My Breakfast with Zizek

by Mitch Jones
with contributions from Joshua Strauss

PART I: The Narrative

We spent the night in preparation at Josh's house the previous evening.  Neither of us got much sleep.  Despite the insomniatic energy, we didn't get much done.  We had absolutely no idea what was about to happen the next day.

We woke up early, at like 6am, and made the forty minute trip out to Brockport, my alma mater.  It was a Saturday, however, and none of the professors I knew would be there.  When we arrived we told them our credentials and they offered us the grad student rate for admission.  Well, we didn't have any money.  They let us in for $5 between the both of us!  Power to the people!  Then we were treated to a breakfast of bagels with cream cheese, muffins (not as healthy as you might think), donuts (piggy's favorite) and the most beautiful thing in the world at that moment... COFFEE.

We saw our friends Ian and Mary there.  Ian was presenting that day.  He wrote a paper called "In Praise of Irresponsibility," which was about (partially) how around WWII time there was a shift in the left to the partial, the incomplete.  He also makes many pop culture references including GI Joe, fascists who dehumanize their enemies by making them wear masks, and the liquefaction party in William Burrough's Interzone which insists that the majesty of autonomy needs to be questioned.  His conclusion is that Philosophy is irresponsible - can be read and read and reinterpreted over and over, but there is never any response that is sufficient to that text.  Philosophy is that which has no response.

I took tons of notes.  Recorded some audio on my computer.

We got lunch at a diner on Main St.  They gave us BOGO lunch tix at the conference.  I got a bacon cheeseburger and plugged in my computer behind a dart board.  It kept running out of batteries.  Probably because I was using it so much.  Josh got a salad.  I think I ordered another coffee.

When the conference was over for the day I was dying for a cigarette.  I was all out.  Had been the whole day.  We went to another resturaunt where a Zizek Conference party was going on and hobnobbed.  I bummed a cigarette from some dude who told me he just got engaged outside a bar on main street.  For some reason I didn't see it lasting for them.

Inside the resturant we were talking to all the professors and grad students and by this time our minds were completely burnt out, blown and getting to the verge of twisted.   I ended up calling a woman I used to know who still lived in Brockport.  We slept on her couch.

I got no sleep.

We left at six the next morning and went to Wall Mart.  Today was the day.  We were going to interview Zizek in just a few short hours.  We realized that we had no video equiptment.  Wall Mart was a necessary evil.  We bought a little, cheap, digital video camera.  Josh has been using it ever since.  I saw people I used to know most of the places we went.  Then we went to McDonalds to use their WiFi and get some breakfast and more coffee.

We met Antonio Garcia at the conference site at 9.  He escorted us to the dormitory where Zizek was staying.  He met us at the door.  Then we proceeded into a classroom within another dormitory.  This was to be our warroom.  We were unprepared for this.  An intimite moment with Slavoj Zizek.  Just me, Josh and him for forty minutes with everyone watching like it was a television show.  Well, it was on cable access and it's available on YouTube so I guess it is a television show now.

I was initially disappointed in my choice of questions but as time went on I began to feel grateful for the privilege of getting to interview a rockstar intellectual and even a little proud.  We stayed for a few more talks, but I was so tired that we went home shortly after lunch.  They ran out of free coffee fairly early in the day and I couldn't hold my head up anymore.

We took the sleepy drive home buzzing and jazzed from the fallout of the excitement.

When I got home I still didn't sleep for several hours, but I couldn't think.  I had exercised my mental muscle to exhaustion.

PART II: Useless Academia

"Pure, useless academia... is as subversive and necessary as ever."
"All good things come as collateral damage of useless thinking."
- Slavoj Zizek

The function of ruling class ideology is to make us not think too much.  Thought may lead to action and action to revolution.  However, action without thought can be just as dangerous.  No clearer of a recent example of this can be seen but in the Kony 2012 movement.  A YouTube video posted by Rhianna on her Twitter page caused a stir over the leader of a rebel army in Sierra Leon (?) who happens to use child soldiers.  The bloggers and facebookers sprung into a clicktivistic fury over this viral infotainment.  However, few got the whole picture... one that painted the government as hardy innocent in this quagmire.  In addition, the blind cyber-Praxis of clicktivists ignored all sorts of other atrocities going on in the world of equal import and reprehensibility.

PART IIA: Theory and Praxis

The thing that arose over and over in my mind was one of Praxis... i.e.: WHAT THE FUCK CAN WE DO ABOUT IT!!!!!
We've identified the problems, so what's the solution.  The only person that had an answer to that question was Jodi Dean of course.  I'm becoming more pragmatic, realistic and practical as I get a few more years on me.  I've read the Revolution Betrayed.  I'm a Trotskyite.  So we have here a formula for a pragmatic revolution.  As Castro said after taking Havana, "We've won the war, now the revolution begins."  He also said "Homeland or death!"

Jodi Dean, in her eloquent speech on Occupy Wall Street and the Communist Party form, stated that clicktivism and use of capitalist social media by the activist vanguard does have liberating potential.  However, she warns about turning the movement into a physical manifestation of the internet.  It mustn't be solely a public forum for expressing disparate concerns.  We already have the internet for that.  Her suggestion, from my understanding, is that an enlightened party vanguard, with a measure of theoretical sophistication, steer the 99% in the direction of liberation.  Here Dean employs anarchist anthropologist David Graeber's distinction between anarchists and communists - anarchist groups operate on the assumption that no one can convert anyone, whereas communism emphasizes conversion.  This dialectic can be boiled down to vangaurdism vs. insurrectionary alternatives.  Anarchists lead by example, forging their own autonomous communities within the "shell of the old."  Communists seek to transform the old system rather than creating what Hakim Bey calls "Temporary Autonomous Zones."  Zizek's problem with anarchism is that most anarchists do not have a clear, pragmatic vision for what anarchist society would look like.  I must admit, however, that the science-fiction writer Ursula K. LeGuin put together a fairly clear outline for an anarcho-syndicalist society in her novel The Dispossessed.

PART III: Individualism

Zizek says that his vision for a communist society would be something like the television show Heros whereby a collection of mavericks ("freaks and outcasts") comes together with their own strengths to bring to the table.  This allows one to understand the compatability of communism with individualism.  If we collaborate then each one of us will bring their own valueable and idiosyncratic experise to each situation.  The difference between this vision and anarchist "consensus" models is that there would have to be some sort of authority that has the final say.  This could be democratic authority, sometimes called the dictatorship of the majority, whereby a one-person, one-vote plebicite is formed.  The reason anarchists oppose the majoritarian democratic model is because ultimately someone's opinions will be marginalized.  The anarchist wants every individual to be empowered and for there to be no winners or losers.  That sounds great and should be strived for at the local level.  The problem is that when you start to deal with a large population it gets increasingly difficult to convince absolutely everyone that one direction or another is the right way to go.

In some ways I disagree with Zizek's analysis of individualism.  But this is only a recent event.  When I was younger I was extremely individualistic, to the point of becomming anti-social.  Individualism was one of the things that lead me away from religion.  However, at this my 27th year on the planet, I am starting to understand the need to conform to your environment somewhat.  Sometimes it involves doing things that you don't want to do.  Freud said that repression of desire is essential so that we don't go around acting out all our most perverse fantasies all day.  This is how humans get along together.

We decide to repress our desire for something it usually fits into some sort of collective decision, like standards of lawfulness or politeness.  Often these standards are organic and driven by culture, but collectively agreed upon nonetheless.

Capitalism too is a collective decision. We need to begin seeing capitalism as imaginary and not just the natural way of being.  This is made aparently clear when we look at the institution of money.  Money is an abstract concept, but it drives our lives despite its surrealistic nature.  That is because we as a society have collectively agreed to place value upon money.

I think homo sapiens is an essentially social species.  We actually mostly go through life doing no willul harm to others.  We all have our moments of anti-social rage, but for the most part we don't want any trouble.

Standing in line is a perfect example.  For the most part people wait patiently in line until their turn arives.  When you're a kid there are "cuts" or "budges" where someone strong arms a more strategic position in line.  However adults rarely do this.  If they do it's only out of desperation.  Politeness and mutual respect are virtues in our society that need to be cultivated more.

Violent criminals are only a very small portion of the overall population.  However, our media is fascinated with violent crime.  As a result of a combination of that and our racist justice system that punishes the powerless more than the powerful, we have locked up more people in America than in any other country in the world.

PART IV: Unilinear evolution

Zizek is a traditionalist Marxist when it comes to "Third World Socialism."  He describes the indigenous movements in Latin America and the Bolivarian revolution as what Marx describes as "primitive communism."  "Capitalism is a condition of liberation," according to Zizek.  He here shows his adherence to the unilinear model of cultural evolution.  According to Marxian unilinear-evolutionism as explained by Eric Wolf, the history of the world can be through modes of production: from the kinship mode (primitive communism, tribes and bands, forraging and horticulture/pastoralism), to the tributary mode (feudalism, cheifdoms and kingdoms, agriculture), to the capitalist mode (empires, industrialism), and then through socialism (mixed economy, more efficient industrialism) to "true" communism (decentralized industrialism and a "withering away of the state").  The people mustn't skip a step.  You can't go immediately from agrarian feudalism to industrial communism.  This is what Mao tried to do and with disasterous results in the short term.  In the long term China would become a superpower, but only because of it's embrace of private enterprise creating what has been described as "state-capitalism."

PART V: The Fetish

When you look at the man he's got a larger than life character.  He's foreign.  He ran for Prime Minister of his country, Yugoslavia... and almost won because his opponent admitted that he was smarter than all the other candidates.  His accent reminds me that he is in fact from the other side of the iron curtain.  They experienced communism and some of them kinda liked it.  He's been described as a rock star intellectual.  He's a little overweight.  He has greasy hair and a shaggy beard.  He wears nice shoes.  He has nervous ticks where he pinches his nose.  He swears, tells dirty jokes.  He likes cinema.  He is growing bored of politics.

His most recent book was a 2000 page work on Hegel.  Pure philosophy.  Hardcore thinking.  He is the envy of other philosophers.  There is also a journal devoted to him.

The first talk we saw on Saturday morning was Russell Sbriglia - The Symptoms of Ideology Critique.  It spoke of fetishistic disavowal whereby the fetish enables to us sustain the unbearable truth.  Fetishists are realists.  Where Marx described ideology as "They do no know it but they are doing it," Zizek updates it by saying "They know what they are doing, but continue to do it."  This pacifies the people.  Like shopping.

This is a result of alienation.  I think about alienation when I'm at work.  Gorky described workers under capitalism as human machines.  I therefore become alienated from myself when I wear a fake smile.

PART VI: Reiterations

"Lauage is art, communication is the real form of activity"
-Joshua Strauss

"The more you consume, the less you live."
-Paris '68

"Become the media."
-Jello Biafra

Zizek makes use of reiteration excessively.  He beats the proverbial dead horse.  He is almost condescending.  He not only uses the works of other intellectuals, but he also makes pop culture references.  He extapolates from Kung Fu Panda the concept that he wants to get across, but there is not really anything inherently ideological about Kung Fu Panda necessarily.  Is there?  Zizek finds ideology in everything.  Everything is an argument for him.  All the memes in the ether are making some sort of ideological point.

The recognition of what is relevant appears to be missing here.  He goes on a lot of tangents.  He is long winded, scatter-brained even.  He is the Nutty Professor.  He is the mad scientist with a big Hg, the periodic table symbol for mercury, on his tshirt.  Mercury is a poisonous, liquid metal.  In the East it was once thought to be a youth-restoring tonic.  Many died as a result of Mercury poisoning.  Mercury has also traditionally been used in thermomethers.  You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows... or how hot it is.

He is also excessively self-aware.  He embraces the subjectivity of human experience.  He see things through a Lacanian/Marxist/Hegelian framework.  Lacan for psychoanalysis, Marx for politics, and Hegel for the metaphysics.  His psychoanalytic approach differentiates his framework from the anthropological or sociological approaches.

If nature is media Zizek uses it well.  Why has Zizek become the new rockstar?  Why are there no more Rage Against the Machines or Public Enemies?  The intellectual has killed the radio star with video.

PART VII:  Zizekian Anthropology

Is there a lesson that anthropologists can discover from reading Zizek?  Zizek puts himself firmly in the psychological court.  He is constantly reiterating Freud and his student Lacan and their students.

The difference between the psychological paradigm and the anthropological paradigm is that psychology is primarily concerned with the individual whereas anthropologists emphasize a collective called culture.  Psychology attempts to diagnose whereas anthropology attempts to understand.  Psychologists describe culture as something external to the individual whereas anthropologists see a constant interplay between the individual and culture whereby one affects and is also affected by culture.  Sometimes we anthropologists make sweeping generalizations, but aren't psychologists guilty of the same when they attempt to pathologize behavior?  We may be guilty of reifying culture, as though it is this organic, amalgamous blob somewhere in the ether.

Isn't culture in fact a collective decision, however?  Culture is pathological.  It also relies heavily on ideology.  Perhaps most useful for anthropologists is Zizek's critique of ideology and fetishistic disavowal.  Post-modernism reflects this disavowal.  As I quoted earlier, Zizek's modification of Marx; "They know what they are doing, and they continue to do it," helps us understand the current state of culture.

Indigenous cultures are being replaced by consumer culture in nearly every corner of the globe.  The title of the conference was "Neoliberal Perversions."  This monoculturization is a product of neoliberalism.  One would be hard pressed to find a major city where there is not a McDonalds.  And while we're being doped by binary choices, i.e.: Coke or Pepsi, the real choices in life are made for us.  Human autonomy is disappearing under neoliberalism, to be replaced with the empty promise of individualism through consumer power.  However, it is the bourgeoisie that makes the choice of how much to pay the rest of us (the 99%), thus regulating how much consumer power we can exercise.

Through ideology the myth of freedom is perpetuated.  We engage in warfare with so-called "freedom" as a justification.  Make no mistake, the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan was started by the Soviets.  Stalin (?) was the first to offer so-called "freedom" to the Middle East.  The Afghanistan invasion was a disaster for the Soviets.  Despite that fact that the Obama government finally found and killed Osama bin Laden, the United States has not fared much better in that region.  Many innocent and military lives continue to be lost.  Some anthropologists have even worked within the "human terrain system" to help the troops better understand the culture of the peoples they are conquering, despite a denunciation of this practice by the American Anthropological Association.