Book: In Defense of Lost Causes

Slavoj Žižek, "In Defense of Lost Causes" (Verso, 2008):

www.versobooks.com/books/431-in-defense-of-lost-causes

Publisher's description: "In this combative major new work, philosophical sharpshooter Slavoj Zizek looks for the kernel of truth in the totalitarian politics of the past. Examining Heidegger's seduction by fascism and Foucault's flirtation with the Iranian Revolution, he suggests that these were the 'right steps in the wrong direction.' On the revolutionary terror of Robespierre, Mao and the bolsheviks, Zizek argues that while these struggles ended in historic failure and horror, there was a valuable core of idealism lost beneath the bloodshed. A redemptive vision has been obscured by the soft, decentralized politics of the liberal-democratic consensus. Faced with the coming ecological crisis, Zizekk [sic] argues the case for revolutionary terror and the dictatorship of the proletariat. A return to past ideals is needed despite the risks. In the words of Samuel Beckett: 'Try again. Fail again. Fail better.'"

Review: "Zizek [...] addresses the limits of liberal democratic approaches to politics and the possibility of benefit in totalitarian approaches to statehood. [...] Scholars of political theory and modern philosophy will find much here to consider and argue for or against." ("Library Journal")

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, and International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at Birkbeck College, University of London.

Matthew Sharpe's article "'Then We Will Fight Them in the Shadows!': Seven Parataxic Views, On Žižek's Style", which appeared recently in the online publication "International Journal of Žižek Studies" (4 [2], 2010), draws on this book.

The full text of the article can be downloaded free of charge here:

www.zizekstudies.org/index.php/ijzs/article/view/261

Excerpts: "Žižek's commitment to the egalitarian-revolutionary Idea places him on a continuum with the radical democratic political tradition with which his earlier work is usually associated. Democracy, rule of and by the people, implies some minimal commitment to egalitarianism, however conceived. Yet, following Badiou, and associating democracy with contemporary liberal-democracy, Žižek at several points indicates that faith in democracy today is the Enemy to be overcome: 'What, today, prevents the radical questioning of capitalism itself is precisely the belief in the democratic form of the struggle against capitalism.' (Žižek 2008, p. 183) [...] Žižek is unconditionally, or rather profoundly, attracted to [...] the utopian moment of radical negativity, in which the old regime is overthrown and suddenly we confront an indefinite, open future, shorn of any 'big Other' defining what is possible and impossible, permitted and prohibited ('Nothing should be accepted as inviolable in this new re-foundation, neither the need for economic "modernisation" nor the most sacred liberal and democratic fetishes' (Žižek 2008, p. 276)"

Matthew Sharpe and Geoff M. Boucher are the authors of a book on "Žižek and Politics: A Critical Introduction" (Edinburgh University Press, March 2010) that also seeks to highlight "Žižek's shift from his earlier, radical-democratic politics, to his later [that is, current], revolutionary, authoritarian vanguardism":

www.euppublishing.com/book/9780748638048

Publisher's description: "In Zizek and Politics, Geoff Boucher and Matthew Sharpe go beyond standard introductions to spell out a new approach to reading Zizek, one that can be highly critical as well as deeply appreciative. They show that Zizek has a raft of fundamental positions that enable his theoretical positions to be put to work on practical problems. Explaining these positions with clear examples, they outline why Zizek's confrontation with thinkers such as Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze has so radically changed how we think about society. They then go on to track Zizek's own intellectual development during the last twenty years, as he has grappled with theoretical problems and the political climate of the War on Terror. This book is a major addition to the literature on Zizek and a crucial critical introduction to his thought." (bold removed)

This book is fully searchable on Google Book Search (including table of contents):

http://books.google.com/books?id=OHDgjpvREnMC&printsec=frontcover

Matthew Sharpe is a Lecturer in the School of International and Political Studies and Geoff M. Boucher is a Lecturer in the School of Communication and Creative Arts, both at Deakin University, Geelong, Australia.

Article: Neoleninism in Post-democracy (in German)

Micha Brumlik is the author of an article titled "Neoleninismus in der Postdemokratie" (Neoleninism in Post-democracy), published in the monthly German magazine "Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik" (literally, "Pages for German and International Politics"; 8/2010: pp. 105-16):

www.blaetter.de/archiv/jahrgaenge/2010/august/neoleninismus-in-der-postdemokratie

Abstract in English (found online and apparently provided by the magazine): "What do Joachim Gauck's candidacy for German President and the 'Communism Congress' at Volksbühne Berlin [both in June 2010] have in common? Both represent the longing for alternatives in 'Post-democracy'. Micha Brumlik, Professor of Pedagogy at the University of Frankfurt on the Main and co-editor of the Blätter, criticises Alain Badiou's and Slavoj Zizek's undemocratic 'neo-leninism'."

Here too, I had no access to the full text of the article.

Book chapter: Žižek against democracy

Jodi Dean's book "Žižek's Politics” (Routledge, August 2006) includes a chapter on "Democratic Fundamentalism" (pp. 95-133):

www.routledge.com/books/Zizeks-Politics-isbn9780415951753

That chapter seems to be largely identical to an article titled "Zizek against Democracy" Dean published in the journal "Law, Culture, and the Humanities" a year earlier (1 [2], June 2005: pp. 154-77):

http://lch.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/1/2/154

From the abstract: "This article takes up [the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst] Slavoj Zizek's critical interrogation of democracy, defending Zizek's position as an alternative left politics, indeed, as that position most attuned to the loss of the political today. Whereas liberal and pragmatic approaches to politics and political theory accept the diminishment of political aspirations as realistic accommodation to the complexities of late capitalist societies as well as preferable to the dangers of totalitarianism accompanying Marxist and revolutionary theories, Zizek's psychoanalytic philosophy confronts directly the trap involved in acquiescence to a diminished political field, that is to say, to a political field constituted through the exclusion of the economy: within the ideological matrix of liberal democracy, any move against nationalism, fundamentalism, or ethnic violence ends up reinforcing Capital and guaranteeing democracy's failure. Arguing that formal democracy is irrevocably and necessarily 'stained' by a particular content that conditions and limits its universalizability, he challenges his readers to relinquish our attachment to democracy. I argue that critical Left theory should take up this challenge."

Some excerpts (from the book): "[D]emocracy is the form our attachment to Capital takes; it is the way we organize our enjoyment. He writes, 'what prevents the radical question of "capitalism" itself is precisely belief in the democratic form of the struggle against capitalism.' Faithful to democracy, we eschew the demanding task of politicizing the economy and envisioning a different political order. Some theorists think Žižek's position here is mere posturing. [...] [Ernesto] Laclau implies that Žižek's antidemocratic stance is something new. Attention to Žižek's writing shows, to the contrary, that a skepticism toward democracy has long been a crucial component of his project. [...]

"In a number of his early books published in English, Žižek voices a sense of betrayal at the bait and switch occurring in Eastern Europe when they 'went for' democracy and got capitalism and nationalism instead [...], what Žižek calls a 'scoundrel time' when capitalism appears as democracy and democracy as and through capitalism. [...] In subsequent work, Žižek names the limit to current thinking 'democratic fundamentalism'. [...] [D]emocracy binds our thinking – anything that is not democratic is necessarily horrible, totalitarian, and unacceptable to any rational person. [...] Are we destined to fetishize democracy [...]?"

The book is fully searchable on Google Book Search (including full table of contents):

http://books.google.com/books?id=NXfzZ9omaQwC&printsec=frontcover

While I haven't been able to access the 2005 journal article, yet another version of this text is available from Dean's blog (I don't know/didn't check, however, to what extent the text may or may not be identical with that published in either the journal or the book):

http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/files/zizek_against_democracy_new_version.doc

I couldn't shake the feeling that Dean is a whole lot more anti-democratic than Žižek, and Žižek's writings merely serve her as a prop to expound her own ideas. But, then, that's how Žižek works too.

Jodi Dean is Professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Erasmus Professor of the Humanities in the Faculty of Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Book: Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies

Jodi Dean, "Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics" (Duke University Press, July 2009):

www.dukeupress.edu/books.php3?isbn=978-0-8223-4505-3

From the publisher's description: "Through an assessment of the ideologies underlying contemporary political culture, Jodi Dean [...] argues that the left's ability to develop and defend a collective vision of equality and solidarity has been undermined [...]. As Dean explains, communicative capitalism is enabled and exacerbated by the Web and other networked communications media, which reduce political energies to the registration of opinion and the transmission of feelings. The result is a psychotic politics where certainty displaces credibility and the circulation of intense feeling trumps the exchange of reason. Dean's critique ranges from her argument that the term democracy has become a meaningless cipher invoked by the left and right alike to [...] confronting the marriage of neoliberalism and democracy".

Under the title "W(h)ither the State", she yesterday wrote on her blog: "In a discussion of Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies today some students pressed a point of weakness in my discussion: namely, the critique of democracy in all or nothing terms. Rather than considering the multiplicity of forms of local action and community engagement, I reject the democratic 'system,' its liberal-democratic justifications, and its materialization in communicative capitalism. The state is rotten and thus the only solution is revolution."

Reviews: "Her diagnosis of 'communicative capitalism' discloses how our 'really existing democracies' curtail prospects of radical emancipatory politics. Dean demonstrates this status of democracy as a political fantasy not through cheap, pseudo-Marxist denunciations but through a detailed examination of social, symbolic, and libidinal mechanisms and practices. To anyone who continues to dwell on illusions about liberal democracy, one should simply say: 'Hey, didn't you read Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies?'" (Slavoj Žižek, University of Ljubljana/Birkbeck College, London)

"Jodi Dean provides an incredibly lucid explanation of what neoliberalism has been in terms of both policy and collective fantasies regarding the relation of markets to freedom." (Lauren Berlant, University of Chicago)

Dean is also the author of a number of articles apparently opposed to democracy. Among those I haven't been able to access (and that were published in journals that many university libraries may not be subscribed to) is "The Democratic Deadlock" ("Theory & Event", 10 [4], 2007: pp. not given):

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/theory_and_event/v010/10.4dean.html

Excerpt: "A commonplace of media punditry in the middle years of the first decade of the twenty-first century concerns the deep divide in American politics. Whether in terms of political parties, red states and blue states, support or opposition to US militarism in Afghanistan and Iraq, or the ongoing culture war between the religious right and the secular left, the United States is depicted as a nation split in its fundamental ethico-political self-understanding. This depiction is misleading. It occludes the way these seeming opponents continue to appeal to democracy. Thus, the administration of George W. Bush presents itself as actively engaged in bringing democracy to the Middle East, as encouraging countries throughout the world to strengthen their democratic institutions. The Left, although seemingly opposed to the Bush administration, also appeals to democracy as that which it wishes to restore, redeem, or reach. Why does the Left continue to appeal to democracy? Is democracy, as Slavoj Žižek asks, the ultimate horizon of political thought? For Žižek, to accept this horizon is to accept an impoverished political field, a diminishment of aspirations to something better. We accept the limitation of democracy, convinced that this is as good as it gets. Real existing constitutional democracies privilege the wealthy. They exclude, exploit, and oppress the poor. Crucial determinants of our lives and conditions remain outside the frame of political deliberation and response."

I also had no access to her article "Feminism, Communicative Capitalism, and the Inadequacies of Radical Democracy", published as a chapter in the contributed volume "Radical Democracy and the Internet: Interrogating Theory and Practice", eds. Lincoln Dahlberg and Eugenia Siapera (Palgrave Macmillan, July 2007).

Presumably the book covers most of the arguments she made in her earlier articles.

Jodi Dean is Professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Erasmus Professor of the Humanities in the Faculty of Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Leftist philosophers advocate criticism of democracy

The influential leftist philosophers Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek have long been ambivalent in their position toward democracy, neither heartily endorsing it nor being deeply critical, torn between (neo-)Marxism/communism and radical democracy. They prefer therefore to be mostly mute on the subject.

A new book, "Philosophy in the Present" (Polity Press, November 2009), transcribes a discussion between Badiou and Žižek on occasion of a public event at the French Cultural Institute in Vienna, Austria, in 2004. While the topic of the book is whether philosophy should intervene in the world, their short exchange on democracy (and the possibility of criticizing it) may be the clearest statement either of them has dared to make on this.

www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745640969

Here the relevant excerpts: "BADIOU: [...] Today there is an entire strand of political literature which carries out a radical critique of the economic order, but which contains a no less radical support for a certain political form. This is absolutely common. Today, innumerable people are fierce anti-capitalists: capitalism is frightful, it is an economic horror, and so on. But the same people are great defenders of democracy, of democracy in the precise sense that it exists in our societies. In truth, we are dealing with the same paradox [...]: one develops a sort of radical, objective critique of the economic form, while remaining a great supporter of the representative democracy.

"There is a statement by [Richard] Rorty that really struck me, a very important statement, which says that 'democracy is after all more important than philosophy'. While this statement may appear banal, its propaganda content is truly remarkable. Can a philosopher affirm that a political form is more important than his own activity? I think that in fact this strange statement carries a repressive content. It is intended to prohibit philosophy from asking what the veritable essence of that which today goes under the name 'democracy' is.

"I would absolutely invert the traditional approach of critique. Today's great question is not the critique of capitalism, on which more or less the whole world is in agreement with regard to the appalling material injustices, the thirty million dead in Africa because they do not receive medications, the atrocious disparities in the planet, and so on. All of this can be referred back to capitalism, in the wish for a capitalism that is better, a more moderate capitalism, and so on, without advancing an inch. Because the real question is not there, it does not lie in the negative and verbal critique of capitalism.

"The real question is that of an affirmative proposition regarding democracy, as something other than the consensus on the parliamentary form of politics. This is what the paradox [...] tries to conceal, in other words, that the truly risky philosophical imperative, the one that really poses problems for thought, is the critique of the democratic form as we know it. That is the heart of the problem. And it is altogether more difficult than acknowledging along with everyone else the extent of capitalism's injustice.

"ŽIŽEK: Now, I think, we are touching the really delicate theme – God, it's becoming boring – of our agreement: delicate, because I have paid dearly for the agreement in this case. Do you know how much this book on Lenin cost me? I lost two-thirds of my friends because of it. You can refer to Marx without any problems: Capital – what a brilliant description of the capitalist dynamic, of the 'fetish-character of the commodity', of 'alienation'. But if you refer to Lenin, that is another story, a completely different story. It is unbelievable how everybody said to me afterwards that it was merely a cheap provocation.

"Excuse me, but when I organized a colloquium in Essen, as I later found out, the German secret service popped up and asked my secretary what we were doing. You see: it is not as tolerated as it seems. That is the paradox of today's situation: according to the official ideology, everything is allowed, there is no censorship, and everything goes off neatly. But we shouldn't be deceived. [...] As we have seen, all possible excesses seem to be allowed. Just try once, however, to touch the fetish of democracy and you will see what happens.

"And I agree with you: we should try to do that today, at least – to express myself briefly – for three reasons. First, we have to ask ourselves: what does democracy really mean today? How does it function? What we can least overlook is not, for example, that it is of the people and for the people, but rather that we accept determinate rules that we obey – whatever the result may be. For me Bush's election victory in 2000, if it was that, was the apex of democracy. Why? Because no democrat in any moment even thought of not acknowledging the election result and going to the streets – even though everybody knew that they had cheated in Florida. It was clear the whole time that despite the manipulations there were rules that had to be upheld no matter what. And therefore democracy means today in the first place, even in the case of vulgar injustice, 'injustice rather than disorder', as Goethe is supposed to have said. So much for the first concrete meaning of democracy and the first reason for laying hands on it.

"I would see a second reason in the fact that there is an opportunism within democracy, an opportunism in the sense of a flight from the act. Here I would like to cite respectfully the German theoretician of the risk society, Ulrich Beck. He gives us to understand that the risks that confront us today are radical risks. It is not a case of breaking the influence of the great entrepreneurs, those who are responsible for environmental destruction, and of bringing in specialists in order to manage to take the correct decision; rather, it is about having to make a choice. We are all continuously confronted with a choice in which we must decide without any reason. Often the democratic representatives, however, speak only to the fetish of democracy.

"A way of avoiding the risk of decision is to barricade oneself behind the voters: it is not my decision, even if I legitimate it; we are all in the same boat ... Our second point of critique thus aims at the fact that democracy – as process of decision – is a way of concealing decisions. That looks roughly like this: 'I am not the one who really decides; I only make suggestions. You, the people, are the ones who make the decisions.' Here one would rather follow [Jacques] Lacan, who said that also in the political act one must take the risk completely upon oneself.

"On the third reason: in The Communist Manifesto, Marx famously wrote that communism was accused of abolishing private property: but capitalism itself had already done that. Something similar, I think, is happening today with democracy. There is a whole series of symptomatic indications of this; for example, the renewed popularity of Ralf Dahrendorf or Leo Strauss. The usual story goes like this: democracy? Yes – but only for those who are also mature for democracy. Now, we all know what sort of a dead-end the US is facing in Iraq. If they introduce democracy – and with democracy I don't mean any authentic form of democracy, but rather, our beautiful, corrupt
multi-party democracy – that would probably mean the electoral victory of the Shiites. And one notes all the current 'rethinking'; it is a key word: some US philosophers, Alan Dershowitz for example, are of the opinion that we should rethink human rights and change them to the extent that in certain cases torture is permissible.

"Here it is not just a case of the question: democracy or not. It is decisive to see what actually goes on in democracy. If there is a symbolic meaning – I hate the idea – of September 11, then in my opinion we should look for it in connection with the date 1989. For me, 1989 was not the end of utopias, as it is commonly claimed, not the end of communism, but rather the unleashing of the great utopia of liberal capitalism, marked by Francis Fukuyama's 'End of History'. And September 11 is the answer to it; if it means anything at all, it means that this utopia is today dead. The Americans, I think, are paying the price in the meantime: look at American politics – it has been completely transformed.

"We don't have to believe their phrases about democracy any more. They want to combine their world, their power to be able to intervene militarily in the world wherever they want, with a new isolationism, new walls, etc. And democracy is defined in such a radically new way in this process that only its name remains.

"Something similar happens with the economy, namely, with the WTO and the IMF. Here I agree in part with a book that, in other respects, I fundamentally reject: Hardt and Negri's Empire. People like [Oskar] Lafontaine in Germany were fooling themselves if they believed that decisions could be democratized that are made on this economic level. How do you democratize the banking institutions? That is impossible already for structural reasons: should for example four and a half billion people elect the supervisory board of the IMF? We would have to conclude: economic growth and global-capitalist processes structurally exclude democracy – even in the form that capitalism itself ascribes to it.

"We should consider all this if we are supposed to come to a decision for or against democracy. I'm inclined here to bring in [Georg/György] Lukács, who said in History and Class Consciousness that it is a question of tactical consideration. Sometimes great things are achieved in a democratic way, for example when there is a completely unexpected result in an election. That is for me a beautiful, almost sublime moment: when we leftists support a good thing, but secretly believe however that the people are too manipulated, and yet there is ultimately a miracle and the thing goes well. My problem is, however, another one: I am prepared to advocate my views in a democratic way; but not, however, to allow others to decide democratically what my views are – here I confirm my philosophical arrogance."

Responding to a follow-up question from the audience regarding his "critique of democracy", Badiou revealed: "I can speak to you about my personal case: I haven't voted since June 1968. I am a long-term non-voter".

Žižek, on the other hand, in 1990 ran as a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic of Slovenia.

Alain Badiou is a French philosopher, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris.

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, and International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at Birkbeck College, University of London.