Slavoj Zizek’s article "Joe Public v the volcano" that appeared in
the April 29 2010 New Statesman illustrates once again the perils
of being the shock jock of academic Marxism. One can imagine him
stroking his beard and saying to himself after writing such an
article: “Hah, that will get ‘em talking”. Yes, it might get
people talking but the goal is to raise their awareness, not just
get them talking.
I am afraid that Zizek gets sidetracked in these sorts of
intellectual dead ends because he, like many big-time “theorists”,
operates pretty much as a lone wolf. In the rarefied world of
plenary sessions and featured articles in the New Left Review, the
professional intellectual operates like a novelist or a composer.
They have to make a big impression and that means carving out some
turf that cannot be confused with some other second-rate talent.
Unfortunately, when it comes to Marxism, you really need to be
part of some kind of collective discussion or else you end up
veering off in odd directions. Of course, within that framework
you have to have the ability to think for yourself. Ironically,
the crisis of Marxism today is largely a function of people like
Zizek operating in their own hermetically sealed intellectual
space on one hand, and on the other hand “Marxist-Leninists”
functioning like the Borg in Star Trek. You need both the
collective framework and the freedom to speak your mind.
Zizek’s article was inspired by the volcanic eruption in Iceland:
We are living in an age when we are both able to change nature
and more at its mercy than ever –– as the Icelandic volcano has
proved.
Many of those who have a fear of flying are haunted by a
particular thought: that is, how many parts of such a complicated
machine as a modern plane have to function smoothly in order for
it to stay in the air? One small lever breaks somewhere, and the
plane may spiral downwards . . . When you start to think how many
things could go wrong, you cannot help but panic.
The people of Europe have experienced something similar in the
past few weeks. That a cloud from a minor volcanic eruption in
Iceland – a small disturbance in the complex mechanism of life on
earth – can bring to a standstill the air traffic over almost an
entire continent is a reminder of how humankind, for all its power
to transform nature, remains just another living species on the
planet.
Starting from a major event taking place in nature, Zizek spins
off into some questionable musings on ecology that by its very
definition involves human agency. His main problem is that he
lacks a class analysis. Note carefully in the following excerpt
how freely he uses the words “we” and “our” as in the following:
“our best hope of understanding those threats, and the means
through which we may find a way of coping with them”. Between
someone like myself and a shrimp swimming around in the Gulf of
Mexico on one hand and BP and the Obama administration on the
other, there’s not much “we” going on.
full:
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/zizek-as-shock-jock/
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