i know of is Julien. So don’t tell me who is yours : this post is a moment of zen (as X. Jardin would put it) i’m trying to prolongate.
blogger’s privilege
OK, well, I guess… Seems a bit spare this, an ambiguous hit and run…
By “the continuing purchase in the academic literary mind of Sorelian attitudes” do you mean a cynicism about mass politics, about the mass’s ability to know its own interests and act on them?
(Goddamm… it doesn’t take Sorelian influence to make me cynical… recent elections are reason enough, no...)
And it’s strange that Sorel doesn’t come up much nowadays because of that would endow later efforts, such as those of F. and Z., with the tang of fascism? Is that it?
Just trying to understand the point. You’re getting increasingly cryptic, starting to sound like one of those libel-fearing British tabloids: “What notable theorist was recently slurping down the essence of totalitarianism with a certain fin-de-sielce commie-turned-pro-fascist strategist?” “What major theorist now mumbles sweet nothings to his revolutionary bedfellows in Persian?”
I don’t know. For someone prone to lecture on academic protocol, I’m not sure this really hacks it as a critical stance. Intimations rather than arguments.
Plausible deniabiliy rather than engagement…
Oh, and what Matt said over on the other thread…
Foucault’s similarity to Sorel is the more obvious, Jonathan. While he was blown away by the Iranian revolution and excited by the idea of Islamic government, it doesn’t seem to have been because there was anything in the ideology of Islamism that moved him. I don’t have the book in front of me, but in his piece on a revolution spread by cassettes and the other essays, I think he envisions Khomeini more or less as Sorel does the myth of the general strike—a compelling source of mass enthusiasm that is admirable for the way it creates collective action and “enigma[tically]” bursts the horizon of expectations. That in holding this view Foucault also drew a strong opposition between the political will of the collective Iranian people (good) and the role of political parties or revolutionary strategists (loathsome) also seems to me to make him resemble Sorel.
What brought Zizek to mind in this context was that his idea of revolution does not seem to involve the proletariat seizing the means of production, say, or the increasing immiseration of the working class, but simply the occasion of a solidarity that is otherwise prevented by something on the order of collective myth. The significant conflict in his view does not seem to be between bourgeoisie and proletariat but between one order of reality and an eruptive, utterly contrary order. Hence the appeal of seeing the revolution as not either the end point of necessary historical development or as the achievement of a vanguard party, but as an alternative history—one that intersects with the history we know in messianic form. Here, too, Zizek’s attitudes seem to me closer to Sorel and the general strike than they do to more traditional Marxism.
CR, at this point I’d almost be disappointed if you didn’t show up with your usual dopiness. I take it that the second most sincere form of flattery is to be dogged by a blithering pissant.
"Hence the appeal of seeing the revolution as not either the end point of necessary historical development or as the achievement of a vanguard party, but as an alternative history—one that intersects with the history we know in messianic form.”
Are you suggesting Sorel is the ur-text for this ‘appeal’?
his idea of revolution does not seem to involve the proletariat seizing the means of production, say, or the increasing immiseration of the working class, but simply the occasion of a solidarity that is otherwise prevented by something on the order of collective myth
On which Zizek texts is this statement based?
Random note: I haven’t read that Tratner book, but I have read this Tratner essay [.pdf] on “Derrida’s Debt to Milton Friedman” and found it an honest criticism of some deconstructive claims. (Note: it does not undermine the entire deconstructive project, nor does it blow holes in the very fabric of Theory itself. It addresses a few specific aspects of Derridian thought, contextualizes them, and attempts to trace their origin in mainstream economic theory.) To wit:
Historians of theory would probably prefer to cite Marcel Mauss and George Bataille as the ones who led Derrida to the concepts of gifts and of mysterious, uncontrollable economic structures. It is probably true that they figure more consciously in Derrida’s own thinking than do Keynes and Friedman. But the emergence of deconstruction and its rapid spread during the 1970s are not merely events in the history of highly intellectual disciplines; they are also events in the broader history shaped by the changes in everyday economics and governmental practices. Keynes and Friedman developed theories which had material consequences; Mauss and Bataille were in effect mythologizing the events going on in mainstream economics.
Mauss and Bataille may seem better predecessors because they were critics of capitalism, as Derrida is, but if mainstream twentieth-century economic practices in effect involve the deconstruction of signs as an everyday part of their functioning, then perhaps deconstruction should not be considered inherently anti-capitalist or even anti-authoritarian. Derridean theorists need to be careful when they generalize that a deconstructive challenge to one form of authority (such as the authority given to production as the source of economic value and the source of linguistic meaning) carries with it a challenge to authority in other realms, or even a challenge to the very idea of authority entirely. Derrida makes such an unwarranted leap when he argues in his essay that the power of a counterfeit coin to generate real wealth is equivalent to a radical disruption of patriarchy: the power of the counterfeit coin in Baudelaire’s story, Derrida claims, reveals that “the phantasm” has “the power . . . of producing, of engendering, giving, rather than the ‘True Father’” (GT 161). The image of a True Father, Derrida implies, depends on theories of production and human giving as the basis of prosperity, in other words, on outdated economic theories. In noting that the phantasm, the sign, the code, has more power of “engendering” and of “giving” than the True Father, Derrida might be tracing not the demise of patriarchy but simply the demise of Keynesian economics and of the liberalism of the 1960s, the demise of the notion that the government can wrap itself in the guise of the True Father and maintain the economic system by appearing to give gifts whenever recession threatens.
Robert: a passage from the article linked above (the one in which Zizek reportedly uses Santner as his sock puppet):
For a radical Marxist, the actual history that we live is itself the realisation of an alternative history: we have to live in it because, in the past, we failed to seize the moment. In an outstanding reading of Walter Benjamin’s ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’ (which Benjamin never published), Eric Santner elaborated the notion that a present revolutionary intervention repeats/redeems failed attempts in the past. These attempts count as ‘symptoms’, and can be retroactively redeemed through the ‘miracle’ of the revolutionary act. They are ‘not so much forgotten deeds, but rather forgotten failures to act, failures to suspend the force of social bonds inhibiting acts of solidarity with society’s “others.”’
Scott, that passage looks like its from Tratner’s second book called, I think, Deficits and Desire, which I’ve been wanting to read for awhile. Have to say, provocative as it sounds, the association between Derrida and Friedman seems pretty counterintuitive.
It’d almost be simpler to assume that Benjamin is in fact the shared factor here, since Zizek actually sites Benjamin in the passage in question and since there were periods in Foucault’s intellectual development where he was apparently reading some Frankfurt school stuff (even though Benjamin isn’t “really” Frankfurt school).
I honestly was expecting a whole lot more “below the fold”—for example, an argument of some kind. I guess that comes out in comments. Still, I’m so jealous of blogs with a “below the fold” that it pains me all the more to see it used frivolously.
Also, at some point during the writing of The Puppet and the Dwarf, Zizek apparently fell madly in love with Eric Santner—the affair apparently hasn’t abated yet.
It’s rather amusing to read some hick seminary student’s lightweight references to the Frankfurt school or Zizek--both avowedly materialist and atheist. Kostco: stick to the Abridged Nietzsche (included in your Domino’s Pizza Employee Handbook)
Sorry to let you down, Adam. So many hours in the day, you know. My main motivation was to put in a word for Tratner’s fine book, but I was kind of hoping that some one might take up and extend the discussion along the lines you suggest or others.
It would make sense to look to Benjamin, of course. But I believe Benjamin was quite influenced by Sorel, who was I believe the direct inspiration for the “Reflections on violence” and whose influence is arguably all over Benjamin’s political vision. Personally, I think that vision isn’t very impressive. Benjamin was a brilliant critic, but, considered as political analysis, his theory of capitalism and revolution, etc. looks, well, let’s say, thin. No one’s gonna hold that too seriously against Benjamin because he was brilliant, and a great writer, and because of the world he was living in and the history he knew. Unfortunately, Zizek has none of that going for him.
Sean,
Certainly Zizek is no Benjamin, but out of curiosity—how many of Zizek’s books have you read, as opposed to these online articles that most students of his thought find to be quite embarrassing? It seems risky to hang your assessment of Zizek’s “theory of revolution” on his quoting Eric Santner quoting Benjamin.
I’m not sure that Zizek has a fully-fledged ‘theory of revolution’, but there are a number of places where he explores the idea of revolution - Revolution at the Gates, the opening of Tarrying with the Negative, etc. If I had a student who wanted to explore ‘Zizek’s ideas about revolution’ I’d direct him/her to these texts. If he/her used only an article or two in the LRB, and based on these expressed ‘amazement’ that people ‘still took [Zizek] seriously’, I’d be unimpressed. I’d suggest that ‘not taking him seriously’ wasn’t really the result of reading only this couple of articles but that reading only this couple of articles was the result of not taking him seriously.
As I’ve pointed out repeatedly in the past when people have stated that you have to read more Zizek in order to criticize him, Zizek is acting as a public intellectual in the LRB. A public intellectual tries to influence the public through the reception of his or her works intended for the public, and one can’t expect people to go back and read through Zizek’s ouevre to understand his real and true meaning. The most that you could say if you want to defend Zizek in this manner is that he’s a bad public intellectual but that this doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s a bad thinker.
Rich, let’s take a comparable example. Habermas has a short encyc. article on the Public Sphere as well as his book length study. How would you respond to someone who, on the strength of the Encyc. article alone, referred to Habermas’ “absurd theory of the public sphere”??
If you’re going to criticize Zizek’s “public intellectual” activity, then you probably should say that his interpretation of the Iraq War or his take on “What if?” history is absurd. If you’re going to criticize something like “Zizek’s theory of revolution”—or his “theory of subjectivity” or whatever—then maybe you should go to the places where such things are worked out in detail, rather than merely mentioned in passing.
I’m not particularly pleased with Zizek’s work as a public intellectual, but that doesn’t discredit his other work in my mind. It’s two different contexts—just like my shitty blogging doesn’t necessarily reflect badly on my scholarly work.
As for “public intellectuals,” one is inclined ask along with Foucault, “What are these? I have never met any.”
Three comments. I’ll dispose of Matt’s contentless one first:
From http://www.bbk.ac.uk/news/prarchive/cash.html:
“Explaining why he was attracted to this new role, Professor Zizek says: “I like what was offered to me by Birkbeck, that is, to promote the role a public intellectual, to be intellectually active and to address a larger public. It’s not only good for me, but also for Birkbeck and the country.”
And a description of his workplace: “The Faculty of Arts at Birkbeck has established a Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities to promote new practices in the study of society and culture, and to offer a forum to enhance the role of the public intellectual.”
Now that the let’s-pretend-we-don’t-understand-English ploy has been flushed, Robert next:
Robert, what is an encyc./Encyc. article? Is there some journal named “Encyc.” that you are capitalizing haphazardly? I’ll assume that you mean an encyclopedia article. An encyclopedia article serves a very different function from that of an essay published by a public intellectual. An encyclopedia article is supposed to give you a very basic understanding of a particular subject. Yes, if someone based a criticism of someone’s theory only on an encyclopedia article, then you could probably say that they should read more. But the essay of a public intellectual is supposed to be self contained, because it is supposed to be an agent of influence by itself. If it doesn’t communicate the author’s own position correctly to a reasonably charitable reader, then the author is at fault.
Lastly, Adam. You have a way of restating what someone wrote so that it sounds like you’re correcting them, but which is actually equivalent. How is “I’m not particularly pleased with Zizek’s work as a public intellectual, but that doesn’t discredit his other work in my mind. It’s two different contexts—just like my shitty blogging doesn’t necessarily reflect badly on my scholarly work” in any real way different from my “The most that you could say if you want to defend Zizek in this manner is that he’s a bad public intellectual but that this doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s a bad thinker”?
As for the start of your comment, I find it unconvincing. Zizek did lay out a sort of primitive theory of revolution in his LRB article, and when Sean was asked what he meant, that’s what he cited. According to Robert, Zizek does not really have a more fully-fledged theory of revolution waiting in the wings. Sean should not be chided for saying that Zizek’s theory of revolution is absurd instead of saying that Zizek’s take on “What if” history is absurd if what he really means is the first, and if everyone understands where he got it from.
Consider it flushed; that’s rich.
Surely you didn’t aspire to be such a literalist dunce at some point.
Matt, I’ve seen the cite to Foucault before—you’ve been brandishing it at every opportunity. As a reason for saying that we can not refer to Zizek as a public intellectual when he himself does, it doesn’t work. Perhaps you should Email him the cite.
As for calling me a literalist dunce, let’s see if I can adjust to the intellectual level that that involves—OK, I have it. Back on you ten thousand.
Zizek, Foucault, Sorel, Derrida! I believe they are not nice men, and that when one reads their works, ones contributes to the deplorable situation in which men politely request their sisters and mothers enter the workplace to help pay the bills. I think this makes perfect sense. Don’t you?
Adam and Robert,
You’re quite right. I haven’t read much Zizek, nor do I have any plan to. I’m not a student of his thought, such as it may be. And if it’s actually substantial, well, my loss. As Rich points out, I was in fact responding to something he wrote in the LRB and to the apparent theory he sketched there. If you want to say, well, this is some stupid shit. Fine by me. We agree, and I’ll take your word that things might be different elsewhere.
Robert, if you look back, I think you’ll see that my comment about the impossibility of taking Zizek seriously has less to do with his theories, such as they are, then with the fact that he used Eric Santner for auto-sublation, as John puts it. As far as I’m concerned, that alone is enough to confirm my impression of him as a huckster and a fool. You feel differently, I wish you luck explaining that kind of thing. All that said, though, your rejoinder would be a lot more interesting, Robert, if you had actually said that the apparent theory in the LRB essay is actually inconsistent with some more subtle views Zizek elaborates elsewhere. Having not seen that, I can’t help but take Zizek at his word and continue to believe that he probably has a latter-day Sorelian view of revolution. In my view, that’s politically and intellectually unimpressive.
No hablo inglés [rubs palms together mischieviously; thinks, “I certainly have stymied Puchalsky’s argument!"]
...
Okay, I had to get that out of my system. But here’s the thing—now that I think about it further, Foucault’s take on the Iranian revolution and Žižek’s citation of Santner’s citation of Benjamin don’t strike me as particularly similar, certainly not similar enough to require some kind of common root.
Indeed, while I know it’s unfair of me to demand broad acquaintance with Žižek’s work from those who are making broad statements about it, Žižek gives a prominent role to the “party” in his (admittedly not fully developed) “theory of the revolution” in other works—see, for instance, the edited volume of Lenin’s works, or his insistence that the reason Paul is so helpful is because he’s like Lenin, or whatever else. And also his critique of Hardt and Negri, who are much more similar to Foucault/Sorel as we’re discussing it here. So maybe based on that one sentence Žižek’s “theory of the revolution” (which is, as noted, deployed in the context of a second-degree citation) might be very different from traditional Marxism—but looking at his other works changes the picture, in a way that does not neceessarily reflect poorly on Žižek. That is, he made a citation (with which he presumably agrees) that is relevant to the topic at hand; his point was not to elaborate or even summarize a “theory of the revolution” in any kind of complete sense, but to respond to his particular topic, the “What if?” histories.
I can’t wait until Žižek publishes another article so that we can have the exact same discussion.
Sean, Our comments crossed in the ether.
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Have no fear, The Cheese Lover! You and your cheese are safe so long as I’m around!
All this talk of cheese is hilarious. You know so much more than we could ever hope to about philosophical matters like tautologies, derivatives and instantion, despite the fact that some of you have read books originally written in French. You deserve all the praise the humble members of The Cheese Lover Appreciation Society can muster. Huzzah to you all, my dear friends. Huzzah!
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Thanks, Adam. That’s quite interesting. Here’s the rub, though. Sorel himself became a big admirer of Lenin and I believe (though I’m happy to be corrected by people who know more than my pitiful thumbnail full) that there’s a case that can be made that Sorel was useful to Lenin. Scott’s wisdom should probably be heeded and false consistencies not imposed on someone as wild as Sorel, but if I understand correctly, what he objected to in the Second International was the displacement of a vision of the “totality” of revolution by the prospect of peaceful evolution, rational planning, and ordinary party competition. If socialism became politics as usual, it was gonna be no good to him. So, though he disliked efforts to make Marxism scientific, Lenin’s voluntarism was appealing to him.
In these respects, I think Foucault’s thoughts about the Iranian revolution do resemble Sorel’s surprisingly closely. As noted, I don’t know enough about Zizek to say whether that’s true of him more generally. (I’m guessing you’re right that Hardt & Negri make for a closer resemblance.) But is it possible that Zizek’s Lenin resembles Sorel’s Lenin?
The larger context for all of this is, of course, something Rich has pointed out--pessimism. To the extent Zizek’s or Foucault’s or Hardt and Negri’s visions resemble Sorel’s fancies, it’s probably because they share his pessimistic views of the possibility for actually existing socialism.
Obligatory disclaimer: what I am now about to say is based on a teeny, weeny, but not non-existent piece of evidence.
Adam, I just found Zizek’s defense of Lenin from last year’s In These Times. The view of Lenin it proposes doesn’t seem inconsistent with the possibility I suggest above. It also seems to me foolish and--did it have the remotest relation to any existing movement--frightening. The basic premise, that “‘democracy’ is a false issue,” seems to me both hackneyed in the extreme and enormously wrong:
Our basic political choice in the United States—Democrat or Republican—cannot but remind us of our predicament when we want artificial sweetener in an American cafeteria: the all-present alternative of Equal and Sweet&Lo, of blue and red small bags, where almost each person has his/her preferences (avoid the red ones, they contain cancerous substances, or vice-versa), and this ridiculous sticking to one’s choice merely accentuates the utter meaninglessness of the alternative.
Yes, electoral politics in the U.S. are not going to bring about socialism in our lifetime. But anyone who thinks that means it doesn’t matter which party is in near complete control of all three branches of the federal government is simply blind to reality. (Whether or not that is “the real” is a matter of complete indifference to me.)
Among the qualities that make Zizek seem a fool to a non-sympathetic reader is not simply that he recycles old and dubious notions, but that they have so little relation to political reality. Were there the serious prospect of actual Leninist movements taking revolutionary power, comments like he makes in this essay would be terrifying. But since there isn’t, all this looks like clowning.
Sean, I agree with you about the bone-chilling freeze that goes down my spine when I think of a Leninist Third Way. But that said, Zizek’s comparison between the two-party system and artificial sweeteners isn’t necessarily ignorant.
In fact, it reminds me of Hannah Arendt’s definition of freedom: freedom isn’t the ability to choose from available options, but the ability to imagine options not yet given. What I like about her concept of freedom is that it moves beyond both liberal ideals of negative liberty (in which “freedom” is “freedom from x, y, z") and neo-lib ideals of freedom as the ability to go to Target and choose from a vast array of forms and colors of toilet bowl scrubbing brushes (what might be called the Virginia Postrel School of Freedom).
Which isn’t to defend Zizek: it’s nearly always the case that his best insights are cribbed from other, better, thinkers (’tho *The Sublime Object of Ideology* is a very good book, if you care about Hegel). Arendt’s version of freedom doesn’t argue that there’s no real differences between available options (nor does Zizek’s, for that matter; as he writes, there’s enough of a difference for people to choose sides). She simply doesn’t think we are truly free if we can’t think outside of or beyond the given.
What worries me politically is the question: for whom are the two parties different? I think it matters to certain groups who’s in power. But since Clinton, I’m not sure it matters to the poorest Americans. Or, to put that with more subtlety, I think it matters to them, but only insofar as many of the poorest Americans feel more strongly about issues such as abortion, faith, gay marriage, and so on than they do about their material interests. This is where Tom Frank got it right (where he got it wrong was in arguing that the Republicans will never actually make the policy changes that keep the cultural Right voting Republican).
It would be one thing if the Democrats were workshopping a new Great Society program. But it seems to me—‘tho I’m probably wrong—that a great deal of the Dems run around seeing who can more quickly cut programs for the poor and give cash back to the middle and upper classes. Gov’t, red and blue, is increasingly like an auto sale: vote for me and get $500 in cash back bonuses.
Please tell me it ain’t so!
Wow, if it hadn’t been for Zizek, I don’t think that I ever would have heard anyone say that there was no meaningful difference between the U.S. political parties. Why, Zizek might want to come up with some amusing coinage, like “Demopublican” or “Republicrat”, some combination of words never seen before, to illustrate this new and different assertion.
Luther, there are very important problems with your analysis that have nothing to do with Zizek. No one has problems imagining options not yet given. And there is no mystery as to why these options can not be made real. The U.S. political system is set up in such a way as to almost enforce the existence of one major center-left party and one major center-right party that between them win all of the major elections. It has nothing to do with imagination, and everything to do with the structural characteristics of how the electoral system rules work. You can’t simply imagine your way out of the system; in fact, no one really likes the system. To get out of the system, you need to either change the electoral rules or decide to not work through elections.
And the “for who are the parties different” bromide is so unserious. “Since Clinton” means “since 2001”. Is that supposed to be some long-distant and forgotten historical era? Or is this a varient of the argument that Clinton gave money to the rich? This isn’t a policy blog, but that last assertion is basically untrue, and is usually asserted by people who have no need for marginal adjustments like the Earned Income Tax Credit and who can safely scorn them from their position of comfortable middle-class radicalism.
As Sean mentions, I think that the politics of socialist pessimism are somewhat interesting. Zizek is rather like a postmodern Ghost Dancer, a failure of the imagination greater than any other mentioned here. As some point socialists are going to have give up on socialist history and make something new, and stop being fascinated by both the positive and negative aspects of socialist history, the dead hand of Marx, much less Lenin. All of that in both its positive and negative aspects has been firmly imported into what you might call the ruling narrative. As I discovered when poking around a bit into the history of train-related socialism for a comment on Mieville’s _Iron Council_, Eugene Deb’s house is now number 66000008 on the list of U.S. National Historic Landmarks.
I don’t think that the difference between encyclopedia articles and magazine articles is the relevant distinction here, is it Rich? The obvious point is that if an author has a large body of work about subject x, and then alludes in passing to subject x in an article, anyone who wishes seriously to talk about that author’s treatment of subject x does not confine his attention to the article. He does not, on the basis of this passing article reference, conclude that the author’s treatment of x is ‘absurd’. And if he does, he should not expect to be taken seriously himself.
Robert,
There’s something to be said about a man’s ambitions when his articles written under the guise a public intellectual so poorly reflect (as Adam notes in response to this post) the perceived value of his scholarly work. It doesn’t reflect upon the work itself, mind you, but upon the man who insists on sullying his own reputation by failing to realize that his brief forays into the public sphere embarrass him and his students alike. (Especially if said someone preaches introspection and self-awareness of the psychoanalytic sort.) That said, I lean more toward LB’s position, now that I’ve read some more substantial bits of Zizek’s work: he’s better on long-form than short-play...which isn’t to say I don’t have a problem with him in any form, only that the problems I have with him are exaggerated in the condensed form in which he packages his thought for public consumption. (Another way to say this is: the man has a problem with concision. Having attended one of his lectures--and taken note of his Stephen King-like scholarly output--I’d say that may very well be the case.)
OK, Robert, let’s say for the sake of argument you’re right. Can you go beyond this procedural point and say something substantive about why Zizek’s more extensive thoughts are inconsistent with the impression created by the short form? If not, you’re blowing smoke.
Let me reiterate, I’m not particularly interested in Zizek. The point of my post was to mention Michael Tratner’s book and to note that I had been reminded of it by what strikes me as the common Sorelian premises in contemporary literary academic attitudes. But, let’s say Zizek is exceptional and represented his own views poorly in that essay. Tell me what I’m missing.
I can’t be sure the Troll di dispiacere left this comment, attacking himself. Even if not, it’s still no more acceptable to spew obscenity in one direction than the other. Besides, insults go so much better in Italian. - the management
Oooo, Italian! I know that. Changed the name to better reflect the content of this particular act of self-mockery. I mean, who doesn’t love a man with the voice of an angel. -the management (er, the other the management)
Troll di dispiacere, avete saputo che mentre provate a deridere il mondo, il mondo intero li ride? Avete avuti le sfere da ballare sotto il vostro proprio nome, voi. La vostra vergogna è la vostra vergogna, il castrato, non introito che migliore fuori sul vostro migliora. voi la gradiscono quando ridono? voi gradiscono l’aumento che ottenete? Poiché non ottenete uno. Non siete presi seriamente, neppure in quei momenti rari in cui quasi faccia un punto. Se è un concorso che grande del dick desiderate, sapete, possiamo avere uno. Ditch la merda e l’alberino anonimi sotto il vostro proprio nome, vigliacco. Desiderate fuoriuscire la vostra avversione, voi siete così fieri di esso, perchè non possedete fino esso? O facciali gradiscono essere un’altra puntura pusillanimous, ancora un altro wonder dickless nella storia corta della comunicazione in linea. Siete stati dimenticati, vigliacco, come tutto il altro who’ve di castrati sparito nell’etere. Fuori, ora sbatti esso, il c’mon, o chiuda la scopata in su.
Another point, which I’m not sure if Sean’s considered, is that any reader of Reflections on Violence will quickly realize that Sorel is an egomaniacal bigot (so-and-so’s intelligence, we learn early on, is “hardly superior to that of a Negrito,” etc.)
I’m a little late to this--and the best part is the cheese. The post doesn’t have anything to do with Zizek, Foucault, or Sorel, as far as I can tell.
For the most part, I agree with Adam but will add a couple of things.
Zizek doesn’t seem to have a ‘theory of revolution’ yet, as far as I can tell. He has mentioned the Party (interesting insofar as most radical democrats these days focus on loose identity based groups or fluid networks or even no connections at all--Hardt and Negri). He has a notion of the Act, which he takes from Lacan. What links Party, Revolution, and Act together, it seems to me, is the account of retroactive determination of meaning. This isn’t a full theory of revolution, by any stretch, but it does contribute to thinking about action by combining a sense of the indeterminancy and unpredictability of action (as in Arendt) with the recognition that an act changes the conditions in which it arises, thus changing the conditions in which it will be assessed. So weirdly, a revolution can be more or less than one might accept. It can be more insofar as we could not predict how it would be assessed, our norms could be so radically different, and it could be less insofar as something relatively minor could be retroactively determined as a major event (Z talks in For They KNow Not What they do about the Dreyfus Affair in this regard).
Robert, you’re just re-asserting yourself, adding that you don’t think that a distinction that you introduced is relevant.
Interesting post on Adam’s site. “I’m tempted to say that Žižek might seem like a better ‘public intellectual’ if we didn’t have such a sucky public”: where have I heard something like that before? And the Chomsky dismissal through rhetorical expansion: “Žižek could go the Chomsky route and read every shred of information published in the English-speaking world in order to back up his claims, I suppose”. So Chomsky is what, for doing this? A pedant? A model of what we can’t really expect anyone else to do, if only he didn’t really exist?
Adam ends with “But I don’t want to talk about Žižek’s idiosyncrasies anymore. I want to talk about ‘the situation,’ the set of all things that are the case. I want to know what an ‘intellectual’ is to do.” Presumably what is meant by “what an intellectual is to do” is how an intellectual is to politically influence the situation. Well, if you look at previous instances in which intellectuals (I don’t think that Matt’s scare quotes add anything) have influenced politics, you often see a pair, or two groups, of intellectuals, one of which is noteable for theoretical coherence in defining the current world situation in new terms, the other of which uses clarity of written expression to popularize and bring into mass conciousness the complex insights of the first. What Adam seemingly doesn’t understand is that Zizek positively interferes with either of these two functions—he isn’t theoretically coherent *or* popularly clear. The second I can judge by his LRB pieces. The first I can judge by the fact that when people who have read Zizek extensively are asked questions about topics important to Zizek, such as “OK, you say that I don’t understand Zizek’s theory of revolution, what is it then?” they can never answer. So the very first step in addressing the question of what the intellectual is to do about the situation is to allow yourself to give up on Zizek and similar unserious figures.
Jodi explained his “theory of revolution,” such as it is, perfectly clearly, as far as I can tell—taking into account the constraints of the blog comment box genre.
I’m not trying to dismiss Chomsky, but since we already have a Chomsky, I don’t see much value in Zizek just duplicating his efforts.
And finally, it’s customary to respond to posts on the site on which they appear.
Adam, Jodi started her answer with “Zizek doesn’t seem to have a ‘theory of revolution’ yet, as far as I can tell”—matching what Robert wrote. The rest of her comment is her attempt to tie various of Zizek’s concerns together into some kind of coherent theory. When I said that people can’t answer, I meant that they can’t answer with a description of what his theory is, not that they literally can’t answer at all. If they answer that he has no theory about a concern that is apparently central to his project, then this is a confirmation of his incoherence.
As for which blog, I don’t see the problem, really, see I know that you are reading this discussion and since I don’t generally follow yours. But I’ll copy my comment over as you like.
It’s not necessary to copy your comment; I was just being a whiny little bitch.
Right now I’m working my way through Origen contra Celsum; this conversation reminds me of that.
Actually, ‘revolution’ isn’t central to his project, which is why there isn’t a theory of it. The ‘yet’ suggests that it could be. Theorists develop their ideas over time, thinking, struggling with them.
An interesting example: Locke on tacit and express consent. Many commentators find Locke incoherent on how consent as he describes it can be a ground of political obligation. That he isn’t coherent on this, doesn’t mean that people dismiss him. It means that people find the problem an opportunity to keep developing the notion of consent.
Do as the Dutch do. -the management
Misschien vindt u de neurale en genetische wegen van intentionality aangezien iemand als Dennett doet en dat om het even welke jargon-geladen, emotionele, anti-empirische leftism (of theism) nooit van de massieve ingewikkeldheid van de huidige technocratie (zeg de energiemarkt, voor) kon rekenschap geven, en dan de futiliteit van “Menswetenschappen” realiseren en aan de nieuwe technologie van de brandstofcel werken, of misschien banken roof en collectief Amerika… of misschien in plaats daarvan schok-weg aan jodi en wat grote cuke mmmmmmmmmmmm van Sreeepture of van Marky Marx… mmm realiseer binnendring in een beveiligd computersysteem
Jodi, thanks for the generous contribution. Here’s my contention. In his LRB essay, Zizek has laid out an underdeveloped theory of revolution that shows recognizable similarities to Sorel. Why? Because he treats revolution as an occasion for spontaneous solidarity that otherwise appears to be prevented by something on the order of collective myth. “Failed attempts” at revolution amount to “failures to suspend the force of social bonds inhibiting acts of solidarity with society’s ‘others.’”
That passage would appear to suggest that, when we are able to overcome “social bonds” and feel “solidarity” with “others,” the revolution will occur.
My contention that this is a view that Zizek expresses presents several possibilities for response. You could say, for example, that I’m misreading Zizek, or Sorel. You could say that Zizek has expressed himself more fully elsewhere and that this passage is misleading. But, if you’re gonna do something more than just obfuscate, you should say something one way of another. So far, verbiage.
Please note, as I mentioned above, I dismiss Zizek because: (a) he uses Eric Santner as his sock puppet; (b) he finds hackneyed ways to resuscitate Lenin in a context where Lenin has no likely relevance; and (c) (a point I haven’t stressed in this thread) he advances a stupid and ugly account of kristallnacht. To the extent, the LRB essay mentioned above actually expresses his views of revolution, that is in fact another reason to dismiss him. But there’s no direct connection between the apparently sophomoric nature of the theory and my impulse to view him as a clown--there being sufficient evidence for that view elsewhere.
Jonathan, I’m not sure why Sorel’s egomomania is germane. It’s not exactly rare. Is there a reason you brought it up.
It won’t seem plausible to the Zizekians out there, but as I mentioned above, I brought this all up because I think Tratner’s book is excellent. Zizek is actually a matter of indifference to me. I’m amused by the desire to defend an indefensible figure, but Foucault and Sorel alike are both far more interesting, I think.
Rich, Insofar as I claimed that Zizek “had” a “theory of revolution,” I was wrong. There are many reasons I got that wrong, chief among them being that I was responding in kind to a lazy post. If you’ll note, Sean’s original contention that Zizek’s “theory of revolution” was absurd was therefore also wrong, insofar as the statement presumed the existence of a fully-developed “theory of revolution.”
A less than full development in one area of his thought does not indicate a global incoherence. His theories of subjectivity and nationalism are as coherent as one could wish. His argument that his psychoanalysis-cum-German Idealism is applicable to ideology critique—together with his single-handed renewal of “ideology” as a topic of theoretical concern are both convincingly and thoroughly argued in my humble opinion.
You have not read the works in which those ideas are thoroughly elaborated, as far as I can tell. You have only read works in a genre in which it would be ridiculous to assume that such ideas would be elaborated sufficiently for you to be able to tell whether his body of work is “coherent.” You don’t have to read any of his works. You have only so much time, and there are hundreds of compelling thinkers who deserve your attention.
But if you’re not going to put in the work, I see no reason why you need to keep asserting your a priori assumption that Zizek is a worthless thinker. I see no value whatsoever to your contributions to these debates—unless, of course, you have an extensive bibliography under your belt of which I am not aware.
What is your objection to his account of Kristallnacht?
If you’ll note, Sean’s original contention that Zizek’s “theory of revolution” was absurd was therefore also wrong, insofar as the statement presumed the existence of a fully-developed “theory of revolution.”
Adam, this is silly. The LRB essay proposes an explanation for revolution, and a remarkable one. It’s one that seems to me worth noting, both for its implausibility and for its resemblance to other currently prominent visions of political change. Tell me what I should call it so as not to offend the sensibilities of Zizekians, and I will go back to edit the post. Should I call it Zizek’s non-theory of revolution? His concept? His fantasy? Will any of this nomenclature really matter?
To be clear, my point wasn’t that Zizek’s theory is undeveloped or incoherent, but that the theory (or what have you) is just plain dumb. Given that premise, no amount of elaboration or complexity will save it. Either my understanding of Zizek is wrong. Or Zizek’s explanation of himself is misleading and just a trivial example of foolish public posturing. Or there is some way to see the view of revolution expressed here as something other than the Sorelian vision it appears to be. Everything else said so far is smoke.
What’s my objection to his account of kristallnacht? Well, we’ve been over this before in the threat to John’s post about alternative histories, but here’s another shot. Zizek says this:
In this way of thinking, Kristallnacht – a half-organised, half-spontaneous outburst of violent attacks on homes, synagogues, businesses and individuals – becomes a Bakhtinian carnival, a symptom whose fury and violence revealed it as an attempt at ‘defence-formation’, a covering up of a previous failure to intervene effectively in Germany’s social crisis. In other words, the very violence of the pogroms was proof of the possibility of an authentic proletarian revolution, its excessive energy marking the reaction to an (unconscious) awareness of the missed opportunity.
For Zizek, Kristallnacht is the result of the guilt that anti-semites feel at not having brought off the revolution. Or, as I believe Robert amended, anti-semitic violence is the form that guilt for not having brought off the revolution took. Either way, the proximate cause of Kristallnacht was the non-occurence of the revolution.
This strikes me a just-so story of a sort more than hackneyed in the history of the left. As an account of revolutionary change, it seems in keeping with the apparently Sorelian views expressed elsewhere in the essay, since the main factor necessary to revolution other than “solidarity” appears to be violent enthusiasm. If there were any evidence that anti-semitic thugs were motivated by guilt or that they would be otherwise inclined to pursue a socialist revolution, there might be something to this story. But there isn’t, and so it’s just a fable that dignifies anti-semitic thugs by giving them a tragic (or freudian) depth and that in passing mangles Bakhtin.
As it happens, when this all came up first, Captain Revolution thundered ponderously about how Zizek was not describing the psyches of individuals but something far grander and more difficult to name. A reading of Santner’s essay shows this not to be the case. Zizek is describing individual characters in Christa Wolf’s novel. He thinks they felt guilty and so joined a pogrom. That seems to me a bad theory.
путем ликвидируя марксисты, theists, и клоуны клапана после этого исключите словесность и postmodernism и марксист-gegelevskoe схематическое от академии после этого установите подкреплени-reinforcement-ware в peasantry
From Sean’s comment above:
--Z’s “idea of revolution does not seem to involve the proletariat seizing the means of production, say, or the increasing immiseration of the working class”
I think both these statements are correct; this is why some don’t read Z as a Marxist at all
--"occasion of a solidarity that is otherwise prevented by something on the order of collective myth.”
I can’t tell from the sentence if it is the occasion of solidarity that is prevented or enabled by the myth; this will make a big difference re Sorel; I think that for Sorel the myth happens in advance of a revolutionary outbreak and guides/inspires it; Z has been explicit that the left needs to keep open paths that have not been taken, past hopes and energies; I don’t think these paths or pasts ever reach the level of a myth, or a fantasy, for Z they are Real. After an ‘outbreak’ there will be a retroactive determination of meaning, which will cut off some options and paths; but, again, I don’t think the new production of meaning lives up to a myth. (And, let me clear here, I’m not writing any of this as a defense per se, just as what I see as an explication; so I’m not trying to defend him from a charge of Sorelianism, I’m just trying to show why I don’t see a similarity re myth.)
--"appeal of seeing the revolution as not either the end point of necessary historical development or as the achievement of a vanguard party”
Z does not posit an ‘end’--that would be the end of politics, a kind of reconciliation or end of alienation that he rejects; again, another reason he is more post-marxist than marxist On vanguard party--he doesn’t give the party that role in his writing on Lenin, so, this seems right as far as it goes. So, yes, not traditional Marxism
--on messianic: I just don’t see it; there is no reconciliation, no promised resolution, justice, or anything, no way to secure the ethical conditions of one’s act in advance.
the one potentially scary part: if one reads Sorel as advocating something like permanent rejuvenating violence, and one emphasizes Z’s position that no reconciliation or end is possible, that the best one can hope for is keeping gaps open, then one faces the question, is this position one that leads to or could lead to permanent violence. I’m not sure. I want to find an answer that says no, but I don’t yet know how to do it. This is part of the challenge of thinking with a philosopher who is writing, alive, developing his thought.
Adam writes: “But if you’re not going to put in the work, I see no reason why you need to keep asserting your a priori assumption that Zizek is a worthless thinker. I see no value whatsoever to your contributions to these debates [...]”
Adam, if you must “see value”, then perhaps my contribution is to correct your logic errors and tendentious restatements. Have I really made an a priori assumption? Have I even stated that Zizek is a worthless thinker?
To review what I have stated: I wrote that Zizek is a bad public intellectual—this based on my readings of some of his actual essays. You apparently agree, or so I would understand the post on your site. So far so good.
Next, I wrote that if you accept that Zizek is a bad public intellectual, this is not necessarily evidence that he is a bad thinker. Again, you agree.
At this point one comes to my metaphor of Zizek as “postmodern Ghost Dancer” and my statement about his theoretical incoherence—this last being not a priori, but based on the evidence that his, um, extensive readers (I remember that you once strongly objected to my use of the term “Zizekians") stated that he had no theory behind the topics of his public essays whenever questioned. Note, however, that there is a common element to both of these statements—the suitability of Zizek in relation to the sort of topic that you brought up on the post on your site, i.e., what is the situation, and what is the intellectual to do. I also recall th