Žižek and Thumb-up-your-butt politics
Apr. 16th, 2022 06:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mobiusstripperAnd then there's Žižek. I don't know much about him except:
"Better to do nothing than to engage in localised acts whose ultimate function is to make the system run more smoothly (acts like providing space for the multitude of new subjectivities, and so on). The threat today is not passivity but pseudo-activity, the urge to “be active”, to “participate”, to mask the Nothingness of what goes on” (The Parallax View, p. 334).
“ . . . the withdrawal expressed by “I would prefer not to” is not to be reduced to the attitude of “saying no to the Empire” but, first and foremost, to all the wealth of what I have called the rumspringa of resistance, all the forms of resisting which help the system to reproduce itself by ensuring our participation in it — today, “I would prefer not to” is not primarily “I would prefer not to participate in the market economy, in capitalist competition and profiteering,” but — much more problematically for some — “I would prefer not to give to charity to support a Black orphan in Africa, engage in the struggle to prevent oil-drilling in a wildlife swamp, send books to educate our liberal-feminist-spirited women in Afghanistan. . . .” A distance toward the direct hegemonic interpellation — “Involve yourself in market competition, be active and productive!” — is the very mode of operation of today’s ideology: today’s ideal subject says to himself: “I am well aware that the whole business of social competition and material success is just an empty game, that my true Self is elsewhere!” If anything, “I would prefer not to” expresses, rather, a refusal to play the “Western Buddhist” game of “social reality is just an illusory game.”
(The Parallax View, p. 383)
"Law (ideology) necessitates a hidden ideological disidentification. This means that every effective ideology has a certain space of inherent transgression built inside of it that gives subjects a sense of freedom and distance from their ideology. This, of course, is a very subtle trick on the part of ideology and its mechanisms. It simulates a space outside of itself which only serves to keep us locked into the ideology we take ourselves to be at a distance from. For example, American ideology creates all sorts of spaces that seem to be either non-ideological or anti-ideological. These spaces include or have included rock concerts, bars, strip clubs, protests, unruly sporting events, comment sections on the internet, etc. People can go to these establishments and “transgress”, but this is inherent transgression, that is, a form of enjoyment (jouissance) that seems to transgress the rules of Law/ideology, but actually only serves to make us more subservient to it, more invested in it. None of these spaces stand as actual threats to the ideological order. Rather, they reinforce it. They convince us that we are not ideological puppets, but this is just a way to blind us to our strings."*
“Nothing is more conducive to proper integration into the hegemonic ideologico-political community than a “radical” past in which one lived out one’s wildest dreams. The latest protagonists in this saga are today’s US neocons, a surprising number of whom were Trotskyites in their youth. As we can now claim, retroactively, was not even the glorious Parisian May ’68 such a collective rumspringa which, in the long term, contributed to the reproductive capacity of the system?” (The Parallax View, p. 332). In other words, they got it (resistance) out of their systems just so they could become the system itself (power). A leftist-academic rumspringa? “I would prefer not to.”
"Bartleby politics can be used to think of “resistance” in terms of a toxic romance, that is, it also works at the personal level — not just the politico-social one. When couples fight, they often get off on hurting each other. They enjoy getting under each other’s skin. There are always those subjects that are off limit when it comes to arguing, e.g., comparing a woman to her mother. This is the “inherent transgression” within the “Law” of the relationship, within the parameters of what is explicitly and implicitly appropriate to say. So long as each person in the relation gets off on insulting one another, both remain libidinally invested in the relationship. They are still playing the game. However, the moment one of them denies the enjoyment of hurting the other is the moment when the game is finished. This is the moment of preferring not to. To prefer not to in this case is to reject the enjoyment one gets from the toxicity (obscene supplement) that ultimately keeps one invested in the very relationship that drives one mad. To prefer not to is to opt out of the game entirely. It frees one from the relationship altogether. It rejects the modes of “resistance” one enjoys within the relationship. You know you’ve seen this shit before. How much a person will enjoy saying something cruel to the other in the heat of the moment. How that person will giggle his or her ass off by crossing the line of the forbidden. As long as one gets enjoyment from these acts of transgression, one is still invested in the relationship. The key is truly mean it when you say, “I’m so done with this!”"
So, basically, all of us hippies, punks, activists, freaks, pinkos, and other agitators are in an abusive codependent relationship with Le System (and, come on, we already knew that), and rebellion is just a way of having masochistic hate-sex with it. So go take a shower and the next time the System shoots you a booty call, text back, "I prefer not 2," and go stare at a brick wall or something instead.
More on this later. I'm just going to work on digesting it for a while and see if it stays down.
*The quotes with citations from The Parallax View are directly from Žižek, while the uncited quotes are commentary by The Dangerous Maybe from the linked article.
- It's hip to like him and even hipper to hate him
- He appears to be some strange hybrid between man, meme, and opossum
- He will one day be Jordan Peterson's eternal tormentor in Hell (the really special part, where they put the philosophers)
"Better to do nothing than to engage in localised acts whose ultimate function is to make the system run more smoothly (acts like providing space for the multitude of new subjectivities, and so on). The threat today is not passivity but pseudo-activity, the urge to “be active”, to “participate”, to mask the Nothingness of what goes on” (The Parallax View, p. 334).
“ . . . the withdrawal expressed by “I would prefer not to” is not to be reduced to the attitude of “saying no to the Empire” but, first and foremost, to all the wealth of what I have called the rumspringa of resistance, all the forms of resisting which help the system to reproduce itself by ensuring our participation in it — today, “I would prefer not to” is not primarily “I would prefer not to participate in the market economy, in capitalist competition and profiteering,” but — much more problematically for some — “I would prefer not to give to charity to support a Black orphan in Africa, engage in the struggle to prevent oil-drilling in a wildlife swamp, send books to educate our liberal-feminist-spirited women in Afghanistan. . . .” A distance toward the direct hegemonic interpellation — “Involve yourself in market competition, be active and productive!” — is the very mode of operation of today’s ideology: today’s ideal subject says to himself: “I am well aware that the whole business of social competition and material success is just an empty game, that my true Self is elsewhere!” If anything, “I would prefer not to” expresses, rather, a refusal to play the “Western Buddhist” game of “social reality is just an illusory game.”
(The Parallax View, p. 383)
"Law (ideology) necessitates a hidden ideological disidentification. This means that every effective ideology has a certain space of inherent transgression built inside of it that gives subjects a sense of freedom and distance from their ideology. This, of course, is a very subtle trick on the part of ideology and its mechanisms. It simulates a space outside of itself which only serves to keep us locked into the ideology we take ourselves to be at a distance from. For example, American ideology creates all sorts of spaces that seem to be either non-ideological or anti-ideological. These spaces include or have included rock concerts, bars, strip clubs, protests, unruly sporting events, comment sections on the internet, etc. People can go to these establishments and “transgress”, but this is inherent transgression, that is, a form of enjoyment (jouissance) that seems to transgress the rules of Law/ideology, but actually only serves to make us more subservient to it, more invested in it. None of these spaces stand as actual threats to the ideological order. Rather, they reinforce it. They convince us that we are not ideological puppets, but this is just a way to blind us to our strings."*
“Nothing is more conducive to proper integration into the hegemonic ideologico-political community than a “radical” past in which one lived out one’s wildest dreams. The latest protagonists in this saga are today’s US neocons, a surprising number of whom were Trotskyites in their youth. As we can now claim, retroactively, was not even the glorious Parisian May ’68 such a collective rumspringa which, in the long term, contributed to the reproductive capacity of the system?” (The Parallax View, p. 332). In other words, they got it (resistance) out of their systems just so they could become the system itself (power). A leftist-academic rumspringa? “I would prefer not to.”
"Bartleby politics can be used to think of “resistance” in terms of a toxic romance, that is, it also works at the personal level — not just the politico-social one. When couples fight, they often get off on hurting each other. They enjoy getting under each other’s skin. There are always those subjects that are off limit when it comes to arguing, e.g., comparing a woman to her mother. This is the “inherent transgression” within the “Law” of the relationship, within the parameters of what is explicitly and implicitly appropriate to say. So long as each person in the relation gets off on insulting one another, both remain libidinally invested in the relationship. They are still playing the game. However, the moment one of them denies the enjoyment of hurting the other is the moment when the game is finished. This is the moment of preferring not to. To prefer not to in this case is to reject the enjoyment one gets from the toxicity (obscene supplement) that ultimately keeps one invested in the very relationship that drives one mad. To prefer not to is to opt out of the game entirely. It frees one from the relationship altogether. It rejects the modes of “resistance” one enjoys within the relationship. You know you’ve seen this shit before. How much a person will enjoy saying something cruel to the other in the heat of the moment. How that person will giggle his or her ass off by crossing the line of the forbidden. As long as one gets enjoyment from these acts of transgression, one is still invested in the relationship. The key is truly mean it when you say, “I’m so done with this!”"
So, basically, all of us hippies, punks, activists, freaks, pinkos, and other agitators are in an abusive codependent relationship with Le System (and, come on, we already knew that), and rebellion is just a way of having masochistic hate-sex with it. So go take a shower and the next time the System shoots you a booty call, text back, "I prefer not 2," and go stare at a brick wall or something instead.
More on this later. I'm just going to work on digesting it for a while and see if it stays down.
*The quotes with citations from The Parallax View are directly from Žižek, while the uncited quotes are commentary by The Dangerous Maybe from the linked article.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-17 03:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-17 05:40 am (UTC)I have to learn more about these ideas to really be able to weigh in, but I think that his observation of the way resistance is baked into the system and serves as a scripted role within it is worth examining because I suspect there is a good deal of truth to it. That's pretty much what I was saying in my last post, just going a step further. While I was expressing frustration at how resistance seems to inevitably get co-opted into controlled opposition, Zizek is arguing that all resistance is designed by and born into the system. That it's not just easily subsumed into the machinery of Moloch; it's a vital organ. So the key question is, is it? What to do (or not do) about it can only be discussed once that premise has been evaluated.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-17 02:25 pm (UTC)I do think its possible for a resistance to change things but the main distinction is that they have to either be authoritarian and dupe enough people into voting them into power or another political power thats neither Capitalist not Authoritarian who can convince enough people, en masse, to change to their ideology. The problem is that one takes a lot more time and effort and some people genuinely are just that stubborn.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-18 04:10 pm (UTC)It's an interesting view. Disengaging isn't without its merits. And like you say, it can be a bit of an abusive relationship. There are a lot of interesting thoughts here. It's something I want to think about for a while as well. Thanks for sharing this.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-20 08:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-21 11:58 am (UTC)To the question of transgressive acts being baked into the system and therefore being more performative than "really" transgressive or revolutionary (revolution itself being Just Another Control Mechanism)- I think even a cursory investigation validates this position, it's just trivially obvious...
Zizek's answer (or the interpretation of his answer) to disengage, to prefer not to, is, I think, only a kind of first step and not some kind of ultimate resolution of this problem. It's just that in order to begin enacting truly radical change I might have to disengage with my pretentions first to even have enough perspective to understand the situation at all- to lift the veil of confusion and pause long enough to reassess with a clear eye.
Doing nothing, preferring not to, isn't the solution. It's a way to reset and reevaluate.
Happy to see anyone even talking about Zizek here, you made my day.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-21 03:45 pm (UTC)I think you're spot on.