[2012] not less than nothing, but simply nothing

7/30/2019 [2012] Not Less Than Nothing, But Simply Nothing

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Not Less Than Nothing, But Simply Nothing

By Slavoj iek

Versobooks.com/blogs, 02 July 2012

If I am repelled by John Grays review of my two last books ('The Violent Visions ofSlavoj iek',New York Review of Books, July 12 2012), it is not because the review ishighly critical of my work, but because its arguments are based on such a crude misreadingof my position that, if I were to answer it in detail, I would have to spend way too muchtime just answering insinuations and setting straight the misunderstandings of myposition, not to mention direct false statements which is, for an author, one of the most

boring exercises imaginable. So I will limit myself to one paradigmatic example whichmixes theoretical dismissal with moral indignation; it concerns anti-Semitism and is worthquoting in detail:

iek says little regarding the nature of the form of life that might have come

into being had Germany been governed by a regime less reactive and powerlessthan he judges Hitlers to have been. He does make plain that there would be noroom in this new life for one particular form of human identity:

The fantasmatic status of anti-Semitism is clearly revealed by a statementattributed to Hitler: We have to kill the Jew within us. Hitlers statementsays more than it wants to say: against his intentions, it confirms that theGentiles need the anti-Semitic figure of the Jew in order to maintain theiridentity. It is thus not only that the Jew is within uswhat Hitler fatefullyforgot to add is that he, the anti-Semite, is also in the Jew. What does thisparadoxical entwinement mean for the destiny of anti-Semitism?

iek is explicit in censuring certain elements of the radical Left for theiruneasiness when it comes to unambiguously condemning anti-Semitism. But itis difficult to understand the claim that the identities of anti-Semites and Jewishpeople are in some way mutually reinforcingwhich is repeated, word for word,inLess Than Nothingexcept as suggesting that the only world in which anti-Semitism can cease to exist is one in which there are no longer any Jews.

What is going on here? The above-quoted passage fromLess Than Nothing immediatelycontinues with:

Here we can again locate the difference between Kantian transcendentalism andHegel: what they both see is, of course, that the anti-Semitic figure of the Jew isnot to be reified (to put it navely, it does not fit real Jews), but is anideological fantasy (projection), it is in my eye. What Hegel adds is that thesubject who fantasizes the Jew is itself in the picture, that its very existencehinges on the fantasy of the Jew as the little bit of the Real which sustains theconsistency of its identity: take away the anti-Semitic fantasy, and the subject

whose fantasy it is itself disintegrates. What matters is not the location of theSelf in objective reality, the impossible-real of what I am objectively, but how

I am located in my own fantasy, how my own fantasy sustains my being assubject.

Are these lines not perfectly clear? The mutual implication is not between the Nazis andthe Jews, but between the Nazis and their own anti-Semitic fantasy: "you take away the


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anti-Semitic fantasy, and the subject whose fantasy it is itself disintegrates."The point isnot that Jews and anti-Semites are somehow co-dependent, so that the only way to get ridof the Nazis is to get rid of the Jews, but that the identity of a Nazi depends on his anti-Semitic fantasy: the Nazi is in the Jew in the sense that his own identity is grounded inhis fantasy of the Jew. Grays insinuation that I somehow imply the need for theannihilation of the Jews is thus a ridiculously-monstrous obscenity which only serves the

base motifs of discrediting the opponent by ascribing him some kind of sympathy for themost terrifying crime of the XXth century.

So when Gray writes that iek says little regarding the nature of the form of life thatmight have come into being had Germany been governed by a regime less reactive andpowerless than he judges Hitlers to have been, he is simply not telling the truth: what Ipoint out is that such a form of life would precisely not have the need to look for ascapegoat like the Jews. Instead of killing millions of Jews, a regime less reactive andpowerless than he judges Hitlers to have been would, for example, transform socialrelations of production so that they would lose their antagonistic character. This is theviolence I am preaching, the violence in which no blood has to be shed. It is the utterlydestructive violence of Hitler, Stalin, and the Khmer Rouge, which is for me reactive andpowerless. It is in this simple sense that I consider Gandhi more violent that Hitler:

Instead of directly attacking the colonial state, Gandhi organized movements ofcivil disobedience, of boycotting British products, of creating social spaceoutside the scope of the colonial state. One should then say that, crazy as it maysound, Gandhi was more violent than Hitler. The characterization of Hitler

which would have him as a bad guy, responsible for the death of millions, butnonetheless a man with balls who pursued his ends with an iron will is not onlyethically repulsive, it is also simply wrong: no, Hitler did not have the ballsreally to change things. All his actions were fundamentally reactions: he acted sothat nothing would really change; he acted to prevent the Communist threat of a

real change. His targeting of the Jews was ultimately an act of displacement inwhich he avoided the real enemythe core of capitalist social relationsthemselves. Hitler staged a spectacle of Revolution so that the capitalist ordercould survive in contrast to Gandhi whose movement effectively endeavoredto interrupt the basic functioning of the British colonial state.

Instead of boring the reader with dozens of similar examples of Grays misreadings, let mejust mention that Gray concludes his review with a remark on the alleged isomorphismbetween contemporary capitalism and my thinking which

reproduces the compulsive, purposeless dynamism that he perceives in theoperations of capitalism. Achieving a deceptive substance by endlesslyreiterating an essentially empty vision, ieks worknicely illustrating theprinciples of paraconsistent logicamounts in the end to less than nothing.

Anything whatsoever can be proven with such superficial pseudo-Marxist homologiesthese homologies, together with Grays numerous tendentious distortions, are sadindications of the level of intellectual debate in todays media. It is Grays work which fitsperfectly our ideological late-capitalist universe: you ignore totally what the book you arereviewing is about, you renounce any attempt to somehow reconstruct its line ofargumentation; instead, you throw together vague text-book generalities, crude distortionsof the authors position, vague analogies, etc.and, in order to demonstrate your personal

engagement, you add to such bric-a-brac of pseudo-deep provocative one-liners the spiceof moral indignation (imagine, the author seems to advocate a new holocaust!). Truthdoesnt matter herewhat matters is the effect. This is what todays fast-food intellectual


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consumers crave for: simple catchy formulas mixed with moral indignation. It amuses youand makes you feel morally good. Grays review is not even less than nothing, it is simply a

worthless nothing.

N.B. In a recent review ofLess Than Nothing (Guardian, Saturday 30 June), JonathanRe reaches a new depth in moralistic insinuations:

[iek] never discusses poverty, inequality, war, finance, childcare, intolerance,crime, education, famine, nationalism, medicine, climate change, or theproduction of goods and services, yet he takes himself to be grappling with themost pressing social issues of our time. He is happy to leave the world to burn

while he plays his games of philosophical toy soldiers.

How can someone write this about an author who recently produced a whole series ofbooks dedicated to precisely these topics is beyond my comprehensioneven inLess ThanNothing, a book on Hegel, there is an extensive discussion of socio-political problems inthe books conclusion.

[2012] not less than nothing, but simply nothing

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