>http://www.uchicago.edu/research/jnl-crit-inq/docs/Against%20the%20Populist%20Temptation%20-%20Slavoj%20Zizek.pdf
>
> What we need is a totally new main melody, a new definition of Europe
> itself. The problem of Turkey, the perplexity of European Union with
> regard to what to do with Turkey, is not about Turkey as such, but the
> confusion about what is Europe itself.
Here’s my own warped-by-elvish-communism theory: the “no” vote on the EU Constitution was Gollum’s surprise reappearance at Mount Doom. Left to its own devices, the EU would have claimed the Ring (i.e. the lordship of Capital) for itself, and would’ve replaced one nightmare with its carbon copy. But the Europroletariat resisted. Frodo-multinationalism and Gollum-neonationalism battled at the edge of the abyss, and now the Ring’s own unrelenting malevolence has undone itself. The spell is melting, along with the oiligarchy and its planetary war. More Zizek:
> What, then, is Europe’s predicament today? Europe lies in the great
> pincers between America on the one side and China on the other. America
> and China, seen metaphysically, are both the same: the same hopeless
> frenzy of unchained technology and of the rootless organization of the
> average man.
Nah, it’s got nothing to do with China. East Asian capitalism is really and truly East Asian. Japanese keiretsu, Korean chaebol, and Chinese jituan (the word, I’m told, for business groups), all hooked up to developmental states. And now an East Asian media culture is materializing faster than you can say “Mellow Maromi”.
> The message
> of the French NO to all of us who care for Europe is: no, anonymous
> experts whose merchandise is sold to us in a brightly-colored
> liberalmulticulturalist package, will not prevent us from THINKING. It is
> time for us, citizens of Europe, to become aware that we have to make a
> properly POLITICAL decision of what we want. No enlightened administrator
> will do the job for us.
Video Leninism at last! Cool.
I don’t know what an emancipated Europe would look like. Maybe like a giant eco-sized spaceship, with 24/7 Eurohiphop jams, and Linux-run HDTV multiplayer on the bridge – a Starship Europa instead of the Europe of the Central Bankers.
-- DRR