Anti-Capitalist Objections to the Postcolonial

7/28/2019 Anti-Capitalist Objections to the Postcolonial

1/21

1

ariel: a review of international english literature

ISSN 0004-1327 Vol. 43 No. 1 Pages 121 Copyright 2012

Anti-Capitalist Objections to thePostcolonial: Some ConciliatoryRemarks on iek and Context

Ian Almond

Te ambiguous place o the postcolonial in any critique o contempo-rary global capital is a book-length topic in itsel, and an attempt toclariy some o its parameters risks a number o pitalls. Tere is, frsto all, the vagueness o the term postcolonial, not so much a theory asa multiply-centred feld rom which dierent structures o analysis haveemerged. Disagreement in the feld over central issues such as agency,national identity, and the role o capital in cultural inuence, whichstem rom the tension between poststructuralism and Marxism, thetwo major inuences on postcolonial thought, has internally racturedthe discipline in a number o interesting ways.1 A second danger liesin the specifc response to Marxist/post-Marxist criticisms o the post-colonialnamely, the risk o a possible complicity in late capitalist/neo-imperialist ideology through such gestures as an uncritical re-armationo the value o dierence, an ontological sense o charity towards thesemantic sel-determination o other cultures that bully other nations,

or, most pertinent to Slavoj ieks case, a demand or the ethical whichwould wholly ignore the proximity to sel-violence and prohibition aphrase such as the ethical has or a Freudian/Lacanian vocabulary.2 Inother words, a careul deense o certain postcolonial gestures in the aceo charges o complicity with structures o oppressionthe postcolonialas a lubricant o late capitalism or a pressure valve used to prevent thewhole system rom explodingmust avoid appealing to the very con-

cepts so central to its alleged collusion.o some degree, this deense will ail at the outset, or one o the

defnitions presupposed in this essay will be that o the postcolonialas an historically global analysis o modern capitalism that gives equalweight to the semantic, economic, psychological, and military op-


2/21

2

Ian A lmond

pression o subjects. Te notion o the postcolonial as an historicallyinected critique o hegemony will be unpalatable to iek in partbecause its siding with the victim o European/European settler im-perialism involves a de-traumatizing prettifcation o the Other (InDefence165), and mainly because, or iek, such side-taking missesthe point o examining the colonizer/colonized conict. His objectiveis not simply to take one side or the other but rather to see how theirasymmetrical relationship to one another reveals an antagonism withintheir own identities.

Te aim o this essay, thereore, is not to propose some ridiculoussynonymy between the postcolonial and iekan critiques o capital-ism but rather to suggest how both discourses might useully interruptone another.3 I will attempt this in three sections: an examination o aseries o postcolonial moments in ieks work; a consideration o someo ieks objections to the benign universe o postcolonial studies(iek, A Plea 548); and a reection on ieks use and abuse o his-

tory, as well as a proposal or where a more nuanced reading o the post-colonial canon may be o use to him.

I. ieks Postcolonial Moments: Superfcial Resemblances?I we were to pretend that iek is a postcolonial theorist and then goon to fnd moments in his vast oeuvrewhere this claim might be cor-roborated, where would we look? A number o possible locations stand

out, but the frst is the nature o ieks exegesis itsel. How analogous toieks Lacanian habits o interpretation is the postcolonial strategy oteasing out marginal reerences to the Orient in Western canonical textsin order to relocate them to the centre as the tacit ground o the work?iek oten discovers signifcance in supposedly unimportant scenesin flms or texts. How closely does his hermeneutical re-orientation othese works co-ordinates mirror, say, Edward Saids re-designation o

an Austen novels central signifcance in a side reerence to a Caribbeanslave plantation? (Said 59)

Te iekan diagnosis o what he oten reers to as the hole in theocial narrative superfcially resembles the postcolonialists identifca-tion o hegemonic gaps where the colonizers narrative encounters mo-


3/21

3

Ant i -C ap i t a l i s t Ob j e c t i o ns t o th e Po s t co lon i a l

ments o unintelligibility that only the subalterns narrative can makeintelligible (iek, Te Counterbook 149). As iek writes:

Many peace-loving Israelis coness to their perplexity: they justwant peace and a shared lie with Palestinians; they are ready tomake concessions, but why do Palestinians hate them so much,why the brutal suicide bombings that kill innocent wives andchildren? Te thing to do here is o course to supplement thisstory with its counter-story, the story o what it means to be a

Palestinian in the occupied territories, subjected to hundredso regulations in the bureaucratic microphysics o power. (TeCounterbook 149)

Te disagreement between Gayatri Spivak and the rest o the SubalternStudies group over the ontological status o the subalterns unearthednarrative (repressed reality or alternative fction?4) is mirrored in ieksimagined responses to the Israeli narrative, which he views not as a

postmodern dispersal into a multitude o local narratives but a re-doubling in a hidden narrative (iek, Te Counterbook 148). Onesignifcant dierence between these two versions o unearthing lies inwhat happens in their atermath: or iek, the Israeli exclusion o thePalestinian Real is precisely the lack through which the identity o theIsraelis is constituted.5 In at least some versions o the postcolonial, thecounter-story is articulated in order to enrich and diversiy the ocial

narrative rather than orce it to traumatically ace the antagonisms o itsown ontologically split subject. For iek, then, postcolonial interpreta-tion merits the same disdainul reaction as a deconstructive approach,which he views as an incomplete analysis, an exegesis which is able tolocate the exotic anamorphotic blot in the Western canonical text and,looking awry, understand it to be the hidden, non-Western counter-story in the narrative, but which cannot develop this recognition o the

marginal into a proounder understanding o the structures identity asa whole.6

A second, less philosophically complex way in which iek superf-cially displays all the symptoms o a post colonial theorist is a certainTird World empathy in his approach that is attributable not merely


4/21

4

Ian A lmond

to a Marxist distrust o G-8 capitalism but also perhaps to his senseo a Slovenian/Balkan invisibility in History. iek rebukes imothyGarton Ash or not including at least one name rom the Big Sevensomebody, say, like Kissinger in his ranking o the worlds worst warcriminals (Welcome to the Desert47); likewise, iek is wonderully elo-quent in his criticism o Fortress Europe, as the enorced borders o theEuropean Union have come to be called, and o the Italian governmentwhich wants to imprison a group o unisian fsherman or rescuingorty-our Algerian immigrants rom drowning at sea (First As Tragedy

47). I iek shares anything with the postcolonial, it is an unwillingnessto accept either the historiographical hegemony o First World power(i.e., who the bad guys are) or the arbitrary and racist parameters otheir jurisdiction (the First World ability to illegalize on a whim).

Somewhat less requently, iek sees the imposition o capital-ist democratic values on non-Western countries as a orm o culturalimperialism, a term which creates some tension with his insistence

expressed elsewhereor Westerners not to be ashamed o the eman-cipatory heritage let behind in postcolonial countries (First As Tragedy55, 117). His awareness o how contemporary eminists like CatherineMackinnon are always ready to legitimize U. S. Army interventionswith eminist concerns is not necessarily postcolonial in itsel (iek,Welcome to the Desert 67)one hundred and fty years earlier, KarlMarx was already discerning similar strategies in pan-slavic propa-

ganda about the Ottomans (Marx Aveling 20)but it does resemblethe analysis o white men saving brown women rom brown menwhich Spivak presents (A Critique of Postcolonial Reason 287), in thatboth Spivak and iek see human rights issues as coarse excuses orimperialist intervention. Perhaps a more postcolonial aspect o ieksIdeologiekritikemerges in his criticism o Bhutans recently released hap-piness index, which has been assessed according to an imported list o

United Nations criteria such as psychological well-being and health(iek, First As Tragedy55), even i his criticism targets late capitalismshegemonic exportation o its own notions o happiness rather than anyobliteration o dierent kinds o knowledge, new epistemologies, romother cultures (Young 15).


5/21

5


Finally, iek partially replicates the standard postcolonial observa-tion o how the West projects the products o its own repression ontoa non-Western, requently Muslim Other: Every eature attributed tothe [Islamic] Other is already present at the heart o the USA (Welcometo the Desert 43). In Welcome to the Desert of the Real, normal out-bursts o American patriotism and right-wing Christian undamental-ists are seen by iek as American versions o Jihadism and the aliban;

Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertsons condemnation o liberal America isthe same as the one rom the Muslim Other (Welcome to the Desert

44). Both iek and the postcolonial theorist share an awareness o theprojected constructedness o a Muslim Other; they seem to part ways,however, in their subsequent development o the idea. Following MichelFoucault, a thinker like Said attends not to whether the projection istrue or alse but to what practices and discourses the Othering enablesand legitimizes. iek, although equally uninterested in questioning thetruthulness o such images, instead concentrates on how such Muslim

Othering leads once more to the ontological split within each subject,and how clash-o-civilizations clichs illustrate the idea that the trueclash is the clash within each civilization (Welcome to the Desert44). Oparticular signifcance is how a common Lacanian/Foucauldian disbe-lie in extra-discursive objective reality results in the same displacemento attention, albeit in undamentally dierent directions: reections onmechanisms o societal power or the postcolonialist and insights into

the ontology o the subject or iek.

II. ieks Objections to the PostcolonialIn his attack on iek, Jeremy Gilbert rightly asserts that iek makespractically no reerence to any named theorist or book in his dispar-aging treatment o the postcolonial, a term which seems to work oriek as a broad lumping together o Levinasian otherness, multicul-

turalism, and cultural studies-style depoliticised analysis, reiterated inan international ramework (Gilbert 66). Less convincing is Gilbertsargument that none o the key fgures in the ormation o [post colonialstudies][,] . . . Said, Spivak, Bhabha[,] . . . could be accused o doing[what iek says they do] namely, proering individualist liberalism


6/21

6

Ian A lmond

or radical political positions (6667). Te wonderully ree-oatinghybridity o Homi K. Bhabha (which Aijaz Ahmad amously views ascapitalist alienation re-packaged [18]), the hostility o both Said andSpivak to communism (and, indeed, the latters association o socialismwith imperialism7), not to mention the redoubtable manner in which allthree theorists have become canonized fgures within academic institu-tions over a period coinciding with the rise o neo-liberalism, might wellprovide Gilbert with a tenable argument or the existence o a capital-riendly postcolonialism.

iek maintains three objections to the postcolonial. Te frst con-cerns an alleged postcolonial reduction o material and economic prob-lems to issues o otherness and tolerance, a perceived psychologising oreal political problems which ultimately distracts rom more concrete,less palatable explanations o oppression:

Te problem o postcolonialism is undoubtedly crucial; how-

ever, postcolonial studies tends to translate it into the multicul-turalist problematic o the colonized minorities right to narratetheir victimizing experience, o the power mechanisms that re-press otherness, so that, at the end o the day, we learn that theroot o postcolonial exploitation is our intolerance toward theOther and, urthermore, that this intolerance itsel is rooted inour intolerance toward the Stranger in Ourselves, in our in-

ability to conront what we repressed in and o ourselves. Tepolitico-economic struggle is thus imperceptibly transormedinto a pseudopsychoanalytic drama o the subject unable toconront its inner traumas. (iek, A Plea 54546)

ieks charge contains a great deal o truth. It is probably a redundantgesture to chide him or an ignorance o the bitter amily quarrels withinpostcolonial theory over the years, which could almost merit its division

into two schools o thought: one capital-riendly, the other decidedlyhostile. Bringing Levinasian examinations o otherness to a situationsuch as the Israeli-Palestine conict or the L.A. riots o 1993 certainlyruns the risk o de-politicization, i de-politicization means the non-con-sideration o any material or economic actors (e.g., military superiority,


7/21

7


levels o unemployment) which might implicate democratic capitalismas a cause o these conicts. Tus ieks 2002 argument in avour o aproper dose o economic reductionism in considering Islams relationswith the West is a valid response to what he perceives as the post colonialoveremphasis on the psychoanalytical/metaphysical ramework o the

Wests discourses on the Islamic Other (Welcome to the Desert44). Tatiek adopts positions in later texts (such as On Violence) that seriouslycompromise this stance will be examined in a moment. More immedi-ately, the question arises o how iek, as a Lacanian political theorist,

is able to evaluate the perceived postcolonial shit in emphasis rom areal politico-economic struggle into a pseudopsychoanalytic drama.ieks commitment to a Lacanian perception o reality as always over-determined by the symbolic texture within which it appears (Butler,Laclau, and iek 220) is a central problem in his evaluation. ieksbelie that our knowing o reality is embedded in reality itsel (iek,e Parallax View 28) problematizes his condemnation o the post-

colonial or privileging one strand o the symbolic texture over another.I our perception o politico-economic circumstances is every bit asembedded in the symbolic abric o reality as pseudopsychoanalyti-cal explanations, then why is discussing nineteenth-century Europeanimages o the tribal any more misleading than reporting the activities omining corporations in West Bengal?

One response to this issue might lie in the iekan/Lacanian tenet

that, even i the Real cannot be represented (precisely because it is thatwhich resists representation), its contours may be intuited by its eectsor the resistant symbolization generated by its traumatic imminence.Tis aintly apophatic strategy o knowing something through its e-ectso grasping what Lacan called those points o impasse . . . whichshow the Real yielding to the symbolic (Stavrakakis 288)enables usto encircle the Real, to use Stavrakakis phrase (288). In other words,

a curiously empirical notion o distance justifes the privileging o eco-nomic circumstances over cultural explanations as being somehownearer the truth o the Real.8 Tis introduction o a negative intuitionmay help address some epistemological questions concerning the at-tempt to speak about the Lacanian Real, but it still does not justiy why,


8/21

8

Ian A lmond

or iek, postcolonial attempts to explain phenomena should be takenless seriously than politico-economic approaches. Te most obviousway o answering this concern is to see the iekan Real as being, atleast in certain moments, close to the movement o capital; iek, inhis dialogue with Judith Butler and Ernesto Laclau, comes close to sucha position himsel: insoar as we conceive o the politico-ideologicalresignifcation in the terms o the struggle or hegemony, todays Realwhich sets a limit to resignifcation is Capital (Contingency 223). Ithe Real is capital, then ieks preerence or economic analysis and

condemnation o the postcolonials airy-airy pseudopsychoanalyzingbecomes clearer, i somewhat more conventional.

Complicatedly, however, iek does not always analyse phenomena inthis way: in his interpretation o the Paris riots, or example, he seems toreverse his own objection and, eschewing socio-economic explanationso the riots, opts or an answer superfcially closer to pseudopsycho-analysis than anything else:

Te Paris outbursts were thus not rooted in any kind o con-crete socio-economic protest, still less in an assertion o Islamicundamentalism. . . . Te riots were simply a direct eort togain visibility. . . .

Te conservatives emphasise the clash o civilizations and,predictably, law and order. . . . Meanwhile letist liberals, no

less predictably, stick to their mantra about neglected socialprogrammes and integration eorts, which have deprived theyounger generation o any clear economic and social prospects:violent outbursts are their only way to articulate their dissatis-action. (On Violence66, 68)

Borrowing a term rom Roman Jakobson, iek argues that letist analy-ses o the riots as rooted in concrete socio-economic protest ail to

understand the phatic unction o the protests (67), a meaninglessuse o language to ascertain the useulness o a communicative code orchannelin the case o the burning cars in Clichy-sous-bois, an eortto gain visibility. Hence, it is only psychoanalysis that can disclose theull contours o the shattering impact o modernitythat is, capitalism


9/21

9


combined with the hegemony o scientifc discourseon the way ouridentity is grounded in symbolic identifcations (On Violence70). o alarge degree, this is not a contradiction. Te psychoanalysis iek has inmind, which discerns how the late capitalist subject colludes in ideologythrough the symbolic identifcation o antasy, is hardly synonymouswith the postcolonial pseudopsychoanalysis he dismisses as distract-ing. And yet his pushing aside o letist socio-economic explanations,his reusal to see any political purpose in the Paris riots (there certainlywas some, however minimal9), and his turn to a Czech linguist to ex-

plain the real meaning o the riots, cast his views o postcolonial de-politicisation in a somewhat ironic light.

ieks second objection to the postcolonial concerns respect or theOther which, ultimately, leads to a de-traumatization or ethical pretti-fcation o the Other (In Defence165). iek oregrounds those decon-structive/Levinasian elements in postcolonial theory which insist upona respect or a oreigners alterity, and he re-describes them as a vocabu-

lary o naivet, a de-caeination o the Other, precisely because such aview overlooks the neighbour as the bearer o a monstrous Otherness(On Violence 49; Parallax 113). In other words, the postcolonial ob-

jection to the demonization o the Other ails to glimpseor doesnot wish to acewhat is radically inhuman not simply in the Otherbut in us all. According to iek, this multicultural/liberal temerity inthe ace o the Real allows it to be easily co-opted by the democratic

capitalist symbolic order, a collusion (this postcolonial deifcation oOtherness) that ensures a thorough de-radicalisation o the political,emphasizes peaceul capitalist multicultural harmony instead o radi-cal anti-colonial justice, and signals an unwillingness to contemplatethe truly monstrous in the Other that will always thwart projects oradical action. In one o the ew moments where iek demonstrates anawareness o postcolonialisms internal tensions, he cites Frantz Fanons

well-known armation o violent action as provoking uneasiness [in]radical post-colonialist Aro-American studies (iek, Ticklish Subject244). For iek, the postcolonial lubricates late capitalism not merelythrough its reduction o political/economic conicts to pseudopsycho-analysis, but also in its avoidance o the Real in the Otherultimately,


10/21

10

Ian A lmond

an avoidance o Lacans call to take on, in all its aspects, the impossibletask o symbolizing the Real.

Te main problem with ieks insistence on recognizing the mon-strous in the Other is that such a gesture requires the same evapora-tion o politico-economic circumstances that iek deplores as culturalstudies chic (e Universal Exception 239). I bringing Levinasian/post-colonial naivet to conicts in Palestine and the Congo depoliticizes suchstruggles by overlooking their material rameworks and simply concen-trating on the Stranger in Ourselves, does not an equal acknowledge-

ment o the monstrous in both Israeli and Palestinian, police ocerand immigrant, colonizer and colonized necessarily involve a completede-contextualization o conicts between the equally monstrous? In sit-uations where the Other is already demonizedsuch as the Muslim orthe Mexican/Latinoa call to recognize the monstrous Other not onlyappears redundant but, more importantly, ironically overlooks imbal-ances o power or income in order to make a psychoanalytical/ontologi-

cal point about the Monster in Ourselves.Tis ontologizing evisceration o circumstance becomes more wor-

rying when we see how oten examples o ieks objections to multi-cultural tolerance lead to whollysequiturassociations o Muslims withNazis, a standard neo-conservative rerain:

[A]s a partisan o Middle East dialogue puts it: An enemy is

someone whose story you have not yet heard. . . . Tere is,however, a clear limit to this procedure: can one imagine invit-ing a brutal Nazi thug to tell us his story? Is one then also readyto arm that Hitler was an enemy only because his story hadnot been heard? (iek, First As Tragedy39)

iek exhibits an understandable anger toward glib liberal platitudesand the accompanying liberal belie that idealization is the only response

to demonization, yet it runs into trouble when a Palestinian narrative isimplicitly placed alongside Hitlers. A divorce rom reality takes place asthe asylum-seekers narrative or deported Algerians testimonial is seenas susceptible to the same degree o symbolic, sel-victimizing fction asGoebbels or Rosenbergs. ieks notion o the ethical as the determina-


11/21

11


tion to ully discern the Real in even the most uncomortable symboli-zations, such as that o an immigrants narrative, results in a levelling othe politico-economic distinctions he justifably discerns in post colonialpseudopsychoanalysis.

Such constant linking together o Muslims with Nazis sits uneasilynext to ieks wholly valid objection to the way liberals are alwaysready to support the revolt o the poor and the dispossessed, so long asit is done with good manners (iek, In Defense177).10 iek proposesthat we should be able to acknowledge the violent assertiveness o op-

pressed peoples without demonizing them, a gesture Emmanuel Levinashimsel, the poet o otherness (In Defense177), was unable to perormwhen he dismissed Maos uprising as the yellow peril (In Defense177).In a curious moment o anti-Eurocentrism, iek takes both MartinHeidegger and Levinas to task or their dismissive attitude towards the

Asiatic threat to the West (177). An observer might ask the ollowing:i iek objects to the prettifcation o the Other and wants us to ace

the monstrous in our neighbour, what is so wrong with Levinas label-ling o the Maoist masses as a peril? Te answer lies not so much in themotivation o the remarkthe peril in Levinas Maoist Other stemsrom their sel-empowering threat to his bourgeois Western world viewrather than a proounder evaluation o the Real immanent within all oour symbolic identitiesas in Levinas inability to wholly welcome theotherness o Maos masses unconditionally. Levinas remark, or iek,

reveals the precise limits late capitalist versions o otherness encounterwhen met with an exotic Other who wants to radically change the waywe live.

Te limit-encounter in Levinasian/Derridean otherness, in whichthe toute autre suddenly becomes a peril when it acquires, say, thePalestinian/Maoist dimensions o the Real (as Levinas own inamousposition on the massacres o Sabra and Shatila illustrates [Hand 292])

acilitates two observations. First, Levinas comment exemplifes how anomission o the Lacanian Real reveals both deconstruction and histori-cism to be awediekan historicity, according to a defnition oeredin one interview, being historicism plus the unhistorical kernel o theReal (Vighi and Feldner 18). However, i ieks notion o historicity


12/21

12

Ian A lmond

proper involves an inclusion o the Real as the crucial epistemologicalstumbling block whose (non)presence orever provokes symbolization,is there room in ieks highly critical attitude towards deconstructiveotherness or an inclusion o the Real which would, perhaps, providea version o Levinasian alterity (and implicitly, a post colonial attitudetowards dierence) more to his liking? In other words: can we imaginea postcolonial attitude towards the Other that iek might endorse?

I we recall ieks notion o the only truly ethical stance being toassume ully the impossible task o symbolizing the Real (Metastases

199200), then we may fnd similar veins o ontological authenticityin deconstructive/postcolonial thoughts on the Other. Certainly, theethical in our attitude towards the Other begins, or Jacques Derrida,with an acknowledgement o the absolute irreducibility o the other-ness o the other (qtd. in Midgely 13).11 Tis notion shares commonepistemological ground with iek insoar as it demands a delineationo the contours o unknowability o the Real. A critic may say: yes,

the epistemological ailure is the same, but the concept o the ethicalis completely dierent. For iek, it springs out o a determination todwell as symbolically close to the traumatic Real as possible, whereas orDerrida, it derives rom a desire to avoid inicting violence upon theOther. However, this objection would not be wholly accurate in its eval-uation o how such vocabularies o otherness really talk about the Other.Far rom promoting a prettifcation or decaeination, Derrida in-

sists on resisting the desire to romanticise or idealise the Other, andremaining absolutely empty towards the toute autreeven when acedwith the possibility o its being radically evil (qtd. in Midgely 15).One could cite a similar number o postcolonial moments in whichthe postcolonial theorist ully takes on the impossible task o delin-eating the real dimensions o the tribal/indigenous/reugee: that theydeecate, hate, lie to one another, or menstruate. One o the most wide-

spread themes in postcolonial eminist criticism is the debunking o theoppressed-woman-in-chador moti and a very Lacanian insistence onthe corporality and irreducible desire o the Tird World Woman.12ieks requent grouping o postcolonialism with political correctnessoverlooks what drives the postcolonial critique o Western-centered dis-


13/21

13


course: a desire to restore, as ully as possible, the dimensions o the Realto both sympathetic and hostile versions o the non-Western Other, a re-introduction o ontological complexity to idealisations/demonizationswhich, whilst not synonymous with ieks own notion o an ethicalstance, certainly come much closer than he is willing to admit.

III. iek and Historyieks third objection to the postcolonial is that, through notions o hy-bridity and alternative modernities, the postcolonial enables capitalism

to unction under the guise o a tolerant, multiply-centred, poly-acetedideological network and masks capitalisms true nature and essential an-tagonism. o some extent, this allegation o complicity shares the sameground as his objections to identity politics; he argues that debates con-cerning gender, race, and religion acilitate the silent suspension o classanalysis (Contingency97) insoar as they render invisible the rameworko capital against which such identity debates take place, making trans-

parent the ideology that any mention o class would render traumati-cally opaque.

Tus, the postcolonial uses a vocabulary which undamentally avoidsantagonismnot merely class antagonism (preerring to oreground therights o this or that ethnic or regional group against a tacit backdropo capital) but the much more undamental ontological antagonism, thelack which enables the feld o dierences to emerge in the frst place.

Accompanying this argument is ieks conviction that a deence o al-ternative modernities will ultimately deend practices that come closeto a pagan ascism:

Was not the basic idea o ascism that o a modernity whichprovides an alternative to the standard Anglo-Saxon liberalcapitalist one o saving the core o capitalist modernity by cast-

ing away its contingent Jewish-individualist-profteering dis-tinction? (Parallax34)

ieks observation springs rom a passage by Jameson (which iekquotes at length) in which Jameson sees the recently ashionable theo-ries o alternate modernities as a late capitalist strategy to re-brand


14/21

14

Ian A lmond

globalized, ree-market modernity as a plethora o locally-avoured,particular modernities (an Indian modernity, an Arican one), in muchthe same way a ast ood chain such as McDonalds avoids vulgar ho-mogenization by colouring certain ranchises in ways that harmonizethem with their environments (a McDonalds with a Chinese roo or amedieval German acade) (Jameson 12). iek elaborates on Jamesonsundamental point (the attempt by postcolonial multiculturalists to takethe capital out o global capitalism by celebrating its diversity) andsuggests an element o etishistic disavowal as the real reason behind the

postcolonial multiplication o modernities, a reusal to recognise thebasic antagonism o modernity that results in a prousion o alterna-tive versions.13

As with all o ieks objections, there is certainly a degree o truth tohis evaluation o global capitalisms exploitation o aZeitgeisto diversityand dierent temporalities in order to smoothly maintain its operations.

Yet two points need to be made. Te frst concerns the extent to which

iek ails to take into account the potential o alternate modernitiesto crack open global capitalisms transparent ubiquity as the only gamein town (Ticklish Subject353). I, as iek claims, the triumph o con-temporary capitalism lies in the disappearance o the word, in our in-ability to think outside Francis Fukuyamas vision o endless capitalism,then the revelation o alternative modernities might de-universalize andre-localize capitalism, a strategy that might be termed (with apologies

to Spivak) strategic relativism. iek does, in certain moments, con-cede the political expediency o postcolonial nostalgia as a Utopiandream which can be thoroughly liberating (Melancholy and the Act659), even i the disadvantages o employing such a strategy seem to himgreater than the advantages.

However, a more essential point must be made concerning Historynot so much ieks reusal o non-Western alternatives to modernity

(or, in e Puppet and the Dwarf , his various dismissals o non-West-ern spiritualities) as what ieks reusal o alternative modernities saysabout his own thoughts relationship to History. In its perspectives onwhat history is, the postcolonial shares with iek the idea that truth isthe result o a struggle, and that it is precisely through an engagement


15/21

15


with the particular that the colonized glimpse the agonistic possibilityo their own universal. History is central to postcolonial critique becausethe becoming-consciousness o the colonized subject is not simply a his-torical process but also a process that uses History and sees the historicaltext as a crowbar with which to prise open the sealed door o hegemony.Hence the centrality o historiography in the postcolonial canon (Said,Ranajit Guha, Partha Chatterjee); the violent articulation o alternativehistories o unrecognised suering that break open standard narrativeso the Worthy and the Undeserved provides only the initial phase in

a radical project o collective sel-empowerment. Te Guatemalan, thePalestinian, and the West Arican cannot aord the ironists luxury o anindierence to History.

For iek, too, the late capitalist evaporation o history can be a lam-entable phenomenon. In his comments on the flm Children of Men,iek singles out as one o his avourite scenes the moment in whichthe protagonist enters an apartment flled with superuous, context-less

examples o classic art (Michelangelos David, or example, stands on itsown by a window). iek argues that the moment signifes how the trueinertility [in the flm] is the lack o meaningul historical experience(qtd. in Schwartzman 3). Drawing on Alain Badious notion o atonalworlds , ieks understanding o postmodern capitalism as constitutingthe permanent dissolution o all lie-orms (On Violence177) sees anideological process which robs the world o history, transorms all mo-

ments into an eternal now, and reduces all values to past-less, endlesslyuctuating commodities, so that the colours o real historical contextare replaced with the monochrome o ree market economics.

Nevertheless, this world-emptying gesture o global capitalism, thepermanent dissolution o historical context inherent in the dynamico capital, is a movement that occasionally fnds some degree o equiva-lence in ieks own attitude to history, particularly where the history o

the non-Western world is concerned. In On Violence, his problematic re-iteration o this gesture o world-emptying capitalism is seen with regardto the immediate past. As with ieks interpretation o the Paris riots,material explanations o the phenomena as rooted in poor economicconditions or recent massive military bombardments are not allowed


16/21

16

Ian A lmond

to interere with the real, psychoanalytically-structured analysis o theevent. iek distances himsel rom those partisans o multiculturalisttolerance (On Violence91) who explain the worldwide Muslim outrageconcerning the Mohammed cartoons as really being (in the wake o the100,000 plus dead o Iraq) a consequence o the Wests entire imperi-alist attitude (On Violence 91). Tis de-prioritization o circumstan-tial history in deerence to theoretical analysis would be problematic initsel, but in e Puppet and e Dwarf, ieks marginalization o the

Wests entire imperialist attitude (On Violence91) becomes an attitude

o absolute historical non-recognition. Citing D.. Suzukis approvingremarks concerning Japanese militarism in the 1930s, iek derides thewidespread notion that aggressive Islamic or Jewish monotheism is atthe root o our predicament (Puppet and the Dwarf2324).14 He sug-gests instead that our predicament is a product o uncritical capitalistmulticultural tolerance. Buddhism, ar rom being a gentle, balanced,holistic religion, encourages sociopathic militarism with its world-dis-

tancing void (Puppet and the Dwarf26). In contrast, true monotheistsare tolerant (26).

First, I am not taking issue with ieks negative reading o theBuddhist tradition, not because it is correct, but because iek wouldpay little attention to the point.15 Nor am I levelling a charge o Euro-centrism at iek. iek is quite happy to call himsel a letist Euro-centrist and has articulated quite orceully why his own views on the

necessarily particular expression o all universal truth justifes this.Finally, I am not going to deny the way the most superfcial aspectso Oriental spirituality (holism, serene acceptance o suering, abso-lute tolerance, and inward meditation) have been cleverly co-opted intotwenty-frst century capitalism (see, or example, the 2001 private entre-preneurs guide e Monk and the Riddle: e Art of Creating a Life While

Making A Living).

From a postcolonial standpoint, the most dicult aspect o a text suchas e Puppet and the Dwarf, even or a sympathetic reader o iek, liesin the tacit premise underlying its radical re-description o a tolerantmonotheism and an Oriental spirituality complicit with rapid indus-trialization and militarization (26): in order to entertain this reversal o


17/21

17


commonly-held conceptions, the reader must join iek in overlook-ing fve hundred years o history. Te widespread notion o aggressivemonotheism and peaceul Buddhism is not widespread simply becauseo ideology but because the worlds experience o imperialism overthe past fve centuries has been overwhelmingly at the hands o mono-theistic cultures. By 1914, eighty-fve percent o the planet was undereither European or European-settler rule (Said 8). A reusal to histori-cally think through the truly enormous European/settler legacy o indig-enous extermination and orced assimilation is the enabling premise o

the text, the supreme act o orgetting which allows the rest o the bookstheological and philosophical arguments to unold. Tis is not simply torebut ieks arguments outright and crudely lump imperialism alwaysand everywhere with monotheism but rather to highlight how such anargument can only take place ater an evacuation o historical context.It is in the evaporation o history that iek betrays the radical energyo his own ormidable thought by replicating the late-capitalist gesture

o permanent dissolution and reiterating a neo-liberal contempt orhistory.

In the very last years o his lie, Marx embarked upon an enormousamount o reading concerning non-Western societies; his notes romthis exercise ormed the so-called ethnological notebooks.16 Te his-tory and culture o Indians, native Americans, Algerians, not to mentionthe social structures o societies in Egypt and pre-colonial Indonesia, all

ormed part o Marxs project to historically inorm his account o thetransition rom eudalism to capitalism (Anderson 91). In many ways,one wishes or such a late phase or iek, a thinker who has done morethan anyone else in the past twenty years to elucidate the intimacies oour collusion in late capitalism. I ieks astute analysis o the multicul-tural proclivities o global capital can help us locate some o the subtlerpolitical naivets within postcolonial theory, a postcolonial reminder

o the valency o History can useully interrupt ieks more globalpronouncements; the consequence does not have to be an all-levellingBadiou-esque slide into endless cultural complexities but rather a moreaccurate understanding o the history o anti-colonial struggle, whichwould useully concretize a universal analysis o injustice.


18/21

18

Ian A lmond

Notes1 For one o the best introductions to these debates, see Lazarus Introducing

Postcolonial Studies (117).2 See Zupani. For Lacans own airly cynical view o political positions, see his

amous remarks on communism as a desire o/or the Other based upon justicein the redistributive sense o the word (Lacan 4849).

3 Te term is Spivaks (In Other Worlds344).4 See Spivaks Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography(In Other

Worlds270304).5 For a more detailed description o the process, see iek, Looking Awry6.6 For more on anamorphosis, see Looking Awry9091; ieks thoughts on decon-

struction as an essentially incomplete project can be ound in For ey Know37.7 See Ahmad 279. For a useul account o the way the postcolonial has ascended

within academia, see Parry 6680. Gandhi, in her otherwise excellent and justlyubiquitous introduction to postcolonial theory, presents letist critics such as

Ahmad and Dirlik as useul but ultimately polemical voices (58).8 I mean that it is curiously empirical in the sense that they reject truth claims as

simply embedded in the symbolic code, and yet they still claim to be able to em-pirically veriy how close the presence o the Real is maniesting itsel within this

symbolic reality. In other words: sometimes they reject epistemology wholesale,sometimes they do not.

9 Te rioters use o the Internet in the disturbances testifes to some element oorganization, however weak. See Duoixs More Tan Riots: A Question oSpheres.

10 In Defence177. Dabashi is only one o many Muslims who expresses his uneasewith ieks inconsistent use o the term Islamo-ascism (Dabashi 4).

11 Tis phrase is taken rom a transcript o the discussion with Alexander GarciaDuttman Perhaps or Maybe (qtd. in Midgley 13).

12 See Spivaks essay on Mahasweta Devis short story Stanyadani (Breast-Giverby Mahasweta Devi). Such a postcolonial demand or a recognition o theReal in the Other is ound in Varzis criticisms o Azar Nafsis Reading Lolita inTehran as a book which automatically assumes the sexual experience o the Westand the sexual innocence o the Muslim East. Chatterjees 1988 English, August:

An Indian Storyalso oers a picture o the South Asian tribal which, withoutdelegitimizing the tribals claims, deates some o the innocent savage mythscirculating about them.

13 Or, in the words o Mezzandra and Rahola, how capitalism is able to concedea particular synchronicity (that one o the market) to the dierent orms o liespreading all around the world (22).

14 For Suzukis remarks, see Victoria (50).15 See ieks reply to Harts criticisms o his view o Buddhism (I Plead Guilty

57983).


19/21

19


16 A small part o these have been translated into English and published (seeKrader). A comprehensive English edition is still in progress.

Works CitedAhmad, Aijaz. Te Politics o Literary Postcoloniality. Contemporary Postcolonial

eory: A Reader. Ed.Padmini Mongia. New York: Arnold, 1996. Print.Anderson, Kevin B. Marxs Late Writings on Non-Western and Pre-Capitalist

Societies and Gender. Rethinking Marxism 14.4 (2002): 8496. Print.Badiou, Alain. Logics of Worlds. London: Continuum, 2009. Print.Butler, Judith, Laclau, Ernesto, and iek, Slavoj, eds. Contingency, Hegemony,

Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left. London: Verso, 2000. Print.Chatterjee, Partha. e Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories.

Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993. Print.Chatterjee, Upamanyu. English, August: An Indian Story. New York: Faber, 1988.

Print.Children of Men. Dir. Alonso Cuaron. Per. Julianne Moore, Clive Owen, and

Chiwetel Ejioor. Universal Pictures, 2007. Film.Dabashi, Hamid. Te Discrete Charm o European Intellectuals. International

Journal of iek Studies3.4 (2009): 18. Print.Duoix, Stphane. More Tan Riots: A Question o Spheres. Social ScienceResearch Council, n.d. Web. 7 November 2010.

Fukuyama, Francis. e End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press,1992. Print.

Gandhi, Leela. Postcolonial eory: A Critical Introduction. New York: ColumbiaUP, 1998. Print.

Gilbert, Jeremy. All the Right Questions, All the Wrong Answers. e Truth ofiek. Ed. Paul Bowman and Richard Stamp. London: Continuum, 2007. Print.

Guha, Ranajit, ed. A Subaltern Studies Reader, 19861995. St. Paul: U o MinnesotaP, 1997. Print.

Hand, Sen, ed. e Levinas Reader. 1989. Oxord: Blackwell, 2001. Print.Hart, William David. Slavoj iek and the Imperial/Colonial Model o Religion.

Nepantla: Views from South 3.3 (2002): 55378. Print.Jakobson, Roman. Linguistics and Poetics. Style in Language. Ed. Tomas Sebeok.

Cambridge: MI P, 1960. 35057. Print.Jameson, Fredric.A Singular Modernity. London: Verso, 2002. Print.Komisar, Randy. e Monk and the Riddle. Cambridge: Harvard Business Review

P, 2001. Print.Krader, Lawrence. e Ethnographical Notebooks of Karl Marx. Assen: Van Gorcum,

1972. Print.Lacan, Jacques.My Teaching. rans. David Macey. London: Verso, 2008. Print.


20/21

20

Ian A lmond

Lazarus, Neil, ed. e Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies.Cambridge UP, 2004. Print.

Marx Aveling, Eleanor, and Edward Aveling, eds. e Eastern Question: A Reprintof Letters Written 18531856 Dealing with the Events of the Crimean War. New

York: Burt Franklin, 1968. Print.Mezzadra, Sandro, and Federico Rahola. Te Postcolonial Condition: A Few Notes

on the Quality o Historical ime in the Global Present. Postcolonial Text2.1(2006): n. pag. Web. 12 January 2011.

Midgely, Nick, and Johnathan Dronsfeld, eds. Responsibilities of Deconstruction.Coventry: Parousia, 1997. Print.

Nafsi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran. New York: Random House, 2003. Print.Parry, Benita. Te Institutionalization o Postcolonial Studies. e Cambridge

Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies. Ed. Neil Lazarus. Cambridge: Cam-bridge UP, 2004. 6680. Print.

Pound, Marcus. iek: A (Very) Critical Introduction. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,2008. Print.

Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage, 1994. Print.Schwartzman, Sarah. Children o Men and a Plural Messianism.Journal of Religion

and Film 13.1 (2009): 3. Print.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Towards a History ofthe Vanishing Present. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999. Print.. Breast-Giver by Mahasweta Devi. In Other Worlds. New York: Routledge,

1998. 30531. Print.. In Other Worlds. New York: Routledge, 1998. Print.Stavrakakis, Yannis. Encircling the Real: owards a Lacanian Political Teory.

Jacques Lacan: Critical Evaluations in Cultural eory. Ed. Slavoj iek. Vol 3.New York: Routledge, 2003. Print.

Varzi, Roxanne. Miniskirt Democracy. Rev. o Soft Weapons: Autobiography in

Transit, by Gillian Whitlock. London Review of Books31 July 2008: 2526. Print.Victoria, Daizen.Zen at War. Boston: Weatherhill. 1998. Print.Vighi, Fabio, and Heiko Feldner. iek: Beyond Foucault. Basingstoke: Palgrave,

2007. Print.Young, Robert. What is the Postcolonial?ARIEL: A Review of International Litera-

ture40.1 (2009): 1325. Print.iek, Slavoj. A Plea or Leninist Intolerance. Critical Inquiry28.2 (2002): 542

66. Print.

. First As Tragedy, en As Farce. London: Verso, 2009. Print.. For ey Know Not What ey Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor. London:Verso, 1991. Print.

. In Defence of Lost Causes. London: Verso, 2008. Print.. I Plead GuiltyBut Where is the Judgement? Nepantla: Views from South

3.3 (2002): 57983. Print.


21/21


. Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan rough Popular Culture.Cambridge: MI P, 1992. Print.

. Melancholy and the Act. Critical Inquiry26.4 (2000): 65781. Print.. On Violence. London: Verso, 2009. Print.. Te Counterbook o Christianity. iek: A (Very) Critical Introduction. Ed.

Marcus Pound. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007. Print.. e Metastases of Enjoyment: Six Essays on Woman and Causality. London:

Verso, 1994. Print.. e Parallax View. Cambridge: MI P, 2006. Print.. e Puppet and the Dwarf: e Perverse Core of Christianity. Athens: MI P,

2003. Print.. e Ticklish Subject: e Absent Centre of Political Ontology. London: Verso,

1999. Print.. e Universal Exception, Volume 2: Selected Writings. Ed. Rex Butler, Scott

Stephens and Slavoj iek. London: Continuum, 2006. Print.. Welcome to the Desert of the Real: Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates.

London: Verso, 2002. Print.Zupani, Alenka. Ethics of the Real: Kant, Lacan. London: Verso, 2000. Print.

Anti-Capitalist Objections to the Postcolonial

Documents

Transcript of Anti-Capitalist Objections to the Postcolonial