OK, Finally delurking after two or three weeks. I've met some of you before on other lists so if you remember, hello again. I resisted mailing in on Marxist Sociology and Neo-Kantianism (though I was bugged by the fact that the debaters seemed to have forgotten about, er, Europe which did and does contain a fair few pockets of neo-Kantian Marxism and where lots of people know about Kant and there are stacks of marxist sociologists).
But I am increasingly of the view that the split between the US and Europe (culturally, politically, economically and intellectually) is becoming more important than their alignment and I'm afraid the division caused by the parochialism of the US is all over parts of this list. And Zizek is a case in point. I'm not really a fan of the man but he was right about Chomsky who is such a product of the very ideology and culture he intends to denounce. Like the author of the anti-Zizek piece reposted here I used to think that Americans were unfortunate duped souls whose evil mass media and oil rich establishment kept them alienated and oppressed.
But Zizek is on to something when he realises that people could find out all the facts if they wanted to and the question is why it makes no difference. The US has much greater freedom of information and speech than the UK where I am and US people are much more used to using these freedoms. But it doesn't make any difference in the end. The US state doesn't stomp all over the rest of the world satisfying the self-interest of its leading classes DESPITE the citizens of the republic it does it BECAUSE of them, to keep them happy, clappy and sated, to give them what they want. They like it. Lots of goodies and toys and fun but also some nasty all evil enemies to feel satisfyingly threatened by and then superior to. And that is what the wars on latin and south america gave them, the war on terrorism AND the paranoid fantasies about world government that feed the militiamen AND the arguments of Chomsky and the 'anarchist' left. It is all a very satisfying and very American and even (though it may sound odd with reference to Chomsky) Protestant eschatological manichean and individualist fantasy. On this list, the long and unnecessary discussion about whether the US is fascist or not was part of the same thing.
Isn't this clear now? Isn't this obvious since September? How else can it be that so many in the US want to see policies that will NOT defeat terrorism and will NOT make the world a safer place? Why else does the US go about the world winding people up (as the CNN Poll data posted here suggested) and then make films fantasising about all the people that want to hurt America?
It srikes me now that the US is the LEAST 'globalised' country in the world. It is the least exposed to the culture, values, goods and experiences of other places. It is the least buffeted by other people's economic and social actions. This is its triumph and its tragedy. Even when people from the US visit other places they seem not to actually leave it but bring the US with them and seek out aspects of the US in places they go to.
And so we get someone who calls themselves a Marxist attacking Zizek for not being Marxist enough as a defence of Chomsky who we are meant to presume is a Marxist? Please. Still, such sectarianism is dull. I am in fact a US citizen if not so acculturated. But I think it is starting to show. I shall return to studying Kelley's fuck machines.
Cheers