With Zizek, We're All Just Left Joking Around

by Andrew Bast

Originally published in the May issue of The Advocate at the CUNY Graduate Center.

In Defense of Lost Causes by Slavoj Žižek (Verso Books, 2008, 208 pgs.)

Jennifer Anniston is a terrorist. This is how low leftist intellectuals have sunk. Set aside for a moment what a downright silly moniker a leftist intellectual has become and instead consider this: theory-hungry thinkers are now spending $34.95 on a hulking hardcover book — In Defense of Lost Causes — by the rambling, more-intellectual-than-thou Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Žižek. What to expect? Riffing on Hollywood’s The Break-Up, Žižek argues that when Anniston screams at co-star Vince Vaughan, “I don’t want you to wash the dishes — I want you to want to wash the dishes!” this silver-screen trope is more than a spoof on the tedious bickering natural to cohabitation. Žižek writes that it is, “the minimal reflexivity of desire, its ‘terrorist’ demand.” Come again? This is bunk by the bulk, and amid the dissonant yammering that accompanies so much of politics today, the absurdity of In Defense of Lost Causes offers an opportune moment to state outright that, in this ripe political moment, the intellectual culture of the left is lost as a comical farce, and what is most devastating? Everyone just seems to be laughing along.

Where to begin with Žižek? The 59-year-old philosopher lectures and publishes widely. Wearing a furry gray beard and an achingly anguished visage, in conversation he hustles as if unable to get to the next point quickly enough. His books such as Enjoy Your Symptom!, The Sublime Object of Ideology, and The Ticklish Subject, while difficult to categorize, might be deemed postmodern: Lacanian in approach, expansive in scope, and often about film. In a profile, the New Yorker asked, seemingly without a hint of irony, “He may appear to be a serious leftist intellectual, but is it not the case that he is in fact a comedian?” The ostensible topic of In Defense of Lost Causes, however, isn’t so funny: revolutionary terror. At times he cherishes it, at times he dissects it, but all in all, Žižek loses focus, and with it, his case. The book is neither leftist, nor comedy, nor brilliant, but instead a pioneering work in a newfound genre: that of overlearned, underdisciplined, philosophical blogger.

Earlier this semester, Žižek spoke to a sold-out audience at the Graduate Center. Billed as the world’s “most controversial public intellectual,” he packs lecture halls full of graduate students across the country. It would be a dirty fallacy to take Žižek as the intellectual barometer of today’s wider academic scene, but on several levels, his popularity points to symptoms with which few would disagree: the academy’s insularity, reliance on regimented and specialized fields of study, and perversely maniacal obsession with an exclusive, intellectual lexicon. (Do not be fooled, the lot of such pedantic prose makes trade book and newspaper editors cringe.) Put simply: not much of the public is very interested in faddish tropes about Lacan, determinate negation, and the former actress from Friends. The leftist public intellectual, here, has become a joke.

Six Years On, and September 11th is Politics as Usual

Flaring tempers, big talk about Iraq and another video from Osama bin Laden: It must be September 11th.

Last week, families of those who died six years ago today slammed New York's ABC Channel 7 Eyewitness News with angry e-mails and phone calls, and convinced the station to broadcast all of today's memorial services. Also, Gen. David Petraeus, the head honcho in Iraq, today concludes his assessment of the war to Congress. And the wretched man at the heart of the whole matter, appearing older and fatter in a recent videotape, has called for Americans to "embrace" Islam to stop the war in Iraq. September it is, indeed.

Since I moved into my apartment two years ago, through my living room window I have watched four--count them, four--high-rise buildings shoot skyward. They're luxury apartment buildings, and in seemingly no time, they are massive and fully occupied.

At the same time it has been six years and just finally are the "final" plans for a rebuilt World Trade Center showing up on the evening news. Construction is on, but it has been a long time coming, held up by interests, money and power. Books, literally, have been written on the monstrous egos, collective grief and financial disaster the project has become.

To think it is a coincidence that the White House chooses to present Petraeus on the  Hill this week, as opposed to any other of the 51 this year, would be utter denial. The attack six years ago, which had nothing whatsoever to do with Iraq, is here on public trail again with the same cheap, false associations. Sept. 11 is still peddled as one in the same with the now devastated lands of modern-day Mesopotamia.

Everyone mourns in his or her own way, and if we, as a country, had some class, we wouldn't necessarily have any more memorials, but we would at least leave ceremonies the time and space to take place in peace, free of the slimy banter of politics.

I was surprised the other night when I saw the twin beams of blue light bursting from Ground Zero, piercing a layer of thick clouds above. Watch them closely tonight, because each in our own way and without the callous cacophony to muck up our minds, the "Tribute in Light" allows us to do what a true memorial should: Remember.

(by Andrew Bast, also published in Metro.)

A Terrorist Fights, But Is He A Soldier? It Depends on Who You Ask.

Once you get beyond the apparent irrationality of the phrase, "laws of war," and look closely at the terms, juridical dilemmas abound. Despite the fact that George II's "War on Terror" is now half a decade old, debate over the most fundamental aspects of how that war is waged is still very much ongoing.

Today on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times, retired four-star General Wesley Clark gets down and dirty with those terms of international law and asks the question, is a terrorist a soldier? In short, he argues that terrorists need to be considered more like "modern-day pirates than warriors."

At first glance, "modern-day pirate" may seem like a flilppant phrase, but it is tough to get one by Clark, considering that he not only graduated valedictorian of his class at West Point but also took a master's degree in military science from the Command and General Staff College. In fact, the term "pirate" is used with deft attention to character.

A pirate is a criminal on the high seas. The latter fall under the jurisdiction of no nation, and the former, therefore, work on behalf of no sovereign. It is an interesting parallel to draw with a roving terrorist organization like al-Qaeda.

George II's administration has chosen to treat captured terrorists as enemy combatants. Clark writes, "By treating such terrorists as combatants, however, we accord them a mark of respect and dignify their acts. And we undercut our own efforts against them in the process." The crux of his argument follows:

If we are to defeat terrorists across the globe, we must do everything possible to deny legitimacy to their aims and means, and gain legitimacy for ourselves. As a result, terrorism should be fought first with information exchanges and law enforcement, then with more effective domestic security measures. Only as a last resort should we call on the military and label such activities “war.” The formula for defeating terrorism is well known and time-proven.

As Clark goes on to posit that terrorists ought to be tried in the court system, the elephant in the room begins to snort; perhaps the bigger problem here is the waging of a war without end, as the details of such a conflict will tie down any possibility of success?

(Photo from Roger G1's flickr.)