On Mon, 01 May 2000 13:54:03 -0400 Charles Brown <CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us> wrote:
> CB: Howabout a summary statement of Zizek's radical democratic aims from
those who can. What is Zizek's concept of democracy ?
What psychoanalytic ethics opposes, against *all* forms of authoritarianism and totalitarianism's "You May!" [Do as you will] is not some basic "You mustn't!" [Do not violate the sacred democratic rules].
Civil disobedience? Of course! Lawful conduct? Of course! Success in either? Never!! The social continues to be written, it is incomplete. It is up to us, not you, not me, to us, together - the choice of how to proceed is undecidable, because it continues to be an effect of what has been chosen prior to the decision. This is not abstract. We should not let the complexity or contradictions of our decisions to terrorize us. It takes the form of determinate negation, and positive assertion, of a ruthless criticism of everything existing. This is not impartial. It is a biased position, self-acknowledged. Democracy is not a time or a place - it is a way of relating to the Other (which does not exist).
A radically democratic ethos endores a choice between bad and worse [two radical evils] - an ethic of "Do not compromise your desire!" - fully acknowledging the pragmatic paradox of the order to be free: it is an exhortion to dare.
Democracy is a paradox, between universality and particularity. Between substance and abstract formalism. A radical democratic ethos lives up to its substance in the awareness that it is, in itself, not universal - rather - contingent. This contingency, which denies itself, falls back on itself when it is raised to the universal. Democracy is both procedure and process, a positing of "something" without knowing whether that something is possible or desirable. Yet one persists in the hope, and the desire, of its radical fulfillment, knowing that this fulfillment is a bad utopia. Reconciliation is always a subordination. This isn't relativism. Democracy is not pluralistic --> it is asymmetrical with blind authority. It opposes totalitarianism without being dependent on it.
Zizek is trying to kindle the fragile yet muscular status of a universalistic model of democracy without cynicism or totalitarianism, without falling prey to any kind of 'postmodernist' traps, such as the illusion that we live in a post-ideological condition, post-historical, post-rational, post-human. The survival of democracy hinges on our ability to consummate the act [insert *full* responsibility here] of assuming the nonexistence of the Other, without giving up on the Other by falling into nihilism. To tarry with the negative a bit longer. To uphold a universal in a failed sense: "Oh course human rights exist! Yet I am unsure of whether we've got them figured out yet." To acknowledge that reality is contingent, and that contingency is our ontic horizon. To resist reconciliations that repress or submerge the antagonistic reality that we find ourselves entangled in.
To leave an absent centre in politics, always filled with substance and particularity, but without colonization or threat of violence in its reflective moment. To leave no position immune from criticism. Politics without enjoyment is an illusion. Our political position are manipulated by desire, which is always the desire of the Other. Enjoy your symptom: take responsibility for it. Tarrying with the negative. Know not what you do. It's the *political* economy, not THE economy.
There is no correct position, all positions which elevate themselves to the universal, are false. The whole is false. The whole does not exist. Nothing is whole. Democracy is a matter of praxis - thinking with the idea that laws are like clubs and principles like riot gear. They do not exist, yet they live on each and every street corner.
What does this mean?
Primacy is given to those who are suffering. The aims of psychoanalysis are focused exclusively on the suffering subject. To do so means to focus on all of the elements of the subject, such elements extend to language, society, the imagination, the conscious and the unconscious. A social theory, responsibly practiced, is never finished. Time and space must always be established for a rejoinder.
Democracy? We wish we knew. This is not the final word.