Zizek on 'living in end times'

I have just started reading the prolific philosopher-psychoanalytic theorist Slavoj Zizek’s latest book (as far as I know), temptingly titled Living in the End Times (Verso, 2010), and already I am excited. On the cover, Zizek is described (by New Republic) as “The most dangerous philosopher in the West”, and with good reason. Unlike those contemporary so-called philosophers who are the counterparts of the ones described as “bread thinkers” by Schopenhauer in the 19th century — because they put what minds they had in the service of the status quo by uncritically defending conventional assumptions — Zizek fearlessly uses his formidable intellect to debunk the present “gods of the city”, foremost among whom is the globally entrenched economic system.

Echoing several other thinkers who have similarly identified problems endemic to this system, he announces in the Introduction (p. x):

“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.”

If this seems a mouthful that is hard to swallow for ideologically (or financially) blinded supporters of the status quo, consider Zizek’s brief elaboration, in the Introduction, of the last point in the quotation, above. He reminds his readers that what he calls the “new forms of apartheid” are most conspicuous in the wealthy oil states of the Middle East, including Dubai and Saudi Arabia, where thousands of immigrant workers, who are employed to do all the “dirty work”, are sometimes literally “hidden behind walls” under conditions reminiscent of those which applied to migrant workers in South Africa under apartheid, such as being separated from their families and being deprived of privileges.

In a footnote he elaborates: “Invisible to those who visit Dubai for the glitz of the consumerist high-society paradise, immigrant workers are ringed off in filthy suburbs with no air conditioning. They are brought to Dubai from Bangladesh or the Philippines, lured by the promise of high wages; once in Dubai, their passports are taken, they are informed that the wages will be much lower than promised, and then have to work for years in extremely dangerous conditions just to pay off their initial debt, (incurred through the expense of bringing them to Dubai); if they protest or strike, they are simply beaten into submission by the police. This is the reality sustained by great ‘humanitarians’ like Brad Pitt who invested heavily in Dubai.”

As Johann Hari, to whom Zizek refers here, pointed out in The Independent of November 27 2009, this is nothing but a “morally bankrupt dictatorship built by slave labour”. It is therefore no understatement to claim, as Zizek does, that these conditions represent “an explosive potential” that is exploited by religious fundamentalists (who will inevitably find willing recruits among the justifiably discontented).

What Zizek argues here was already pointed out by Hardt and Negri in Multitude (2005), where they list a number of accumulating grievances against the dominant powers in the world today, including the protests against inadequate democratic representation worldwide, the protests against war, and the protests against economic as well as ecological exploitation. What is striking is their comparison of contemporary grievances with the “cahiers de doleances” or similar compilation of grievances, submitted to the French king just before the French Revolution ignited by the storming of the Bastille in 1789.

The difference is, of course, that, today, these grievances are global in extent, and therefore amount to a global demand for a fundamental change in the exercise of political power — one not characterised, as the present one is, by widespread and fundamental injustice. (On the topic of protest, just this weekend an article in one of the SA Sunday newspapers, in which the ruling party is accused of abusing the workers, caught my eye.)

If the situation as described in the Arab states should persist, Zizek points out, it is not unlikely — in fact, very likely — that some “rogue” group may obtain and show itself as being ready to use a “weapon of mass destruction” of some kind against whom it identifies as the global oppressors. For this reason, he states, the “most basic coordinates” of social and political awareness have to change from the present “state of collective fetishistic disavowal” (or ideological blindness) to an admission that these conditions exist, and have to be addressed, perhaps by moving towards a kind of social democratic welfare state in the relevant countries (something I don’t see happening in a monarchic Arab dictatorship like Saudi Arabia, where the royal family owns all the wealth).

In addition to these new “apartheid spaces” (referred to above), there are the many urban slums in various countries — areas that are in effect outside of state control — where not only gang rule and religious sectarianism flourish, but radical political organisations also exist, and expand, as has been acknowledged in India, where a Maoist movement is in the process of creating an alternative social realm in the slums. These are some of the symptoms of the “explosive growth of social divisions and exclusions” that Zizek alludes to.

Always original in characterising an event in unexpected ways, Zizek turns to the well-known Swiss psychologist Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s famous five stages of grief, which follow the discovery, that one has a terminal illness, namely denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, acceptance, reminding readers that she later applied the same schema to any kind of disastrous personal loss, such as death of a beloved, divorce and job loss. Kübler-Ross also stressed that these five stages do not always necessarily come in the same order.

These five phases of response can also be interpretively applied, at a collective as well as a personal level, to the sometimes implicit awareness of the looming global catastrophe facing us today, and may be readily perceived, Zizek claims (p. xi-xii):

“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 — or, as Mao Zedong put it: ‘There is great disorder under heaven, the situation is excellent.’ ”

The five chapters of the book address the manifestations of each of these responses on a global scale, and provide Zizek with the opportunity to demonstrate his penchant for roaming far and wide among political, economic, and cultural events and artefacts, as well as psychological “symptoms” of the imminent change, all of which are subjected to his inimitable variety of razor-sharp philosophical and psycho-analytical interpretation. More on this another time.