Zizek: First as Tragedy, Then as Farce Part IV: On Revolution

   How might Zizek’s Communist hypothesis become more than a hypothesis? How does a real political revolution happen in a post-industrial capitalist state? Zizek is not extremely optimistic about our current state of affairs, but he does offer a few guidelines and examples. Drawing on Kant’s writings about the French revolution, Zizek points out Kant's notion of enthusiasm, which extends throughout the socio-political landscape in a type of wave effect. He informs us that “Kant interpreted the French revolution as [a] sign, which pointed towards the possibility of freedom: the hitherto unthinkable happened, a whole people had fearlessly asserted its freedom and equality . . . even more important than the often bloody reality of the events in the streets of Paris was the enthusiasm those events gave rise to in the eyes of sympathetic observers all around Europe.” Zizek seeks out this enthusiasm in today’s world, looking to the election of Barrack Obama, where he suggests, “[I]n light of the Kantian conception of enthusiasm . . . Obama’s victory should be viewed not simply as another shift in the eternal parliamentary struggle for a majority, with all its pragmatic calculations and manipulations. It is a sign of something more.”

Zizek: First as Tragedy, Then as Farce Part III: The Communist Hypothesis!

So where were we? Oh yeah, capitalism bankrupt, injustice rampant, democracy gridlocked. Where to turn? Communism! This would be where you stop reading if you’re anything like a lot of people. But you’re not! And it’s worth hearing Zizek out on this point, because his goal is not to resurrect the old hammer and sickle, but to distill the essence of Communism, and use the tools this perspective offers us to evaluate our present day crises and opportunities. In his own words he “endeavors to locate aspects of our situation which open up the space for new forms of communist praxis.” He argues that the question is not: “are Hegel and Marx still relevant to us? But rather, ‘what our contemporary situation might be in their eyes, how our epoch would appear to their thought.” And refreshingly, Zizek makes absolutely no claims to be “objective” or some sort of neutral observer. Instead, he tells us that this book offers, “not a neutral analysis but an engaged and extremely ‘partial’ one—for truth is partial, accessible only when one takes sides, and is no less universal for this reason.”