>It would be interesting to hear Doug's reactions to the substance of the
>various papers at Zizek's Leninist shindig -- for my part, if only to see how
>much they conformed to my hermeneutic prejudice about Zizekian politics in
>general. That is, my suspicion is that "Lenin" is for Zizek not so much the
>leading representative of a certain tradition of politic practice, that one
>can analyze, critique and then either adopt or reject, on part or in toto,
>but a 'floating signifier' of a left politics 'radically' outside of the
>mainstream, "bourgeois democratic" consensus.
Most of the contributions were rather dull exercises in "scholarship" (in the pejorative sense) - the Lenin of 1905 vs. the Lenin of 1917; Hegel's influence on Lenin; etc. There wasn't much attention to 2001. Alex Callinicos invoked "Seattle" (which was 1999), only to say, in effect, that the kids need The Party. There was much disappointment in the audience at the final session over the lack of attention to the present (my rant was well received by all but the fossil-like presenters; Zizek seemed quite pleased too, which of course made me beam with delight) - but, on seeing that, Slavoj said in his closing statement that he *meant* the conference to be a failure, so in that sense, it was a success.
As for what Lenin means to Zizek, I've appended an excerpt from the conference announcement, which I think he wrote. The host of the conference, the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institute (KWI) of Essen, was scandalized by its contents; the president wrote Zizek a very distressed letter urging him to keep it "scientific," rather than "political," for fear that businesses might cut back on their funding of the KWI. Some papers were removed from the conference website too.
Doug
----
>As such, Lenin's politics is the true counterpoint not only to the
>Third Way pragmatic opportunism but also to the marginalist Leftist
>attitude of what Lacan called le narcissisme de la chose perdue.
>What a true Leninist and a political conservative have in common is
>the fact that they reject what one could call liberal Leftist
>'irresponsibility' (advocating grand projects of solidarity,
>freedom, etc., yet ducking out when one has to pay the price for it
>in the guise of concrete and often 'cruel' political measures): like
>an authentic conservative, a true Leninist is not afraid to pass to
>the act, to assume all the consequences, unpleasant as they may be,
>of realising his political project. Kipling (whom Brecht admired
>very much) despised British liberals who advocated freedom and
>justice, while silently counting on the Conservatives to do the
>necessary dirty work for them; the same can be said for the liberal
>Leftist's (or 'democratic Socialist's') relationship towards
>Leninist Communists: liberal Leftists reject social democratic
>'compromise, , they want a true revolution, yet they shirk the
>actual price to be paid for it and thus prefer to adopt the attitude
>of a Beautiful Soul and to keep their hands clean. In contrast to
>this false liberal Leftist's position (who want true democracy for
>the people, but without secret police to fight counterrevolution,
>without their academic privileges being threatened...), a Leninist,
>like a Conservative, is authentic in the sense of fully assuming the
>consequences of his choice, i.e. of being fully aware of what it
>means to take power and to exert it. Therein resided the greatness
>of Lenin after the Bolsheviks took power: in contrast to hysterical
>revolutionary fervour caught in the vicious cycle, the fervour of
>those who prefer to stay in opposition and prefer (publicly or
>secretly) to avoid the burden of taking things over, of
>accomplishing the shift from subversive activity to responsibility
>for the smooth running of the social edifice, he heroically embraced
>the heavy task of effectively running the State, of making all the
>necessary compromises, but also the necessary harsh measures, to
>assure that the Bolshevik power would not collapse.
>
>The return to Lenin is the endeavour to retrieve the unique moment
>when a thought already transposes itself into a collective
>organisation, but does not yet fix itself into an Institution (the
>established Church, the IPA, the Stalinist Party-State. It aims
>neither at nostalgically re-enacting the 'good old revolutionary
>times,' nor at the opportunistic-pragmatic adjustment of the old
>program to 'new conditions,' but at repeating, in the present
>world-wide conditions, the Leninist gesture of initiating a
>political project that would undermine the totality of the global
>liberal-capitalist world order. One should approach this task in the
>spirit mercilessly (self)critical attitude, with no a priori
>sectarian exclusions.