Antagonism
I've been reading through "The Desert of the Real" by Slavoj Zizek during slow times at the cart. It's an OK quick read -- 5 chapters, some interesting points, but it has a pretty weak overall point (more on that in a moment).
One of the things I liked: his indisputable assumption of antagonism as one of the axioms of society. he seems to suggest (although I can't pin down a quote on this) that antagonism is origin of politics as such, and that society, the community of political persons, is a secondary creation.
From there he takes a long digession into the only occasionally interesting, a grand tour of the supression of antagonism. This occurs, he insists, through the creationi of a category of political non-persons, what he calls homo sacer (after, he claims, giorgio Ambegen (sp?)) -- those people to whom no "regular" political protection is offered. Well, duh. War between classes is not "regular" war, just as wars of conquest were not "regular" wars during their era. History belongs to the dominant class.
(He could go even farther, show how the supressed dual character of the Homo Sacer -- as strategic consideration and political non-consideration -- functions both as a political "demonstration" of the power capital has over labor, and as sign of it's weakness. The contradiction -- on the one hand great violence justified by the "impossibility of (political) negotiation", on the other, the administrative necessity of negotiating (strategically) -- be it through military action, refugee camps.)
But this is all just fooling around with set-dressing -- "setting the stage" for a new political actor's emergence. (Necessarily strategic negotiation precedes political negotiation). So where's the beef, what struggle gets them on stage?
His "answers," such as there are, he leaves floundering in a choppy sea of ethics. What we are left with after the shipwreck is, well... not much. Apparently, there's some way of puncturing the ethical arguments of the dominant class and getting political recognition for the unrecognized, but it involves, get this...action, and not mere talk. Whoa, step back, baby's cooking with gas!
Moreover, this action will contain some element of risk. And this is it for this book, this is as far as his ethical daring permits him to venture!
It just shows you how ultimately timorous all these "ethicists" are (Hardt and Negri included). The hoped-for change is not going to come about by polite explainations, and the ethicists recognize this. And yet they persist in whipping at the same polite explainations as though they are tigers, as though surviving ethical turmoil is bravery enough to ask from a revolutionary. At the end of the day they lack the courage to tackle political questions.
If, on the other hand (as I suggested before), we look at the coherent action of labor as a strategic question, the politics becomes much clearer. The wordwide ethical standing of labor inevitably follows its strategic power. The strong never want for friends.
Of course the administrators of capital are not going to let anybody to the bargaining table it doesn't have to. It is a struggle to get them to come to any the bargaining table, period! It's not enough to talk about Homo Sacer, let's talk about Homer Simpson!
The magnitude of this task is enough, even if we don't overburdening the details? If it is a struggle to get political recognition for oppressed classes in poor countries, if it is a struggle to get capital to come to the bargaining table to come to the bargaining table with undocumented workers, if it is a struggle to gain recognition for the unemployed as an intentional and structural feature of the subjugation of labor, these are only the second, third, fourth...nth orders of political domination. Their questions cannot be developed without reference to the exploitation of the "first order" of labor -- organized labor. Relating these orders of domination is a fine political objective, but it is important to know which the sharp end of the spear is.
After reading these gloomy thinkers, I am always refreshed to wake up and remember the huge strength of the working class. Turn their gloomy logic around!
Rather than placing such a huge political focus on the political vulnerability of labor, rather than poking at labor's wounds, stirring up the agonizing pathos of the unprotected (isn't this what Zizek indicts liberals for?) in order to show the ethical fortitude of being unmoved (ah no he "bears it well" unlike them)
Shouldn't we instead feel heartened that the capitalist state recognizes the political status of any workers at all! I think most workers would be shocked to discover this -- that they are recognized, their awakening is feared. Fuck Bush isn't afraid of terrorists, of "Homo Sacer" or however you lable those that can be politically disappeared.
It is the self-recognition, expressed as a strategic and organizational unity that cannot be disappeared, which puts us beyond the "ethical problems" of the violence whose extremity can only underscore it's meaninglessness. Savage beatings doled out to the weakest boy on the playground can only intimidate for so long. Do you think the tower boys are afraid of terrorists or any other of the "excluded"? This is just theatrics, an organization of the exploited is what really scares them.
It is this simple perspective that is missing from Zizek. Without it, "social antagonism" dissappears down the rabbit hole all too easily.
Posted by Sam at March 23, 2005 02:19 AM
