Introduction: “The Spiritual Wickedness in the Heavens”
How was it that the euphoria of the fall of the Berlin Wall changed into the re-election of ex-communists a few years later? Žižek’s answer is that what the west thought the second world wanted was freedom and democracy when what people really want is “‘Socialism with a human face.’” Western style liberal capitalism did not deliver and that fact will soon be clear to even the most capitalist capitalist in the west. “The underlying premise of the present book is a simple one: the global capitalist system is approaching an apocalyptic zero-point. Its ‘four riders of the apocalypse’ are comprised by the ecological crisis, the consequences of the biogenetic revolution, imbalances within the system itself (problems with intellectual property; forthcoming struggles over raw materials, food and water), and the explosive growth of social divisions and exclusions.” For Žižek the zero point has a double meaning. First, is when there is nothing left of capitalism. Žižek, like Marx, has a grudging admiration for capitalism which “has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations…. [and] during its rule of scarce one hundred years has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generation together.” – Marx Communist manifesto. All the evils of capitalism are on the verge of overcoming any good and when there is nothing good left in capitalism it will have reached its zero point. The second, is when an individual hits rock bottom; when they pass their dark night of the soul; when the only way forward is up.
“The most basic coordinates of our awareness will have to change, insofar as, today, we live in a state of collective fetishistic disavowal: we know very well that this [zero point] will happen at some point, but nevertheless cannot bring ourselves to really believe that it will….the truth hurts and we desperately try to avoid it.” Žižek takes advantage of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ five stages of grief system (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) to illustrate and explain “the way our social consciousness attempts to deal with the forthcoming apocalypse. The first reaction is one of ideological denial: there is no fundamental disorder; the second is exemplified by explosions of anger at the injustices of the new world order; the third involves attempts at bargaining (‘if we change things here and there, life could perhaps go on as before’); when the bargaining fails, depression and withdrawal set in; finally after passing through this zero-point, the subject no longer perceives the situation as a threat, but as the chance of a new beginning”.
Žižek’s goal in the book is to hasten our collective movement through the first 4 stages because only once we have reached the acceptance stage will we have the courage to start to really fix the world’s problems. So the process of the book will be to speak to people who are in the first 4 stages and try to move them along. If acceptance is the goal and we are not there then the “state of our daily lives is that of a lived lie, to break out of which requires a continuous struggle. The starting point for this process is to become terrified by oneself.” Žižek, wanting to show the chain of connections of shame to terror to courage, quotes Marx’s A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: “The actual burden must be made even more burdensome by creating and awareness of it. The humiliation must be increased by making it public….The people must be put in terror of themselves in order to give them courage” to do what must be done.
It is important to note that as we are dealing with people who are deluded and trying to avoid the truth: “The truth we are dealing with here is not ‘objective’ truth, but the self-relating truth about one’s own subjective position; as such, it is an engaged truth, measured not by its factual accuracy but by the way it affects the subjective position of enunciation.” In other words we are dealing with the truth of people that determines their actions, their justifications, and their rationales.
1 Denial: The Liberal Utopia
Why such a big uproar over the burqa in France (and recently Quebec)? This is a symptomatic problem – one that is a proxy for another problem. It is symptomatic because it really is so marginal; very few women in France (or Quebec) insist on wearing a burqa but the whole nation speaks about it. It is not a conspiracy or distraction. Most public marginal problems are symptomatic manifestations of a deeper terror. In the case of the burqa controversy there is a revealing subtle under tone of anxiety that comes from not seeing a face when one expects to. “From a Freudian perspective, the face is the ultimate mask that conceals the horror of the Neighbor-Thing: the face is what makes the Neighbor le semblable, a fellow-man with whom we can identify and empathize….[this causes anxiety] because it confronts us directly with the abyss of the Other-Thing, with the Neighbor in its uncanny dimension. The very covering –up of the face obliterates a protective shield, so that the Other-Thing stares at us directly”. When we see some one’s face we can read them and that is comforting – we think we know their true intentions.
This is where ideology can “save” us – or rather give the nation an opportunity to vent their anxiety by doing something; anything even if (and sometimes it is better if) it is totally unproductive. “[I]deology is itself this very texture of the lifeworld which ‘schematizes’ the proposition, rendering them ‘livable’” an ideology “becomes ‘livable’ only against the background of the obscene unwritten rules and rituals…in which it is embedded.” Venting leads to action – we could ban or tolerate the burqa – which ideology is more acceptable is the one that is most livable which is the one that would reduce the anxiety the most. With ideology we can avoid thinking deeply or empathizing deeply. In the case of the burqa controversy, this is postmodern racism. Campaigns to help starving children in Africa are similar examples of postmodern racism: just act donate money; don’t think about deeper causes or solutions and your anxiety and conscience will be satiated.
Another, more positive sounding, example of ideology is the popularity of Tantra in the west: “it offers the ultimate ‘spiritual logic of late capitalism’ uniting spirituality and earthly pleasures, transcendence and material benefits, divine experience and unlimited shopping…instant gratification as the path to enlightenment…” Both, giving and listening to opinions about the burqa and learning and practicing Tantra are examples of ideology in practice. Ideology is everywhere and it is always practiced for the “gaze” of the Other. Consider, for example, the behaviour of congress people during a state of the union address: where and when to stand and clap (or not to) is for the gaze of the Other. This acting out of ideology happens on every level – when you follow the rules or break them. Žižek then takes a detour to discuss two opposing views of what he calls ideology in ancient China. He concludes with: “the two opposed theories, Confucianism and Legalism, share a deeply materialist premise. For both of them, the truth of ideology does not matter, it is even implied that ideological myths are ‘beautiful lies’; what matters is how ideological myths and rituals function, their role in sustaining social order.”
The entire chapter seems dedicated to examples of how the world is set up (and has always been set up) to help us avoid real objective truth and to accept ideology as a substitute because it is more socially harmonious and therefore more pleasant. This is Žižek way of trying to bring us out of denial.
Interlude 1. Hollywood Today: Report from an Ideological Battlefield
In this half chapter interlude Žižek dedicates himself to looking at popular Hollywood movies. One of his theses here is “one of the best ways to detect shifts in the ideological constellations is to compare consecutive remakes of the same story.” To this end he talks a lot about Batman and the Joker and other remakes but spends the most time on the four versions of “I Am Legend” the first being the 1954 novel by Richard Matheson, which was made into a film in 1964 called “The Last Man on Earth,” then a second version in 1971 called “The Omega Man,” and finally the 2007 version called “I Am Legend” starring Will Smith. In the first movie the main character is revealed to be a legend to a race of vampires – a role reversal with modern vampire stories. It seems, perhaps, the ideology expressed was meant to give vent to the anxieties of the nuclear age and the sexual revolutions of the 60s. In the second the ideology gives vent to the anxieties of technology as the main antagonists are all afraid of the technology of the main character the Omega man. In the last film Will Smiths’ character makes a Christ-like sacrifice of himself to save a woman and child who will be able to save the world, “Openly opting for a religious fundamentalism.” This is an attitude that is needed to maintain the war on terror and foreign military engagements today. Ideology shifted to help people deal with changes in the world and to make the changes seem reasonable, comfortable and known – without having to think through them.