Category: zizek

Forced corruption

Remember. The problem is not corruption or greed. The problem is the system. It forces you to be corrupt.

This line is a quote from Slavoj Zizek’s speech at Occupy Wall Street.  I will not try and wade into the larger conversation about this movement (see here for frequent updates).  I want simply to focus on this line.  For me this line is a stumbling block; and I believe stumbling block is precisely the correct term.  I continue to believe in autonomous morality.  I continue to believe that it is possible for each individual to make a morally valid decision in real life circumstances.  I believe this despite the fact that I know it is not true.  And so I come to a stumbling block, an offense.

I sat with this line as I visited a man from my neighbourhood.  Our church is not exactly a hot spot for those seeking material support though we get our share of traffic.  The process is almost always the same.  There is prefacing story which sets the person both in morally acceptable or pitiable conditions.  This often includes acknowledging some religious conviction, some desire to work, and some immediate pressing need.  I will then wait for the second half of the conversation in which the person will move inevitably towards his (almost exclusively a male) best shot at getting something out of the exchange.

And there I sit, Solomon on his throne, judging how best to suggest sawing his child in half to reveal true motivations.  I stand as the face and gate-keeper of what should be the symbol of consuming charity.  Now to be sure charity is not paternalism but why does paternalism exist in the context of giving charitably?  Still one must learn to be responsible, correct?  To the extent that responsiblity lies in the realm of economics I will continue to be corrupt in my engagement with those in need.  To the extent that responsbility is integrated into a relational fabric there may be a chance to level out life experiences.  Current capitalist economics demands a responsibility based on severed points of accountability.  It demands I take care of my house.  And this is where existentialism remains important in conversations about social systems.  One must ultimately be converted into a larger house; a house that still has rooms and boundaries but a house that also has a larger and expanding commons.  The church in North America, by and large, cannot offer a commons to those who seek it.  And until then I may be forced to remain corrupt.

Job and the thunderstorm in Kierkegaard’s Repetition

Well I just caught up with my (rough) Kierkegaard reading schedule having finished Fear and Trembling and Repetition.  Both were re-reads and I found Repetition a much more illuminating re-read.  I think Fear and Trembling has had so much press that despite how arresting it can be it may need another form in order to achieve ‘repetition’ which leads me to Repetition.

Continue reading “Job and the thunderstorm in Kierkegaard’s Repetition” →

I am a feel good story; Or, What would Zizek do?

Yesterday I swung by the University of Winnipeg to pick up a copy of Zizek’s The Parallax View.  On my way back to the car I noticed a flash of colour standing out against the dirty white snow on the curb.  Lying there, as though nestled on some heavenly cloud was a bundle of cash.  There before me lay $1oo dollars staring up at me with no indication of ownership.  I suddenly found myself in some sort of poorly contrived morality sketch.  What should I do?  Some of thoughts that ran through my head;

  1. Write a note with my contact information where I found the money so that the person could tell me the amount and denomination.
  2. Donate it to some worthy cause.
  3. Go back into the University and donate it to the hippies with a booth promoting sustainable agriculture.
  4. Leave it in the snow bank.
  5. Keep it.

I waited for a few moments in the car to see if anyone was frantically running around.  I did not like any of my responses.  1-3 seemed like some ‘noble’ redemption of this sullied money . . . no good.  5 just felt wrong and right at the same time.  4 may have actually be the best option because I felt that certainly no one else would give such thoughtful consideration to finding money as I will and they would proceed immediately to 5.  In the end I decided to go in the nearest building which was the athletic building.  I went up to the front desk and told the girl what I found.  Recognizing the torn envelope she responded, “That must be Tim’s . . . I mean that was what Tim was supposed to deposit” as she pointed to their deposit box.  Hey, if she lied, good on her for the presence of mind.  In any event, as I was leaving I heard her say, “You’re so honest.”  Ahhhh, I slept well that night.

So money implies dishonesty.  As soon as money is detached from any recognizable or enforceable relationship immediate ownership upon discovery is assumed.  And why not?  Money shows no allegiance.  It does not bear the marks of enduring long-term relationship.  It is built for pure mobility.  I have to say that I am glad it seemed to return the place where it would cause some undergrad the least amount of grief.  But I can’t help but think . . . what would Zizek do?

Irony and Change; Or, Why Porn is F**king Boring (Or is that Other Way Around?)

Kierkegaard begins the second part of The Concept of Irony exploring the place of irony in shifting or changing of historical eras.

Catholicism was the given actuality for the generation living at the time of the Reformation, and yet it was also the actuality that no longer had validity as such.  Consequently, one actuality collides here with another actuality. (260)

Kierkegaard goes on to explore the difference between the ironist on one hand and the prophet and hero on the other.  The prophet articulates presentiments and the hero battles for the new over the old but the ironist perceives the old “in all its imperfection” (261).

For the ironic subject, the given actuality has lost its validity entirely; it has become for him an imperfect form that is a hindrance everywhere.  But on the other hand, he does not possess the new. . . . He is the one who must pass judgment.  In one sense the ironist is certainly prophetic, because he is continually pointing to something impending, but what it is he does not know.  He is prophetic, but his position and situation are the reverse of the prophet’s. The prophet walks arm in arm with his age, and from this position he glimpses what is coming. . . . The ironist, however, has stepped out of line with his age, has turned around and faced it.  That which is hidden from him, lies behind his back, but the actuality he so antagonistically confronts is what he must destroy; upon this he focuses his burning gaze (261).

The negative work of irony here is not of particular phenomena but of the whole, infinite absolute negativity.  Here Kierkegaard begins to drawn heavily on Hegel noting that the ‘negative’ in Hegel’s system is ‘irony’ in actual history.  He then moves on to articulate a position that sounds very much like the Hegel/Kierkegaard synthesis that Zizek promotes.

[S]ince the ironist does not have the new in his power, we might ask how, then, does he destroy the old, and the answer to that must be: he destroys the given actuality by the given actuality itself; but it should be remembered nevertheless that the new principle is present within him [potentially], as possibility.  But by destroying actuality by means of actuality itself, he enlists in the service of world irony.  In his Geschichte der Philosophie, Hegel says: “All dialectic allows as valid that which is to be valid as if it were valid, allows inner destruction to develop in it – the universal irony of the world” (262). [emphasis mine]

The means of destruction are provided by what is to be destroyed.  Let me take an example that may be more or less controversial depending on my reader.  I grew up with pornography being a dark, shrouded and heinous sin.  In my evangelical youth I remember various works emerging to deal with this problem.  Pornography was treated like acid.  To even inadvertently cast a less-than-pure glance over a cheerleader as you (religiously) watched football was to risk being splashed with its scarring spew.  Eye poison.

Now I can appreciate the need to address pornography on a number of levels but I began to see this approach heaping supernatural power on nearly every form of possible sexual expression.  Now for any of you wander off the straight and narrow path of internet browsing (perhaps finding less-than-legal sites for sampling music or whatever) it does not take much to come across some pretty hardcore stuff.  First glances raise all that historical baggage but then I actually looked at what was being promoted.  How incredibly unattractive and downright boring this stuff is.  I can see why the industry has to be the fastest evolving in terms of technology and expression because it plays out so quickly.  In other words the seeds of its destruction are within.  I am not looking to downplay the reality of addictions.  I mean getting drunk becomes pretty boring as well.  The question may be to help people into a space where they can see clearly what is at play and name it for themselves as opposed to having someone else name it for them.  Or at least to understand where these names come from and who is invested in them.

Now perhaps we can move on to economics . . .

Have You Seen This Dead God?

Lately it seems I cannot turn around without coming across the dead God.  I have been reading Zizek again and instead of simply being playfully amused by his counter-intuitive insights I have begun to see more clearly his hegelian reading of the Trinity.  God empties himself into Jesus and is split, de-centered from himself.  And dies.  The God of ‘beyond’ which can and does ground every ideology is emptied and the space of struggle, the Holy Spirit, is opened in this death.  Traditional theology will tend to keep God the Father above and beyond pulling the strings and maintaining order.  It is precisely that God that must be emptied into Jesus die for the purpose of salvation.

Man is eccentric with regard to God, but God himself is eccentric with regard to his own ground, the abyss of Godhead. . . . Christ’s death on the Cross thus means that we should immediately ditch the notion of God as a transcendent caretaker who guarantees the happy outcome of our acts, the guarantee of historical teleology – Christ’s death on the Cross is the death of this God, it repeats Job’s stance, it refuses any ‘deeper meaning’ that obfuscates the brutal reality of historical catastrophes. – The Monstrosity of Christ

I also recently finished reading Ronald Osborn’s Anarchy and Apocalypse.  This is a relatively conservative appeal to the biblical resources of non-violence set within particular contemporary settings.  However, here the dead God surfaces in the form of post-holocaust Jewish thought, namely that of Elie Wiesel.  Wiesel sees God as the young child hung from his neck, dying and almost dead.  This becomes the straightforward,

ethical as well as a religious imperative: if we are to remain human we must refuse passivity, ease, complacency, and fight for the justice which God, in His captivity, in the time of His banishment, cannot bestow. – Anarchy and Apocalypse

And all the reminded me of an old post I wrote reflecting on Kierkegaard’s test for true love which is to love someone dead.  The dead is the absolute relationship.  If the relationship of love changes it must be because of you, the variable element (no blaming the dead for not understanding you).  To love one dead is love a non-being.

In order properly to test whether or not love is faithful, one eliminates everything whereby the object could in some way aid him in being faithful.  But all this is absent in the relationship to one who is dead, one who is not an actual object.  If love still abides, it is most faithful. – Works of Love

What is going on here?  Will a decade, more or less, pass after which we will look back at these silly caricatures of theology?  Or are these accounts already reflections and indictments of an already over-caricatured and debased theology and ecclesiology?  I would like to call this theme humanist in its apparent rejection of God but that does quite do it justice.  Death is something other than human or perhaps fully human; something that modern humanism (as I have encountered it) does quite seem to grasp.  Also these accounts remain in many ways thoroughly theological.  They are dealing with the dead God not with God as an illusion.  It is this possible realism in theology that I find intriguing and potentially attractive.

And for your listening pleasure he is Gash’s 1986 God is Dead