Overview:
The renowned philosopher finds a utopian future in worldwide protests.
So where do we stand now, in 2012? 2011 was the year of dreaming dangerously, of the revival of radical emancipatory politics all around the world. Now, a year later, every day brings new proofs of how fragile and inconsistent the awakening was, with all of its many facets displaying the same signs of exhaustion: the enthusiasm of the Arab Spring is mired in compromises and religious fundamentalism; the OWS is losing momentum to such an extent that, in a nice case of the “cunning of reason,” the police cleansing of Zuchotti Park and other sites of the OWS protests cannot but appear as a blessing in disguise, covering up the immanent loss of momentum. And the same story goes on all around the world: the Maoists in Nepal seem outmaneuvered by the reactionary royalist forces; Venezuela’s “Bolivarian” experiment more and more regressing into a caudillo-run populism…
What are we to do in such depressive times when dreams seem to fade away? Is the only choice we have the one between nostalgic-narcissistic remembrance of the sublime enthusiastic moments, and the cynically-realist explanation of why the attempts to really change the situation had to fail?
The first thing to state is that the subterranean work of dissatisfaction is going on: rage is accumulating and a new wave of revolts will follow. The weird and unnatural relative calm of the Spring of 2012 is more and more perforated by the growing subterranean tensions announcing new explosions; what makes the situation so ominous is the all-pervasive sense of blockage: there no clear way out, the ruling elite is clearly losing its ability to rule. What makes the situation even more disturbing is the obvious fact that democracy doesn’t work: after elections in Greece and in Spain, the same frustrations remain. How should we read the signs of this rage? In his Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin quotes the French historian André Monglond: “The past has left images of itself in literary texts, images comparable to those which are imprinted by light on a photosensitive plate.
The future alone possesses developers active enough to scan such surfaces perfectly.” Events like the OWS protests, the Arab Spring, demonstrations in Greece and Spain, etc., have to be read as such signs from the future. In other words, we should turn around the usual historicist perspective of understanding an event out of its context and genesis. Radical emancipatory outburst cannot be understood in this way: instead of analyzing them as a part of the continuum of past/present, we should bring in the perspective of the future, i.e., we should analyze them as limited, distorted (sometimes even perverted) fragments of a utopian future which lies dormant in the present as its hidden potential.
According to Deleuze, in Proust, “people and things occupy a place in time which is incommensurable with the one that they have in space”: the notorious madeleine is here in place, but this is not its true time. In a similar way, one should learn the art to recognize, from an engaged subjective position, elements which are here, in our space, but whose time is the emancipated future, the future of the Communist Idea.
Žižek’s new book, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously, is a collection of essays focusing almost exclusively on what Žižek sometimes calls “shitty politics” in his interviews and public speaking engagements. As we are used to expecting from Žižek’s public engagements, the discussion of “shitty politics” in his new book is filled with many excursions through contemporary ideology. Though The Year of Dreaming Dangerously is divided into ten so called “chapters,” the essays neither hang together nor do they form a unity, despite the fact that Žižek deals with repeating themes, such as the political events of 2011, Capitalism, and new ideological expressions of the contemporary political state of affairs.
The first three chapters and the essay on Occupy (Chapter 7) are marvelous essays, however, as they display Žižek’s uncanny ability to transport well known topics found in the Marxist traditions to new, often psychoanalytical or ideological, shores. In addition, in these chapters one can study his political commitments in more detail. All texts are written from what Žižek calls the “engaged position” (129), namely, the assumption that we are unable to analyze the current political and cultural situation from a neutral standpoint – populist, determinist, or stagist Marxist positions included. Insofar as the view from nowhere, which allows us to know in advance where the historical process is going and what tools we need to push it forward, is not given to us, Žižek seems to say, we need, simply, to accept the diversity of contemporary signals and the mess we currently find ourselves in on the practical level as well on the theoretical level. A messy reality, in other words, cannot be overcome by non-messy theorizing.
“Such passion, in a man whose work forms a bridge between the minutiae of popular culture and the big abstract problems of existence, is invigorating, entertaining and expanding inquiring minds around the world.”—Daily Telegraph
“A great provocateur and an immensely suggestive and even dashing writer ... Žižek writes with passion and an aphoristic energy that is spellbinding.”—Los Angeles Times
“The thinker of choice for Europe’s young intellectual vanguard.”—Sean O’Hagan, Observer
“Žižek’s ingenious handling of culture, films, philosophy, intellectual history, personal stories, daily politics, combined with a politically incorrect wit (especially in his lectures) is truly enjoyable. This at times overwhelming combination of ideas remains unmatched in the contemporary intellectual scene.”—Christian Lotz, Marx and Philosophy Review of Books
“Žižek highlights exciting trends in class-organization, political consciousness, cooperation, and struggle ... [and] frames various victories as ‘signs from the future’ so the necessity of inner subjective engagement with social struggle becomes clear.”—Book News
“His ability to fuse together Martin Heidegger’s ‘fundamental ontology,’ Francis Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ and Naomi Klein’s ‘shock doctrine’ in order to undermine our liberal and tolerant democratic structures is a practice few intellectuals are capable of.”—Al Jazeera
ENJOYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!
And Blessed Are The Jackstocks Which Care Only For Themselves!
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