Bill Walker | Blog

“When today’s Left bombards the capitalist system with demands that it obviously cannot fulfill (Full employment!  Retain the welfare state!  Full rights for immigrants!), it is basically playing a game of hysterical provocation, of addressing the Master with a demand that will be impossible for him to meet, and will thus expose his impotence.  The problem with the strategy, however, is not only that the system cannot meet these demands, but that those who voice them do not really want them to be satisfied.  When, for example, “radical” academics demand full rights for immigrants and the opening of borders to them, are they aware that the direct implementation of this demand would, for obvious reasons, inundate the developed Western countries with millions of newcomers, thus provoking a violent racist working-class backlash that would then endanger the privileged positions of these very academics?  Of course they are, but they count on the fact that their demand will not be met – in this way, they can hypocritically retain their clear radical conscience while continuing to enjoy their privileged position.” (p. 44-45, The Puppet and the Dwarf – Slavoj Zizek)

As popular, entertaining, learned, and prolific as Zizek is, he does not have what by anyone’s standard would be considered a traditional professorship appointment or comfortable, prestigious academic post, which is precisely what makes him able to level such a warning and criticism at the ivory tower perspective.  I’ve been indirectly critical of Zizek elsewhere with regard to how some have employed him for supposedly constructive theological purposes.  He’s actually a Marxist-materialistic with a Lacanian, psycho-analytical, post-structuralist twist (if you don’t understand all of that, it’s ok – neither do I), but he really happens to like a radically immanent understanding of Christianity, which basically just means that he takes Jesus’ death to literally be the death of the idea of God altogether.  Hence, he says, there is no “big Other”, so actually doing something about the outcome of history is up to us.  Like others before him (Alan Badiou and Giorgio Agamben, for example), he also is attracted to Christianity because of a perceived usefulness about St. Paul’s “militant” nature.  In other words, Zizek et. al. want to employ Paul’s universalization of Christianity for political ends (anti-capitalist ones, usually).

Needless to say then, as far as theology and Christian orthodoxy goes, Zizek isn’t the must charitable writer, and like many thinkers before him (Nietzsche for instance in The Anti-Christ, which I hope to blog about soon), he succumbs to the bad habit of performing highly selective readings of the Christian faith, the Bible, and of great authors (e.g., Kierkegaard, G.K. Chesterton, or even C.S. Lewis) in order to re-interpret certain conventional ideas for achieving support of very particular contemporary interests.  I don’t fault them on these grounds as such, however, because Zizek for one is very honest and upfront about this, which is why I think it’s good to use him, in return, as a resource for all kinds of other important projects (criticizing consumerist and sexual liberation culture, complacency in general, partisan politics, the mainstream media, soft-core liberals that think they’re actually doing serious freedom fighting by just standing up for gay rights when thousands of children are dying of starvation, etc).

Anyway, I made note of this quote mostly as a reminder for myself.  I can’t help that I was born into this world now, this family, and live in this place, etc., but am I doing enough to really authenticate my own speaking out against injustices, and my own attempt at testifying to another way – with integrity in my own life: my spending habits, and stewardship of time, work, and relationships in general?  How much do we let God discomfort us, or bring us into contact with “the other”?  Do we ever actually try to “go without”?  This is a good topic for the Lenten season.  Conviction and rebuke can come from the most unlikely of places.

Related Articles

• My athiestic/theoretical take on the christian cosmos (god/soul/sin/spirit/holy etc) (aaronasphar.wordpress.com)
• Slavoj Žižek masterclasses, and Jacques Lacan lecture (cruciality.wordpress.com)
• the accursed share: Zizek and Materialism (cengizerdem.wordpress.com)