[lbo-talk] enemy's turf

Charles Turner vze26m98 at optonline.net
Thu Oct 27 04:03:51 PDT 2011


On Oct 26, 2011, at 4:37 PM, Eric Beck wrote:


> Occupy first. Demands come later
> Slavoj Žižek
>
> [...]
>
> 'What one should always bear in mind is that any debate here and now
> necessarily remains a debate on enemy's turf; time is needed to deploy
> the new content. All we say now can be taken from us – everything
> except our silence. This silence, this rejection of dialogue, of all
> forms of clinching, is our "terror", ominous and threatening as it
> should be.'
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/26/occupy-protesters-bill-clinton?fb_source=home_multiline&fb_action_types=news.reads&fb_action_ids=10100140661325429&fb_ref=U-4t4huzY1t0_f4GnQI3G8X8-CFCONX01FRS-32qm7XXX

That's all very fine and good, but is time so short we've forgotten his words on the London riots?

<http://www.lrb.co.uk/2011/08/19/slavoj-zizek/shoplifters-of-the-world-unite>

"The fact that the rioters have no programme is therefore itself a fact to be interpreted: it tells us a great deal about our ideological-political predicament and about the kind of society we inhabit, a society which celebrates choice but in which the only available alternative to enforced democratic consensus is a blind acting out. Opposition to the system can no longer articulate itself in the form of a realistic alternative, or even as a utopian project, but can only take the shape of a meaningless outburst"

"The indignados dismiss the entire political class, right and left, as corrupt and controlled by a lust for power, yet the manifesto nevertheless consists of a series of demands addressed at – whom? Not the people themselves: theindignados do not (yet) claim that no one else will do it for them, that they themselves have to be the change they want to see. And this is the fatal weakness of recent protests: they express an authentic rage which is not able to transform itself into a positive programme of sociopolitical change. They express a spirit of revolt without revolution."

Not trying to prove him wrong here, but I think he owes his audience some "connect the dots" action to get from point B back to point A.



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