Slavoj Žižek: From Western Marxism to Western Buddhism

[BuroshKozorg]

http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/2/western.php

The ultimate postmodern irony of today is the strange exchange between Europe and Asia: at the very moment when "European" technology and capitalism are triumphing worldwide at the level of the economic infrastructure, the Judeo-Christian legacy is threatened at the level of "ideological superstructure" in the European space itself by New Age "Asiatic" thought, which, in its different guises ranging from "Western Buddhism" to different "Taos," is establishing itself as the hegemonic ideology of global capitalism.

"Western Buddhism" thus fits perfectly the fetishist mode of ideology in our allegedly "post-ideological" era, as opposed to its traditional symptomal mode in which the ideological lie which structures our perception of reality is threatened by symptoms qua "returns of the repressed," cracks in the fabric of the ideological lie. The fetish is effectively a kind of symptom in reverse. That is to say, the symptom is the exception which disturbs the surface of the false appearance, the point at which the repressed Other Scene erupts, while the fetish is the embodiment of the Lie which enables us to sustain the unbearable truth. Let us take the case of the death of a beloved person. In the case of a symptom, I "repress" this death and try not to think about it, but the repressed trauma returns in the symptom. In the case of a fetish, on the contrary, I "rationally" fully accept this death, and yet I cling to the fetish, to some feature that embodies for me the disavowal of this death. In this sense, a fetish can play a very constructive role in allowing us to cope with the harsh reality. Fetishists are not dreamers lost in their private worlds. They are thorough "realists" capable of accepting the way things effectively are, given that they have their fetish to which they can cling in order to cancel the full impact of reality.

[ellisonz]

1. Nihilist bullshit.

The conclusion to be drawn from this is a simple and radical one: Moral Majority fundamentalists and tolerant multiculturalists are two sides of the same coin: they both share a fascination with the Other. In the Moral Majority, this fascination displays the envious hatred of the Other's excessive jouissance, while the multiculturalist tolerance of the Other's Otherness is also more twisted than it may appear—it is sustained by a secret desire for the Other to remain "other," not to become too much like us. In contrast to both these positions, the only truly tolerant attitude towards the Other is that of the authentic radical fundamentalist. ­

And pray tell me, oh leader of the brotherhood, what is an "authentic radical fundamentalist" other than a tyrant?

[Jim__]

2. Nihilist? "Authentic radical fundamentalist" as tyrant?

He proposes antidotes to the western misperception of Tibet. Why would a nihilist propose antidotes to anything?

Tyrants? His example of an authentic fundamentalism is the Amish:

... The difference between the authentic fundamentalists and the perverted Moral Majority fundamentalists is that the first (like the Amish in the United States) get along very well with their American neighbors since they are simply centered on their own world and not bothered by what goes on out there among "them," while the Moral Majority fundamentalist is always haunted by the ambiguous attitude of horror/envy with regard to the unspeakable pleasures in which the sinners engage. ...

His definition of authentic fundamentalism is being centered on your own world and not bothered by what goes on outside of it.

[tama]

3. "Authentic Radical Fundamentalist"

Another example of ARF is Shire and hobbits.

Sauron and Saruman are the perverted ones.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. 11 years old, and obviously completely wrong

"the Judeo-Christian legacy is threatened at the level of "ideological superstructure" in the European space itself by New Age "Asiatic" thought, which, in its different guises ranging from "Western Buddhism" to different "Taos," is establishing itself as the hegemonic ideology of global capitalism."

Patently, that has not happened at all. Maybe it was an attempt to guess what would happen soon, but I'd say that, in 2001, there was no significant involvement of Buddhism or Taoism in global capitalism. There certainly hasn't been since then.

[snagglepuss]

5. Steve Jobs was a Buddhist. Just saying.

[darkstar3]

7. One man does not equal a hegemony.

[snagglepuss]

8. True dat but Zizek's article is insightful and has merit when one

considers that almost all New Age books and Self-Help books variations of Buddhist ideas non-attachment. I'm not saying Buddhism is not valuable however I do see how it preserves the status quo.

snip

Western Buddhism" is such a fetish. It enables you to fully participate in the frantic pace of the capitalist game while sustaining the perception that you are not really in it; that you are well aware of how worthless this spectacle is; and that what really matters to you is the peace of the inner Self to which you know you can always with-draw.

[snagglepuss]

6. According to a scathing NYT article about Steve Jobs, Jobs was a student of Buddhism.

Rereading the NYT article after reading this, I realize that ZIzek is spot on.



http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/jan/12/who-was-steve-jobs/?pagination=false

[Odin2005]

9. Žižek spewing more PoMo word salad, as usual.

Žižek goes in the same category as Derrida and Lacan, profound-sounding bullshitters.

[Jim__]

10. Word salad? Really? Can you specify a part of the article that you think is incoherent? - n/t

[Odin2005]

11. It looks like something that went though a postmodernist statement generator.

[Jim__]

12. But you can't point to anything specific?

I don't find this article difficult. I find it both interesting and thought provoking. I have read a few of Žižek's books and it may just be that I am used to his writing. Some of his sentences are complex. American writing does tend to use simple sentence structure, but not to the complete exclusion of complex constructs.

Do you understand his opening sentence:

The ultimate postmodern irony of today is the strange exchange between Europe and Asia: at the very moment when "European" technology and capitalism are triumphing worldwide at the level of the "economic infrastructure", the Judeo-Christian legacy is threatened at the level of "ideological superstructure" in the European space itself by New Age "Asiatic" thought, which, in its different guises ranging from "Western Buddhism" to different "Taos," is establishing itself as the hegemonic ideology of global capitalism.

I inserted a closing quote behind the phrase economic infrastructure - that may clarify it a bit. The sentence is long with some nesting of dependent clauses, but I think it's both beautifully written and easy to understand.

How about the second sentence:

Therein resides the highest speculative identity of opposites in today's global civilization: although "Western Buddhism" presents itself as the remedy against the stressful tension of capitalist dynamics, allowing us to uncouple and retain inner peace and Gelassenheit, it actually functions as its perfect ideological supplement.

Granted the sentence contains a German word. If you have no understanding of the that word, the sentence may lose some nuance, but it retains its meaning. Žižek is, of course, a European and it may be that they throw foreign words in more than Americans do. But, that certainly doesn't make the sentence look like something out of a statement generator.

Elsewhere in the articcle, he uses the word fetish in an unusual way; but he explains his usage. There is a sentence where he refers to the lost object and the Kantian transcendental illusion; but the meaning of that paragraph is clear even if you don't understand that sentence.

I find it hard to believe that you can't understand that article.

[GliderGuider]

13. Once I settled down and actually read it, it's quite an insightful piece.

Last edited Tue Feb 21, 2012, 10:11 PM - Edit history (1)

I don't quite get the references to the role of Buddhism in hegemony, and I think "indifference" is a poor way to refer to non-attachment (I preferred Gelassenheit* once I looked it up), but beyond that I thought it was a remarkable article.

The references to the fetishistic qualities of Western Buddhism and its role as an anodyne for the alienation and anomie of our technological lives struck a particular chord with me. I resonated because of my recent search for some means of achieving personal equanimity in the face of my deep awareness of the potential collapse of civilization (that awareness itself is a distilled and compressed form of the "future shock" Žižek mentions). What I stumbled (back) into was Western Buddhism, Taoism, Advaita Vedanta and a host of more New Agey formulations. While they provided the non-attachment that I needed to get my bearings again, the closer I got to their actual substance the less comfortable they felt. The Perennial core of the philosophies was OK, but their trappings - the scripture and canons of Buddhism for example - seemed progressively more foreign and less useful the better I got to know them.

That said, a core of non-attachment/Gelassenheit is IMO essential if one is to come to terms with the illusion of life. As the sophists like Gorgias may have been pointing out, if life is an illusion then we have three choices: ignore that fact and treat it as if it is real (which most of us do); try to penetrate the illusion to discover the truth behind the veil (which is simply another facet of the illusion); or recognize and accept that it is an illusion with no truth behind it, and come to terms with it by developing Gelassenheit. If we choose this last approach our behaviour ends up being little different than those who still think everything is real, but our emotional response is much calmer.

In order to approach that position, I found that it helped to investigate a number of avenues: traditional and non-traditional Eastern approaches, aboriginal belief systems, the pre-Socratic Greeks (including Pyrrhonian skepticism), and modern Western QM metaphors and psychedelic prescriptions. Once the common core of all these was integrated, the fetishistic trappings could be discarded. This process left me with the armour and insight required to continue along happily in life in the face of modern absurdity, but hopefully leaving the fetishistic aspects of those belief systems behind.

In hindsight, I loved the article.

*from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heideggerian_terminology#Gelassenheit :
[div class="excerpt" style="border:solid 1px #000000"]Often translated as "releasment," Heidegger has described gelassenheit as "the spirit of disponibilité (availability) before What-Is which permits us simply to let things be in whatever may be their uncertainty and their mystery." Heidegger borrowed the term from the Christian mystical tradition, proximately from Meister Eckhart.