Passive aggression versus aggressive passivity
I attended a small talk this evening on Slavoj Zizek, a Slovenian cultural critic that has been getting a lot of attention lately for his views on postmodernism, politics, subjectivity, Lacan, and a number of other things that only theorists could be interested in. (In addition, Zizek has written on some rather engaging subjects, like globalization, Alfred Hitchcock, myth, and Lenin.) The talk began with a screening of the latest documentary on the thinker, entitled Zizek!. The film itself was rather entertaining and helped remind the viewer that even ingenious cultural critics and thinkers have lives, too. One of my favorite scenes from the movie has Zizek describing in his pretty-good English the current status of a toy war between he and his son.
The high point of the evening was the talk afterwards headed by Adrian Johnston, one of Zizek’s graduate students and a preeminent Lacan scholar. Someone asked about the political suggestions that Zizek makes at the end of his latest book, The Parallax View. Zizek essentially argues that one should practice “Bartleby politics” (derived from Melville’s short story “Bartleby the Scrivener”)–essentially, when asked to pursue a cause along the lines of donating to Green Peace, or signing a petition for better social security, or universal healthcare, or any number of the “good liberal” things the Left puts faith in, we should answer with Bartleby’s famous response: “I’d rather not.”
Why? For Zizek, who is staunchly anti-capitalist, these various causes aren’t moving us towards a better state. Rather, they are simply patching small holes in the social fabric, managing to keep it just barely functional. If we were to stop donating to Green Peace, to stop pushing for better social security or universal healthcare or any of our “good liberal” causes, we would let the horrors of capitalism ooze and stagnate and–eventually, hopefully, possibly–produce a good ol’ fashioned revolution. We can either be “passively aggressive” and allow the status quo to subsist by giving it tiny band-aids to cover up its horrific results or, alternatively, we can advocate “aggressive passivity” and let capitalism continue to produce these injustices until it implodes on itself, resulting in a stage that can provide real change.
I thought the point was fairly profound. It certainly has me thinking.
Filed under: philosophy, politics by Jesse
Profound and a call to arms. This goes hand and hand with my commentary on the problems cropping up with globalization. Melville’s brilliant protagonist in Bartleby has been interpreted many ways, when I first found this gem of a short story I felt it was a slap on the face of capitalism but never mentioned it in my literature class at the time because most wanted to discuss the psychological defects of Bartleby.
The problems facing societies across the world are being faced not with rapid action but as Zizek points out, with band aids.
I know I say it to the point of annoyance, but sooner or later the religious mythologies are going to be shattered, the question, from your commentary, is not a matter of how anymore, but when.