By: Slavoj Zizek Publisher: Verso Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: Verso Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 504 Publication Date: April 28, 2008
Product Description: A witty, adrenalin-fuelled manifesto for universal values by the maverick philosopher.
Is global emancipation a lost cause? Are universal values outdated relics of an earlier age? In the postmodern world, ideologies of all kinds have been cast in doubt. In this combative new work, renowned theorist Slavoj Zizek takes on the reigning postmodern agenda with a manifesto for several "lost causes." From a provocative redemption of Heidegger's engagement with the Third Reich as "a right step in the wrong direction," to reasserting class struggle as the underlying reality of global capitalism, to a defense of the emancipatory legacy of Christianity against New Age spiritualism, Zizek confronts the failures of contemporary theory and proposes unexpected resolutions.
Why Am I Reading This? Over the recent past, Slavoj Zizek has attracted a kind of cult followership. Some devotees attend to each of his public appearances, consult all his interventions on the internet, and voraciously read each and every volume that he publishes at an amazing pace. For others, he is a proto-terrorist on the loose, and his brand mix of Freudism and Marxism sets back the intellectual clock to the worst hours of leftist dogmatism. For my part, although I am far from sharing Zizek's political orientation, I find reading the Slovenian social scientist a useful distraction from more conventional readings, as well as a useful mind-stretching exercise. Like many other readers, I read Zizek for fun.
But reading In Defense of Lost Causes made me think again about why I took to reading his works with a kind of compulsive frenzy. I can think of several reasons. First, there is the shock of provocation, the "can he really mean that?" feeling when you stumble across sentences like "We need to reinvent revolutionary terror", "Today the enemy is not called Empire or Capital. It is called Democracy" or "The problem with Hitler is that he was not violent enough, that his violence was not 'essential' enough", or again chapters titled "How Stalin Saved the Humanity of Man" or "Give the Dictatorship of the Proletariat a Chance!"
So my first impulse was to check out his politics, so as to determine whether he really meant what he wrote. In fact, it took me a while to see clearly through his political agenda, as the first work I read (The Parallax View) was not very explicit in that respect. But In Defense of Lost Causes presents a clear overview on where Zizek stands with respect to issues of democracy, revolutionary terror, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the New Left agenda, or the antiglobalization movement. And there is only one conclusion I could draw: when he writes something, he means it.
The second element that makes reading Zizek an addictive pastime is the broad array of his references, spanning from pop culture to classical philosophers like Kant, Hegel and Heidegger, or modern critical theorists like Badiou, Laclau, Negri, Mouffe or Deleuze. Readers who praise Zizek's references to pop culture, his ability to mix high-brow references to continental philosophers with astute commentaries of Hollywood productions, might be frustrated with this volume. Zizek has only one single chapter on popular movies and novels. But his analysis of the commonalities in Michael Crichton's novels (fear of women) or in Steven Spielberg dramas (the rebuilding of a family), or his disclosure of the subversive element in Zack Snider's 300 (the film can be viewed as an apology of resistance to US imperialism) are pure Zizek vintage.
Zizek also reveals himself as a classical music lover, revisiting the debate on whether Dmitri Shostakovitch was a faithful Soviet composer or a closet dissident, or comparing him to the fate of Sergei Prokofiev, the other great name of Soviet music, who had a more tormented relationship to the regime. Other passages include an in-depth analysis of Robert Schumann's Humoresque, a piano piece with the vocal line reduced to silence, or the hint that Beethoven implanted a subversive irony toward the ideal of universal brotherhood in his Ninth Symphony's Ode to Joy.
The third reason that makes me relish Zizek is because I share with him a cultural horizon that tends to get lost in the current intellectual debate. Zizek bears testimony to a time when conservative intellectuals could engage their radical brethren on a discussion about dialectic materialism or the subversive element in Freud's writings. Zizek refers to marxism and psychoanalysis because they are "not only theories about struggle, but theories which are themselves engaged in a struggle". Here struggle should not be understood solely in terms of politics and ideology, but as a struggle within the self, an inner strive that leads to a higher form of self-consciousness. This is why many among the best conservative intellectuals, and this also includes the neo-cons, were former marxists, or at least defined their thought in relation to marxism.
According to Zizek, we now live in a post-ideological world, not in the conventional sense that we are at least liberated from the burden of great ideological narratives, but in the more cynical sense that power no longer needs to legitimize its rule and now exposes itself naked. The search for profit, the debasement of any intellectual pursuit, the acknowledgement of the use of torture are now part of our political horizon. This situation satisfies him: what Zizek hates the most is the recuperation of subversive discourses by the powers that be, who treat radical theorists as "harmless gadflies who sting us and thus awaken us to the inconsistencies and imperfection of our democratic enterprise."
Zizek wants no part in this legitimation business. Neither harmless gadfly nor amusing pet, he would like to rekindle the flame of radicalism that burned out after the seventies. But as we know, history only repeats itself as farce.
No one said it would be easy Mao said, the revolution is not a dinner party, and along the way horrible things may happen, Zizek here reclaims, or claims again(resurgence) the demise of thinking through the paradigm of change, it is not so much a matter of what has gone wrong but seeing one's mistakes, failing and going on- at it again, he likes Beckett's apt phrase, of Fail and fail again,we are human failure is part of what we do, nature somehow missed this, for now we may create ourselves out of existence with control over bio-political horizons, cloning,DNA research;software robotics;there is a chapter on this;UNBEHAGEN IN DER NATUR; but Zizek is getting good at writing, yes the entertainment factor is contained, he relies on sober analysis of the state of democracy and culture, exploitation,religion,hot spots the Right and the Left, the points of representation as the favelas, or the Zapatistas, Lulu in Brazil, the Left in Europe,Negri, Mao, Lenin, Critchley and Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, all become objects for contemplation on the objects of the state and transformations or lack thereof, the Cultural Revolution,(can collectives run the state?) all through the Lens of Lacan at times, or Hegel,certainly Marx; all well thought through; You come away with a real sense of knowing where things are within the globe, where greed resides,false hopes; "what should be done", and not done, the spectre of Walter Benjamin hovers here with the strain of Messianism, reclaiming the path to enlightenment and simple understanding, why revolutions failed is not so much the aim here as how to pick up the pieces once the Winter Palace was seized; perhaps Lenin believed in revolution but also that nothing happened in Soviet Russia; dual powere as well is great objects for discussion, as we find today, Zizek opts for a kind of nomadic resistence, create your own alternate spaces within capitalism, it is not going away, work within it, give concerts of political music in your friend's loft(don't publicize it) and invite your marxist friends(Freundshaft) with your stock broker friends as well;Deleuze as well makes an appearence herein, the "objects without a body",(OwaB)and(BwaO)sort of a Webern-ian mirror reversal on virtuality, the the spaces we like to inhabit, our comfort zones of contemplation and cognition;Zizek also follows quite well serious music, with a fascinating discussion on the "smoking gun" of Shostakovich, was he a committed socialist or not,with hundreds of thousands of dollars in production of the performances of his symphonies, I'd think the fundraising boards at USA orchestras should know. . . he is compared to Prokofiev,who was above all this dirty poltical stuff. . . great read . . .
New territory for the Big Z? While I have yet to finish my recently purchased copy I can say that to some extent, much of this is the same ol' Zizek mentioning Hegel at the top of the page and moving on to "The Break Up" with Jennifer Aniston and whats-his-face at the bottom (hooray pop and highbrow culture mixing, how superficially 'postmodern', etc.). But of course that is part of the tongue that is in the cheek while reading Zizek that is pleasurable, only here his overall argument remains compelling and insistent (as opposed to somewhat vague and sporadic in "The Parallax View") as he attempts to summon a spirit virile enough to advocate universal emancipation once again (i.e. "Think Globally, Act Globally).
While the book could take its time to weave its way through the halls of academia and other popular channels, I feel confident this tome caps a comforting wave of other newly-translated texts and memes entering Anglo-American discourse (namely, that of revolutionary terror and the actual pursuit of leftist power) from the likes of Verso, the ripples thereof to be seen in coming decades in a (one hopes) tidal wave of social action.
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