I wanted to do a bit of a Zizek-ian analysis on a sign help up by a "53%-er." You can see the actual picture if you click here. His sign reads:
I am a former Marine.
I work two jobs.
I don't have health insurance.
I worked 60-70 hours a week for 8 years to pay my way through college.
I haven't had 4 consecutive days off in over 4 years.
But I don't blame Wall Street.
Suck it up you whiners.
I am the 53%.
God bless the USA!
I I don't know if Zizek would agree with my analysis, but even if he wouldn't, it might shed some light on something important (hopefully!).
The 53% movement, by the way, is the conservative response to the Occupy Wall Street movement. The premise behind it is that people need to take personal responsibility for their lot in life and work hard. They assume that the We Are the 99% movement is comprised of people looking for free handouts from Wall Street or the government. Instead of working to earn their money, they are gathering together and protesting with the sole purpose of taking what rightfully belongs to the wealthy, and stealing it for themselves. I think this generally captures the sentiment. Most signs held up for the 53% movement end referring to protestors as whiners or lazy bums.
An important place to start with this particular sign we are reading is with Zizek's concept of psychoanalysis, and ultimately with fetishism. For Zizek, we begin a psychoanalysis with the assertion that there is no Subject without the Social - "the field of social practices and socially help beliefs." Against the idea that we can isolate the subject and explore their individual experience, or their individual psychoses, we understand the Subject's trauma or neuroses within the context of external, actual social conditions. In other words, we cannot understand this marine outside of the social conditions that gave him cause to write his letter. This is often not how psychoanalysis is performed.
Zizek notes, with regard to the standard way psychoanalysis works, "Instead of the concrete analysis of external, actual social conditions... we are thus given the story of unresolved libidinal deadlocks; instead of the analysis of social conditions that lead to war, we are given the 'death drive'; instead of the change of social relations, a solution is sought in the inner psychic change, in the 'maturation' that should qualify us to accept social reality as it is. In this perspective, the very striving for social change is denounced as an expression of the unresolved Oedipus complex... Is not the notion of a rebel who, by way of his 'irrational' resistance to social authority, acts out his unresolved psychic tensions ideology at its purest? However... such an externalization of the cause into 'social conditions' is no less false, in so far as it enables the subject to avoid confronting the real of his or her desire. By means of this externalization of the cause, the subject is no longer engaged in what is happening to him."
So, it's important to note that psychoanalysis is best performed with an account of social conditions and the subject's desires in relation to such social conditions.
In Late-Capitalism, as we find ourselves currently, Zizek holds that subjects will typically maintain a cynical distance with social norms. It's likely this cynical distance is that which Lyotard was referring to in his musings about post-modernism: people see themselves as being past the grand narrative. We no longer believe in the great stories of history's march towards perfection, or some such fairytale. We see ourselves as critical thinkers, not swept into an ideology. As Zizek scholar Adrian Johnston notes, "Subjects acquiesce to a system of rules, norms, and conventions (i.e. a big Other) only so long as they are somehow able to sustain a minimal sense of sane selfhood or individuality vis-a-vis conceiving of themselves as skeptics reluctantly going along with the run of things amidst a herd of simplistic, gullible believers." This seems pretty typical. Occupy Wall Street protestors see themselves as free-thinkers, individually taking a stance against the herd - those 53%ers or that Tea Party or the Republican or Democratic parties or those dumb red states. Likewise, the 53%ers maintain their sanity by speaking out against a 'simplistic' group of 'whiners' and 'lazy bums' and 'dirty hippies' who don't really understand economics or Wall Street or those heathens who don't know god and are unwittingly led by the devil. If they weren't such sheep, they wouldn't be out protesting.
When the marine notes that he works two jobs, it's with an attitude of cynical distance - as though he, through hard work, forded a way to become independent of the system. While those in the herd complain, he works. And whatever Wall Street does, he will work. He sees himself as being independent of Wall Street's actions. While likely seeing himself at a distance from social norms, in actuality, he has conformed very nicely to the current strategies of Capitalist Liberal-Democratic Ideology. While surely maintaining a cynical distance from it in his conscious life, in his unconscious fantasy, he has found conformity bearable. He has found the rough life of 60-70 hours a week and the uncertainty that comes with having no health insurance a bearable reality. So, while I'm sure he would be offended if labeled a conformist (can you think of anyone who wouldn't be?), given his work-life and his acceptance of the status quo, he is absolutely a conformist. Zizek investigates how this is possible, and it brings us to fetishism.
For Zizek, fetishism is not unique to this marine, but is a cultural neurosis. So, as you read this, consider what you yourself fetishize. Johnston writes, "Fetishists... deliberately and knowingly 'enjoy their symptom'... The fetishist is someone who can, whether through stoicism or sarcasm, tolerate the harshness and difficulty of daily existence: 'fetishists are not dreamers lost in their private worlds, they are thoroughly 'realists,' able to accept the way things effectively are - since they have their fetish to which they can cling in order to cancel the full impact of reality.' However, if the fetish-object is taken away from the fetishist, this cynical facade of pragmatic realism disintegrates, plunging the subject into depression, despair, or even psychosis."
The marine is definitely a fetishist through stoicism. He tolerates a terribly difficult life by distancing himself from any feeling of dependency and just working and working and working. He is a 'realist' - the world is harsh and difficult and you can't count on anyone but yourself for anything. He's come to accept this world as it is. But that would be a devastating world to live in, so how does he tolerate it? With his fetish, which is work. He works like a madman. It takes up his time and gives him little in return, but as he clings to it, his work takes on purpose and the harsh world becomes a bearable world, one in which he can afford rent and food. Even as he comes home exhausted, he prepares himself for the next day's work because, as a worker, he can exist in the dog-eat-dog reality.
Now, imagine this proud man was diagnosed with cancer and he could no longer work 60-70 hours a week. According to Zizek's assessment, his fetish-object, which is intense work, would be taken away. His ideas about not wanting to rely on others for health insurance would no longer be held up triumphantly, but would be incredibly painful for him. He may not change his mind about it, but without his fetish, he would not be able to pretend that the world was bearable. His suffering would intensify, and his outlook would be depressing: "I can't afford to live in this world - I simply can't afford my medication." And perhaps his outlook would change with the removal of his fetish - perhaps he would no longer be accepting of the status quo: Johnston writes, "The implication is hence that if the relatively small salaries and various little techno-gadget toys of today's late-capitalist subjects were to be taken away from them, their pretense to being realistically accepting of the status quo would be dropped immediately." He would likely no longer see a justice in the dog-eat-dog reality.
Zizek is not recommending that we get rid of our fetishism. He maintains that fetishism is an important coping technique for us in the face of Ideology. But we need to maintain some self-criticism, and at times challenge the status quo. Especially in light of such a grim picture depicted by the marine, why not challenge that type of harsh reality? Why not face the tenuous structure of your lifestyle? Seriously, one bad injury or sickness and this man's world is shattered. It's completely reliant on the continuation of an insane workload. Will he be able to maintain those hours when he's 50 years old? And this really goes for all of us. How do we maintain sanity when we learn about sweatshops overseas or we hear about rain forests being chopped down to make space for growing sugarcane for biodiesel to run our cars? How do we keep our cool when we hear of oil leaks in the Gulf of Mexico when we know we buy food which travelled miles and miles and miles to get to our table? What fetish object in our life makes it bearable? And why has Occupy Wall Street taken so long to unearth? We knew millionaires weren't paying their fair share. What in our lives made it ok for their wealth to keep multiplying and multiplying at a disproportional rate to our own? How have we tolerated lobbying for all these years? Why did the breaking point take so long? I think the answer is clear: money.
For most of us, money is the ultimate fetish-object. Zizek argues just this. Consider, the Occupy Wall Street didn't happen when banks were bailed out because absurd unemployment rates were just getting started. Now people have not been working for a long time and their fetish-object, money, is looking more scarce. Driven to despair, the people are taking action. So long as we have money, and we can put that money towards investments that multiply it, life in late-Capitalism is pretty bearable. We can live with growing disparities between the rich and poor, we can live with industrialization, we can live with globalization. Granted, we maintain our cynical distance - we disapprove, we see ourselves as fighting the herd who would destroy this earth before giving up their gas-guzzling cars. But however cynical we are, so long as we have money, life is bearable. It appears that, if we are not to wait until a horrible crisis, revolution rests on psychoanalysis and self-criticism.
To the marine who is part of the 53%, your work ethic is admirable, but I sure hope we can do better than that.
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