File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2003/lyotard.0301, message 26


Date: Mon, 06 Jan 2003 13:33:28 -0500
From: shawn wilbur <swilbur-AT-wcnet.org>
Subject: Re: Postmodern Religion


"steve.devos" wrote:

> there is no suthentic marx that can be
> approached directly, bypassing Lenin..."  (Zizek The fragile absolute.)

He makes this claim, complete with the reference to Paul, in an essay on
Lenin published in "Rethinking Marxism" a year or so back. The rationale
is interesting. Zizek claims that Marx's thought is "universalized" by its
application by Lenin, an outsider (not a member of Marx's inner circle.)
But there isn't much support for the claim. Lenin is presented as one who
acts, to be contrasted with those who can not or will not act, and as one
who acts out a "politics of Truth," supposedly "without compromise."
Zizek is quick to point out that the fact that Lenin believes he knows
"what is to be done" leads to actions (firing squads are mentioned) that
we might quite rightly condemn. Lenin is too sure he knows what the
results of any dissent are likely to be. It is quite simply not a matter of
"truth" that the Mensheviks (or Makhnovists, or Kronstadt sailors) must
be suppressed. And given that it is hard for me to tell exactly what is not
being compromised.

I'm left with a couple of questions. How is the "politics of truth" of the
Bolsheviks different from the "moral clarity" of the Bush administration?
How is "universalization" achieved in Lenin's appropriation of Marx, and
how is this different from, say, Marx's various appropriations? Or from
other, competing appropriations of Marx's thought? Is the charge of an
appeal to "authenticity" really best aimed at, say, Derrida, rather than,
for
example, the writers for The Monthly Review or some other orthodox
Marxist group? Is Zizek perhaps just displacing an appeal to something
very much like "authenticity" with his "universalizing" Lenin?

I'm also left with the conviction that for various reasons - perhaps most
of which boil down to a disagreement about the "economy of the letter"
and the Derrida-Lacan debate - Zizek seems to misunderstand completely
the role of "inheritance" and "responsibility" in the writings of Derrida
and other poststructuralists. In the Derridean claim that one must choose
to, and how to, "inherit" the thought of Marx (etc), he leaves little or no
room for the appeal to "authenticity."

-shawn


   

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