Among Zizek's remarks on East Europeans, I found the following most memorable and promising; "What is of special interest here is the lack of understanding between the Western Left and dissidents such as Havel. In the eyes of the Western Left, Eastern dissidents were too naive in their belief in liberal democracy -- in rejecting socialism, they threw out the baby with the bath water. In the eyes of the dissidents, the Western Left played patronising games with them, disavowing the true harshness of totalitarianism" ("Attempts to Escape the Logic of Capitalism," <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v21/n21/print/zize01_.html>). You can tell that's written before Zizek's "turn to Lenin," because he simply concludes the above passage with a summary judgment -- "The idea that the dissidents were somehow guilty for not seizing the unique opportunity provided by the disintegration of socialism to invent an authentic alternative to capitalism was pure hypocrisy" -- rather than pursuing a dialectical chance to consider both the Western Left and the Eastern Dissidents to be in possession of their own tragically partial truth.
Fast forward to the present, moving up from petty bourgeois to bourgeois politics, and East fails to meet West again; the bearded Old Man was right -- "the second time as farce":
"No, Chirac Didn't Say 'Shut Up'": <http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/23/weekinreview/23LEVI.html>
[See also "East European Intellectuals Are Reluctant to Take Sides," <http://www.iht.com/articles/87642.htm>.] -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>