The Courage of Hopelessness: Chronicles of a Year of Acting Dangerously by Slavoj Žižek
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When All Else Fails: Read the Instructions

It is a principle of psychotherapy and religious conversion that the need to change one’s views about life does not become compelling until all other attempts to get things to ‘work’ fail. The remaining option is unpalatable but unavoidable. Breakdown is a necessary condition for repair.

Žižek has an interesting though paradoxical take on this principle in The Courage of Hopelessness. Everywhere in the world, socialism is in retreat. Global capitalism has never been healthier in its manipulative exploitation of those who benefit through it as well as those exploited by it. The political Left is in disarray and probably prefers the status quo in any case. There is no coherent alternative intellectual argument on the horizon which might impede the further expansion of capitalist self-interest.

So, guided by the established principles of psychotherapy, religious conversion, and the general aphorism ‘when in a deep hole stop digging,’ it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect some sort of intellectual reversal by Žižek, at least a modification of his long-term Marxist analysis. Bot no, instead world events, for him, point more urgently than ever to the truth and usefulness of communism as an explanation of these events and as an ideal around which to rally for world betterment.

Don’t get me wrong: I admire Žižek’s intellect. His resistance to the idea of immigrants as the new proletariat, his defence of European culture as the source of anti-colonialism as well as the original malaise, his mistrust of academic and bourgeois Leftists as mere ‘jobs worth’ types concerned more with ideological credential rather than the political fate of the world are all things I can agree with.

But Žižek’s unmitigated devotion to Marxism seems to distort his considered observations about the way the world is. His response is more of the same that he has been preaching for decades: “The task confronting us today is precisely the reinvention of communism, a radical change that moves well beyond some vague notion of social solidarity.” Note: a reinvention of communism, an adaptation of the same underlying theory of the physical alienation of human beings from themselves.

But as he documents in his own arguments, people apparently want to be alienated from whatever Žižek thinks they really are. The proletariat seems to resolve itself into those who, for the moment, find themselves outside the protective bubble of capitalism. But capitalism is inexorably sweeping in these outliers. It is avoiding the mistake of that other global European institution, the Catholic Church, by accepting entirely local customs and traditions and transforming them into brands and desirable objects for sale.

For those already inside the global capitalist bubble, Žižek can only plead for a raising of consciousness about the ‘objective’ situation: “Our ethico-political duty is not just to become aware of the reality outside our cupola, but to fully assume our co-responsibility for the horrors outside it.” Sure, that’ll work. Just look at the great successes of the Green movement in changing national environmental policies. Their progress depends as much upon convincing folk of their own direct interests as any other political party. And what is there left but “ some vague notion of social solidarity”?

Perhaps I’ve missed it in my intermittent reading of Žižek’s work, but nowhere can I recall an admission of error, the recognition of an intellectual mistake that he regrets making, an apology for a lack of understanding or for misdirecting the understanding of others. He continuously returns to the same tired tropes of Marxism just as evangelical Christians harp endlessly about the real, the authentic, the eternal message of the gospels. His attempts to reinterpret Marxist doctrine as if a century and a half of ideological ‘experimentation’ has never taken place is just silly. Perhaps other people are reading a different manual.

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