Zizek and Utopian Universalism? Maybe?

I spent parts of yesterday and today mulling over Jodi's essay on "Zizek and Democracy."  First, I want to echo Luther Blissett's remark about the entertainment value of Zizek's thought as Jodi describes it.  Its hair-pin turns exhilirate and this quality extends to students of his thought.  Take Jodi's account of the implications of Zizek's criticism of identity politics:

An example from the U.S. might be Rosa Parks: at issue was not simply her particular seat on a bus or even the racist practices of busses in Montgomery, Alabama. Rather, the laws of segregation, and indeed, the racism of U.S. law most broadly, of U.S. willingness to enforce a system of apartheid, were at stake. One can imagine what could have occurred should the therapeutic and particularized practices of institutionalized identity politics have been in place: Rosa Parks would have discussed her feelings about being discriminated against; the bus driver would have dealt with his racism, explaining that he had been brought up that way; and, perhaps there would have been a settlement enabling Parks to ride at a discounted fare on weekends and holidays. Maybe the two would have appeared together on a television talk-show, the host urging each to understand and respect the opinion of the other. Ultimately, the entire situation would have been seen as about Park’s specific experience rather than about legalized segregation more generally.

Zizek's claim that identity politics, to paraphrase Jodi, eliminate the possibility for systemic change by reformulating systemic problems as personal issues strikes me as fundamentally correct.  Then again, I came to the essay already believing that identity politics often trivialize concepts of social justice by subordinating them to an ethos of personal expression, so the nodding of my head in assent as I read those passages didn't shock. 

My major difficulty with the essay can be guessed by anyone who knows my feelings about psychoanalysis.  Zizek relies on a psychoanalytic model of human and social development that I think profoundly misguided.  From what I can tell, psychoanalytic concepts function for Zizek as both philosophical truisms (capable of standing toe-to-toe with the categorical imperative) and psychological fact.  Reading this unnerves me.  Just as I nodded in assent with his account of the identity politics without surprise, however, I also shook my head in dissent without shock.  I knew coming into the essay that I would find that part of his argument unconvincing.

That said, I do have some questions and criticisms for Jodi about the essay.  Some of them derive from my ignorance of Zizekian thought, others from my ignorance of political science.  One or two may be the product something other than ignorance.  In other words, consider every claim below prefaced by an invisible "I think I think that." 

The criticisms first:

Zizek strikes me as a profoundly utopian thinker.  I understand that he fashions himself as such because he sees a lack of viable alternatives within democracy or capitalism (on which more shortly), but he never offers anything but suggestions as to what those alternatives may be.  Coalition politics would seem to work for him, but under what larger political formation?  What would govern the interaction of these coalitions?  (Or is the lack of governance here why you criticize what could be read as his glorification of violence in the name of politicization?) 

Since most of the rest of my questions are contingent on these assumptions being correct, I won't post them now.

Comments

[Jodi]

Is 'utopian' a criticism? Others find Zizek nihilist and distopian. For me, neither term quite works. So, I would say that Z thinks that fundamental structures can change (the miraculous does happen). These changes, though, are not outcomes of intentional human action. Rather, and here I am on shakier ground, they are outcomes of interventions that are then retroactively interpreted as changes, differences, etc.

Suggestions for alternatives: nope. No suggestions. This puts him in line, in my view at least, with early Frankfurt school theory and most of Marxism. It even applies to the Habermas of the theory of communication action insofar as Habermas can't account for why people would act in accordance with valid norms (his view requires that acceptance of validity means compliance and therefore can't account for the fact that people knowingly do wrong, act against their interests, etc).

Larger political formation: actually, I think that he can be read as advocating a new Party (this from his book on Lenin; I did some blog posts about this ages ago). The problem with most coalition is a lack of a willingness to assume responsibility for power and for the continuation of hysterical appeals that simply reinstate the authority of the master.

Thanks again for taking the time to read the essay.

[Rich Puchalsky]

In other words, Dada Stalinism.

[Alain]

Perhaps Derri-DaDa Stalinism?

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

"Utopian" isn't a criticism, only a category; it's a way of bringing his arguments into something resembling my ken. (I've done a lot of work on turn-of-the-century utopian schemes.) What I meant is that Zizek seems to be a utopian without a utopia: he acknowledges the systemic repression in the system, analyzes it endlessly and can point to how it represses; but he can't envision, in toto, a system in which it didn't. You begin to answer my question when you say that intentional human actions aren't responsible for social change, and that criticism is thus essential, but not in easily understandable ways. One historical example for which that works: the transition from the Old Left to the New and the withdrawal of troops from Vietnam. The New Left likes to imagine that the hippies, yippies, and the counterculture had some hand in ending the war in Vietnam. Maybe they did, but only inasmuch as protest brought attention to the need for protest, and that need somehow filtered into the institutional structures and brought about some slight changes...but it's all so nebulous at this point that it's just as easy to say that the counterculture had no effect on the political culture of the Nixon Administration and that what ended the war was losing it.

But there's another example: the New Deal. Here we have the embodiment of those late-nineteenth century socialist and Christian socialist fantasies and, contra Zizek, it was the outcome of intentional human action. It's the doctrine of Wilsonian management writ large, on a national scale, and it's entirely the result of intentional human action. Now, as I mentioned at Matt's place, I think it's easy to snipe when the stakes of such sniping are low. It's easy to talk of the potentiality of alternative models of human interaction (alternative to democracy/capitalism); what's more difficult, for example, is to build a system that involves the sort of compromises idealists want to avoid. Even the turn-of-the-century American utopians noted the necessity of compromise; but since the rise of the New Left in the U.S., the critical position has become merely critical, unproductive in the sense that it seeks not build anything but only to critique. That said, another question I had, one what follows indirectly from this, is what exactly Zizek means when he talks about "the Left." To wit:

"Zizek wonders if the Left is 'condemned to pledge all its forces to the victory of democracy.'"

You note that he makes this remark about Eastern Europe, but you quickly switch from talking about democratic reform in former socialist regimes to extant democracy in neoliberal/globalized capitalist Western Europe, Great Britain and the U.S. Now, this may be the historicist imp in me, but I wonder how that jump's accomplished when the material conditions and political culture in those regions/countries are radically different. The broad-strokes with which he paints strike me as so broad as to almost be irresponsible: for one, how can one talk about democracy in the U.S. and Great Britain without acknowledging that the distribution of power in each system differs markedly; same with each government's respective position to market forces. In other words, what authorizes the level of generalization at which he speaks? (Or is this the sort of question not asked in political theory circles? I can well imagine that it wouldn't be, i.e. that it could be beside the point, especially given the degree of paralysis such a thorough-going historicism entails.)

[Jodi]

Scott,
I don't think I can say what authorizes the level of generality with which Zizek speaks--other than that he is a pretty cosmopolitan person. I'll take responsibility for the jump, defending it in light of the way that in each case (for different reasons) socialism has been taken to be a dead end, non-starter, false move. That this sentiment is present isn't considered controversial in my political circles, in which Americans, Brits, and Europeans are all writing. (It was also the supposition of Francis Fukyama etc) To criticize this jump can also be interesting--I'd like to know where it would go, if it would open up more spaces for socialist alternatives, etc. Oh yes, how can one talk about democracy in the US and UK? critically, for sure, neither Z nor I are claiming that it is realized. It's also pretty conventional, though, to refer to these countries as democracies because that is there self-representation and because of their constitutional practices. This also opens up the interesting question of whether the problem is that democracy has not been fulfilled of if it is impossible, that is, if the very attempt to realize it (which will always be through a supplement--liberal democracy, radical democracy, etc) necessarily undermines it and then whether this undermining means that our political horizons are truncated when democracy is a primary term for emancipatory, progressive politics.

In psychoanalysis, one can't escape repression and alienation. That's the way things are. What is rejected is immediacy and disalienation as fundamentally incompatible with the fact that we are through language.

Zizek will say that acts are possible. What is not possible is transparent, fully known actions. Any act will involve a risk, a jump. After an act, there is a process of the retroactive production of meaning that lets us describe the New Deal the way we want to (in keeping with fidelity to a truth-event). So, some Marxists will say that the New Deal was accomodation with capital; others will say that it was the beginning of the end of American freedom; others will say that it was the produce of systemic forces....My preference is for a story of solidarity and the recognition that markets are deadly and must be controlled, that inequities of wealth corrupt the human spirit bringing only degradation and despair, and that it's unconscionable that these steps remained concomitant with racism.

[Luke]

IMHO, Zizek's use of pychoanalysis, which is by far the most difficult aspect of his work for a non-specialist, is designed to overcome the particluar failing of Western Marxism: ideology critique. If we look at Habermas, we see that much of his work is an attempt to overcome the critique of reason in Foucault and Adorno; Zizek wants to move past discourse ethics by building an alternative to the aporia of Reason/Ideology. The fundamental issue is objectivity: how can we be sure that our reasonings are also true for others.

Lacan's psychoanalysis, the little I understand of it, is a structuralist reworking of Freud. Now I agree with your reservations concerning psychoanalysis in general: it can be an all-encompasing, and thus meaningless, theory. That said, I do believe it has insight; for example, in questions about mass politics and extremist movements. The question though will always be generalizing a certain frame of mind that remains valid for the group -- and, hopefully for us social scientists, testable in some way. The fact that Lacan is structuralist is I think highly significant: we shouldn't forget his ill-fated attempt to systematize the mind via mathemes.

If Lacan fails, does Zizek fail? Does Zizek's thought rely so heavily on Lacan that a critique of the latter becomes a critique of the former? I do not know at this point. Though it is a significant point: if it is the case, then perhaps the "Act" which Zizek fetishizes in Lenin is simply his act, not our act.

... this comment is out of control. Hope it helps.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Luke, yes, this comment ... is out of control ... it's gonna burn this city ... burn this city ... What? Franz Ferdinand's better than Dance Dance Revolution, no?

Some of your questions are easy to answer:

Does Zizek's thought rely so heavily on Lacan that a critique of the latter becomes a critique of the former?

Yes. Therefore:

If Lacan fails, does Zizek fail?

Yes. Now on to the more difficult ones:

Now I agree with your reservations concerning psychoanalysis in general: it can be an all-encompasing, and thus meaningless, theory. That said, I do believe it has insight; for example, in questions about mass politics and extremist movements.

My problem with psychoanalysis isn't that it's all-encompassing--although that does, on occasion, crop up as a problem I have with psychoanalysis. What troubles me about psychoanalysis is that it simply isn't a science of the human mind but sells itself as one; that it posits the existence of an unconscious, and attributes to it a dazzling array of powers, when whatever subconscious there is to the human mind isn't structure like the Freudian unconscious, nor is it structured like a language, as Lacan would have it. It's a series of empirically identifiable (but not fully-cataloged by a long shot) mental processes which, while having some bearing on one another, are often times strikingly discrete. To wit: the breakdown of the ability to undestand sarcaasm I described Thursday. A psychoanalytic account of the inability to process sarcasm would look radically different from the neurobiological one the Israeli researchers provided, as you can well imagine (and I would rather not, lest I be sucked into the vortex). I hope this begins to answer your questions (but I fear not, as I am tired, stuffy-headed and muddle-minded this morning). I'll address some of these issues in my next little bit on Foucault, which should be available on the Internets SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY!

[marvin gonzalez]

It actually doesn't posit itself a science. Sure early Frued did. But by the time he wrote Future of an Illusion his position had changed. Lacan himself speaks about how Psychoanalysis occupies a place between science and religion. Between philosophy an literature. It is anti-philosophy par excellence. It is the logic of the scientific formalism but definitely not a medical practice. Metapsychology is the best term i have heard for it.