I’ve just thoroughly read and re-read a piece by Slavoj Zizek in The Cabinet entitled “From Western Marxism to Western Buddhism“. Zizek is on my “must read” list for various reasons, so this was a good start, and I quoted briefly from this particuar piece in responding to Chris Locke’s reference to it in his blog header. Not always clear when Chris is piling on the irony, and dare I say sarcasm, exactly how many levels of irony you are dealing with, but I read Chris as approving of the sentiments Zizek expresses here. If that is the case, then I’m agreeing with both.
Zizek is pointing out the falacy, the fetish, in one group holding a view of another somehow distinctly “other” remote, distant, lost in time in possessing some superior wisdom, resulting in a kind of jealousy, both a wish for it and a negative reaction against it. Both equally irrational – a fetish. Zizek is a man after my own heart in his liberal use of “scare quotes” – “rational” being one of the words frequently couched that way.
Zizek is referring to the “West vs East” fetish in particular, and uses Tibet / Lhasa as a specific object illustration of this fetishism. But he also reminds us that this is as old as the Greeks revering the Egyptians, the Romans the Greeks, the classicisits the Romans & Greeks, the Westerners the Eastern, and so on. “Twas ever thus” I must have said a million times, and it’s been said for over 4000 years itself. Zizek’s actual target is the debate bewteen moral majority fundamentalists and tolerant multicuturalists. Â He has two main points.
One is that the fetish and its symptoms are so close as to be almost interchangable, yet secondly the whole of both is concerned principally with the focus on otherness. This paradox is real and worth serious consideration. A pox on both their houses he says …
The conclusion to be drawn from this is a simple and radical one: Moral Majority fundamentalists and tolerant multiculturalists are two sides of the same coin: they both share a fascination with the Other. In the Moral Majority, this fascination displays the envious hatred of the Other’s excessive jouissance, while the multiculturalist tolerance of the Other’s Otherness is also more twisted than it may appear—it is sustained by a secret desire for the Other to remain “other,” not to become too much like us. In contrast to both these positions, the only truly tolerant attitude towards the Other is that of the authentic radical fundamentalist.
OK so again, the conclusion is that dichotomous choice is no choice, throwing out babies with the bathwater is an acknowledgement of the reality of babies. Rejecting eastern wisdom is an acknowledgement of the reality of eastern wisdom for example. Atheism is an acknowledgement of the reality of theism, Denial of global warming is an acknowledgement of global wearming as an issue, etc … pick your favourite world-scale (dichotomous) debate.
The fact that either side is making a living “marketing” its side of any such debate is a hypochrisy we all share so long as standing for something is seen as taking sides.
[Aside, interesting reading Gibbon, as I still am, is seeing that the persecution of Christians and their one supreme god was a primary motivator for their success.]
Question is what is “authentic radical fundamentalism” ?
(Sounds like neo-pragmatic / radical-empiricism maybe ?)
Need to read more Zizek. Marketing works 😉