hooves on the turf

I will avoid paraphrasing Zizek wherever possible, since there’s no way that won’t involve butchering of words, so I resort, inevitably, to a somewhat trashier retelling, which begins with one of my favorite feminist columnists, Katha Pollit, seated right in front of me–only I realized much later that it was she, and that she was married to Steven Lukes, who was there to promote his “Big Ideas / Small Books” title Moral Relativism, as was Slavoj Zizek to promote his “Big Ideas / Small Books” title Violence.

Continued after the jump.

L to R: Moderator from NY mag, Lukes, Zizek. Photo by Lucas, who let me scribble over it.

If you’re unfamiliar with Zizek, his tale begins with a head that bursts with ideas, and he talks in order to catch up, which is to say he talks a lot. In fact, and here comes paraphrase number one, Zizek admitted that he never stopped talking while at his psychoanalyst’s because he feared his weaknesses would be found during silence. And I’m pretty sure that Ms. Pollitt and Mr. Lukes were aware of this reputation when the husband signed up to share a stage with Zizek, but Ms. Pollitt was visibly frustrated at Zizek’s parade of thoughts nonetheless, and her flustered aura was distracting to me the whole time. Though I’ll always admire Katha Pollitt for writing that the NRA does everything short of painting guns pink to sell them to women (ha ha ha – lefties do have a sense of humor, Michael Weiss*), I was disappointed both in the husband’s performance, and in the wife’s, who was doubling as a fellow liberal intellectual (at one point she blurted out, “Time’s up” when Zizek was talking, though it was really her endless shifting, shaking of the head and deep sighs that I found unbearably disconcerting, given that she wasn’t fretting over his ideas as much as she was over Zizek-the-believer-of-inaction stealing the show from her husband! ).

Here’s how a great liberal disappointment unfolds: some liberal intellectuals like Steven Lukes and Katha Pollitt are often driven by the feisty, right-wing culture of America (which amazingly gets away with a staggering number of ridiculous things) to behave like birds with broken wings, understandably so, but still! This shouldn’t have been a contest between two men as it should’ve been between ideas–Lukes is of humanist leanings, believes in voting for Obama, protesting against the war on Iraq and so on, whereas Zizek believes (here, monumental paraphrasing follows) that there are some well-intentioned actions, like the protest against war on Iraq or charity, that only serve to mask the flaws of a broken system, in which case taking no action would do far better in exposing the flaws of that system. The great liberal disappointment was that instead of smashing his ideas against Zizek’s, Lukes chose to ridicule Zizek’s ideas without presenting any of his own. His way of provocation was something like, “But don’t you think McCain’s presidency will be so much worse than Obama’s?” What! Seriously, could it have been any more lame? Besides, Slavoj Zizek isn’t Christopher Hitchens. Zizek replied that it would absolutely be worse, clarifying that actually he would vote for Obama if Zizek were an American citizen, mainly because Obama has, he said, helped open a much-needed space for dialogue, and that choosing to stop discussion of something due to perceived dead-ends is not something Zizek believes in. But, he went on to explain further, after four years, Obama would suffer the same fate as that of great leaders like Nelson Mandela (which is to say he wouldn’t be able to fix all problems, for one thing), at which point it would no longer be Obama’s fault, but the fault of what Zizek calls “systemic violence”, which is one of the two constituents of “objective violence”.

From the introduction to his new book: “But we should learn to step back, to disentangle ourselves from the fascinating lure of this directly visible ’subjective’ violence, violence performed by a clearly identifiable agent. We need to perceive the contours of the background which generates such outbursts.” It’s these “contours of the background” where “obective violence” festers. He writes further that “subjective violence” is “seen as a perturbation of the ‘normal’, peaceful state of things. However, objective violence is precisely the violence inherent to this ‘normal’ state of things… Systemic violence is thus something like the notorious ‘dark matter’ of physics, the counterpart to an all-too-visible subjective violence. It may be invisible, but it has to be taken into account if one is to make sense of what otherwise seem to be ‘irrational’ explosions of subjective violence.” And here is how a great liberal disappointment unfolds further: after listening to Zizek’s explanation of inaction and Obama’s inevitable, eventual failure for which Obama cannot be blamed, Lukes actually said that perhaps the choice of word “violence” was an “inflation”, which I found most regrettable of course, and in a way, shame on you Katha Pollitt for trying to silence Zizek’s iteration of the truth in preference for your husband’s nonsensical defense of a broken wing (but I bought his book and even got it signed, and I’m sure that it’ll be a good read). Zizek didn’t outshine Lukes with the number of words uttered, but the number of ideas expressed per word, if we were to get down to it. After all, it’s the systemic that makes half a nation cheer for Sarah Palin, and how is whatever that makes half a nation cheer for Sarah Palin not “violence”?

On the whole, Zizek seemed to mostly agree with Lukes, taking those ideas further with his own additions to them, calling those additions and corrections “fraternal suggestions”. I actually don’t think the two men’s ideas are entirely mutually exclusive, but there is a clear difference of approach in terms of what pertains to action and what to the service of the truth in that very “space for dialogue”. When the moderator from New York magazine asked if Lukes lived by the idea of “Who are you to judge, other than in case of clear violence like child abuse, murder, etc across cultures?” to the end, Lukes actually nodded a yes. On the other hand, I don’t think Zizek has ever been about living by his “radical” ideas to the end. He lives in a consumer society, drinks Starbucks, buys Legos for his kid, says he’d vote for Obama if Zizek were an American citizen despite Obama’s known, inevitable failure. It’s not hypocritical, but simply that Marx was Marx and Lenin was Lenin, and they were never the same.

Afterward at the signing table, I presented my purchases with a sticky note that spelled my name out. “What kind of a name is that?” Zizek asked with interest, “Which country is it from?”. I named that little nation with its brand new Maoist President, and Zizek excitedly looked up to point to my face, saying with emphasis, “Look!”; as if to say, “look, here is a face from that distant land with its brand new Maoist President.” He asked, “How are things looking there? Do you think they will solve the problem?” I said, “I don’t know really but I hope so.” He said, “Yes, it’s very open. I hope so too”.

Anyway, Zizek rocked it. He debates fellow heavy-weight Bernard-Henri Lévy on September 16th, when Levy’s Violence & the Left in Dark Times becomes available. Tickets ($15) are on sale now.

* = sometimes