Slavoj Zizek has another confusing editorial in the NY Times, this one on a recent Chinese legislation regarding reincarnation. Zizek's perpetual critique is always provocative, but usually that's all it is. We more pragmatically minded may ask "but what, Slavoj, do you want?" To which he will likely respond "the very fact that you are asking that question shows that you are hopelessly embedded in the logic of Western pluralist capitalism." And so it goes.
But the article is still worth reading, and I think one paragraph in particular shows both the strength of SZ's criticism and its weakness:
“Culture” has commonly become the name for all those things we practice without really taking seriously. And this is why we dismiss fundamentalist believers as “barbarians” with a “medieval mindset”: they dare to take their beliefs seriously. Today, we seem to see the ultimate threat to culture as coming from those who live immediately in their culture, who lack the proper distance.
If "proper distance"=disbelief is one dialectical pole and fundamentalism as unadulterated belief is the other (the one Zizek seems to consistently defend, as long as it is within the proper Stalinist-Marxist framework), it strikes me that a synthesis is possible. Namely, the attitude that one takes one's beliefs so seriously that one is willing to question them. Every major religion, doctrine, or ideology has this crucial strain, often uncomfortably cohabiting with both the liberal pluralists and the fundamentalist dogmatists. The study of theology, for instance, always begins from a position of belief but is willing to put that belief into question so that one may attain a more complete, compelling, or authentic understanding. Slavoj may find that suspect, the slippery slope toward fast capitalism, but I believe it is the hard center worth pursuing.
Posted by pjaussen at October 11, 2007 10:03 AM