But Zizek's
<< Their [the Bush Right's] defeat will be their ultimate triumph: >>
is just masking defeatism with a pseudo-dialectical veneer.
The struggle continues. Why should we expect otherwise? The End of History?
---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- From: Dwayne Monroe <idoru345 at yahoo.com> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 19:51:52 -0400
>Gregory Geboski wrote:
>
>
>When you get right down to it, at this point it doesn't matter if they
>secretly wrap W in wet sheets every night and leave him screaming in
>that famous bowling alley in the White House basement. His mad
>(organically-driven or, more likely, not) policies are in place all up
>and down the federal government, and a culture of fear and protection
>has developed around them.
>
>===========
>
>
>
>And of course, it remains to be seen whether this culture of fear, which
>has as one of its theoretical foundations the undeniable fact of
>actually existing global terrorism (a fact that's twisted,
>unsurprisingly, to suit state sponsored terroristic ends) can be undone
>in short order, even if Kerry is elected and wants to undo it.
>
>Or, as Zizek put it a little while ago...
>
>
>from -
>
><http://www.lacan.com/iraq.htm >
>
>
>We do have here a kind of perverted Hegelian "negation of negation": in
>a first negation, the populist Right disturbs the aseptic liberal
>consensus by giving voice to passionate dissent, clearly arguing against
>the "foreign threat"; in a second negation, the "decent" democratic
>center, in the very gesture of pathetically rejecting this populist
>Right, integrates its message in a "civilized" way - in-between, the
>ENTIRE FIELD of background "unwritten rules" has already changed so much
>that no one even notices it and everyone is just relieved that the
>anti-democratic threat is over. And the true danger is that something
>similar will happen with the "war on terror": "extremists" like John
>Ashcroft will be discarded, but their legacy will remain, imperceptibly
>interwoven into the invisible ethical fabric of our societies. Their
>defeat will be their ultimate triumph: they will no longer be needed,
>since their message will be incorporated into the mainstream.
>
>
>.d.
>
>
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