If you don’t know who Slavoj Zizek is, then, well…I don’t know what to say. He’s a very famous Hegelian-Lacanian philosopher and cultural theorist from Slovenia. My boy Hollywood Heems (his blog Gordon Gartrelle is linked in my blog roll) recently posted a video of Zizek spitting his fire about Sound of Music as a (Das) racist film.
Anyway, Zizek has recently written favorably about Obama in a recent online exclusive for the London Review of Books and has recently penned a column for In These Times taking on the VP Nominee for the Republican ticket Sarah Palin.
If you don’t know, Zizek has a penchant for taking small bits of cultural phenomena and turning them into quite novel theoretical analysis. Here, he argues that the Republican tickets utter inconsistencies could be seen as potential benefits, especially when it comes to gender politics and the Sarah Palin pick. (I hope not.)
Republican strategists masterfully exploit the flaws of liberalism: Its patronizing “concern” for the poor that is combined with a thinly disguised indifference toward — if not outright contempt for — blue-collar workers, and its politically correct feminism that is usually combined with an underlying mistrust of women in power. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was a hit on both counts, parading both her working-class husband and her femininity.
Zizek then continues to draw a contrast with earlier high-profile female politicians in other parts of the world–”Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and even, up to a point, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton” who, Zizek argues, were “phallic” women. That is to say, they had to out “man” even the men. The phallus in psychoanalytic thought is NOT the sexual organ itself but the symbol of power which is associated with it in a male dominated society. So where does Palin’s power come from?
Palin provides a “post-feminist” femininity without complexity, uniting the features of mother, prim teacher (glasses, hair in a bun), public figure and, implicitly, sex object, proudly displaying the “first dude” as a phallic toy. The message is that she doesn’t lack anything — and, to add insult to injury, it was a Republican woman who realized this left-liberal dream. It is as if she simply is what left-liberal feminists want to be. No wonder the Palin effect is one of false liberation: “Drill, baby, drill!” Feminism and family values! Big corporations and blue collars!
So in this Lacanian way, is Zizek implying that the country will somehow defy the polls and elect the Republicans? No, because of the economic meltdown and the Republicans’ inability to pick their pants up as they were caught with them down. Their contradiction could for a short historical moment be covered over as they could not answer the question: How can they be anti-statist(Washington is broken) and pro-market and yet still support the bailout under their watch?
The initial Republican reaction to the financial meltdown was a desperate attempt to reduce it to a minor misfortune that could easily be healed by a proper dose of the old Republican medicine (a proper respect for market mechanisms, etc.). In short, the Republicans’ between-the-lines message was this: We allow you to continue to dream.
However, all the political posturing of lower state spending became irrelevant after this sudden brush with the real. Today, even the strongest advocates of diminishing the excessive role of Washington accept the necessity for a state intervention that is sublime in its almost unimaginable quantity. Confronted with this sublime grandeur, all the “no bullshit” bravado was reduced to a confused mumble. Where, today, are McCain’s steely resolve and Palin’s sarcasm?
Hence, Zizek argues that the future of left politics very much depends on the dominant narrative of the bailout, and gives us this prescription:
Consequently, the main task of the ruling ideology is to impose a narrative that will not put the blame for the meltdown onto the global capitalist system as such, but on, say, lax legal regulations and the corruption of big financial institutions. Against this tendency, we should insist on the key question: which “flaw” of the system as such opens up the possibility for — and continuous outbreaks of — such crises and collapses?
The danger is that the predominant narrative of the meltdown will be the one that, instead of waking us from a dream, will enable us to continue to dream. And it is here that we should start to worry — not only about the economic consequences of the meltdown, but also about the obvious temptation to reinvigorate the “war on terror” and U.S. interventionism in order to keep the economy running.
I’m a little shocked. Is Zizek arguing for the interruption of fantasy? Not only does this counter his usual line of political thinking, but it also seems to me a bit odd because he is after all…a psychoanalyst.
Props to cscan for initial hook-up.
X-posted at Human Potential.
Believe it or not, but the largest segment of the electronics industry is…TV sales. It is not too surprising. America has placed its chips all in with the television and the broadcast apparatus–the networks, cable providers, etc.–since the advent of mass television watching in the 1950s. And as we are facing the first holiday season of what many economists and other experts consider to be at least a 14-month long recession, many are looking towards TV sales as a sign of the recession’s effect on the “real economy.” (I actually do know what this means, but really, what the EFF does this term mean?) All the retailers are slashing prices like crazy, so if you have some cash to spare, it may be good time to start shopping for a TV. I should be telling myself this but really, I kind of like the small TV that I stole from Mike Shamoon after college. 
vs 
David Carr, media writer at the Times, has written a 
I just voted players. The voting machine broke in my polling center (the lobby of my building) but after an hour it was fixed and we got it on and poppin’.
