
i have just finished reading the fragile absolute - or, why is the christian legacy worth fighting for? by slavoj zizek (you'll have the imagine the little squiggles over the zeds). not only did i come to a fuller understanding of pete rollins's wardrobe choices (objet petit a ring any bells?) but it was a thoroughly engaging and provocative read. a few words:
“…where is the second way today? That is to say: did not the notion of the Third Way emerge at the very moment when – at least in the developed West – all other alternatives, from true conservatism to radical Social Democracy, lost out in the face of the triumphant onslaught of global capitalism and its notion of liberal democracy? Is it not the true message of the notion of the Third Way therefore simply that there is no second way, no actual alternative to global capitalism, so that, in a kind of mocking pseudo-Hegelian negation of negation, this much praised ‘Third Way’ bring us back to the first and only way –the Third Way is simply global capitalism with a human face, that is, an attempt to minimize the human costs of the global capitalist machinery, whose functioning is left undisturbed.” (62-63)
zizek brings together insights from marxism, psychoanalysis, christianity and contemporary cinema with symphonic orchestration. writing about subverting the law, he says:
“One can violate/ transgress its prohibitions: this is the inherent transgression which sustains the Law, like the advocates of liberal democracy who secretly (through the CIA) train murderers-terrorists for the proto-Fascist regimes in Latin America. That is false rightist heroism: secretly doing the ‘necessary but dirty thing’, that is, violating the explicit ruling ideology (of human Rights, and so on) in order to sustain the existing order. Much more subversive than this is simply to do what is allowed, that is, what the existing order explicitly allows, although it prohibits it at the level of implicit unwritten prohibitions. In short – to paraphrase Brecht’s well-known crack about how mild robbing a bank is in comparison with founding a bank – how mild transgressing the Law is in comparison with obeying it thoroughly – or, as Kierkegaard put it, in his unique way: ‘We do not laud the son who said “No,” but we endeavour to learn from the gospel how dangerous it is to say, “Sir, I will.” […] when Christ claims that he is here merely to fulfil the (Jewish) Law, he thereby bears witness to how his act effectively cancels the Law.” (147-8)
“What this means is that in order effective to liberate oneself from the grip of existing social reality, one should first renounce the transgressive fantasmatic supplement that attaches us to it.” (149)
taking the west wing as an example (one a friend of mine loves to ridicule) of this transgressive fantasmatic supplement, it is easy to see how one set of politics are replaced for another (though how uncannily similar they appear), one president, chief of staff, press secretary, speech writer etc for another, while the machinery of liberal democracy and global capitalism remains firmly in place. there is something tragically naive about wishing jed bartlett was president instead of george bush. despite its focus on the president’s personality, ahead of his politics, if the west wing demonstrates anything it is how jed, josh, leo, cj, toby and even the gorgeous sam remain at the mercy of the machine...where election campaigns are multi-million dollar affairs and the contest to elect the figurehead of global democracy is a two-horse race between two candidates bending over backwards not to alienate any more voters than is absolutely necessary to maintain their public persona.
not that i am advocating that west wing fans put away their box sets and start reading the communist manifesto. the west wing is a brilliant show. it is educational as well as entertaining (even if what it is educating us about is how the machine operates) and – did I mention earlier? – rob lowe is in it for heaven’s sake! but a show is all that it is. and in that sense, it really does replicate the nature of american politics accurately.