> well no one commented on that paper i forwarded either, angela, so
> whatever. it looked like a pretty damned good analysis of the politics
> and events leading up to it all.
Hey there a second -- in part, I was commenting on it. The the reference to the fight over national history and the eclipse of a certain intellectual attitude toward national history -- I think that was a good analysis. And, it's an analysis that can be easily applied to recent Australian history as well.
I don't know what Rob and Catherine might think of this, but it sure was apparent that since 1988, when John Howard (current Liberal PM) began his ascendancy to the Prime Ministership, he began it with two specific and related things: a campaign against what he called, following Blaney, 'black armband history' which, according to him, wanted only to focus on all the negative stuff about massacres of Aborigines and racism; and a campaign against 'multiculturalism', immigration and the so-called politically-correct, guilt industry.
That sounds to me remarkably similar to the ways in which the article you posted talked about the re-creation of the right in Austria.
> anyway, i think the problem is that several
> people noted that they saw nothing particularly spectacular in zizek's
> analysis
It might well be "old", and I doubt that Z would say otherwise. Has he said this is a new and spectacular insight? I would have thought the issue would be whether it's relevant or not to understanding and responding to what's been happening. I think it is.
But, there were two other sets of criticisms of Zizek's piece: that it was demobilising (Ken L); that it was equal to Third Way politics (Yoshie). Anyone s*bscribed to nettime will already have had a good dose of actual Third Way blabberings about how despicable they thought Z's article was, so I'll just point people to the nettime archives. http://www.nettime.org See recent threads on Zizek, Wark, etc.
I was primarilly responding to the first.
It's in that sense that no one has indicated what the qualitative differences are between Haider and pretty much the rest of the EU. I can only think of one significant difference: that of EU and NATO expansion which Haider opposes.
Moreover, It's not by chance that the last year saw the largest series of mobilisations against the EU's border and detention policies. What does antiHaiderism mean in the context of that if not a distraction from those parties who now loudly proclaim that Haider is intolerable? Here are some pics (for those who like me can't read italian) from the most recent actions.
Milano, 29 gennaio 2000 MANIFESTAZIONE PER LA CHIUSURA DEL LAGER DI VIA CORELLI http://www.ecn.org/29gen00/milano/index.html
29 GENNAIO 2000 MOBILITIAMOCI CONTRO I LAGER ITALIANI A MILANO CHIUDIAMO VIA CORELLI go to start > iniziative > no ai lager http://www.ecn.org/zip/start.htm
> it is not clear to me that we can apply a general "law"
> specifying how we should react based on this analysis. that's my beef
>with such an approach: there are far too many specific processes and
dynamics
> we need to ask about before we go rushing to the conclusion that the
> repressive Law is always productive of an identification with/desire for
> that which has been denied.
I agree with you, in part: there are no general laws of the psyche. Does Z say there are?
But, I think the issue of law and desire is a complex one: it includes not only the issue of a hegelian dialectics and/or the dialectical relation without reserve (and here, I'm inclined to step back from Z as well as Hegel toward Spinoza, who in any event does not escape dialectics either, but is nonetheless interesting for the fact that he doesn't and how); whether or not censorship does provide that which is censored with a mystical , indeed desirable, quality (Marx says exactly the same thing in his discussion on freedom of speech, and I'm inclined to agree on the issue of censorship); and whether or not (here's my qualification) a repetitive and unprovoked refusal indicates the place (and i do mean specifically 'place' rather than 'content') of desire. Those are related issues, but not the same.
On the issue of racism, though, Z does not, however, say it's not possible to say 'X is racism', though does he? He's interested in the 'how' we might go about doing this.
> finally, the uproar was over a general analysis of anti-racism as
founded on that psychic dynamic.
During the previous time we discussed Z or the recent one? The latest round seemed to me to enter into the territory of assertions that Z's position entailed a 'demobilisation' and 'intellectualisation' of sorts. And it was also the most vehement of responses.
> you, yourself, have
> suggested reservations to ken's account.
Yep. But I wasn't responding to Ken Mck's reading of Z here so much as the reasons some people gave for why Z was not "useful": demobilising, querying motives, etc. I think Z is right about the ways in which calling out racists functions to provide a boost to their political aspirations; but I think it's a temporary boost whose danger lies in a) diversions from banal or instituted racism to antifa spectacles; b) given that accusations of racism tend to operate as characterisations of persons, the assumption is that removing said persons removes racism, and worse, it provides the steady and by-now routine defense that 'I'm not a racist, but I think A and B' -- personality over content, and content gets to proceed along quite merrily without being seriously considered. Personalisation provides racism with an out: eg, the Freedom Party gets to be in the Austrian Cabinet because Haider agrees to take a backseat; Euro govts get to enact the same policies, and because Haider is not there, no problem; Haider himself gets to declare politics which gain credibility precisely by way of having tagged onto them the personal detachment of 'But I'M not a racist personally', et cetera.
> and yes, i do agree that the
> all-round denunciations of ken/zizek/etc were a manifestation of this
> phenom, in part.
You mean racist enjoyment? No, I wouldn't say that. I would say that many of the responses showed -- simultaneous with the claim that Z's article was too intellectual and abstract -- a complete disinterest in the antiracist struggles that have been occuring in Europe which provide the explicit context for Z's article.
>but then, what makes that symptom any different than
> anyone else's?
It doesn't. For me, Z raises the question. I think it's a good question to ask, of the analyst even. Those questions are the basis of politicisation. And, that the question can never finally be answered is fine as well. How could such a question be answered outside of its effects? My experience tells me that it's a question that should have been asked more forcefully during the antiHanson campaigns, esp given what's eventuated in Australian politics.
> donning the mantle of a supercilious i can see what you
> can't see, as zizek does, is prompted by the very same dynamic.
It can be supercilious. It doesn't have to be. If, however, one wanted to play games about claiming a knowledge immune from such a dynamic, psychoanalysis doesn't ensure this. Claims to scientificity are a lot more assured -- they end the question by asserting formal rules.
Angela