So I was scrolling down the Occupy Wall Street website and I came to a piece with a Part 1 and Part 2 but I didn't actually check the title as it turns out. Why this is important you will see.
So I'm reading this speech "In April 2011, the Chinese government prohibited on TV and films and in novels all stories that contain alternate reality or time travel. This is a good sign for China. It means that people still dream about alternatives, so you have to prohibit this dream. Here we don’t think of prohibition. Because the ruling system has even suppressed our capacity to dream. Look at the movies that we see all the time. It’s easy to imagine the end of the world. An asteroid destroying all life and so on. But you cannot imagine the end of capitalism. So what are we doing here? Let me tell you a wonderful old joke from communist times."
"A guy was sent from East Germany to work in Siberia. He knew his mail would be read by censors. So he told his friends: Let’s establish a code. If the letter you get from me is written in blue ink ,it is true what I said. If it is written in red ink, it is false. After a month his friends get a first letter. Everything is in blue. It says, this letter: everything is wonderful here. Stores are full of good food. Movie theaters show good films from the West. Apartments are large and luxurious. The only thing you cannot buy is red ink."
Wait a minute! I say this sounds familiar. Then I realize it sounds an awful like Zizek. So on the radio show today at Progressive Action Network with my co-host and Web Manager-according to her that's her proper designation. And I was reading from the speech all the time gushing about how much this guy sounds like Zizek!
For the radio show click here http://planamerica.org/index.jsp
Then I scroll back up and look at the video of the guy talking, look at the guy then glance at the title "Today Liberty Plaza Had a Visit From Zizek." Holy Shit! I exclaim. "No wonder it sounds so much like him, it is him!"
A little more of his-Zizekean, what else, expansion-"We are not destroying anything. We are only witnessing how the system is destroying itself. We all know the classic scenes from cartoons. The cart reaches a precipice. But it goes on walking. Ignoring the fact that there is nothing beneath. Only when it looks down and notices it, it falls down. This is what we are doing here. We are telling the guys there on Wall Street – Hey, look down! (cheering)."
I am like Wile Coyote-who Zizek doesn''t name-I didn't realize it was Zizek until I "looked down" in a manner of speaking-or more literally, looked up.
Zizek has more red meat-he has a lot of it. Since there is so much red meat I'll just quote him verbatim here:
"The change is possible. So, what do we consider today possible? Just follow the media. On the one hand in technology and sexuality everything seems to be possible. You can travel to the moon. You can become immortal by biogenetics. You can have sex with animals or whatever. But look at the fields of society and economy. There almost everything is considered impossible. You want to raise taxes a little bit for the rich, they tell you it’s impossible, we lose competitivitiy. You want more money for healthcare: they tell you impossible, this means a totalitarian state. There is something wrong in the world where you are promised to be immortal but cannot spend a little bit more for health care. Maybe that ??? set our priorities straight here. We don’t want higher standards of living. We want better standards of living. The only sense in which we are communists is that we care for the commons. The commons of nature. The commons of what is privatized by intellectual property. The commons of biogenetics. For this and only for this we should fight."
"Communism failed absolutely. But the problems of the commons are here. They are telling you we are not Americans here. But the conservative fundamentalists who claim they are really American have to be reminded of something. What is Christianity? It’s the Holy Spirit. What’s the Holy Spirit? It’s an egalitarian community of believers who are linked by love for each other. And who only have their own freedom and responsibility to do it. In this sense the Holy Spirit is here now. And down there on Wall Street there are pagans who are worshipping blasphemous idols. So all we need is patience. The only thing I’m afraid of is that we will someday just go home and then we will meet once a year, drinking beer, and nostalgically remembering what a nice time we had here. Promise ourselves that this will not be the case.
We know that people often desire something but do not really want it. Don’t be afraid to really want what you desire. Thank you very much!"
I agree that it's pretty perverse that we can't raise taxes on the rich or have decent health care-though Obama's health care is a start I will insist. And I kind of like the media of sex and biogenics, as Zizek does as well if you have read him at all. For that matter sometimes I like perversity.
But when he says that communism failed absolutely and yet capitalism has been found out, where exactly does that leave us? "Care for the commons" is fine but a pretty broad concept. It probably could be used for any number of ideas and concepts.
If communism has failed and capitalism has failed what is left? What is left for Zizek would be "the empty signifier" or that Third Choice without content. He would argue that you don't have to give it content, as he says elsewhere in his speech, now "we are allowed to think about alternatives."
Maybe. But I can't but notice that whenever anyone really spells out what they want to see policy-wise they basically mean Swedish capitalism rather than American or American capitalism before Reagan and Friedman.
As far as his final entreaty, I agree: I will not be afraid to want what I really desire.
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