To read my introduction of Zizek, click here. To read about the Introduction to his book, click here. To read about Chapter 1 (Denial) click here.
Zizek appropriately starts his chatper on anger with an examination of racism. Inspired by the psychoanalyst Lacan, Zizek asserts that the foundation of racism is Fantasy. Fantasy refers to the reduction of the subject's embodied, contextual gaze at the world in favor of "observing the world in the condition of the subject's non-existence" (80). This is to say that the racist forgets his background, education, biases, and understanding and fantasizes about what the world would look like if he did not exist in it. This world, then, takes on an objective character. Racism takes root when this 'objective fantasy' starts to look a bit like a utopia from which he is excluded. Zizek writes, "In jealousy, the subject creates/imagines a paradise (a utopia of full jouissance) from which he is excluded. The same definition applies to what one can call political jealousy, from anti-Semitic fantasies about the excessive enjoyment of the Jews to Christian fundamentalists' fantasies about the weird sexual practices of gays and lesbians" (81). Jouissance refers to enjoyment and pleasure.
The human subject is a jealous subject, and it comes out in all sort of interesting and perverse ways. As a spectator of cinema, we are essentially jealous subjects: "Is she not, by definition, a jealous subject, excluding herself from the utopia observed on screen?" (81). Zizek identifies the scientific trend to explain each and every human behavior in terms of Darwinist reductions from human behaviors to animalistic adaptive strategies as an exercise in jealousy. Consider the animal documentaries we watch - a world where humans don't matter - where language isn't needed - where camera-men are not noticed or cared about. The animal kingdom represents a truly harmonious society - every animal spontaneously knows her role. Zizek notes, "This is why the case of National Geographic is so interesting: although it combines reports on both nature and human societies, its trick essentially is to treat a human society (whether a tribe in the middle of the Sahara or a small town in the USA) as an animal community in which things somehow work, where 'everyone has his place, where everyone is in his place, and where everyone knows and does exactly as he must so that everything can keep on in its proper place'" (83).
Zizek challenges us in this chapter to recognize this utopian dream as fantasy - "On account of its temporal loop, the fantasmatic narrative always involves an impossible gaze, the gaze by means of which the subject is already present at the scene of its own absence," not unlike the fantasy of witnessing our own funeral (84). These utopian dreams, so often responsible for outbursts of murder and violence, are the focus of Zizek's chapter on anger. It will be argued that spiritual, poetic verses on faith are responsible in developing the Fantasy that has resulted in so many nationalistic ethnic cleansing mobilizations that have occurred over the last century.
A common trend in all of Zizek's work is the critique of the so-called 'Post Ideological Era' we live in. This chapter follows suit. Zizek examines the ethnic cleansing and death squads of Bosnia and Rwanda, with close attention to Doctor Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb politician accused of war crimes committed against Bosnian Muslims. He was discovered, in hiding, under the alias Dragan Dabic, a spiritual healer writing articles for Zdrav Zivot (Healthy Life) magazine. Zizek argues that Dabic was not a "fiction constructed to obfuscate Karadzic's true identity," but rather "the ideological key to the 'real' war criminal Karadzic" (95). That is, Dr. Dabic's spiritual work, which was publishable and geared toward distinguishing the fine line between meditation and quietude, as accepted right into New Age Spiritual circles, was indeed the key to Karadzic's crimes against humanity. The foundational argument here is that poets, as inspired by faith and religion, lay the groundwork for moral impunity and nationalistic mobilization.
This is a difficult argument to swallow, but let's follow it through. Zizek, alongside Plato's repudiation of poets, argues that poets ultimately made the ethnic cleansing possible in places like Bosnia and Rwanda. According to Zizek, this Bosnian poem fits nicely alongside the ('spiritual') Chinese proverbs hand-selected by Dr. Dabic:
Convert to my new faith crowd
I offer you what no one has had before
I offer you inclemency and wine
The one who won't have bread will be fed by the light of my sun
People nothing is forbidden in my faith
There is loving and drinking
And looking at the Sun for as long as you want
And this godhead forbids you nothing
Oh obey my call brethren people crowd
The key to understanding how this spiritually inspired poem is responsible for today's 'postmodern nationalism' that fueled the fires for ethnic cleansing rituals, is its suspension of moral prohibitions: "People nothing is forbidden in my faith." Similar calls making the seemingly unethical ethical can be found in the Bible: "Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man's enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for Me sake will find it." (Matthew 10:34-9). (Also, see Luke 12:49-53 and Luke 14:26 and Thomas 16, which is, of course, non-canonical.)
Considering the poetic culture of Bosnia preceding ethnic cleansing, and the way Karadzic so gracefully self-identified with Dr. Dabic, we see the role of religion in justifying violence today. But we need to see it within a larger context: we live in a supposedly 'post-ideological era', and that means that we are no longer governed by a Big Other. This has played out as a call to enjoy life and fulfill ourselves, and makes no room for great public causes and mobilizations. Having no sides and no Big Other causes, all people are self-identified as 'moral' and "it is difficult for the majority of humans to overcome their revulsion at torturing and killing other human beings." Consider the tolerant nature US citizens have had toward the treatment of un-convicted criminals being tortured and help without trial in Guantanamo Bay. Even Barak Obama has been able to get away with keeping them there. And Zizek continues, "Since the majority are spontaneously 'moral' in this way, a larger, 'sacred' Cause is needed, which will make individual concerns about killing seem trivial" (97). The spiritual poetry of Bosnians and Rwandans preceding the killings, with calls to suspend moral prohibitions, inspiring the writings of Dr. Dabic following his war crimes, provides the Big Other - the mobilization, the abundantly present Ideology, the cause, the impetus, and the faith. Religion has made localized movements possible what would be impossible for those perceiving themselves as living in a 'post-ideological era'. For people with such perceptions, the mobilization is less visible and far more ubiquitous, realizing itself in a faith toward Capitalism. Its 'ethnic cleansing' does not involve death squads, and involves, for instance, courtroom battles between hegemonic corporations and exploited indigenous populations such as is the case between Chevron and the indigenous tribes of the Ecuadorian rainforest.
But back on point, with reference to localized explosions of anger and violence, Zizek concludes: "Religious ideologists usually claim that, whether true or not, religion can make otherwise bad people to do good things; from recent experience, we should rather stick to Steve Weinberg's claim that while without religion good people would do good things and bad people bad things, only religion can make good people do bad things" (97).
Part of Zizek's project is furthering a critique on Capitalism. He notes, when we stop anchoring ourselves to an impossible gaze, and rather to an embodied, contextual gaze, we are brought once again into the historical process and we become responsible agents for the way things are. For Zizek, this kind of understanding entails Marxism.
Zizek quickly points out that Marxism, against the fantasies of, say, the National Geographic 'story', does not see history as a linear, centered narrative. We do not all have our place, and the tragedy in Bosnia and Rwanda did not have to happen. History follows, rather, Stephen Jay Gould's mantra on biology: "Wind back the film of life and play it again. The history of evolution will be totally different." Marxism is always haunted by what could have been, and rests its hope in the fact that the reality we live today is not the result of historical necessity, but rather our ancestors (and our) failure to seize the moment and act (87). Zizek puts his Marxism thus: "first, that all history is a history of the present; second, that our understanding of actual history always implies a (hidden or not) reference to alternate history - what 'really happened' is perceived against the background of what might have happened, and this alternative possibility is offered as the path we should follow today" (88).
Unable to mobilize, concerned with enjoyment and fulfillment, our generation needs to take seriously this Marxist understanding of history. Our lame reactions to Bosnia and Rwanda present us with an alternative possibility, which should guide our actions today. First, we must recognize that we do not live in a post-ideological era. We are no less ideological than violent religious cults. We must constantly survey our self-understanding in the world and reflect on our ethical foundations. Only through such self-criticism can we hope that appropriate mobilizations will be possible. Only then can we seize the path that, given our history of the present, we should indeed take hold of.
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