{"id":5768,"date":"2010-10-03T15:51:06","date_gmt":"2010-10-03T19:51:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=5768"},"modified":"2011-09-20T13:24:21","modified_gmt":"2011-09-20T18:24:21","slug":"5768","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2010\/10\/03\/5768\/","title":{"rendered":"\u017di\u017eek 2001"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hanlon,Christopher. “Psychoanalysis and the Post-Political: An Interview with Slavoj .” New Literary History<\/em>, 32 (2001): 1-21. PDF<\/p>\n

\u017di\u017eek: My idea is the old marxist idea that this immediate reference to experience, practice, struggle, etcetera, really relies on the most abstract and pure theory, and as an old philosopher I would say, as you said before, that we simply cannot escape theory.<\/p>\n

I fanatically oppose this turn which has taken place in social theory, this idea that there is no longer time for great theoretical projects, that all we can do is narrativize the experience of our suffering, that all various ethnic or sexual groups can ultimately do is to narrate their painful, traumatic experience.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think this is a catastrophe. I think that this fits perfectly the existing capitalist order, that there is nothing subversive in it. I think that this fits perfectly today\u2019s ideology of victimization, where in order to legitimize, to gain power politically, you must present yourself, somehow, as the victim.<\/p>\n

An anecdote of Richard Rorty\u2019s is of some interest to me here. You know Rorty\u2019s thesis\u2014and you know, incidentally, I like Rorty, because he openly says what others won\u2019t. But Rorty once pointed out\u2014I forget where\u2014how if you take big opponents, such as Habermas and Derrida, and ask them how they would react to a concrete social problem, whether to support this measure or that measure . . . . Are there any concrete political divisions between Habermas and Derrida, although they cannot stand each other? There are none! The same general left-ofcenter, not-too-liberal but basically democratic vision . . . practically, their positions are indistinguishable. Now, Rorty draws from this the conclusion that philosophy doesn\u2019t matter. I am tempted to draw a more aggressive, opposite conclusion: that philosophy does matter, but that this political indifference signals the fact that although they appear opposed, they actually share a set of presuppositions at the level of their respective philosophies. Besides, not all philosophers would adopt the same position; someone like Heidegger definitely would not, and a leftwinger like [Alain] Badiou definitely would not. The big question for me today concerns this new consensus\u2014in England it\u2019s the \u201cthird way,\u201d in Germany it\u2019s the \u201cnew middle\u201d\u2014this idea that capitalism is here to stay, we can maybe just smooth it out a little with multiculturalism, and so on . . . . Is this a new horizon or not? What I appreciate in someone like Rorty is that at least he openly makes this point. What annoys me about some deconstructionists is that they adopt as their rhetorical post the idea that what they are doing is somehow incredibly subversive, radical, and so on. But they do not render thematic their own deep political resignation.<\/p>\n

CH: You\u2019ve been a long-time opponent of what you call postmodern identity politics, and especially the subversive hope some intellectuals attach to them. But with your newest book, this critique acquires a more honed feel. Now, you suggest that partisans of the identity-politics struggle have had a \u201cdepoliticizing\u201d effect in some way. Could you hone your comments even further? Do you mean that identity politics have come to supersede what for you are more important antagonisms (such as that between capital and democracy, for instance), or do you mean something more fundamental, that politics itself has been altered for the worse?<\/p>\n

\u017di\u017eek: Definitely that it has been altered. Let me put it this way: if one were to make this reproach directly, they would explode. They would say, \u201cMy God, isn\u2019t it the exact opposite? Isn\u2019t it that identity politics politicized, opened up, a new domain, spheres of life that were previously not perceived as the province of politics?\u201d But first, this form of politicization nonetheless involves a transformation of \u201cpolitics\u201d into \u201ccultural politics,\u201d where certain questions are simply no longer asked. Now, I\u2019m not saying that we should simply return to some marxist fundamentalist essentialism, or whatever. I\u2019m just saying that . . . my God, let\u2019s at least just take note of this, that certain questions\u2014like those concerning the nature of relationships of production, whether political democracy is really the ultimate horizon, and so on\u2014these questions are simply no longer asked. And what I claim is that this is the necessary consequence of postmodern identity politics. You cannot claim, as they usually do, that \u201cNo, we don\u2019t abandon those other aspects, we just add to politics proper.\u201d No, the abandonment is always implicit. Why? Take a concrete example, like the multitude of studies on the exploitation of either African Americans or more usually illegal Mexican immigrants who work as harvesters here in the U.S. I appreciate such studies very much, but in most of them\u2014to a point at least\u2014silently, implicitly, economic exploitation is read as the result of intolerance, racism. In Germany, they don\u2019t even speak of the working class; they speak of immigrants . . .<\/p>\n

CH: \u201cVisiting workers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u017di\u017eek: Right. But the point is that we now seem to believe that the economic aspect of power is an expression of intolerance. The fundamental problem then becomes \u201cHow can we tolerate the other?\u201d Here, psychoanalysis and the post-political we are dealing with a false psychologization. The problem is not that of intrapsychic tolerance, and so I\u2019m opposed to this way in which all problems are translated into problems of racism, intolerance, etcetera. In this sense, I claim that with so-called postmodern identity politics, the whole concept of politics has changed, because it\u2019s not only that certain questions aren\u2019t any longer asked. The moment you begin to talk about . . . what\u2019s the usual triad? \u201cGender . . .\u201d<\/p>\n

CH: \u201cGender\/Race\/Class\u201d?<\/p>\n

\u017di\u017eek: Yes. The moment you start to talk this way, this \u201cclass\u201d becomes just one aspect within an overall picture which already mystifies the true social antagonisms. Here I disagree with Ernesto Laclau\u2019s more optimistic picture of the postmodern age, where there are multiple antagonisms coexisting, etcetera . . .<\/p>\n

CH: . . . But aren\u2019t you then subordinating what is \u201cmerely cultural\u201d to a set of \u201cauthentically\u201d political problems?<\/p>\n

\u017di\u017eek: No, no. I\u2019m well aware, for example, that the whole problematic of political economy also had its own symbolic dimension. . . . I\u2019m not playing \u201cmerely cultural\u201d problems against \u201creal\u201d problems. What I\u2019m saying is that with this new proliferation of political subjects, certain questions are no longer asked. Is the state our ultimate horizon? Is capitalism our ultimate horizon? I just take note that certain concerns have disappeared.<\/p>\n

CH: Let\u2019s talk about another aspect of this critique you lay out. Part of your polemic against this \u201cpost-political\u201d sphere concerns the great premium you place on the \u201cLacanian act,\u201d the gesture that resituates everything, creates its own condition of possibility, and so on. Could you specify this further by way of pointing to an example of such an act? In culture or politics, is there some instance of an authentic Lacanian act that we can turn toward?<\/p>\n

\u017di\u017eek: […] You\u2019ve got me here, in that sense. But I\u2019m not mystifying the notion of act into some big event . . . . What I\u2019m saying is that the way the political space is structured today more and more prevents the emergence of the act. But I\u2019m not thinking of some metaphysical event\u2014 once I was even accused of conceiving of some protofascist, out-of nowhere intervention. For me, an act is simply something that changes the very horizon in which it takes place, and I claim that the present situation closes the space for such acts. We could even draw the pessimist conclusion\u2014and though he doesn\u2019t say so publicly, I know privately that Alain Badiou tends to this conclusion\u2014that maybe politics, for some foreseeable time, is no longer a domain where acts are possible. That is, there were times during which acts did happen\u2014the French Revolution, the October Revolution, maybe the \u201968 uprisings. I can only say what will have been an act: something which would break this liberal consensus, though of course not in a fascist way. But otherwise, there are examples from culture, from individuals\u2019 experiences; there are acts all around in this sense. The problem for me is that in politics, again, the space for an act is closing viciously.<\/p>\n

CH: Let\u2019s move on to another topic. I have to ask you about your reaction to what may be Derrida\u2019s last word on his whole conflict with Lacan, published in Resistances to Psychoanalysis. Without retracting any of his original theses concerning Lacan\u2019s seminar on \u201cThe Purloined Letter,\u201d Derrida now insists that\u201c I loved him and admired him a lot,\u201d and also that \u201cNot only was I not criticizing Lacan, but I was not even writing a sort of overseeing or objectifying metadiscourse on Lacan,\u201d that it was all part of a mutual dialogue . . . . What is your response to this?<\/p>\n

\u017di\u017eek: I would just like to make two points. First, I still think, as I first developed in Enjoy Your Symptom!, that \u201cresistance\u201d is the appropriate term here. In deconstructionist circles, you can almost feel it, this strong embarrassment about Lacan. So they can buy Lacan only, as it were, conditionally, only insofar as they can say he didn\u2019t go far enough. I claim that the truth is the exact opposite; the only way they can appropriate Lacan is to submit him to a radical misreading. You know, all the time we hear about the \u201cphallic signifier,\u201d and so on, and so on, but the figure of Lacan they construct is precisely what Lacan was trying to undermine. For example, one of the standard criticisms of some deconstructionists here in the States is that Lacan elevates the \u201cBig Other\u201d into some kind of non-historical, a priori symbolic order … My only, perhaps na\u00efve answer to this is that the big Lacanian thesis from the mid-fifties is that \u201cThe Big Other doesn\u2019t exist.<\/strong>\u201d He repeats this again and again, and the point of this is precisely that there is no symbolic order that would serve as a kind of prototranscendental guarantor. My second point would be a very materialist, Althusserian one. Without reducing the theoretical aspects of this conflict, let\u2019s not forget that academia is itself an \u201cIdeological State Apparatus,\u201d and that all these orientations are not simply theoretical orientations, but what\u2019s in question is thousands of posts, departmental politics, and so on. Lacanians are excluded from this. That is to say, we are not a field. You know, Derrida has his own empire, Habermasians have their own empire\u2014dozens of departments, all connected\u2014but with Lacanians, it\u2019s not like this. It\u2019s maybe a person here, a person there, usually marginal positions. So I think we should never underestimate this aspect. I think it would be much nicer, in a way, if Derrida said the opposite: not that \u201cI really hated him,\u201d but \u201cthere is a tension; we are irreducible to each other.\u201d This statement you point out is the kiss of death. What\u2019s the message in this apparently nice statement from Derrida? The message is that \u201cthe difference is really not so strong, so that our field, deconstruction, can swallow all of this; it\u2019s really an internal discussion.\u201d I think it is not. I\u2019m not even saying who\u2019s right; I\u2019m just claiming\u2014and I think this is more important than ever to emphasize\u2014the tension between Derrida and Lacan and their followers is not an interfamilial struggle. It\u2019s a struggle between two radically different global perceptions. Even when they appear to use approximately the same terms, refer to the same orders, they do it in a totally different way, and this is why all attempts to mediate between them ultimately fall short. Once, I was at a conference at Cardozo Law School where Drucilla Cornell maintained that the Lacanian Real was a good \u201cfirst attempt\u201d at penetrating beyond this ahistorical Symbolic order, but that it also retains this dimension of otherness that is still defined through the Symbolic order, and that the Derridean notion of writing incorporates this otherness into the Symbolic order itself more effectively, much more radically, so that the \u201creal Real\u201d lies with Derrida\u2019s \u00e9criture, Lacan\u2019s \u201cReal\u201d is still under the dimension of the metaphysical-logocentric order, and so on. This is typical of what I\u2019m talking about. We should simply accept that there is no common language here, that Lacan is no closer to Derrida than to Hegel, than to Heidegger, than to whomever you want.<\/p>\n

[…]\u00a0\u00a0 \u017di\u017eek: Yeah, yeah\u2014you know what I\u2019m aiming at. What I\u2019m aiming at is . . . aren\u2019t racist, anti-Semitic pogroms also Bakhtinian carnival? That\u2019s to say that what interests me is not so much the progressive other whom the power is controlling, but the way in which power has to disavow its own operation, has to rely on its own obscenity. The split is in the power itself. So that . . . when Butler argues very convincingly against\u2014at least she points to the problematic aspects of\u2014legal initiatives that would legalize gay marriages, claiming that in this way, you accept state authority, you become part of the \u201cvisible,\u201d you lose solidarity with all those whose identity is not publicly acknowledged . . . I would say, \u201cWait a minute! Is there a subject in America today who defines himself as marginalized, repressed, trampled by state authority?\u201d Yes! They are called survivalists! The extreme right! In the United States, this opposition between public state authority and local, marginalized resistances is more and more an opposition between civil society and radical rightwing groups. I\u2019m not saying we should simply accept the state. I\u2019m just saying that I am suspicious of the political pertinence of this opposition between the \u201cpublic\u201d system of power which wants to control, proscribe everything, and forms of resistance to subvert it. What I\u2019m more interested in are the obscene supplements that are inherent to power itself.<\/p>\n

CH: Has this relatively pro-State position played a role in your decision to support the ruling party in Slovenia?<\/p>\n

\u017di\u017eek: No, no . . . that was a more specific phenomenon, a very na\u00efve one. What happened was that, ten years ago, the danger in Slovenia was the same as in all the post-Communist countries. Would there emerge one big, hegemonic, nationalist movement that would then colonize practically the entire political space, or not? That was the choice. And by making some compromises, we succeeded. In Slovenia, the scene is totally different than in other post-Communist countries, in the sense that we don\u2019t have\u2014as in Poland, as in Hungary\u2014the big opposition is not between radical, right-wing, nationalist movements and ex-Communists. The strongest political party in Slovenia is neither nationalistic, nor ex-Communist . . . it was worth it. I\u2019m far from idealizing Slovenia, but the whole scene is nonetheless much more pluralistic, much more open. It wasn\u2019t a Big Decision; it was just a very modest, particular gesture with a specific aim: how to prevent Slovenia from falling into the Serb or Croat trap, with one big nationalist movement that controls the space? How also to avoid the oppositions I mention that define the political space of Hungary and Poland?<\/p>\n

CH: Could we talk about Kosovo? In The Metastases of Enjoyment, when the Bosnian conflict was still raging, you insisted that the West\u2019s inability to act was rooted in its fixation with the \u201cBalkan victim\u201d\u2014-that is, with its secret desire to maintain the Balkan subject as victim. More recently, when the NATO bombings were under way, you claimed that the act came much too late. Now, the West seems to have descended into a period of waiting for a \u201cdemocratic transformation\u201d of Serbia . . .<\/p>\n

\u017di\u017eek: . . . which will not happen, I think. Let me end up with a nice provocation: the problem for me is this abstract pacifism of the West, which renders publicly its own inability to act. What do I mean by this? For the West, practically everything that happens in the Balkans is bad. When the Serbs began their dirty work in Kosovo, that was of course bad.
\nWhen the Albanians tried to strike back, it was also bad. The possibility of Western intervention was also bad, and so on and so on. This abstract moralism bothers me, in which you deplore everything on account of . . . what? I claim that we are dealing here with the worst kind of Nietzschean ressentiment. And again, we encounter here the logic of victimization at its worst, exemplified by a New York Times piece by Steven Erlanger. He presented the crisis in terms of a \u201ctruly human perspective\u201d on the war, and picked up an ordinary [Kosovar] Albanian woman who said, \u201cI don\u2019t care who wins or who loses; I just want the nightmare to end; I just want peace; I want to feel good again. . . .\u201d This, I claim, is the West\u2019s ideal subject\u2014not a conscious political fighter, but this anonymous victim, reduced to this almost animal craving . . . as if the ultimate political project is to \u201cfeel good again.\u201d<\/p>\n

CH: In other words, a subject who has no stake in whether Kosovo gains independence or not . . .<\/p>\n

\u017di\u017eek: No stake, just this abstract suffering . . . and this is the fundamental logic, that the [Kosovar] Albanians were good so long as they were suffering. Remember the images during the war, of the Albanians coming across the mountains, fleeing Kosovo? The moment they started to strike back\u2014and of course there are Albanian excesses; I\u2019m not idealizing them in this sense\u2014they become the \u201cMuslim danger,\u201d and so on. So it\u2019s clear that the humanitarian interventions of the West are formulated in terms of this atmosphere of the protectorate\u2014the underlying idea is that these people are somehow not mature enough to run their lives. The West should come and organize things for them, and of course the West is surprised if the local population doesn\u2019t find such an arrangement acceptable. Let me tell you a story that condenses what I truly believe here. About a year and a half ago, there was an Austrian TV debate, apropos of Kosovo, between three different parties: a Green pacifist, a Serb nationalist, and an Albanian nationalist. Now, the Serb and the Albanian talked\u2014of course within the horizon of their political projects\u2014in pretty rational terms: you know, the Serb making the claim that Kosovo was, for many centuries, the seat of the Serbian nation, blah, blah, blah; the Albanian was also pretty rational, pointing out that since they constitute the majority, they should be allowed self-determination, etcetera. . . . Then the stupid Green pacifist said, \u201cOK, OK, but it doesn\u2019t matter what you think politically\u2014just promise me that when you leave here, you will not shoot at each other, that you will tolerate each other, that you will love each other.\u201d And then for a brief moment\u2014that was the magic moment\u2014I noticed how, although they were officially enemies, the Albanian and the Serb exchanged glances, as if to ask, \u201cWhat\u2019s this idiot saying? Doesn\u2019t he get it?\u201d<\/p>\n

My idea is that the only hope in Kosovo is for the two of them to come together and say something like the following: \u201cLet\u2019s shoot the stupid pacifist!\u201d <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think that this kind of abstract pacifism, which reformulates the problem in the terms of tolerance . . . My God, it\u2019s not tolerance which is the problem! This is what I hate so much apropos of Western interventionism: that the problem is always rephrased in terms of tolerance\/intolerance. The moment you translate it into this abstract proposition which\u2014again, my old story\u2014depoliticizes the situation, it\u2019s over. Another aspect I want to emphasize apropos of Serbia: here, my friend\/enemy, a Serb journalist called Alexander Tijanic, wrote a wonderful essay examining the appeal of Milosevic; for the Serb people. It was practically\u2014I wondered if I could have paid him to make my point better. He said that the West which perceives Milosevic; as a kind of tyrant doesn\u2019t see the perverse, liberating aspect of Milosevic;. What Milosevic; did was to open up what even Tijanic calls a \u201cpermanent carnival\u201d: nothing functions in Serbia! Everyone can steal! Everyone can cheat! You can go on TV and spit on Western leaders! You can kill! You can smuggle! Again, we are back at Bakhtin. All Serbia is an eternal carnival now. This is the crucial thing people do not get here; it\u2019s not simply some kind of \u201cdark terror,\u201d but a kind of false, explosive liberation.<\/p>\n

CH: Do you see a viable political entity in Serbia that might alter this?<\/p>\n

\u017di\u017eek: I can give you a precise answer in the guise of a triple analysis. I am afraid the answer is no. There are three options for Serbia: one possibility is that Milosevic;\u2019s regime will survive, but the country will be isolated, ignored, floating in its own shit, a pariah. That\u2019s one option. Another option that we dream about is that, through mass demonstrations or whatever, there will be \u201ca new beginning,\u201d a new opening in the sense of a Western-style democratic upheaval. But I think, unfortunately, that what will probably happen if Milosevic; falls will be what I am tempted to call the \u201cRussia-fication\u201d of Serbia. That is to say, if Milosevic; falls, a new regime will take over, which will consist of basically the same nationalists who are now in power, but which will present itself to the West\u2014like Yeltsin in Russia\u2014as open, and so on.\u00a0 Within Serbia, they will play the same corrupt games that Yeltsin is now playing, so that the same mobsters, maybe even another faction of the mafia, will take over, but they will then blackmail the West, saying that \u201cIf you don\u2019t give us economic help, all of these nationalists will take over . . . .\u201d<\/p>\n

CH: The \u201cdemocratic resistance\u201d in Serbia, in fact, is also deeply nationalistic, right?<\/p>\n

\u017di\u017eek: Of course! What you don\u2019t get often through the Western media is this hypocritical . . . for instance, when there was a clash between the police and anti-Milosevic; demonstrators, you know what the demonstrators were shouting? \u201cWhy are you beating us? Go to Kosovo and beat the Albanians!\u201d So much for the \u201cSerb Democratic Opposition\u201d! Their accusation against Milosevic; is not that he is un-democratic, though it\u2019s also that: it\u2019s \u201cYou lost Bosnia! You lost Kosovo!\u201d So I fear the advent of a regime that would present itself to the West as open and democratic, but will play this covert game. When pressed by the West to go further with democratic reforms, they will claim that they are under pressure from radical right-wing groups. So I don\u2019t think there will be any great transformation. Now that the Serbs have lost Kosovo, I don\u2019t think there will be another great conflict, but neither do I think there will be any true solution. It will just drag on\u2014it\u2019s very sad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hanlon,Christopher. “Psychoanalysis and the Post-Political: An Interview with Slavoj .” New Literary History, 32 (2001): 1-21. PDF \u017di\u017eek: My idea is the old marxist idea that this immediate reference to experience, practice, struggle, etcetera, really relies on the most abstract and pure theory, and as an old philosopher I would say, as you said before, … Continue reading “\u017di\u017eek 2001”<\/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":[78,77,112,32,86,82,94,118,106,41,20],"tags":[137,105],"class_list":["post-5768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-butler","category-class","category-foreclosure","category-foucault","category-gender","category-performativity","category-sexual-difference","category-symbolic","category-the-act","category-the-real","category-zizek","tag-interview","tag-thedebate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5768","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=5768"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5770,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5768\/revisions\/5770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}