For my review of Zizek's Introduction to the book, click here.
The first of the five stages of grief is denial, and that's where Zizek starts. He calls his first chapter: 'Denial: The Liberal Utopia' and he begins with a theme that appears throughout much of his work: a critique of the idea of a 'post-ideological era.' For more detail, you can read my introduction to Zizek, but, put simply, postmodern philosophers have argued that we have entered an era that is beyond the meta-narrative. A meta-narrative would be some story that guides our understanding of the world, like a religious story. The argument that we are beyond the meta-narrative states that we view such stories with a degree of cynicism. We take a little bit from this story and a little bit from that story and we create our own narrative, which we recognize as our own, and even that doesn't have real authority over our actions. We don't follow a blind faith toward it, and we creatively augment it to meet our needs. We don't, then, follow "the Other." For Zizek, there is a denial going on here, and while we may not follow "the Other," we most certainly do follow "the Big Other" - that more elusive other, which is global capitalism. Zizek has famously noted that liberals worry about the 'four riders of the apocalypse': the ecological crisis, the consequences of the biogenetic revolution, imbalances in the capitalist system itself, and rapidly growing social divisions and exclusions, and yet they'd sooner envision the apocalypse than an end to the Capitalist way of organizing society (x). The source of this sad reality is a denial.
Liberals and conservatives alike do not recognize their devotion to global capitalism as ideologically based. The 'Liberal Utopia' is the argument that movements toward multi-culturalism and human rights are beyond ideology. And Zizek starts with the French.
In 2010, the French drafted a law which bans the burqa and "imposes fines of up to 750 euros on anyone appearing in public 'with their face entirely masked'" (1). The law was predictably justified by all major French political parties in terms of post-ideological, universalist arguments protecting a woman's rights, "intended to protect the dignity and security of women" (1). Everything seems fine, until you dig deeper into the parliament's defense of the law. Zizek notes, "Problems, however, begin with Sarkozy's statement that veils are 'not welcome' because, in a secular country like France, they intimidate and alienate non-Muslims... one cannot but note how the allegedly universalist attack on the burqa on behalf of human rights and women's dignity ends up as a defense of the particular French way of life" (1). The law prevents Muslim women who would wear the burqa from entering public spaces, and nothing more. It does nothing to protect these women from being prevented by their families from leaving the home, and so it could actually take a big step back in terms of protecting women who wear the burqa.
Accounts from French women came out in defense of the law, saying that they are humiliated when they see a burqa in a public space. They feel excluded and rejected from society. So it becomes obvious - clouded in the jargon of women's rights and freedom of expression is an anxiety that comes with staring into the face of Otherness. Zizek writes, "From a Freudian perspective, the face is the ultimate mask that conceals the horror of the Neighbor-Thing: the face is what makes the Neighbor le semblable, a fellow-man with whom we can identify and empathize... This, then, is why the covered face causes such anxiety: because it confronts us directly with the abyss of the Other-Thing, with the Neighbor in its uncanny dimension" (2). The Neighbor looks directly at us through the slits in the burqa, but we can not return the gaze. We recognize the foundation for the law passed in France only when we recognize the role of ideology and all the influence it has in multi-cultural interactions.
Zizek, as a good Lacanian, is not arguing that we should rise out of our ideological notions, for its these notions that make up the symbolic ordering of our worlds. What we must be careful of, is utopian dreaming that forgets the role of ideology in our interactions. One liberal utopian dream that greatly undermines the political struggles of the dispossessed is that all forms of racism are the result of intolerance. Zizek asks, "Why are so many problems today perceived as problems of intolerance, rather than as problems of inequality, exploitation, or injustice?" This mis-categorization results in inertia because real root problems that can be addressed and fought are reduced to the impenetrable abyss of psychological states. It also takes the liberal into a self-denying space where he is protected from being implicated in the racism because he is self-identified as 'tolerant.' It does this by forgetting the background noise in favor of what's immediately present. Ideology, Zizek tells us, is "precisely such a reduction to the simplified 'essence' that conveniently forgets the 'background noise' which provides the density of its actual meaning. Such an erasure of the 'background noise ' is the very core of utopian dreaming" (5-6). It's through the facade of ideology that we effectively deny our role in the depredations suffered by the poor and the crises that loom before us on the other side of global capitalism.
An obvious American example is the increasingly politically acceptable racist policies cornering illegal immigrants in places like Arizona and Alabama. At the heart of laws requiring Hispanic people to carry documentation wherever they go and discouraging undocumented kids from attending schools is a similar anxiety that drives the French to outlaw the burqa. The undocumented worker represents, in Zizek's words, "an excessive excremental zero-value element" of global capitalism - the Neighbor, displaced from their home by economic forces, "while formally a part of the system, (having) no proper place within it" (23). Illegal immigrants are a group serving as the most generous and successful relief effort in the world, funneling millions of dollars year after year to the poor people residing in their place of origin. They are a hardworking people struggling to keep themselves and their loved ones alive. Anxious to stand face-to-face with this Neighbor, we direct our efforts at reforming the law to 'managing' these people. Forgotten all along are the route causes of this Neighbor's desperate attempt to find work. We forget this 'background noise', which wholeheartedly implicates every person in the country who does things like eating fruits and vegetables, spending time in constructed buildings, and partaking in imported goods from Mexico. We forget this 'background noise' and dream about 'controlling the problem' through a change in the law. This is part of the grand orchestra. The law will never address root causes: it works only to control that inequality, exploitation, and injustice that our political structure has made possible. If we move beyond accusations of racism and intolerance, we discover at the heart of it all a class struggle: an American people trying to put on a bus and export the shame of their imperialistic economic policies in Latin America. We are talking about an American people who are uneasy with the gaze of the exploited, displaced worker. This is at the root of campaigns to solidify English as the only acceptable language in the US and the calls to build a giant wall between the US and Mexico. With the help of ideology, we can justify oppressive policies and forget all about the struggle for survival endured by the illegal immigrant.
In upcoming articles, I will continue talking about Zizek's work.
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