Dwayne Monroe wrote:
>
> > In short, many people believe something new is afoot. This belief
> *itself* may have pleasant consequences we can't predict. The
> 'cynicism' Zizek's addressing isn't a lack of faith in the Obama
> presidency (because, as Zizek stated at the top of his essay, you
> shouldn't have any faith), but rather, a lack of faith in the
> unforeseen happening.
[First let me explain why I am not going to read Zizek. I can no longer read printed texts, except with a gizmo which is too clumsy in its operatios to be useful for texts at all complex. Secondly, I can only read on screen for a limited amount of time before my grows blurry. There fore I rather strictly ration what I read and what I don't read. I'm glad to see Zizek's article discussed here because it may be of interest, but I can only react to what others say, not the whole of his text. Here I respond _only_ to the paragraph quoted above.]
"Faith" is not really the correct word here, but I'll accept it for present purposes. It is _precisely_ this "faith in unforeseen happenings" for which Doug has endlessly attacked and mocked me for 10 years, sometimes in response to specific posts, several times out of the blue in a thread to which I had not contributed. My claim (I often reference Ollman in making it) is that the conditions under which mass movements arise (a) have _never_ been predicted in the past but have _always_ caught by surprise even those who, in retrospect, are seen to be the agents who created those conditions. (The first and still the most startling in some ways of these events was the French Revolution; the latest were the Black Liberation Movement in this country and the May '68 events in France.) Moreover (b) these conditions cannot be, never have been, and never will be the result of deliberate foreplanning. Moreover, this is not a speculative proposition but in the first instance a mere empirical observation on the political history of 1789 to 2008. And finally, I have posited this as the basis for present activism, even though the probabilities are overwhelming that such activism will _Not_ achieve the specific objects it aims at (e.g., stopping the war in Iraq, stopping the Bailout of the the Banks). That is, without continuous futile struggle the struggles that arise unexpedly and explosively will achieve less -- or may not even occur, though of course it's impossible to identify past explsosions that didn't occur :-). Without the a(mostly quite futile) activities of the CPUSA, of the SWP, of ex-CP members, the NAACP & CORE, of the 1948 Wallace campaign, of various pacifist groups in the 1940s and 1950s the Civil Rights movement and all the struggles to which it gave rise are almost inconceivable.
So certainly one should have not "faith" but a rational conviction, based on an understanding of the modern world, in "unforeseen happenings" as the foundation for current political activity. And if we have this rational certainty, why do we need Zizek's verbal magic around Obama to tell us we need "faith"?
But Zizek is stupidly self-contradictory. He is _foreseeing_ these happenings as emerging from an electoral victory. That is less faith tnan personal arrogance, based on nothing but his verbal dexterity. It is neither cynicism nor lack of faith to mock it. It's simple refusal to be bothered by empty rherorical fireworks.
Carrol