Žižek waits

‘The exemplary figures of evil today are not ordinary consumers who pollute the environment and live in a violent world of disintegrating social links, but those who, while fully engaged in creating conditions for such universal devastation and pollution, buy their way out of their own activity, living in gated communities, eating organic food, taking holidays in wildlife preserves, and so on’ [23].

Whilst such controversial statements may be the reason why many people have slated Žižek’s little book on a big topic, but Violence was to me hard-hitting and thought provoking. Yes, Žižek may have used these arguments before, and yes, he lacks empirical research and jumps too quickly from high to low culture; creating an effect more akin to a pyrotechnic display than an academic argument. But for its ability to prompt greater reflection on the deep and complex causes of violence in society today, this book is of value.

Žižek, as many of his readers already know, does not shy away from controversy, instead using it to grab attention and involve the reader in the argument. Although he prefers to cast ‘sideways glances’ at violence in each of his chapters, Žižek does not shrink from the reality of actual instantiations of violence that have faced us throughout history right up to those on the TV news every day: from French Revolutionary terror, the Holocaust, and Stalinist repression, to the horrifying events at Abu Ghraib. However, he is driven by a fierce desire to avoid fetishising violence, emphasising that graphic descriptions and gory horror stories sometimes end up appealing to us out of shock and fascination - leading to a preoccupation with the gruesome details of each instantiation of violence. Hence his sideways glances try to resist the allure of its horror and achieve a more dispassionate engagement that may help us to see the underlying causes more clearly.

Subjective and objective violence
This is not to ask that we stop feeling the horror that this ‘subjective’ violence naturally produces, but that we try to mitigate this momentarily, to avoid a fake urgency where we rush headlong into trying to stop subjective violence while continuing in our failure to understand, and then tackle, the causes of objective violence. He believes that we should ‘step back’ and ‘disentangle ourselves’ from what he calls ‘the fascinating lure’ of directly visible ‘subjective’ violence, such as ‘acts of crime and terror, civil unrest, and international conflict’, which is all ‘violence performed by a clearly identifiable agent’ [1]. Instead, he argues that we need to be able to ‘perceive the contours of the background that ’causes such outbursts in order to identify the objective violence that lurks here’ [1].

For example, he says that when the media ‘bombard us’ with the usual humanitarian crises we see on our televison screens we must remember that the very fact that this crisis has been covered instead of another is the result of complex and often, ‘behind the scenes’ struggle which concerns less proper humanitarian concerns, and more cultural, ideologico-political and economic considerations [2]. He gives an example of when Time Magazine ‘got it wrong’, using, for their cover story on 5 June 2006, the ongoing crisis in the Congo, where around 4 million people died in the last decade.

But none of what Žižek calls, ‘the usual humanitarian uproar’ followed, bar a few readers’ letters. He observes that it was as if ‘some kind of filtering mechanism blocked this news from achieving its full impact in our symbolic space’ [2]. He remarks, bitterly, that the magazine should have stuck to its more common topics, such as the plight of Muslim women, or victims of 9/11; even an Israeli/Palestinian clash, since ‘the death of a West Bank Palestinian child, not to mention an Israeli or an American, is mediatically worth thousands of times more than the death of a nameless Congolese’ [3]. Hence it is objective violence that sets the scene in which subjective violence is played out. Subjective violence is the effect, whereas objective violence is the cause.

These six glances enable Žižek to develop arguments that attack our contemporary socio-economic order from various perspectives. Firstly, he asserts that it is symptomatic of this political order that we are distracted from the urgency to attend to objective violence. Instead there is a vast predilection in modern liberal societies to oppose all forms of violence, alerting us in a flurry, to the urgent need of the latest natural disaster or humanitarian crisis that has been picked up by the media radar. Yet, he asks, if there is something suspicious about this enforced focus on subjective violence, for ‘by obliterating from view other forms of violence’ it is as if we are being forced to look at one thing, while the real root of the problem sneaks by, out of sight, behind us.

Liberal Communists
So Žižek develops his category of ‘liberal communists’ to refer to the liberal intelligentsia who have sold-out and accepted capitalist economics, doing good works while keeping the very system in place that makes this work necessary. He cites the ideology of these liberal communists as one where market and social responsibility can be reunited for mutual benefit, unveiling the shallowness and hypocrisy behind these ideals in descriptions of those who ‘give with one hand what they first took with the other’ [18] - like George Soros and Bill Gates, who Žižek claims, divide their time equally between personal pursuit of profit and humanitarian activities, without realising the self-eliminating nature of this routine, as they spend half their time contributing to promulgating a violent and destructive system, and the remaining to helping a few of its victims.

Žižek’s familiar argument emerges here, explaining that liberal communists go unnoticed in today’s society because when any ideology is at its strongest it simply becomes accepted and beyond dispute, part of the backdrop culture, the common sense of society: its ‘features, attitudes and norms of life are no longer perceived as ideologically marked’ and instead ‘appear ... neutral, non-ideological, natural’ [31]. So despite liberal arguments to the contrary, we are not beyond politics – beyond right and left. Žižek highlights how our current era is marked by post-political ‘claims to leave behind the old ideological struggles and instead, focus on expert management and administration, while “bio-politics” designates the regulation of security and welfare of human live as its primary goal’ [34]. Yet he notes how these two goals overlap, for they neutralise challenges to the system and also take away the old objects of passion and feeling that ideologies used to command. He argues, that the only way to mobilise people, to make them passionate enough to act in whichever way suits the ‘powers that be’, is through fear. So, today’s so-called ‘end-state’ neutral bio-politics, is actually just a new politics of fear.

Žižek wants to shock and irritate until he wakes us up to this realisation, to make us change perspective just a little, so when ‘bombarded by the heart-warming news of a debt cancellation or a big humanitarian campaign to eradicate a dangerous epidemic’, we can see beneath the veil of decency and reveal the liberal communist and their violence that is at work underneath [32-3].

Another glance, this time to post-hurricane New Orleans and 2005 Paris riots, shows this raw expression of emotion from yet another side. What Žižek saw in these events was an expression of pure resentment: violence and anger with no requests or demands beyond being heard. Yet he says that the absence of a wider social project of which this was a part, is just another symptom of our liberal capitalist world. The protestors’ impotence and lack of cognitive mapping (the ability to link one’s actions to the wider context) show that the only outlet for our emotions and rage is violence, which can only express impotence: our impotence to act in any productive way to resolve the problem that is the socio-economic divide.

Thus he makes an impassioned plea to try to overcome the cruel injustices and poverty that cause resentment to spread and violence to flare. Focusing on the worrying plans to build a wall around the North African Spanish enclave of Melilla, to prevent its penetration by immigrants, Žižek remarks that, contra what he terms the ‘soft-hearted’ liberal view that we should tear down this wall, and all others to promote free migration, the true wall that needs to be torn down is the socio-economic divide, that is what provokes people to, desperately, try to escape their own world.

In the final apocalyptic chapter we finish the journey, coming from our beginning, at the unmasking of false anti-violence, to this manic, loosely constructed endorsement of emancipatory violence. But in this unacknowledged invoking of Derridian post-structuralism the violence is objective, that which is beyond the law, because it is establishing a new law. This is the sort of violence that is a breaking out of the old order, revolutionary, but not necessarily establishing a new order: simply a resistance of meaning – a pure act of resistance in the hope of overturning the structures that holds us captive today.

Writing off sources of inspiration
Despite my endorsement of this work, two broad problems emerge. Firstly, Žižek’s critique is not really about us, about citizens in Western democratic states, going about our lives, and facing difficult moral and ethical decisions every day. Instead, his critique is a critique of the media, of globalisation, of the anti-capitalist movement, of business, and of the academic classes: of their arguments, their lives and commitments. Indeed, such a critique is necessary, but it is perhaps also important to address and acknowledge its subject more explicitly, so that we can begin to turn the lens on those who promote our violent system, while also preventing disillusionment among those of us who may already think we are doing our level best to reveal the manipulation and control that is going on behind the headlines.

Instead by trying to sweep the whole world into one analysis in this book (although one can always turn to his other work for clarification and greater detail) Žižek risks over-simplifying the problem, and needlessly writing off possible sources of inspiration and strength for the anti-capitalist struggle. For example, rather than condemning all religious groups, charities, existing political mechanisms for welfare and redistribution, and support groups for vulnerable people, would it not be more sensible to cautiously weigh up and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the role that all such groups play in challenging the current hegemonic powers?

Secondly, by entitling his book ‘Violence’, and (over-)emphasising the violent roots of our current state of the world, I wonder if Žižek is not capitalising on the very fear that he accuses liberal capitalist culture of exploiting? Painting the world as one where the domain of violence has become equal to the domain of love seems defeatist, perverse, and quite frankly, untrue. Surely a better way to counter this may be to construct ways to develop solidarity and resistance rather than entrenching the inevitability of the very depths of violence to which our culture stoops?


The revolution needs to be postponed
However, these concerns perhaps forget the purpose of Žižek’s book, and overlook his mysterious conclusion. It is evident that Žižek wants to provoke a reaction. Despite how it might appear, I do not believe that Žižek is in the game of telling us what to think. Instead, I read his controversial analysis and shrewd critique as an injunction to weigh up the complicated matrix of global interactions, technology, media, celebrity, religion, culture, and overall the persistent and frightening violence, for ourselves. To analyse not just the hyper-globalised media that spin fables in our newspapers, and the politicians and elites who fail to respond to the needs of rioting youths, but also our own responses to this, the anger we may let dominate, the hatreds we may let develop. To think for ourselves about how all this fits together - who is to blame, and what you and I, are going to do about it?

If we accept this argument, we can turn to the epilogue, to see what Žižek proposes. Violence, he says, is not all the same, thus to simply condemn it all is an ideological move. Yet, it appears difficult to be truly violent - in the emancipatory sense of violence that breaks out of the existing order. Not only this, but Žižek argues that violence is not a direct property of some acts but context-dependent. Thus, in the best poststructuralist style, as it is difficult to know when violence is emancipatory and when it is simply within the system, and since if violence is the way in which a system can be overthrown, then the worrying conclusion emerges that in order to break out of the current system, then more violence, not less, it what is necessary.

It seems to me, that in concern at this conclusion, Žižek, (I’m relieved to note) does not endorse such a move. Instead, he seems to propose that his analysis, and that of his contemporaries, has not gone far enough. More work is needed. Thus rather than a call to arms, or even a manifesto for a better world, Žižek proposes that better than unleashing the hell of extreme revolution, we should step back, withdraw, do nothing.

Yet how is this going to be received amongst left wing dissenters, desperate to challenge the capitalist system that continues to dominate and oppress? They will surely agree with much of Žižek’s analysis: capitalism is the system and revolution will overthrow it. Yet for Žižek, the Marxist analysis obviously no longer fits. He recognises that contemporary capitalism is a wily beast and has outgrown (if it ever fitted in the first place) the Marxist perspective. So, what must we do? Žižek offers a response that frustrates, that angers, that confuses those already desperate to set about creating a safer world. His injunction to do nothing follows a plea to avoid the hurried unthinking action we are so constantly encouraged to participate in, in our contemporary hyper-globalised world. The concern is this ‘pseudo activity’ is not well thought out, and can subsequently end up encouraging the very system it intended to challenge.

Avoidance of responsibility, avoidance of politics
I can understand those critics who say that this is avoidance of responsibility, avoidance of politics. This is irresponsible; it is a hypocritical cop-out and a betrayal. But once the anger has passed, it seems that what may trigger this furious reaction is disappointment. It could be tempting to read Žižek as a blueprint for action - to get him to do the work. The left could get this renegade journalist-academic to lead the way in which they would follow. They are still trying to be Marxists.

Žižek’s answer may not be satisfying, but it is truthful, and although many, in the desire to act, may refuse to concede, it is wise. Those on the left must wait and work to gather strength and purpose to avoid unleashing a monster that they cannot control. Instead, to advance social justice, much work is to be done, for if we are to change a system we must understand exactly where things have gone wrong, and design a new, definitively less violent system to put in its place. In overcoming this dark, violent underbelly of liberal capitalist democracy, patience is indeed a virtue. Fools rush in. Žižek waits.