Thursday, October 14, 2004
(5:43 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Why Zizek is a good philosopher
John Holbo has asked for a more detailed response to his charge that Slavoj Zizek is a no-talent hack whose incipient Republicanism is thinly veiled by endlessly rehashed, unfunny "jokes." Such charges are entirely reasonable if one has only read On Belief, which is admittedly a piece of hackwork -- punctuated by occasional genuine insights (many of which can be found conveniently repeated word-for-word in his other works). However, as I argue in the comments to Dr. Holbo's Zizek post, the Thinking in Action series is a cynical marketting ploy ("Philosopohy -- for people who feel guilty that they don't care about philosophy!") and he gave it about as much effort as it deserves.In any case, Zizek has written other, longer books, and he has addressed topics other than religion. I can recommend the following:
- The Sublime Object of Ideology is his first work in English, and it offers a general overview of his theory that ideology critique is most effective when it draws upon a Lacanian reading of Hegel. The same basic ideas are reworked at much greated length in For they know not what they do: Enjoyment as a political factor, which focusses much more exclusively on Hegel, arguing that his reading of Hegelian political theory offers the best way to understand the events surrounding the fall of Communism.
- Tarrying with the Negative is by far his best book. It's heavy on the Kant and Hegel, showing how a Lacanian reading can help make German idealism available to ideology critique. In his reading, Lacan becomes an integral part of the philosophical tradition, working on and developing the same basic problematic as German idealism, and that allows us to re-read the tradition -- it is a prime example of the ways that doing history of philosophy can help us to do philosophy. (He later works out the same basic problematic with regard to Schelling in The Indivisible Remainder, which ends up being much more about Lacan than about Schelling, and which includes his most extended critique of Derrida. In Bodies Without Organs, he juxtaposes the triads Deleuze-Derrida-Lacan and Spinoza-Kant-Hegel -- arguing that there are certain fundamental deadlocks that philosophy keeps coming up against, and also slyly arguing that the Frenchies are "real" philosophers, too.) He also applies psychoanalysis to nationalism and racism, coming up with political analysis that far exceeds his current, somewhat haphazard analyses of the Bush administration -- after years and years of reading very concerned discussions of race, I felt as though Zizek was saying something new.
- The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Center of Political Ontology argues that most contemporary trends in philosophy share a rejection of Cartesian subjectivity and that the way out of the current impasse in radical thought and politics is to return to the theory of the subject, but to rework it in (of course) Lacanian ways. This work is really a tour de force in terms of addressing and critiquing three big trends issuing from the 20th century continental tradition: phenomenology (primarily Heidegger), French Marxism (from Althusser to Badiou), and American cultural studies (mainly Judith Butler). In each of the book's three sections, he presents a critique, then his constructive alternative, ending on an "exhortation to dare."
The reasonableness of liberalism is, for Zizek, entirely obfuscatory given the horribly exploitative system that supplies the standard for reasonableness. A materialist equivalent to the Southern Baptist fundamentalist is precisely the person who dares to respond with a concrete political program to the empirical evidence that humanity cannot afford to live under capitalism forever. Yes, communism turned out horribly -- but try asking someone in the Third World how capitalism is turning out as we speak. Entire ways of life are being exterminated, and reasonable liberals are doing nothing -- the obscenity of our contemporary political situation is that responding in a concrete way to the empirical evidence is the equivalent to a teleological suspension of the ethical (even if Zizek doesn't understand that concept, I'm pretty sure I do). To claim that Bush is just "the same" as what Zizek is talking about is ridiculous, especially given that there is virtually no empirical evidence to support any significant thing Bush has ever done. It's a gross misreading of Zizek's project -- I'm willing to admit that Zizek bears a lot of the responsibility for that, given the sloppiness of On Belief, but I get the impression that if you're not willing to read his longer books, Zizek doesn't have a lot of time for you, which is why, when presented the opportunity to provide a synopsis of his thought to an audience who will likely never get past the stage of reading "introductions" to philosophy, he threw together a shitty book.
And we all went out and bought it.
