Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2004 21:52:58 -0800 (PST)
From: "J.M. Adams" <ringfingers-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: [postanarchism] Zizek: "Multiculturalism: the Cultural Logic of Multinational Capitalism" (Badiou Discussion)


I am posting this short statement of Zizek's because I
think it ties in well with the discussion of
Katsiaficas' essay on what is called "Islamic
fundamentalism" as well as the upcoming discussions of
Badiou's short book, "Ethics" - particularly
interesting was the rather 'Katsiafican' passage in
which he states that in multinational capitalism:

"any 'real' Other is instantly denounced for its
'fundamentalism', since the kernel of Otherness
resides in the regulation of its jouissance, i.e. the
'real Other' is by definition 'patriarchal',
'violent', never the Other of ethereal wisdom and
charming customs"

As I think we will see in the Badiou readings, this is
the stance taken there as well, I think all of these
approaches maybe a little closer than they first
appeared - while there is a rejection of liberal
multiculturalism, I do get the sense that radical
multiculturalism is in fact embraced by such
arguments.

***

Slavoj Zizek
Multiculturalism, or, the Cultural Logic of
Multinational Capitalism

It is as if we are witnessing today the ultimate
confirmation of Freud's thesis, from Civilization and
its Discontents, on how, after every assertion of
Eros, Thanatos reasserts itself with a vengeance. At
the very moment when, according to the predominant
liberal ideology, we are finally leaving behind the
"immature" political passions (the regime of the
"political": class struggle and other "out-dated"
divisive antagonisms) for the post-ideological
"mature" pragmatic universe of rational administration
and negotiated consensus, for the universe, free of
utopian impulses, in which the dispassionate
administration of social affairs goes hand in hand
with the aestheticized hedonism (the pluralism of
"ways of life"), - at this very moment, the foreclosed
political is celebrating a triumphant comeback in its
most archaic form of pure, undistilled racist hatred
of the Other which renders the rational tolerant
attitude utterly impotent. In this precise sense, the
contemporary "postmodern" racism is the symptom of the
multiculturalist late capitalism, bringing to the
light the inherent contradiction of the
liberal-democratic ideological project. Liberal
"tolerance" condones the folklorist Other deprived of
its substance (like the multitude of "ethnic cuisines"
in a contemporary megalopolis) - any "real" Other is
instantly denounced for its "fundamentalism", since
the kernel of Otherness resides in the regulation of
its jouissance, i.e. the "real Other" is by definition
"patriarchal", "violent", never the Other of ethereal
wisdom and charming customs. One is tempted to
reactualize here the old Marcusean notion of
"repressive tolerance", reconceiving it as the
tolerance of the Other in its aseptized, benign form,
which forecloses the dimension of the Real of the
Other's jouissance.



===="Being at one is god-like and good, but human, too human, the 
        mania
     Which insists there is only the One, one country, one truth and
         one way."

- Friedrich Hölderlin, 1799

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