{"id":11413,"date":"2013-07-02T18:37:13","date_gmt":"2013-07-02T23:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=11413"},"modified":"2013-07-02T18:41:31","modified_gmt":"2013-07-02T23:41:31","slug":"z-strategy-protests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2013\/07\/02\/z-strategy-protests\/","title":{"rendered":"\u017d strategy protests"},"content":{"rendered":"

London Review of Books, 28 June 2013
\nTrouble in Paradise Slavoj \u017di\u017eek on the protests in Turkey and Greece<\/a><\/p>\n

It is also important to recognise that the protesters aren\u2019t pursuing any identifiable \u2018real\u2019 goal. The protests are not \u2018really\u2019 against global capitalism, \u2018really\u2019 against religious fundamentalism, \u2018really\u2019 for civil freedoms and democracy, or \u2018really\u2019 about any one thing in particular. What the majority of those who have participated in the protests are aware of is a fluid feeling of unease and discontent that sustains and unites various specific demands. The struggle to understand the protests is not just an epistemological<\/span> one, with journalists and theorists trying to explain their true content; it is also an ontological struggle<\/strong> <\/span>over the thing<\/strong> itself, which is taking place within the protests themselves. Is this just a struggle against corrupt city administration? Is it a struggle against authoritarian Islamist rule? Is it a struggle against the privatisation of public space? The question is open, and how it is answered will depend on the result of an ongoing political process.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s protests and revolts are sustained by the combination of overlapping demands, and this accounts for their strength: they fight for (\u2018normal\u2019, parliamentary) democracy against authoritarian regimes; against racism and sexism, especially when directed at immigrants and refugees; against corruption in politics and business (industrial pollution of the environment etc); for the welfare state against neoliberalism; and for new forms of democracy that reach beyond multi-party rituals. They also question the global capitalist system as such and try to keep alive the idea of a society beyond capitalism.<\/p>\n

Two traps are to be avoided here: false radicalism (\u2018what really matters is the abolition of liberal-parliamentary capitalism, all other fights are secondary\u2019), but also false gradualism (\u2018right now we should fight against military dictatorship and for basic democracy, all dreams of socialism should be put aside for now\u2019). Here there is no shame in recalling the Maoist distinction between principal and secondary antagonisms<\/strong>, between those that matter most in the end and those that dominate now. There are situations in which to insist on the principal antagonism means to miss the opportunity to strike a significant blow in the struggle.<\/p>\n

Only a politics that fully takes into account the complexity of overdetermination<\/strong> deserves to be called a strategy. When we join a specific struggle, the key question is: how will our engagement in it or disengagement from it affect other struggles? The general rule is that when a revolt against an oppressive half-democratic regime begins, as with the Middle East in 2011, it is easy to mobilise large crowds with slogans \u2013 for democracy, against corruption etc.<\/p>\n

But we are soon faced with more difficult choices. When the revolt succeeds in its initial goal, we come to realise that what is really bothering us (our lack of freedom, our humiliation, corruption, poor prospects) persists in a new guise, so that we are forced to recognise that there was a flaw in the goal itself. This may mean coming to see that democracy can itself be a form of un-freedom, or that we must demand more than merely political democracy: social and economic life must be democratised too.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In short, what we first took as a failure fully to apply a noble principle (democratic freedom) is in fact a failure inherent in the principle itself. This realisation \u2013 that failure may be inherent in the principle we\u2019re fighting for \u2013 is a big step in a political education.<\/strong><\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

In a more directly political sense, the US has consistently pursued a strategy of damage control in its foreign policy by re-channelling popular uprisings into acceptable parliamentary-capitalist forms: in South Africa after apartheid, in the Philippines after the fall of Marcos, in Indonesia after Suharto etc.<\/p>\n

This is where politics proper begins: the question is how to push further once the first, exciting wave of change is over, how to take the next step without succumbing to the \u2018totalitarian\u2019 temptation, how to move beyond Mandela without becoming Mugabe<\/strong><\/span>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

London Review of Books, 28 June 2013 Trouble in Paradise Slavoj \u017di\u017eek on the protests in Turkey and Greece It is also important to recognise that the protesters aren\u2019t pursuing any identifiable \u2018real\u2019 goal. The protests are not \u2018really\u2019 against global capitalism, \u2018really\u2019 against religious fundamentalism, \u2018really\u2019 for civil freedoms and democracy, or \u2018really\u2019 about … Continue reading “\u017d strategy protests”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","category-zizek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11413"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11417,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11413\/revisions\/11417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}