{"id":12211,"date":"2013-11-02T19:48:31","date_gmt":"2013-11-03T00:48:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=12211"},"modified":"2013-11-02T19:54:23","modified_gmt":"2013-11-03T00:54:23","slug":"zizek-ideology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2013\/11\/02\/zizek-ideology\/","title":{"rendered":"Zizek ideology and caste"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Apostate Children Of God<\/a> Ambedkar knew that there would be outcasts as long as there are castes<\/p>\n

Usha Zacharias interview \u017di\u017eek for Kochi Life<\/p>\n

\u017di\u017eek: I am not a postmodern guy who thinks the question of truth is irrelevant, we are all in ideology, I still live in a very traditional way\u2026. I don\u2019t believe in the postmodern mantra: we are just living in stories, we are telling different stories, the only ideology is the idea that you can clearly distinguish between ideology and truth.<\/p>\n

No, everything is not ideology. Also in political life. You can have popular mobilizations at least in the way I understand ideology, in the old fashioned Marxist sense, as something false, something mystifying.<\/p>\n

To be outside ideology to me doesn\u2019t mean a kind of abstraction: for example, if poor peasants rebel in India, claiming we want our freedom blah blah, they can evoke some old goddesses, I don\u2019t care.<\/p>\n

It can be illusion in the literal sense, but it is not ideology. Ideology is for me measured with how your ideas which motivate you relate to fundamental social antagonism, liberation and so on. You can be very scientific, and you\u2019re still within ideology. You can evoke old gods, but you are not in ideology. I use ideology in a very precise sense, not the simple position like ideology versus objective scientific knowledge.<\/p>\n

In 1927, Ambedkar symbolically burnt a copy of the Manusmriti; Gandhi always held in his hand a copy of the Bhagvad Gita\u2014a text that extolled the varna order in its originary four-fold form. Ambedkar mounted a severe critique of the Gita for being a counter-revolutionary defence of the caste order. The Gandhi-Ambedkar difference here is insurmountable: it is the difference between the \u201corganic\u201d solution (solving the problem by way of returning to the purity of the original non-corrupted system) and the truly radical solution (identifying the problem as the \u201csymptom\u201d of the entire system, the symptom <\/strong>which can only be resolved by way of abolishing the entire system).<\/p>\n

Ambedkar saw clearly how the structure of four castes, or the varna system, does not unite four elements which belong to the same order: while the first three castes (priests, warrior-kings, merchants-producers) form a consistent All, an organic triad, the Shudras (slaves) and Untouchables (outside the four-fold system) are like Marx\u2019s \u201cAsiatic mode of production\u201d the \u201cpart of no part,\u201d the inconsistent element which holds within the system the place of what the system as such excludes \u2014 and as such, the Untouchables stand for universality.<\/p>\n

Or, as Ambedkar\u2019s put it in his ingenious wordplay: \u201cThere will be outcasts as long as there are castes<\/strong>.\u201d As long as there are castes, there will be an excessive excremental zero-value element which, while formally part of the system, has no proper place within it. Gandhi obfuscates this paradox, as if harmonious structure is possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Apostate Children Of God Ambedkar knew that there would be outcasts as long as there are castes Usha Zacharias interview \u017di\u017eek for Kochi Life \u017di\u017eek: I am not a postmodern guy who thinks the question of truth is irrelevant, we are all in ideology, I still live in a very traditional way\u2026. I don\u2019t … Continue reading “Zizek ideology and caste”<\/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":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zizek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12211","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=12211"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12216,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12211\/revisions\/12216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}