Zizek: Living in the End Times, Acceptance (Part VII)

And now we come to the final article in my series on Zizek's book, Living in the End Times.  After exploring his Introduction,  Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Bargaining again, and Depression, we can all exhale and relax because we've come to Acceptance.

He begins by talking about the 1968 riots in France, argued to be the end of structuralism, in favor of individualism.  This is argued because the riots were not carried out by one particular group (like a minority group or a political organization), but were carried out by individuals.  The riots seemed to transcend race and culture and age and class and they don't fit nicely into a structuralist narrative.  What Zizek takes from this is, following Lacan's assessment of the event, "the explosive events were ultimately the result of a structural shift in the basic social and symbolic texture of modern Europe," and his point is that one structure was replaced by another.  So long as human psychology is governed in large part by the Symbolic (words, language, useful ways of organizing data and 'slicing up the world'), we will never truly experience a 'Post-Structuralist' world.  What happened in the 1968 riots in France is that a structure in which individuality reigns made its grand entrance.  The structure of extreme individuality, for a functioning economy, relies on the motif that "all people serve".  That is, ordinary people serve the State and the State serves the people.  The King becomes a 'servant of the people'.  Zizek writes, "This logic reaches its climax in Stalinism where the entire population serves: ordinary workers are supposed to sacrifice their well-being for the community, the leaders work night and day, serving the people" (353).

In a personal example, I work at a call center for a company that recently raised its rates.  Since the price change I've gotten many, many, many calls from upset customers who've been customers of the company for a long time and feel that, for their loyalty, they should not be included in the price change.  The idea is that they serve the company (they didn't become customers for their own private interests and for the value the company gave them - they became customers because they were serving the company). The other idea is that the company is there to serve them (the service is made available to customers for the primary reason of providing a public good).  The whole infrastructure of the customer service industry heeds the call of this motif - companies can not exist solely to rake in profits: they are there in large part to serve.  What we end up with is an awkward conversation in which questions of loyalty are brought up among anonymous individuals and an abstract corporate entity, and tensions run high at the thought that the public good isn't being served, even as we know CEO's make their decisions with deference to investors and not, necessarily, the consumers (the company does serve the people - that is, the people who invest in it).  If the customer quits the company, it's also overdetermined by the ethical call to serve the people: "I will cancel my subscription on principle: to protect the rights of the consumer!"  At every level, an infrastructure of 'service to the people' takes precedence.

According to Zizek, the riots of 1968 marked the end of "the hierarchical Fordist structure of the production process" and ushered in a new "spirit of capitalism".  This new spirit encouraged employee initiative and autonomy.  As all aspects and roles within the business need to serve the function of service, even those at the top, "(i)n place of a hierarchical-centralized chain of command there were new networks with a multitude of participants, organizing work in the form of teams or projects, intent on customer satisfaction, and a general mobilization of workers thanks to their leaders' vision" (356).  The hierarchy has become so unimportant that today it's considered rare and likely unwise for a professional to stay with the same company too long.  Resume's should reflect great diversity and personal initiative.

Alongside this call for personal authenticity and individuality, and we're seeing more and more a call for social solidarity.  Zizek makes the point easily with a reference to advertising.  In the 1980s and 1990s advertising focused on the individual, whereas now effective advertising makes us feel like a part of a responsible and ethical social body: "the experience referred to here is that of being part of a larger collective movement, of caring for nature and for the ill, the poor and the deprived, of doing something to help" (356).  Here is an example from Tom's Shoes, an extreme example of 'ethical capitalism':



The success of Tom's Shoes lays in its including in its price the cost of making a second pair of shoes and distributing that pair to a child in need.  Its success is in exploiting this call for social solidarity and for serving the larger good (or, the People).  For Zizek, it entails paying for the sin of consumerism: "the sin of consumerism (buying a new pair of shoes) is paid for and thereby erased by the awareness that someone who really needs shoes received a pair for free" (356).

I own a pair of Toms Shoes.  I also own several other pairs of shoes.  I did not need my pair of Toms Shoes, but I wanted them, and I had enough money to easily afford them.  I now own a pair of shoes I don't need with peace of mind because it wasn't an act of mere consumerism, it was in part an act of charity.  I need not worry about sideways glances as I sport the new shoes - when the Toms logo is seen, people will know that I am a conscious and responsible member of the society.

Here we see an example of the autonomy and sense of servitude felt since the riots of 1968 mixed together with a growing sense of social solidarity and widespread mobilization, especially if I were to purchase a more expensive pair of designer Toms.  Zizek says, "you cannot even drink a cup of coffee or buy a pair of shoes without being reminded that your act is overdetermined by ecology, poverty, and so on.  Again, an ad, and note the end: "It's Bigger Than Coffee".



Zizek is not saying that supporting a child who doesn't have shoes is bad, or being rewarded with a free cup of coffee for voting is terrible, but he's deeply concerned that this overdetermination may misdirect our focus.  If we are seriously to make progress against the ecological crisis, the consequences of the biogenetic revolution, the imbalances within our social-polical-economic systems, and the explosive growth of social divisions and exclusions (these being the four-riders of the apocalypse his book's been focused on this whole time), we may need to question the very thing such overdetermination makes us forget: these problems were made possible by the very structures that makes these companies possible.  Free-Market Laissez Faire Global Capitalism has brought rise to the four-riders of the apocalypse, and they can't be combatted as such.  Zizek's message is radical - "'formal' freedom is that freedom to choose within the coordinates of the existing power relations, while 'actual' freedom grows when we can change the very coordinates of our choices" (358).  The 'freedom' these companies offer us is formal.  It changes nothing to the infrastructure.  It explores the available terrain from within the boundaries of the Capitalism they grew up in.  As bounded, one's freedom is not expanded, but rather unearthed.  To truly empower the dispossessed, we cannot merely buy them shoes, or vote in the right politician.  If we want to provide universal healthcare, we can not adjust a for-profit medical establishment.  We must be more radical than that.  We must redefine the very coordinates that made that which we seek to change possible.  Zizek writes, "The lesson to be learned is thus that freedom of choice operates only when a complex network of legal, educational, ethical, economic, and other conditions form an invisible thick background to the exercise of our freedom" (359).  It's paramount that we always challenge this thick background and look for ways to expand our freedom.

Zizek ends this section with reference to the French riots of 2005.  This burning of cars was an irrational revolt without a cause.  While the 1968 riots brought in a new era of Capitalism, the riots of 2005 brought to the streets what remained of it thirty-seven years later: "the social space which is progressively experienced as 'worldless'" (364).  As Capitalism has gone global and made itself work in every civilization it's encountered, whether that is Christian or Hindu or Buddhist, the idea of a worldview has been replaced with the "global market mechanism," something we all encounter.  Zizek, responding to riots that are increasingly anarchist, warns us that the question of what that 'other world' would look like is increasingly difficult to contemplate.

After writing the book, riots have erupted in Greece and England, not to mention the profound riots of the Arab spring.  There are important aspects of these social uprisings that indicate some sort of meaning that wasn't there in 2005, and they are occurring in light of late Capitalism's failures.  Deficits have reached their default point, and with rising inequalities, people are pissed.  It's of vital importance to study these events and think about their meaning in light of global Capitalism and the four-riders of the apocalypse.  Are we approaching a new dawn?  A radical structural shift?  A post-post-structuralism?  And, in the context of Capitalism and the global market mechanism, will this shift be part of a locality, or is it destined to take on a global nature itself?  We are left with many questions, because the "End Times" Zizek refers to is not a literal apocalypse, but the end of an epoch.  And what is to come is open for discussion and creative engagement.