The Truth of Žižek?

Is this not precisely … The Truth of Žižek? Paul Bowman and Richard Stamp … a blurred contour, a stain, becomes a clear entity if we look at it from a certain ‘biased’ standpoint – and is this not one of the succinct formulas of ideology? (Žižek, Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?) Is this not the very logic of melancholic identification, in which the object is overpresent in its very unconditional and irretrievable loss? (Žižek, Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? ) Is this not the supreme proof of the emotional abstraction, of Hegel’s idea that emotions are abstract , an escape from the concrete socio-political network accessible only to thinking . (Žižek, Revolution at the Gates ) Is this not the most radical expression of Marx’s notion of the general intellect regulating all social life in a transparent way, of the post-political world in which ‘administration of people’ is supplanted by the ‘administration of things’? (Žižek, Revolution at the Gates ) And is not Alfred Hitchcock in such a position of exception with regard to this standard Hollywood narrative? Is he not the very embodiment of Hollywood ‘as such’ precisely insofar as he occupies the place of exception with regard to it? (Žižek, The Fright of Real Tears ) And, to go a step further, is the practice of fist-fucking not the exemplary case of what Deleuze called the ‘expansion of a concept’? (Žižek, Organs without Bodies ) 1 At the time of writing this introduction, in the never-quite-sultry first weeks of July 2006, British television has been broadcasting nightly bulletins promising a ‘pervert's guide to cinema’, presented by pervert-in-chief, Slavoj Žižek (2006a). The programmes’ presenter is billed as ‘philosopher and psychoanalyst’, professions that don't often appear in TV schedules – except perhaps in the same popular films that Žižek takes for his examples. Indeed, the three hour-long instalments of The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema appear to be a striking and timely historical conjunction between a particular form of intellectual celebrity and the niche market diversification of broadcast media. 1 How Žižek and we have arrived at this conjunction might provide the opening for any one of the contributors to this present volume of essays – not least for Žižek himself. Žižek first came to the notice of international intellectual and academic communities outside of his native Slovenia in the late 1980s, with his engagement with the post- Marxist political theory of Ernesto Laclau, who – reciprocally – wrote the preface to The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), Žižek’s first book in English. The ensuing critical debates with Laclau and Mouffe, and later also Judith Butler, drew Žižek into the forefront of critical and cultural theory, where he has remained, developing his unique position as instigator and mediator between various theoretical traditions, ever since. In some sense, this ‘success’ clearly relates to Žižek’s now-signature use of examples from popular culture, particularly the cinema, to illuminate and explicate the finer points of Lacanian theory and the speculative reflexivity of Hegelian ontology. This was developed most acutely in a trio of publications that introduced Žižek to the fields of cultural studies and film studies: Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan Through Popular Culture (1991); Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out (1991a); and the edited volume, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lacan (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock) (1992). He has not stopped, or even slowed down, since then. Indeed, since 1992, Žižek has published over twenty further authored and edited volumes, and there are currently (as always) many more in preparation. However, in the face of such prolific productivity, sustained scholarly reception of his work has actually been rather belated. The sole exceptions to this absence have been two volumes edited by Elizabeth and Edmond Wright: first, their themed collection of Žižek’s writings, The Žižek Reader (1999); and second, a Žižek-themed issue of 2 Paragraph (no.24 (2001)). Only in the last few years has Žižek’s growing international and multidisciplinary influence and public media profile been met with a rush of publications: Sarah Kay’s Žižek: A Critical Introduction (2003), Tony Myers’ Slavoj Žižek (2003), Ian Parker’s Slavoj Žižek: A Critical Introduction (2004), Slavoj Žižek & Glyn Daly’s Conversations with Žižek (2004), Matthew Sharpe’s Slavoj Žižek: A Little Piece of The Real (2004), and Rex Butler’s Slavoj Žižek – Live Theory (2005). Further introductory texts on Žižek are also ‘currently in preparation’. The most immediately striking fact about these books is that they have been preoccupied with introducing Žižek to a wider specialist and non-specialist audience. This is of course understandable, given the need to become acclimatised with Žižek’s often complex and elliptical explications of Lacan and Hegel. However, in the majority of cases, these ‘critical introductions’ have been rather more ‘introductory’ than ‘critical’. (It is perhaps significant that Kay, Daly and Butler all acknowledge the direct involvement of Žižek in their books’ production.) 2 Quite distinct from this, The Truth of Žižek is aimed at readers for whom these introductions, and Žižek’s own texts, have left them with the desire for a more challenging range of critical responses to his work. This is the key contribution of this book. Whereas already existing ‘introductory’ scholarship has in many cases been produced with some degree of ‘authorisation’ or even ‘correction’ by Žižek – as mentioned: Kay (2003), Žižek & Daly (2004), Butler (2005); even Parker (2004), with which Žižek seems content ‘to agree to differ’ – The Truth of Žižek offers a series of independent and thought-provoking assessments of Žižek’s work, which challenge and recast Žižekian scholarship, in order to develop it and move it further along. Of course, although this book was conceived to be as free as possible from such ‘authorisation’ or ‘correction’, it seemed not only fair but also potentially eventful to provide Žižek with a platform to respond directly to his critics. This right to respond seemed particularly appropriate given both the provocative nature of Žižek’s own work and the highly engaged critique of his work and its intellectual and political contexts undertaken in this present collection. For, the aim of this book is to make a series of interventions: to intervene by assessing, pressuring, redirecting, reorientating and developing not only Žižek’s work, but also the future of Žižek-affiliated or Žižek- informed theory and practice. This strikes us as 3 a particularly important and timely task because Žižek’s work has made such a dramatic contribution to the reinvention and revivification of key theoretical and political debates in many academic fields and cultural contexts today. The unmistakable influence of Žižek’s work has been and continues to be felt increasingly in the fields of media studies, film studies, political theory and cultural studies of all kinds, as well as directly and indirectly in both ‘Continental’ and ‘Analytical’ philosophy, as it is in anthropology, sociology and indeed in any of the wide array of fields that incorporate Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis and Marxist and post-Marxist political theory. Moreover, as the TV broadcast of his Pervert’s Guide to Cinema demonstrates, Žižek’s work now overflows the confines of specific disciplines and academic debates. Žižek has not remained confined to the circuits of academic publishing and colloquia, and has begun to establish himself as a globally identifiable public intellectual: from his regular appearances on BBC Radio 4 and many high profile public speaking engagements, newspaper articles, and beyond, to his current role as International Director of the Centre for Public Intellectuals at Birkbeck. He is perhaps in the process of becoming ‘the intellectual’s Public Intellectual’. Certainly, the first documentary film made about him (with the arresting title of Žižek! ), not only sold out at its premiere in San Francisco, but queues of people are regularly turned away at the door of all manner of invariably sold out Žižek events. Clearly, Žižek’s work has intervened into a very wide array of intellectual, cultural and political contexts. Yet it is remarkable that Žižek has achieved this far-reaching intervention by staunchly claiming the necessity of capital-p ‘Philosophy’ and ‘High Theory’, and by developing – in the era of supposed ‘dumbing down’ – an unashamedly and polemically theoretical approach to all subjects. Whether it is making sense of the reality TV phenomenon or discussing moral hypocrisy in debates about torture, the NATO bombing of Sarajevo or global terrorism, Iraq, re-interpreting Hitchcock, or identifying and diagnosing contemporary fantasies and phobias, Žižek is always involved in a bold, philosophically-charged retheorisation of concepts of subjectivity, politics, truth, authenticity and action. In the process, his work can be playful and provocative, polemical and aggressive, even knowingly belligerent – all at the same time . Consequently, the important question seems to be: what is the intellectual status of Žižek’s work? Or, indeed, ‘when the hurly 4 burly’s done’, what is the truth of Žižek? In posing this question, this book picks up a gauntlet thrown down by Žižek himself, in the name of a certain ‘truthfulness’ or ‘fidelity’. For, in a dedication to Joan Copjec at the start of Organs Without Bodies (2004a), Žižek pledges what could be characterised as a ‘hyper-Kantian’ mode of respect : namely, responding to another thinker with what he calls ‘the coldness and cruelty of a true friendship’. This was a role played in Kant’s own life by J. G. Hamann, whose own idea of friendship might be read as the obverse of Kant’s doctrine of virtue: ‘I’m not one of your listeners. Instead I’m your prosecutor who contradicts you.’ 3 The Truth of Žižek should be read as just such a paradoxical expression of friendly, respectful fidelity.

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