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I tolerate this century, but I don't enjoy it.
All of the ephemera that is far too trivial to be bothered with elsewhere on this site or, depending on your point of view, a meta-commentary on it. This ephemera includes, but is not limited to art, music and literature. Most of the content here will be discussed in terms that are as abstract as possible, reality being a singularly overrated concept.
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
I've often though that Slavoj Zizek provides an entirely unintentional justification of the adage that everything communism said about capitalism was true but so was everything capitalism said about communism; his criticisms of modern capitalism are acute but his alternatives represent precisely the form of ruthless idealism that leads to gas chambers and gulags (it's impossible not to read Zizek's descriptions of his politics of truth and not be reminded of the Stalinist credo that one cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs).
To elaborate, Slavoj Zizek's stance is self-consciously the equal and opposite of the hardline conservative, with whom he shares his opposition to that fuzzy liberal area that tends to be the dominant aspect of most modern societies. His readings are a tour de force of the egotistical sublime, with everything subordinated to that pattern from the political to the ephemeral. In each case, the argument is that conservatives and the leninist communist that Zizek describes himself as are equally prepared to adopt a politics of truth that reserves a policy of realpolitik in defence of that truth. My general reaction to such politics is to counter with an appropriately psychoanalytic (Zizek being an acolyte of Lacan) observation; that courtesy has always been rather important to civilisation than truth (i.e. civilisation perseveres through repression and sublimation of its discontents). In the instance of his latest essay, much of my ambivalence about Zizek applies:"Religion is permitted — not as a substantial way of life, but as a particular "culture" or, rather, life-style phenomenon: what legitimizes it is not its immanent truth-claim but the way it allows us to express out innermost feelings and attitudes... And is this also not why we dismiss fundamentalist believers as "barbarians," as anti-cultural, as a threat to culture — they dare to take seriously their beliefs? .. the contemporary redefinition of politics as the art of expert administration as politics without politics, up to today's tolerant liberal multiculturalism as an experience of Other deprived of its Otherness (the idealized Other who dances fascinating dances and has an ecologically sound holistic approach to reality, while features like wife beating remain out of sight...)"
Certainly, my longstanding view has always been bemusement concerning the liberal and personal notions of religion (with the kind of selective approaches to the totality of religion that have earned contempt since Nietzsche) in contemporary society which are more of an appropriation of religion than an observance of it; such things seem to me indicative of little more than atheism without the conviction (though as I have never been anything other than an atheist I am certainly no authority; fundamentalist believers are far from being beyond equally selective approaches to doctrine). Equally, I've long been concerned at modern society's inability to form a critique of religious fundamentalism, since religion is invariably presumed to be a unmitigated social good (hence perhaps my sympathy for the French ban on religious symbols in public institutions).
On the other hand, as an atheist I am in position to object to modern society tending to fillet religion of its meaning (recalling Michel Houellebecq's observation in Platform as to how capitalism would denude islam of belief in time. As an example, consider the Catholic division of sin and sinner, a somewhat risible piece of sophistry that is only put forward since it is no longer possible to speak of sin as wilful inclination rather than simply innate and bengin characteristics), and there are other theoretical perspectives on such matters, such as those of Anthony Giddens. Giddens argues where tradition dominates, individual actions do not have to be analysed and thought about so much, because choices are already prescribed by the traditions and customs. In a post-traditional society, matters becomes much more reflexive and aware of its own precariously constructed state. In short, tradition falls into desuetude but is not replaced with any other equally miltat ideology and in place of the clash of utopian idealism Zizek misses one one is left with a fuzzy form of liberal tolerance. It's debatable as to the desirability of such outcomes (it does rather resemble something out of Brave New World and arguably does have the consequences for art that Zizek says it does; the recursive displacement of prohibition and the injunction of incessantly inventing new artistic transgressions and provocations) but it still seems infinitely preferrable to anything Zizek might offer in reply.Labels: Religion
posted by Richard 8:01 pm
