The article is an inquisitorial process to present the most widely read and translated French philosopher in the world as a sadistic guru of criminal politics and a lewd, thirsty vampire.

*

Eric Conan’s article seeks to discredit the name of Alain Badiou and the thoughts he represents today (and beyond), particularly among young intellectuals. It masquerades in the guise of an investigation, when what it aims to do is criminalize the man.
Indeed, Eric Conan’s article is devoid of any understanding of Badiou’s philosophy, his politics and the substance of his work. In other words, the article is an absolute vacuity. It reveals the workings of a creepy strategy favoured by some journalism, one that is lost in the inessential: when the ‘ad hominem’ replaces the question of ‘Ideas’ and when unfounded personal allegations become the art of trash thoughts.

Eric Doran’s article is a model of our ‘non-thinking’ times. It is the quintessential, more or less unconscious, of the tamed and opiated ideology propagated by this type of journalism: one that understands a book without reading it, thus reducing it to a witch-hunt; one that sees Communism as the reverse of Nazism and treats those citizens who lay claim to it or indeed, who are won over by it, in whatever form, as basically sick individuals. In effect, the aberrant equation of our times is this: Communism = Nazism. Period.
*
Against this, we assert the following:

1. That the work of Alain Badiou is that of a great philosopher. Those who wish to contest this statement must first go through the complexities of ‘ l’Etre et l’Evenement and ‘Logiques des mondes’. It will then remain to be seen whether this statement can still be denied, notwithstanding the resentment at having understood nothing of his work.

2. That the political positions of Alain Badiou, namely, on the one hand,  his criticism of ‘capital-parliamentarism’; the confusion between democracy’s empty form and its lifeblood; the circus  that is parliamentary representation; and on the other hand, his assertion for a ‘generic communism’, supported by the ‘Idea’ of equality, from Spartacus to our present day. These are indeed the only positions that now deserve the name of authentic politics.

The rest is well established and is given the blessing by both institutions  and humans. Those who dare criticize are immediately classed as werewolves and diabolical anti-democrats; this attitude sums up the contemporary version of a ‘skunk’ ideology: one that is only half-conscious of its own scent. In other words, when 9 million men and women worldwide are dying every year of hunger and disease, we prefer debating the ‘lucky hand’ or, for that matter, the ‘cheater hand’ of Henry the footballer. Or when we assign an asylum-seeker, an Arab or a black to a delinquency status; or when we make the world believe that its central problem lies in defeating Al Qaeda’s terror; or when we slide into a confusion that is so utterly stupid that we lump together 1.5 billion Muslims – who are so different from one another -in one category, that of a purely sectarian phenomenon. We make an exception for the burka – which, incidentally, is no more disgusting than the right to dye one’s hair red – and make it society’s major debate…

The rest, or the non-authentic politics, is when we endorse the ghost of democracy whose roots lie in our old institutions and their variable geometrical parameters, thus making obsolete the vote of the people on Europe by a hocus-pocus in the House of Deputies. It is when everyday citizens are presented with ludicrous categories: bad communists and good democrats, good America and bad Saddam … It is when we glamorize the French Revolution and demonize the Russian Revolution; It is when we divide to rule better as we watch incredulously the financial flows being virtually created and lost; It is when we are finally satisfied with the way the world is, and continues to be…It is when we are made to believe that the possible is impossible.

3) It is, therefore, difficult to pass Alain Badiou for a crazy loner. The reality is that we have had enough of these lies, of complaisance to this system, and that we will never renounce the ‘Idea of Communism’.  This ‘Idea’, as problematic as it is and so new its embodiment does not prevent us from being as critical as we want to be of the history of 20^th century’s communism. We are and can be as different from one another in our proposals but we all know and agree on one thing: that a communism to reinvent, of a new and undefined kind, is the only future for humanity. This is because we think this is the one and only eternal political truth and the only justice that the rational mind can ever conceive.
*
The times no longer belong, whether one likes it or not, to the spineless, self-styled and unscrupulous ‘new philosophers’ – but to the philosophers of renewal.

Slavoj Zizek, Fabien Tarby

English Translation : Nada Cabani

Eric Conan’s article in French is reproduced here (link)

Related posts:

1. Enjoy your symptom… on the edge of the void (I)

Is the relationship between multi-nationals and society being re-engineered?

by Francisco Letamendia (Professor of Political Science, UPV-EHU (University of the Basque Country)

The universal power of transnationals is also a universal concern. Academic works are now emerging which study how to articulate a counter-hegemonic strategy in the face of these companies. In my last book [Estructura Poíitica del Mundo del Trabajo, Tecnos 2009] I describe multinationals as:

“hypermobile global players moving about on the chessboard of the post-Fordist world in search of territories with higher subsidies and lower labour costs. Multinationals manipulate governments into meeting their demands by preventing them from dealing with their workforce’s welfare; multinationals often turn their contract workers into subjects without individual or collective rights; and they use the dislocation of their factories as a tool for the search of greater profit as well as a threat to employees, populations and governments in order to achieve their goals.”

A publication that I think brings more elements in order to build this [anti-hegemonic] strategy and which compellingly analyses the nature of transnational corporations with a profusion of well documented detail is the book just published by professor Juan Hernandez (UPV-EHU), based on his doctoral thesis, and entitled: «Las empresas transnacionales frente a los derechos humanos: historia de una asimetría normativa» [Transnational corporations versus human rights: a history of regulatory asymmetry] (Hegoa, 2009).

Against the widely accepted idea, including within the ranks of the Left, according to which this powerful product of neoliberalism works on the basis of a “laissez faire” policy and on wholesale deregulation, Hernandez describes the very complex network of rules and regulations which are to be found at the base of a coercive Global Commercial Law in the service of multinationals. He also reveals the theory -and practice – of the mechanisms of Social Corporate Responsibility and the “internal codes of conduct” masking a bleeding asymmetry in favour of multinationals together with discursively concealing their activities and violations of human and labour rights throughout the entire world.

The book explains how the Global Trade Law or Lex Mercatoria, a legally effective and ‘hard’ international legislation with sanctioning powers, is based on celerity and the confidentiality of the company, while it tightly regulates the core of the transnational activity, namely the contracts of operation and the rules of trade and investment, which are placed well above international human rights and labour legislation. Arbitration tribunals (ICSID) provide full legal safety and security to the investments made by multinationals against host states, bypassing the courts of these states. The Dispute Settlement System of the World Trade Organization (WTO) resolves the disputes between transnational corporations and the states, which result, especially for the weak states of the  South- in legislative modifications, trade sanctions and fines. In Latin America, for example, the system has brought about neoliberal reforms consisting of flexibility, informal economy, and lack of labour and individual or collective human rights guarantees. The “legal certainty” of the Lex Mercatoria is used against those states such as Bolivia, which want to regain national sovereignty over their resources.

This asymmetry is shifted to international bodies. While the decisions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the WTO and the G8 are applied directly to non-member and impoverished countries, the Tripartite Declaration of Principles concerning Multinational Enterprises of the International Labor Organization, ILO, rests on consensus decision making, with which it is displaced towards a kind of “soft” law that becomes a form of semi-blockade. Similar constraints are levied on the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and the UN Global Compact.

The new globalised company produces an ethical discourse based on confidence among the parties involved, respect for human rights, responsibility to the community and the environment … Social, labour and environmental rights are thus displaced towards soft, non-normative regulatory systems. The patterns of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) are based on voluntary agreement, self-regulation and non-enforceability. Class struggle must be replaced by shared responsibility between employers, workers and civil society, collaboration with international institutions and harmony with the states. However, the power of multinationals allows them to “legislate” as well as delimiting the scope of their responsibility, which in turn slows down the whole system of control. The aim of the CSR is to replace the interactivity, coercion and judicial control of the state’s legal guidelines by “soft” patterns of voluntary participation, unilateral corporate activity, and a process of audits outside the judicial system…

The “business ethics” take specific shape through instruments such as the internal codes that intend to establish a new balance between democracy and the market outside the legal system and without relinquishing the capitalist logic. The result of all this is the contrast between such “ethics” and the actual practices of multinationals, to which must be added the disparity, in the field of labour relations, between the discourse of quality assurance, training in values, mission of the company … and the reality of flexible working hours, outsourcing, subcontracting, job insecurity and loss of employment and social rights.

Hernandez highlights, for instance, the bleeding contrast between the [Banco Bilbao Vizcaya] BBVA’s CSR report, prepared on the basis of the information provided by the company, and the information provided by social organizations, trade unions and environmentalists to the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal. Whereas the CSR report fails to discern any negative practice, the Permanent Tribunal emphasises the following practices: “promotion of wars by financing arms trade, the purchasing of political wills, money laundering, anti-humanitarian practices, the financing of highly polluting projects, labour exploitation, micro-financing, commodification of pensions, exorbitant salaries, the use of tax havens and financial abuse and fraud of customers”.

The codes of conduct have been incorporated into the reports of the CSR as an instrument of labour regulation. Although they still share common patterns of voluntary participation and unilateralism, Hernandez notes positive developments in its midst: The emergence of the Global Framework Agreements can allow workers’ participation and negotiation, and opens the way for monitoring instruments to be set in place.

In the conclusion of the book, Hernandez offers a normative proposal based on the dismissal of voluntary agreement. Its implementation would shift between (i) the aforementioned rules of the ILO, OECD and UN- provided that they take into account the extension of the responsibility from the parent company to the subsidiaries, suppliers and subcontractors, (ii) the subordination of multinationals to the sovereignty of States -if that is consistent with the right to development of their own peoples and (iii) the fulfilment of international law by the multinationals.

In the sphere of the workplace, the reference would be the ILO Declaration of Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work (1998), which defines the content of “decent work”. The control of multinationals requires uniting wills between the union movement, NGOs and new social movements. There already exists for it, he points out, a common channel: the World Social Forums.

In a paper presented at the First Meeting of Critical Political Analysis in Bilbao (2008), Juan Hernandez and Mikel de la Fuente proposed the following bases of an anti-hegemonic strategy against multinationals:

• To denounce the governments of the countries that provide cover to the economic and legal strategy of the multinationals’ parent companies.
• To support the anti-neoliberal allegations of social movements and trade unions in the countries of destination for these companies
• To demand international norms and standards that affect upon the responsibility of transnational companies.
• Bringing together representatives of employees feom multinational companies beyond their geographical location.

The necessity for deepening the institutional mechanisms that compel transnationals to abide by international and state-based norms and regulations, say these authors, has become a major challenge for the international community. This requirement should be part and parcel of the agendas guiding trade unions as well as political and social actors.

PS .- My appreciation and admiration for a person who has fought tirelessly against neoliberalism and corporate power, Rafa Diez Usabiaga, and my solidarity with those arrested in connection with the same [police] operation.

* * *

Translators’ note: This article first appeared in Spanish in the GARA newspaper (2009, October, 17). To read the original clik here

Related posts:

1. (CFP) Nationalism, Ethnicity and Citizenship: Whose Citizens? Whose Rights?
2. Journalist handcuffed: Rights violation?
3. Offtopic: Iraqi womens rights set back by 70 years

No related posts.

The article locates the concepts of respect and tolerance within the ambit of the relationships between individuals and social groups.  Eneko Herran extracts a fundamental difference: Respect is established between equals “while tolerance is a vertical concept, typical of a stance that believes to be superior and therefore entitled to mark out the boundaries of what is tolerable and thus impose its views of the permissible on the tolerated.”

* * *

Until not so long ago, if a notion ever emerged to claim a level playing field between the different, whether on grounds of sex, race and religion, or as a matter of ideology, social position or any of the multiple reasons that we humans have endemically given to ourselves in order to differentiate from each other, this was the notion of ‘respect’. The idea behind the notion of respect was not so much to obliterate diversity but to end with the violation of rights that some imposed on others under self-assumed supremacies, whether in quantitative (the highest number) or qualitative terms (ethnic, cultural, moral … or just physical superiority).

Respect was thus understood as opposed to every variety of imposition, which have been continually practiced through history to the delight of some and the derision of “the others”; some “others” who were always lower or at least not worthy of equal opportunities; some “others” who were tolerated as individuals subjected to exploitation to the extent that the private benefit extracted from them was required by the dominant or the privileged groups (the tolerant).

Respect was therefore a term referring to the aspiration of transcending (exceeding) the old precept of tolerance. Tolerance, in turn, is a concept that stems from the assumption of a hierarchical model where some are placed above others, and a concept that refers to such practices as archaic as carried out in the first models of society which we have knowledges of (certainly not a knowledge). Tolerance was the logical consequence of the very implementation of exploitation, yet not direct extermination of the “other”. In other words, for their own benefit, some people consent other people in order to take advantage. If these “others” dare to reveal, or rebel against the situation, tolerance is over. It is that simple and that pragmatic, although, obviously, there is room for nuances.

Respect, moreover, is based on the belief that, beyond the inequalities that can effectively take place between various peoples and individuals, certain equality should prevail which makes people equivalent in terms of rights and opportunities for advancement. The idea is to eliminate prejudice and to remove any ethnocentric behaviour by people and any egocentric conduct by individuals, as far as possible. While tolerance is a vertical concept, typical of a stance that believes to be superior and therefore entitled to mark out the boundaries of what is tolerable and thus impose its views of the permissible on the tolerated, respect is developed as a horizontal concept, and aims at bringing coexistence among the different without, at least by definition, having to establish differences in rank (there is no upper and no lower rank). In short, respect is a concept that aspires to be valid across different cultures, but also between opponents, be they groups or individuals with different options and interests within the same social body.

The problem, however, is that respect understood in this way, i.e., in relation to “others”, is turned into a distorted word as soon as one begins to relate the verb “to respect” with others such as “to obey”. We then speak of “respecting parents,” “respecting certain precepts”, “respecting the law” … Multiple expressions where the word “to respect” becomes a mere synonym of the words “to subordinate”, “to accept”, “to comply” … which is quite perversely unreasonable since one can perfectly obey or abide by a law that does not deserve the slightest respect. It seems to me, therefore, that in part because of these new uses of the word ‘respect’, the aspirations or claims that it once had at the social level are falling into disuse.

In such a context it is no coincidence that over the past few years, tolerance is back in fashion. That references to respect are suddenly relegated and replaced by mere references to tolerance is symptomatic of the way forward those proclaiming its virtues foresee for the future. Similarly, from the perspective of those who aspire to (be) respect(ed), it can only be seen as a worrying phenomenon: From respect bridges of coexistence can be built; from tolerance just about temporary structures to underpin non-confrontation, hanging walkways just as durable as the docility that the tolerated will allow.

All of this is even more worrying if we consider the new conceptual twist that is taking place. The new trend now is to talk about “zero tolerance”. In no time we have moved from the slogan “through tolerance towards respect” to “from tolerance to zero tolerance”. Forced to swallow the validity of “the tolerant vs. the non-tolerant” divide from breakfast to dinner… Compelled to plunge over and over again into the placid sea of tolerance, the highest social virtue and source of life… it now turns out that it is time to return to the old good times when the motto “no water to the enemy” prevailed… and “if in the dessert, salted cod”.

It seems that after repeating the customary “we, the democrats” for years and years and a million times a day, just as much as the democrats are prepared to enact all kind of restrictions to the very foundations of democracy, the tolerant too, following a similar exercise may already digest the discourse of zero tolerance and continue to proclaim themselves as being tolerant without the slightest hint of shame.

In this day and age one can no longer be surprised with anything, so the seeming paradox of the tolerant urging zero tolerance can be even perfectly acceptable. The surprising thing would be that someday, out of a fit of frankness, we found ourselves hearing the following: “The others are bad. Yes, very bad. This is precisely why they are ‘the others’. But we can and are indeed prepared to be worse”. It would be a sign that facile one-line rattling gives way to open, honest talk.

* * *

Original title “Cero en tolerancia“. Translated and edited by Imanol Galfarsoro

Picture courtesy Steve Jurvetson, used in accordance with Creative Commons licence.

No related posts.

Our world is not complex but perfectly simple. So claims Alain Badiou in his “Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universality”, (1997, Stanford University Press, 2003). On the one side, the rule of abstract homogeneization imposed by capital has finally configured the world as a vast, extended market (world-market). On the other side, a culturalist and relativist ideology accompanies the ongoing process of fragmentation into a myriad of closed identities. This affirmation of identity always refers back to language, race, religion or gender, and demands the respect and recognition of one’s own communitarian-cultural singularities (pp. 9-13).

For my own purposes here, the first central point by Badiou is that both processes, i.e: financial globalization, absolute sovereignty of capital’s empty universality and identitarian protest/celebration of particularist differences are perfectly intertwined: the two components of this articulated whole are in a relation of reciprocal maintenance and mirroring. The second point is that, as the contemporary world is thus doubly hostile to truth procedures, Badiou also stands firm on his own subjective, and solitary, militant conviction. This conviction (or belief/faith) prevents him, here, now and forever (p30), from relinquishing the concrete universal singularity of truths to the economic logic and the political structures that support the generalised circulation of capital:

No, we will not allow the rights of true-thought to have as their only instance monetarist free exchange and its mediocre political appendage, capitalist-parliamentarianism, whose squalor is ever more poorly dissimulated behind the fine word “democracy” (p. 7)

Ouch!…Yes, I know: by favouring the polemical side in Badiou’s intervention I fail miserably to properly honour the highly structured philosophical doctrine he has developed over a long and productive intellectual life. But nevertheless: what’s Saint Paul to do with all of this? And in any case, by mobilising Paul’s celebrated and lapidary statement in the epistle to the Galatians (3.28) (“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female”) is Badiou claiming that there are NO differences?

1-For Badiou, Saint Paul is instrumental in understanding our contemporary situation/world. This is so not only because Paul’s radical universalist stance constitutes an “unprecedented gesture (which) consists in substracting truth from the communitarian grasp” (p5); but also because he “provoked -entirely alone- a cultural revolution upon which we still depend” (p.15). Important here is to note the less than innocent maoist reference because, more explicitly…

2- the concrete universality of truth does not collapse the empirical existence of differences. In fact, according to Badiou “there are differences. One can even maintain that there is nothing else” (p.98). In this respect, Paul’s approach becomes “an instance of what Chinese communists will call ‘the mass line’, pushed to its ultimate expression in ‘serving the people’”(p.99). In other words, by “becom(ing) all things to all men” Paul does not stigmatise differences, customs, opinions… Instead he appropriates diversity and particularity and accommodates difference to the immutability of the principles he holds dear.

To summarise: on the one side, the concrete universality of the militant, solitary, nomadic poet-thinker of the truth(-event) requires “indifference to difference” . Simultaneously, however, for the universal itself to verify its own reality, universality must expose itself to all differences. Universality must show that differences are capable of welcoming the truth that traverses and transcends them. (p.106)

On the other side, the false universality of monetary abstraction and homogeneity has absolutely no difficulty in accomodating the kaleidoscope of communitarianisms – of women, homosexuals, the disabled, Arabs! Moreover, through infinite combinations of predicative traits, communitarian identities are turned into advertsing selling points -Black homosexuals, disable Serbs, moderate Muslims, ecologist yuppies… (pp.10-11).

Hence this also applies to the nomadic peoples in the Mongol steppe, the Sahara Dessert, the Arctic, or urban and rural India as well as the two Basque musicians who brings them together in the clip below.

But what is there to be done when Saint Paul himself asks “If even lifeless instruments, such as the flute or the harp, do not give distinct notes, how will anyone know what is being played on the flute or the harp? (Cor. I.14.7). As Badiou continues: “Differences, like instrumental tones, provide us with the recognizable univocity that makes up the melody of the True” (p. 106)

The subaltern do not speak but perform. Let us enjoy our symptom, hey!

Related posts:

1. Enjoy your symptom… on the edge of the void (II)

Somewhere else in this site I already pointed towards the possibility of “stereographic writing” (Kobena Mercer, 2000). This refers to how ideas and issues from one problematic (may) reverberate with others put forward in seemingly incommensurate contexts. This is what I attempted once in trying to apply Ranajit Guha’s models developed in “On some aspects of the historiography of colonial India” (1982) and “The prose of counterinsurgency” (1983) to the Basque case (Subaltern Nomadologies, Pamiela, 2005). This is also what comes to my mind when I read the three articles mentioned above. Too many similarities echoing across contexts! (struggles against neo-liberalism, political violence, state terrorism, failed peace processes, indiscriminate imprisonment of dissenters, torture, slackening of civil liberties, banning of political and social movements, closing down of newspapers…)

Yet, of course, I am also all too aware that the ‘stereographic’ appropriation of the conceptual apparatus provided by Gramsci via Guha’s approach to the subaltern offers no ready-made solution. No, there is no possible short-circuit, no apparent common denominator between the engagement with the struggles that constitute the main geopolitical Indian (or South-Asian) focus of the Subaltern Studies collective and the reading of political antagonisms and oppositional politics in the Basque case. Yes, as Žižek often puts it, the two contexts should be read as being irretrievably “out of sync”. Not even the same perspective and common language of subaltern theory could possibly enable us to translate one context into the other. Therefore, all I can ultimately do is to remain faithful to this split, to record it and clearly state that there is no point in beginning any discussion without displaying awareness of the main Parallax gaps that inform any engagement with subalternity in general and the struggles against neo-liberalism taking place globally from a particular European perspective.

According to Žižek, the parallax way / view is defined by the insurmountable / irreparable gap / split that takes place in the confrontation of two closely linked perspectives between which no neutral common ground is possible. The following quote could help grasping the structure of the parallax split informing my interventions in this site:

Every exclusive focus on the First World topics of late-capitalist alienation and commodification, of ecological crisis, of the new racisms and intolerances, and so on, cannot but appear cynical in the face of raw Third World poverty, hunger and violence; on the other hand, attempts to dismiss First World problems as trivial in comparison with “real” permanent Third World catastrophes are no less a fake – focussing on the “real problems” of the Third World is the ultimate form of escapism, of avoiding confrontation with the antagonisms of one’s own society.(The Parallax View, 2006, p. 129).

A (realtively short) while ago Dipesh Chakrabarty (Princeton, PUP, 2000) gave us strong hints and tips for “provincializing Europe” from a postcolonial perspective. He did not only reminded us, for instance, that the discipline of history must be constantly interrogated and is only one way among many of approaching the past. By attempting to provincialise history and democratise historiography, he also accounted for both the inadequacy yet indispensability of the European intellectual tradition. More recently, Žižek (The Universal Exception, Continuum, 2006) made “A leftist plea for ‘Eurocentrism’” and claimed that the European legacy could “open the way for a return of the political proper, that is, the reassertion of the dimension of antagonism that, far from denying universality, is consubstantial with it” (p.198).

I hope that the reader of this interview is also able to grasp this Parallax split: while many Eurocentric paradigms must be shaken from that sense of superiority that informs their intellectual practice there are clear instances, nevertheless, key intellectual players and political movements etc of the European tradition that cannot be entirely discarded. At stake here is an overall insistence on the irreparable character of the many splits we have to explore, but also, perhaps, an understanding that while I shift between two perspectives (South Asian-Basque; Global-Eurocentric) I also try to discern in each the echoes of its opposite. In this sense J. Ibarzabal’s ‘narrow’ focus ‘limited’ to “the constant construction of Basque socialism” also provides an insight into the totality of the liberation struggles that are taking place in today’s world constellation.

Q: Is there anything new in neo-liberalism?

J. Ibarzabal: Everything, or almost everything has been already said about neoliberalism. It is a social plague, a Black Death constantly undermining the standards of living of the working class. The political class has surrendered into a cult of the market, privatisations, regressive fiscal policies, the liberalisation of the labour market, a cult of wealth and capital accumulation. The degeneration of the European social democracy at present is a showcase of neo-liberalism’s overwhelming presence.

Q: How can neo-liberalism be contested?

J. Ibarzabal: Neoliberalism, as liberalism in its own time, is neither the outcome of a natural order of things nor a product of Western culture. It is rather the consequence of an economic doctrine, of a fiercely conservative and rightwing ideology now acting freely without opposition. There is only one possible way to confront neoliberalism: to build a strong political doctrine from the Left able to combat the monster. A renewed ideology inspired in the principles of Marxism. A new Marxism adapted to the new realities and particularities of the Left collectives and groups still existing in the world. This adaptation should take into account the philosophical elements of Marxism (humanising dialectical materialism and leaving historical determinism aside), the sociological aspects (the emancipation of the working class and class struggle remain basic, fundamental elements), the economic aspects (making economic determinism more flexible, placing more emphasis on class consciousness and underlining the importance of surplus value as a main instance of working class exploitation), and the political aspects (political freedom understood not as an end of a process but as something immanent to the process itself and the construction of socialism – to each according one’s own work- and communism – to each according to one’s own capacities and needs).

Q: What is the contribution of the Basque pro-independence left to this process?

J. Ibarzabal: In addition to taking part in the general outlining of this new Marxism, we must also bring to the fore the contribution throughout the history of the pro-independence movement to the construction of socialism. First of all, political and economic sovereignty are basic requirements for promoting Basque socialism. As a point of departure of the economic process it is necessary to shape a strong, efficient and honest public sector able to control the basic sectors of the economy (finances, transport, health, energy, environment). This requires placing special emphasis on the financial sector, the privatisation of which is a must both at the theoretical and practical level since the sole justification of the oligarchy and the high-business class is their thirst for pillage. The role of the market must also be taken into account. According to the principle of “inverted subsidiarity” the market must be subordinated to the interests of the community and must function only when it plays in favour of popular interests. The central planning of the economy must be all-encompassing for the public sector and should offer guidelines to the private sector. We are talking about a notion of central planning, therefore, which makes sustainable, social and ecological development possible in contrast to the irrational consumption promoted by capitalism. In addition, a fiscal policy must be established which is progressive and tackles fraud head on whilst it is also necessary to take account of the objective indicators that must be fully executed in regards of social welfare (universal wages, housing, control of unemployment rates, employment benefits, pensions).

Q: How does this approach to local politics fit at a global level?

J. Ibarzabal: First of all, international solidarity should be articulated around the demands of Third World countries and the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD). It should develop totally outside the existing international organisations (World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organisation) which are at the service of hegemonic, imperialist and neocolonialist countries as well as multinationals. To put an example we have a good laboratory in the Basque country, the co-operatives where socialism (collective ownership of the means of production) is already a fact. This co-operative movement can serve as a guideline in order to give shape to Basque socialism. To sum up, maybe is time at the international level that the three main branches of Marxism (social-democracy, orthodox Marxism and Trotskyism- should unite forces with identit(ar)y socialism. As the avant-garde among the stateless nations in the struggle for national and social liberation, the Basque country could be a driving force in this movement of coordination. Finally, I would like to dedicate this interview to the many friends and comrades imprisoned recently following the collapse of the peace process, an example of commitment to, and unremitting work in favour of Basque socialism.

Related posts:

1. Mint on India's neo-socialism
2. The problematic of Subaltern Studies
3. Enjoy your symptom… on the edge of the void (I)

You point out that in order to reinscribe “a subaltern politics [that] has to propose radical emancipation” such must be done “within the framework of Leftist thought,” and that, in your own context of intervention, “this will require empathising not just with the subsets of social formations (Dalits, Muslims, Christians) but the subaltern within them, for e.g., women, homosexuals, children, non believers”.

Here is my “theoretical” questions (for which I bring back old texts by Stuart Hall): How do we establish, I insist, theoretically and intellectually, a way to go about the construction of politics around “unity-in-difference”, a way, that is, for opening up political spaces of concrete transformation? Where do we draw the line, the “arbitrary closure” for effective intervention whereby “the politics of infinite dispersal are also contained to avoid them become the politics of no action at all”?

Obviously, since we both are avid, should I also say fervent, consumers of Zizek’s intellectual products, and are hence well aware of the contradictions we must face in our attempts of theorising politics in a postpolitical time, a tentative answer to these questions comes from Zizek himself. Until recently, you will agree with me, we had to read text upon text from scholars of all kinds where ways of thinking were suggested across the once demarcated (essentialist) terrains of identity. The idea was always to produce insights into the cultural constructions of identity in relation to nationality, race, gender, sexuality, religion, diaspora and so on while, of course, class would disrupt, complicate and even haunt and inflect upon the formation of all other categories but always making sure that no hierarchical gradation of priorities took place. According to Zizek (2004, pp. 98, 101):

“The problem with this formulation is that, in the postmodern ‘anti-essentialist’ discourse regarding the multitude of struggles, ‘socialist’ anti-capitalist struggle is posited as just one in a series of struggles (class, sex and gender, ethnic identity…), and what is happening today is not merely that anti-capitalist struggle is getting stronger, but that it is once again assuming the central structuring role. The old narrative of postmodern politics was: from class essentialism to the multitude of struggles for identity; today, the trend is finally reversed. [This] does not mean that class struggle is the ultimate referent and horizon of meaning of all other struggles; it means that class struggle is the structuring principle which allows us to account for the very ‘inconsistent’ plurality of ways in which other antagonisms can be articulated into ‘chains of equivalences’”.

Whether this could be the beginning of an answer to the issue of “infinite dispersal” in identity politics (subaltern or otherwise) I leave it open for discussion. On a more personal, tête-à-tête vein, however, it also occurs to me, particularly after attending Spivak’s e-lecture in my computer, that like with “secularism” and “the state”, there could also be room, perhaps, to “re-invent and nurture an abstract understanding” of ‘class’. Since I notice that you are somehow worried about the elitist position we occupy (I suppose that both as intellectual/academics and as privileged consumers…) this approach would certainly allow us to operate some “homeopathy of self-abstraction”, as Spivak put it, to “synecdochize” our position, as she also mentions in the lecture, to insert our ‘petty-bourgeois’ part within the whole of class politics without worrying too much about, say, my retired parents being once a farmer and a blacksmith; to allow, in other words, that the Gramscian war of positions that often takes place in our particular minds does not prevent us from nurturing a universal(ist) form of Luckacsian “class consciousness” regardless of someone coming from a Bengali middle-class or a family of Venetian gondoliers. By the way, in the terrific book of short essays and fiction “Marginalia” by Joseba Sarrionaindia we are told that “[O]nce upon a time there was a blacksmith hammering away a piece of iron. When he was asked what he was making he said: -Well, if it comes out straight it’ll be a nail and if it bends it’ll be a hook” (1988, p.122). So there is no much point in being too hard on our selves. We keep on doing our job, we keep on knocking our words away and something useful will always come out of it, which is also the nearest analogy I can find of what doing philosophy with a hammer is according to Nietzsche and his repeated calls for active nihilism.

Back to the political then, I am still intrigued with the second part of your text. There you direct us to a link where Dr Kancha Ilaiah attacks Hinduism outright (I will/can not comment much on the overall message despite his “stance strik[ing] at the core of the problem”, as I believe he does since you say so). As you mention also, it seems that “the politics of Illaiah [...] possesses the possibility of real change” not least because he “promotes a Zizekian transformatory “violence”". You go on saying that “I admit I am slipping into a dangerous territory” and the case may well be that you were indeed slipping into a dangerous, again theoretical, territory but I cannot see how Ilaiah himself takes this step. In other words, I don’t see how he embraces, say, ‘divine violence’ understood in Zizek’s words (2008) as “the explosion of resentment which finds expression in [...] organised revolutionary terror” (157), this being why, moreover, “we should fearlessly identify divine violence with positively existing historical phenomena [revolutionary Terror of 1792-94, Red Terror of 1919...], thus avoiding any obscurantist mystification” (167). I take it that this is what you mean by “transformatory violence” which according to Zizek belongs to the “order of the Event” as opposed to “mythic violence [which] is a means to establish the rule of law” and belongs to “the order of being” (169). I do also understand that Ilaiah grasps rather well the workings of ‘structural violence’ (Johan Galtung) and “symbolic violence” (Pierre Bourdieu) in the caste system that the Brahminical-Hindu dominant order/formation seeks to maintain and reproduce (again, forgive me if I worded this wrongly). These comprise two of the three forms of violence that Zizek identifies too in his book. First the “symbolic violence embodied in language and its forms”, an instance of which, I think, is encapsulated in Ilaiah’s following words:

“To begin with, they should sit down with the Sudras to rewrite a true Hindu religious holy book. It should be an egalitarian, spiritual democratic book written by the people’s covenants. But again, for that, I think we the Sudras should be allowed to initiate the writing”.

And second “the fundamental systemic [uncanny] violence of capitalism, no longer attributable to concrete individuals but purely ‘objective’ systemic, anonymous” [12]. A systemic, objective violence which refers to “the often catastrophic consequences of the smooth functioning of our economic and political systems” (1) and which Ilaiah captures in this metaphorical passage:

“Look at the reality. Eighty per cent of the milk in India comes from buffaloes. Buffaloes are the native Indian animals, but they do not have any rights to be protected in the Constitution. Because the buffalo is a Dravidian animal, whereas the cow is an Aryan animal. The buffalo is a black animal and we are black people. We low caste people represent the rights of the buffaloes. Cows cannot be sacred and buffaloes cannot be devilish and yet India can become modern. It is not just possible. All Brahmins in India have been consumers in the history of India. They were never the producers. So, this has to be debated.”

What seems to happen, however, is that there is no room for debate because as Ilaiah continues:

Even the Brahmins in the Communist and liberal parties are not ready for a debate. The people in the press are not ready for a debate. Because all these structures are headed by Brahmins. The question is inconvenient to all of them. (Underline mine)

Obviously paradoxical to an external observer such as myself could be that the violence built in the very social structure/caste system seems to impinge upon the cultural/symbolic order of the Communist party itself, which, from what I read in other contributions to this site, yes, it certainly strives on paper to overcome all forms of discrimination while also, universal(ist) ideology notwithstanding, being tied up to concrete determinations (and privileges!?) on the ground. After all, therefore, it also seems that grounded, local, territorialised… customs, traditions, (hi)stories… fill in with specific, context-bound meaning the empty conceptual containers (democracy, freedom, solidarity…) from which forms of concrete universality arise and are fought out in circumstances that defy context-free abstract, metaphysical thought.

But having said this, I still don’t see how and when Ilaiah calls for forms of violence that correspond to Zizek’s third category: the “subjective” violence which constitutes “just the most visible” (10) form of the triad Zizek builds up in his book, the violence which is enacted by “evil individuals, disciplined repressive apparatuses, fanatical crowds…” (9, 10) but also by organised revolutionary social agents, say, in pursuit of a higher transformatory ideal. In this very site I do read accounts of very visible riots, revolts and mayhem carried out on the grounds of various deeply entrenched, it seems to me, religious and social rivalries; but I don’t see Ilaiah’s clearly stated and reasoned hatred for Hinduism resulting in a call to arms, so to speak.

This is why, perhaps, my own little, particular way out of this debate is resorting to the concluding sentence of Zizek’s latest book (“Sometimes doing nothing is the most violent thing to do” (183)) and embrace his call for the most violent, terrorist act of them all which, given the present circumstances, is just to “Learn, learn and learn” and also, as Spivak says it in the lecture: “to learn how to learn from the other”, a practice that this site, for instance, guarantees fully.

Related posts:

1. Žižek on Violence (Video)
2. Violence, by Slavoj Žižek
3. Commonwealth: Part 6

How do you frame your intellectual tradition and the scope of your political intervention? How does the decolonial option relate to “critical theory.”

It begins from assessing how does Horkheimer’s “critical theory” project looks to us today when we bring into the picture the agency of the ‘damnés de la terre’ (the wretched of the earth), a category that re-locates and regionalizes categories framed by other historical experiences (e.g., on the one hand, the subalterns and the modern subalternity of Antonio Gramsci and the subalterns and the colonial subalternity of Ranajit Guha and the South Asian project and, on the other hand, the category of the multitude reintroduced on behalf of Spinoza by Paul Virno, Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt). But the basic formulation was advanced by Anibal Quijano in his ground-breaking article “Coloniality and Modernity/Coloniality” (1992). The argument was that, on the one hand, an analytic of the limits of Eurocentrism (as a hegemonic structure of knowledge and beliefs) is needed. But the analytic was considered necessary although not sufficient in order to operate an epistemic disobedience and de-linking of rationality/modernity from coloniality.

Where is the option for de-colonial thinking and the logic of epistemic de-linking / disobedience? Or how did it emerge?

The basic argument (almost a syllogism) that I develop here is the following: if coloniality is constitutive of modernity since the salvationist rhetoric of modernity presupposes the oppressive and condemnatory logic of coloniality (from there come the damnés of Fanon); this oppressive logic produces an energy of discontent, of distrust, of release within those who react against imperial violence. This energy is translated into de-colonial projects that, as a last resort, are also constitutive of modernity. Modernity is a three-headed hydra, even though it only reveals one head, the rhetoric of salvation and progress. Coloniality, one of whose facets is poverty and the propagation of AIDS in Africa, does no appear in the rhetoric of modernity as its necessary counterpart, but rather as something that emanates from it. For example, the Millennium Plan of the United Nations, headed by Kofi Anan, and the Earth Institute in Columbia University, headed by Jeffrey Sachs, work in collaboration to end poverty. But never for a moment is the ideology of modernity nor the black pits that hide its rhetoric ever questioned: the consequences of the nature itself of capitalist economy-by which such ideology is supported-in its various facets since mercantilism of the 16^th century, free trade of the following centuries, the Industrial revolution of the 19^th century, the technological revolution of the 20^th century), but rather its unfortunate consequences. On the other hand, with all the debate in the Media about the war against terrorism, on one side, and all types of uprisings, of protests and social movements, in no moment is it insinuated that the logic of coloniality that hides beneath the rhetoric of modernity, necessarily generates the irreducible energy of the humiliated, vilified, forgotten, or marginalized human beings. De-coloniality is therefore the energy that does not allow the operation of the logic of coloniality nor believes the fairy tales of the rhetoric of modernity. Therefore, de-coloniality has a varied range of manifestations-some not desirable, such as those that Washington today describes as “terrorists”-de-colonial thinking is, then, thinking that de-links and opens to the possibilities hidden (colonized and discredited such as the traditional, barbarian, primitive, mystic, etc.) by the modern rationality that is mounted and enclosed by categories of Greek, Latin and the six modern imperial European languages.

How do you define terms of the de-colonial epistemic shift? How does it disengage from Greek and Latin categories of thoughts in which modern/imperial epistemology is grounded?

The thesis is the following: de-colonial thinking emerged in the same foundation of modernity/coloniality, as its counterpoint. And this occurred in the Americas, in Indigenous thinking and in Afro-Caribbean thinking. It later continued in Asia and Africa, not related to the de-colonial thinking of the Americas, but rather as a counterpoint to the re-organization of colonial modernity with the British empire and French colonialism. A third moment of reformulations occurred in the intersections of the decolonization movements in Asia and Africa, concurrent with the Cold War and the ascending leadership of the United States. From the end of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, de-colonial thinking begins to draw its own genealogy. The purpose here is to contribute to this. In this sense, de-colonial thinking is differentiated from post-colonial theory or post-colonial studies in that the genealogy of these are located in French post-structuralism more than in the dense history of planetary de-colonial thinking. The de-colonial epistemic shift is a consequence of the formation and founding of the colonial matrix of power. Even though the meta-reflection about the de-colonial epistemic shift is a recent turnover, the epistemic de-colonial practice “naturally” arose as a consequence of the formation and implementation of structures of domination, the colonial matrix of power or the coloniality of power, which Aníbal Quijano revealed towards the end of the 80′s and continues to work on. Therefore, it is not surprising that the genealogy of de-colonial thinking (this is, the thinking that arose from the de-colonial shift) is found in the “colony” or in the “colonial period”, in the canonical jargon of the historiography of the Americas. That period of formation, in the 16^th century, still does not include the English colonies neither in the North nor in the Caribbean; neither does it include those of the French. However, the de-colonial shift re-appears in Asia and Africa as a consequence of the changes, adaptations and new modalities of modernity/coloniality generated by the British and French imperial expansion starting from the end of the 18^th century and continuing through to the beginning of the 19^th century.

Where do the symptoms of the unresolved tension between the rhetoric of modernity and the logic of coloniality emerge in daily life? Where does the de-colonial energy emerge and how is it manifested?

The uprisings in France, in November of 2005, reveal a point of articulation between the sphere and the illusion of a world that is similarly thought of and constructed as THE world (rhetoric of modernity) and the consequences below this rhetoric (logic of coloniality). Within and from this world, what is apparent is the cruelty, irrationality, youth, immigration that must be controlled by police and military power, imprisoning and using cases such as these in order to sustain the rhetoric of modernity. The liberal tendency will propose education; the conservative tendency expulsion, and the leftist tendency inclusion. Either of these solutions leaves intact the logic of coloniality: in the industrialized countries, developing, ex-First World, G-7, in the long run the logic of coloniality returns like a boomerang, in a movement that began in the 16^th century. In developing countries, not industrialized, ex-Third World, the logic of coloniality continues its climbing march (today, literally, in the zone of the Amazon and in the West of Colombia, where the presence of yellow bulldozers are set up together with the helicopters and the military bases, the inescapable evidence of the march of modernity at all costs). The boomerang returned from the outside the borders of the G7: the boomerang returned within (the Twin towers in New York, the train in Madrid, the bus and subway in London), but it also returned outside (Moscow, Nalchik, Indonesia, Lebanon). The fact that we condemn the violence of these acts, in which one never knows where the limits are between the agents of civil and political society, the states and the market, does not mean that we should close our eyes and keep on understanding these acts as they are presented to us by the rhetoric of modernity, in the mass media and in the official discourses of the state!! In general, the media hide below a pretense of information. In particular, there are corners of the media where the analysis of dissent fight to make themselves heard. But these analyses of dissent disagree in the content and not in the terms of the conversation. De-colonial thinking does not appear yet, not even in the most extreme leftist publications. And the reason is that de-colonial thinking is not leftist, but rather another thing: it is a de-linking from the modern, political episteme articulated as right, center-left; it is an opening towards another thing, on the march, searching for itself in the difference.

So from post-coloniality to de-colonial critical border thinking: is there anything else one should know on the genealogy of de-colonial thinking?

The genealogy of de-colonial thinking is un-known in the genealogy of European thinking. But de-colonial thinking, upon de-linking itself from the tyranny of time as the categorical frame of modernity, also escapes the traps of post-coloniality. Post-coloniality (post-colonial theory or critique) was born in the trap with (post) modernity. It is from there that Jacques Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida have been the points of support for post-colonial critique (Said, Bhabha, Spivak). De-colonial thinking, on the contrary, is scratched in other ‘palenques’, which is a term allowing one to take into consideration the Afro and Indigenous histories of maroon and independence movements and communities, respectively. This is the case of Waman Puma, for instance, from the indigenous languages, memories that had to confront an incipient modernity; or Ottobah Cugoano whose memories and experiences of slavery had to confront the settlement of modernity in the economy and in political theory. If Waman Puma is a gateway to the darker side of the Renaissance, Ottobah Cugoano is a gateway to the darker side of the Illustration. Waman Puma structured the general thesis of the manuscript that he sent to Phillip III within the same title of the work, “Nueva Crónica y Buen Gobierno” (The First New Chronicle and Book of Good Government). Basically, the thesis is the following: a ‘new chronicle’ is necessary because all of the Castilian chronicles have their limits. Waman Puma was “naturally” silenced for four hundred years. Ottobah Cugoano’s “Thoughts and Sentiments on the evil of Slavery” is a brutal ethical critique of the imperial predators and robbers of men (expressions that appear repeatedly in his discourse) in the name of Christian ethics; an analysis of the economy and of slavery, constantly insisting on the disposability of the lives of Blacks (“our lives are accounted of no value”).

Today, de-cololonial thinking, upon establishing itself on the experiences and discourses such as those of Waman Puma and Ottobah Cugoano, in the colonies in the Americas, also de-links (in a friendly manner) from postcolonial critique. Waman Puma and Ottobah Cugoano opened an other-space, the space of de-colonial thinking, via the diversity of experiences that were forced upon human beings by European invasions, as is in these two cases. I will think of them as the foundations (similar to the Greek foundation of Western thought) of de-colonial thinking. These historical foundations (of course, historical, not essential) create the conditions for an epistemic narrative that links with the genealogy of global de-colonial thinking (really an other in relation to the genealogy of postcolonial thought) that is found in Mahatma Gandhi, W.E.B Dubois, Juan Carlos Mariátegui, Amilcar Cabral, Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Fausto Reinaga, Vine Deloria Jr., Rigoberta Menchú, Gloria Anzaldúa, the Brazilian movement Sin Tierras (Landless Movement), the Zapatistas in Chiapas, the Indigenous and Afro movements in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Colombia, the World Social Forum and the Social Forum of the Americas. The genealogy of de-colonial thinking is planetary and is not limited to individuals, rather it incorporates social movements (which refers to Indigenous and Afro social movements-Taki Onkoy for the former, marroonage for the latter) and the creation of institutions, such as the previously mentioned forums).

The strength and energy of de-colonial thinking was always “there,” in the exterior; in that which is denied by imperial/colonial thinking. We could continue the argument stopping ourselves at Mahatma Gandhi. To mention him here is important for the following: Cugoano and Gandhi are united, at distinct points of the planet, by the British Empire. Waman Puma and Cugoano are united by the continuity of Western European imperialisms, in America. We could continue with Frantz Fanon, and connect him to Cugoano through the imperial wound of the Africans and also through the imperial complicity in between Spain, England and France (in spite of their imperial conflicts). With this I would like to highlight the following: the genealogy of de-colonial thinking is structured in the planetary space of the colonial/imperial expansion, contrary to the genealogy of European modernity that is structured in the temporal trajectory of a reduced space, from Greece to Rome, to Western Europe and to the United States. The common element between Waman Puma, Cugoano, Gandhi and Fanon is the wound inflicted by the colonial difference (e.g., the colonial wound).

Related posts:

1. Summer Seminar: Decolonizing Knowledge: Postcolonial Studies, Decolonial Horizons

According to Žižek, what is usually praised in (postmodern) cultural critique as ‘identity politics’ fits perfectly well the bill of the current depoliticised notion of society: a post-ideological notion of society whereby every particular group is accounted for and has its specific status acknowledged through affirmative action or other measures destined to guarantee social justice (for which, Žižek also points out, “an intricate police apparatus is required” (203). In this way, ‘alternative’ and ‘participatory’ political engagement constitutes another variation of “politics without politics” (coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol, sweeteners without sugar or milk without fat…). As celebratory resistances reduce to the pursuit of particular -ethnic, sexual… – lifestyles, the prospect of a truly radical politics is deprived of its malignant supplement. In other words, the sting of real antagonism is substituted with a politics of identity pluralisation not involving a logic of struggle but a logic of ‘resentment’: the logic of acknowledged victimhood, “of proclaiming oneself a victim and expecting the dominant social Other to pay for the damage” (203).

Effectively, therefore, postmodern identity politics is the end of politics proper. It is also the product and outcome of “globalisation without universalism” (204): a product, in other words, where the uncontested realm of the contemporary global market and the new world order’s smooth transnational circulation and functioning of Capital can easily do without the properly political domain of universalising one’s particular fate as representative of global injustice.

According to Žižek, depoliticisation arises thus from the permissive coexistence of a multitude of ways of life within the global capitalist framework; and it is against such an end-of-ideology non-politics that he insists on the potential of democratic politicisation as the true progressive European legacy (206). Europe’s truly radical political legacy and traditions could still allow overcoming, Žižek argues, the post-political procedural framework of pluralist negotiation and consensual regulation remaining at the base of such liberal-multiculturalist notions as ‘understanding’ and ‘respecting’ the other. Instead, this European legacy could

…Open the way for a return of the political proper, that is, the reassertion of the dimension of antagonism that, far from denying universality, is consubstantial with it (198).

In short, what is really needed is to invent a new mode of re-politicisation that questions the undisputed reign of global Capital; to “invent forms of political practice that contain a dimension of universality beyond Capital” (27). Although, to say it again, these forms of political practice do not imply that one should insist too much on ‘transformative’ forms of ‘radical’, ‘participatory’ and ‘alternative’ democracy as we understand them today; on forms of ‘engaged’ political practice, that is to say, in which -words are not minced here – “we are active in order to make sure that nothing will happen, that nothing will really change” (212).

On the contrary, today’s post-political constellation must be apprehended as a closed and self-contained system with no possibilities of substantial change from within. Actual change, if anything, can only stem not from proposing radical alternatives in an attempt at “keeping the dream alive” but from “the acceptance of the desperate closure of the present global situation” (Irak: The Borrowed Kettle, 2004, p.114). As a consequence, in contrast to such a standard (‘agonic’) mode of ‘committed’ participation in socio-ideological life, the proper political gesture is, precisely, not to fall into the urge to act, to avoid, in other words, the compulsion to do something. In the times where the function of all imaginable forms of active and localised “resistance” and “subversion” is “to make the system run more smoothly” and “to mask the Nothingness of what goes on”…

…the first truly critical, [‘aggressive', violent] step is to withdraw into passivity, to refuse to participate – this is the necessary first step that, as it were, clears the ground for a true activity, for an act that will effectively change the coordinates of today’s constellation (212).

This provocative call “to do nothing,” a plea in favour of what Žižek calls “passive aggressivity” (or active nihilism) is not merely a call against even the most modest of ‘local’ practical action. In this respect, since I now live in Liverpool, it is perhaps worth recalling the very highly publicised case over a decade ago, when four middle-aged devout Catholic pacifist women broke into an army compound near this city and succeeded in smashing a warplane with the bare but violent force of their hammer blows. As polemical as it turned out to be, both the jury and hence the presiding judge that took up the court case considered this instance of “direct action” against the arms trade with Indonesia at the time to be illegal but legitimate, and set the Ploughshare activists free on conscientious grounds. As John M. Miller put it in “Seeds of Hope”:

In a surprise verdict, four British women were acquitted in late July [1996] of plotting to damage a Hawk jet fighter bound for Indonesia. Although all four admitted involvement in last January’s Seed of Hope Ploughshares action, a Liverpool jury found them not guilty of causing $2.25 million in damage to the plane.

And yet, from this ‘benevolence’ and ‘understanding’ of the legal system towards what was clearly an illegal act of defiance against the established order, two questions should be asked… at least. One: is it not perhaps better to abide by the law for the wrong reasons than breaking the law for the right reasons? and two: should not any ‘radical’ social and cultural critic be also aware that by means of our both celebratory and activist procedures destined to ‘subvert’, ‘challenge’ and ‘disrupt’ the existing order, actually we serve as the very far from malignant supplement to this existing order?

Within such a context, Žižek’s call for passive aggressivity encompasses a critique against the compulsion to act on two grounds: not only against the fatalistic urge of ‘doing’ something for the sake of doing it (‘something must be done against injustice’); but also against the urge of ‘doing’ something even when theorised within a framework which involves ‘critical’ thinking’. To illustrate this point with another example, Margaret Ledwith (2005) writes that “action without reflection is uncritical”, and then continues:

the dominant hegemony shapes the way we think and, therefore, we act in the world [...] we should [thus] be wary as to the ways in which we can become distracted from our commitment to social justice by allowing the radical agenda to be diluted by more reactionary theories that lead to ameliorative rather than transformative approaches to practice. (28-29)

Ledwith warns us against action without reflection within the context of current British debates on community participation, engagement and empowerment. Against Ledwith’s underlying thesis, however, the truth of community engagement is, on the contrary, that in order to be operative, the ruling ideology has to incorporate a series of features in which the exploited / dominated majority will be able to recognise its authentic longings. That is to say: the dominant hegemony of global Capital is not only not against, but is also very much eager to indulge in, and share our own ‘radical’ theoretical concerns, to the extent that the more fragmented, dispersed and hybrid/hyphenated our identities, the more ‘diversified’ the offerings to the ‘specialised’ demands of ‘the community’ can be – form United Colors of Benetton to exotic black gay tourism in Patagonia, say, or women only Latino dancing in Bali etc.

To put it in other more memorable – but inverted- words: as the ruling ideas are not necessarily (The Ticklish Subject, 184) or are precisely not directly the ideas of those who rule (153), Žižek’s is also a call to step back altogether from what Ledwith phrases as “transformative approaches to practice”: to withdraw from activity (or pseudo-activity)… to do nothing and thus to think instead. Within today’s post-political constellation, Žižek’s is a call to think tout court (although not necessarily to think wishfully). In fact, the truly difficult thing to do today is to withdraw from activity because…

… those in power often prefer ‘critical’ participation, a dialogue, to silence – they would prefer to engage us in a ‘dialogue’, just to make sure that our ominous passivity is broken (212).

Hence, Žižek’s total lack of what illustrious middle of the road Italian liberal-socialist Norberto Bobbio (2001) would name as “moderation of judgment” or “philological scruple” when advancing an outrageous (yet commonsensical) proposal from the self-consciously accepted perspective and reality of the defeated Left:

There is no space for compromise here, no “dialogue”, no search for allies in a difficult time – today in an epoch of the temporary retreat [of the Left] Lenin’s strategic insight is crucial: “When an army is in retreat, a hundred times more discipline is required than when an army is advancing. (The Parallax View, 5-6).

References:

Bobbio, N., Old Age and Other Essays, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2001

Ledwith, M. Community Development, A Critical Approach, Polity press, 2005. First published Venture Press, 1997.

Miller, J. M. “Seeds of Hope” News Notes of the “Non-Violent Activist” http://www.warresisters.org/nva996-3.htm

Žižek, S., The Universal Exception, London, New York: Continuum, 2006

Žižek, S The Parallax View, The MIT Press, USA, England, (2006) pp. 5-6.

Žižek, S Irak: The Borrowed Kettle, London, New York: Verso, (2004) p.114.

Related posts:

1. Kishore. Sorry, you're not theoretical enough mate
2. Commonwealth: Part 3

Tuesday, November 6, 2007: Madrid based North-American journalist Keith Johnson writes an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled Basque Inquisition: How Do You Say Shepherd in Euskera? The article at the source of the row can only be partially accessed here. Partially because to access the full text one must subscribe to the newspaper. Having said this, I still think it is worth giving it a click, not least because at the bottom of the page, in the section ‘related articles and blogs’, access is provided to the full article by Christopher Rhodas (October 11, 2007) entitled: What’s the Hindi Word for Dot-Com? Incidentally, therefore, if somebody was perhaps a bit puzzled by the kind of unlikely stereograhic alliances taking place of late in this blog of the Subaltern Studies collective, then what can I say: there you are! Tough! For even the Wall Street Journal sees, and capitalises on the point that, after all it is not a particular national and/or cultural-linguistic identity that unites us. Instead it is a certainly ghostly, yes, but also all too Real class consciousness which helps give consistence to our critical approaches seeking both to describe and shake off the shared forms of subordination and subalternity we endure.

Now, following from the above and always enthusiastic about sharing too my cosmopolitan credentials with many universalistic liberals, a good idea occurs to me which would be to to set up a new hybrid web page double u, double u, double u sheperd dot-com forward slash esperanto. In the mean time, however, I will come back to the nitty-grity of our particular(ist) debate. If you are still interested in reading the full article by Johnson, you will find it here. When you access it, do not panic just yet… simply scroll a couple of paragraphs downwards. You will find it there and then a bit further down you can also read an expert-authoritative (linguistic) Response to the infamous WSJ article by Mikel Morris at the bottom of the page. If you are not particularly keen in using the mouse forwards and back several times over, then I will still give you a paragraph by Morris later on but first let me describe Johnson’s inflammatory rather than infamous piece as follows in three nutshells:

1. Johnson’a article on the legendary Spanish Inquisition begins precisely with the kind of well rehearsed old trick which consists of pick-n-choosing a fairly isolated case in order to describe Basque resistence to assimilation under the precise guise of its opposite; hence the defence of a minority, subordinate language becoming now the very source of oppression: ‘Basque Inquisition’ over the ‘disenfranchised’ and ‘marginalised’ Spanish speaking population (as if!).

2. Johnson’s position on the overall linguisitc debate favours the well-known instrumentalist approach whereby why should someone learn a language with less than a million speakers when Spanish is spoken by over 400 million all over the world; the obvious flipside being, needless to say, why don’t we then all speak Mandarin? A modest yet nonsense proposal, no doubt, but a proposal with a vengence since “left to our own devices”, as a well-known New Age/liberal motto goes, we would also rather choose to learn and speak English (In passing, this fact alone also makes Gordon Brown and Labour’s New English-centred neo-nationalist obsessions pretty ridiculous, quite frankly. Like many people further afield Polish migrant bricklayers do want to learn the language too!).

3. Johnson expands on several examples in order to show how the Basque language is not suited for modern life. From my part this old argument deserves no further comment, other perhaps than referring the reader to my own discussions with Kishore Budha on the sexy-ness of certain words in certain languages as compared to others (see here)

Saturday, November 11, 2007: On the opposite side of the linguisitc divide, in order to rebuke Johnson’s dismisal of the Basque language on the grounds, for instance, that there are “10 different words for shepherd,” Morris gives us all kind of lexicographic explanations about the issue:

Your observation on shepherd is an example of gross ignorance of not only Basque but of English as well. The origin of the word shepherd is sceaphierde, (From Old English) from sceap “sheep” + hierde “herder,” from heord “a herd” ( Cf. M.L.G., M.Du. schaphirde, M.H.G. schafhirte, Ger. dial. schafhirt.) The Webster dictionary defines “shepherd” as “1 : a person who tends sheep” Thus, you probably meant “herder” or “drover” rather than “shepherd”, but then again that term is too general in English and is usually combined with the animal being driven.

As you can note, Johnson certainly got it totally wrong on this one. But is that the issue really? And does Morris really think that the issue would be somehow sorted by Johnson accepting his invitation to “get your facts straight and talk to competent people who know something about languages”. This is indeed what happens when expert Bascophile scholars, and even grassroots campaigners self-appoint themselves as the guardians of ‘Basque language and culture’ (ancient, pristine, what have you…), a safe heaven to be protected from the hellish ‘ugly politics’ that irremediably accompany all things Basque in standard media reporting. I am afraid that like elsewhere in the world, this is impossible also in the Basque struggles over the political sign. You cannot have it all. You cannot have the enigma (mysterious language and people…) without the stigma (violence, ugly-nationalism, terrorism…). It is not in your hands. In other words: no matter how ‘wrong’ Johnson is, he also represents and holds a power that Morris will never have, regardless of how ‘right’ he might even be in his scholarly defence of an ‘endangered language’. Simple.

Now, in the heat of the debate I too was almost tempted to become a Beautiful Soul on the right-high ground of the moral divide and join in an e-mail campaign promoted by a well-known cultural organisation. This is the message one is invited to send to the Wall Street Journal:

I use Basque to laugh at work, to be annoyed, to be friendly, to reach agreements…to communicate with friends and family… to learn and research… to wake up, to sleep and to dream… to play with my children, to be happy, to love, to punish, to debate… to chat up, to make love, to enjoy… and to do anything else that can be done in any other language

If you want to participate in this campaign, please do so and click here. The instructions are easy to follow: name, country, e-mail address and then comes the quoted extract that I have translated from Basque plus two options in which you obviously agree with the message but choose to either send it or not to the American newspaper. As said, I have finally decided not to take part, but, really, nothing prevents you from doing so. After all, this is not about you speaking the language or not. It is rather about yet another nice folksy protest, about performing subaltern outrage, as it were, for the sake of feeling good expressing one’s deep ‘resentment’ against yet another unfair and incorrect treatment of a ‘minority language’. Do not get me wrong! I am also hurt by this lazy journalist writing silly things about my mother tongue, but put yourself in my position and consider that you were ever to face a situation where you had to assert and defend your language in the terms above. Would you really think that what you were saying is believable even to yourself? Then why would you need to assert it in the first place?

Sunday, November 18, 2007: More of the same but at at more sophisticated scale: 180 ‘concerned’ local and global Bascophile signatories including cultural and political celebrities worldwide such as the writer Bernardo Atxaga and Pete Cenarrusa, former Secretary of State from Idaho, demand that the Wall Street Journal rectify the article by Johnson and to publish on their front page a manifesto-like document rich in legal, semantic and historic corrections. I will not expand on it. If someone wants to read the full text (s)he can click here and, again, find the text and the full list of signatories by scrolling down the page.

To conclude: the problem is that if the already alluded to stereographic alliances taking place in this subaltern site may seem bizarre to some, to me, personally, the kind of across the board solidarity taking place around the Basque linguistic issue is far more strange. This is perhaps why my gut-feeling instructs me that I should invite the academics, cultural critics and media professionals with pro-independence and socialist leanings who have signed this bland post-political multiculturalist petition to politely withdraw from it. Far too many dodgy ‘tolerant’, ‘pragmatic’ and ‘pluralist’ characters in the list who only benefit, as we speak, from our permanent state of subordination and with whom we have nothing to share. Not even our concerns about the language that most of us (do or do not) speak!

Ps: I use the notion of “stereographic alliances” in the same way as Kobena Mercer (“Diaspora and Dialogic Imagination”, 1988) states that “there is a kind of stereographic writing … in which ideas and issues from one problematic reverberate with others put forward in seemingly incommensurate contexts”. Now, talking of “incommensurate contexts”, check this (can only be viewed on Internet Explorer. To see the video click here). There you will have the opportunity to see a rather silly mini-video clip I made together with a more serious explanation I give of the “Basque ethnic cow” you also see in this posting. The nicety of it all comes from the fact that the clip is mirrored in a web site dedicated to football, most particularly to the Barcelona FC player of Argentinean origin Leo Messi… Do not ask me how and why but I want to express my gratitude to whoever has taken the time to set it so nice and neat.

Related posts:

1. Critical Stew Basque
2. Literary wars: Natives Vs Anglophones
3. From subaltern silence to diasporic voices: the language of double consciousness