A defense of the revolutionary philosophy of Slavoj Žižek — Marlon Javier López

One of the most common criticisms of Slavoj Žižek’s political philosophy is that his thinking promotes a kind of political immobility or inaction, which is why the philosopher is far from representing a position that favors effective social change. In short, the Slovenian is accused of stripping the tradition of critical thought that he represents of all revolutionary potential.

The last of these accusations comes from the hand of Gabriel Rockhill who in an article published earlier this year accuses Žižek of turning communism into a simple wish, impossible to fulfill. Let’s see what this author says:

Since Badiou is more systematic and rigorous than the scattershot Žižek, and the latter borrows profusely from the idealist whom he refers to as a living Plato, it is worth recalling the basic Lacanian structure of Badiou’s “Idea of communism”: “the communist Idea is the imaginary operation by which an individual subjectivation projects a fragment of the real into the symbolic narration of a History.”[89] In slightly more straightforward language, this means that the Idea of communism is an operation by which an individual politically ideologically (the imaginary) commits themselves to an unexplainable political event (the Real)—like May ’68 for Badiou—whose consequences they attempt to trace out within a given historical situation (the symbolic). This cannot actually (réellement) be done, according to the French metaphysician, because the Event qua Real is recalcitrant to the symbolic realm of ‘History’ and the ‘State’; it can only be done imaginarily (imaginairement) by the individual Subject.[90] This is one of the reasons why Badiou peremptorily proclaims that “communist” cannot be used as an adjective to describe an actual party or state (Rockhill, 2023).

On the other hand, the Latin American philosopher Santiago Castro-Gómez in his book dedicated to the thought of Žižek (2015) criticizes the Slovenian political strategy. This criticism is reduced to pointing out that the philosopher’s proposal consists of “doing nothing.” The main point of his argument centers on the famous expression promoted by Žižek: “I would prefer not to.”

In this article I will argue that such accusations are the product of a superficial reading derived from the lack of will to deal with a philosopher whose reading demands a complex exercise of interpretation.

Beginning with Rockhill, it is a mistake to equate Badiou’s conception of the event with Žižek’s. In On Belief, the latter criticizes the ontological distinction made by the former between the event and the order of being. For Badiou, fidelity to the event implies discerning its outline; in his philosophy the event becomes a regulative idea that points towards a final objective. A perspective that moves away from Hegel’s philosophical insight. Žižek points out that for the latter “Everything has already taken place.” This notion not only does not prevent commitment to an act, but actually sustains it. The position opposite to that of Badiou is precisely the one maintained by Lenin with his insistence that the moment to take power and establish the new order has already arrived (Žižek, 2001, pp. 125-126).

An event, to be true, must go beyond the existing socio-symbolic coordinates (Žižek, 200, p. 121), only then can it be conceived as an authentic act of freedom. However, this does not mean, as in the case of Badiou, that he is oblivious to the situation from which he emanates. An event is not linked to a given historical time. Žižek underlines this by evoking Rosa Luxemburg’s formula, according to which “if an event is expected to be ripe, the event will never occur” (Žižek, 2003, p. 135). Consequently, for the Slovenian this event is marked by a militant constitution. As he points out: “There is no event outside of the committed subjective decision that creates it” (Žižek, 2003, p. 135).

In the case of the famous expression “I would prefer not to” it must be understood within the framework of the philosopher’s ontology. This phrase, which comes from the novel “Bartleby, the Clerk,” is used by Žižek to illustrate the complexity of the idea of freedom. True freedom not only implies choosing “freely” among a set of options offered under a certain state of affairs, but also a more radical gesture of subtraction. It involves saying no to the options offered, let’s put it that way, by the system. True freedom points toward a more fundamental choice, the choice of what we must choose. As he himself clarifies:

(…) the truly free choice is a choice in which I do not merely choose between two or more options WITHIN a pre-given set of coordinates, but I choose to change this set of coordinates itself. The catch of the “transition” from Really Existing Socialism to capitalism was that people never had the chance to choose the path of this transition – all of a sudden, they were (almost literally) “thrown” into a new situation in which they were presented with a new set of given choices (pure liberalism, nationalist conservatism…). What this means is that the “actual freedom” as the act of consciously changing this set occurs only when, in the situation of a forced choice, one ACTS AS IF THE CHOICE IS NOT FORCED and “chooses the impossible.” ( Žižek, 2001, p. 121 ).

This choice points to the “impossible”, but here the impossible should not be understood as that which cannot happen, but rather as that which should not happen within a set of existing coordinates. That is why it can only be experienced as an unbearable gesture of violence. The best historical example that we can find, of course, is that of Lenin, because in the existing coordinates of his time, the only alternative to which it seemed that he could cling was that of capitalist progress. He had to choose between embracing the foreign policy followed by the communist parties of the time, and their support for imperialist war, or conservatism opposed to such progress. Lenin did not succumb to this false choice, his action represented a true event to the extent that it gave a completely new direction to the era. This is the Leninism defended by our philosopher, Žižek is not content with embracing the options offered by the prevailing status quo, his imperative is to question and suspect any easy way out.

Marlon Javier López has a degree in philosophy from the University of El Salvador and has been in charge of various chairs at the same university.

Bibliography

Castro-Gómez, S. (2015). Revoluciones sin sujeto. Slavoj Žižek y la crítica del historicismo posmoderno. Madrid: Akal.

Rockhill, Gabriel (2023 January 2). Capitalism’s Court Jester: Slavoj Žižek.CounterPunch. https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/02/capitalisms-court-jester-slavoj-zizek/

Žižek, Slavoj. (2000) Class Struggle or Postmodernism? Yes Please! In Contingency, Hegemony, Universality, Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Žižek. London and New York: Verso, 90-135

Žižek, Slavoj. (2001). On Belief. New York :Routledge.

Žižek, Slavoj (2003) The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity. Cambridge: MIT Press