The unbearable
is not the difference. The unbearable is the fact that in a sense there is
no difference…(Zizek 1994, 2).
The psychological damages that
are caused by the primordial generative element of the ‘enjoyment’ symptom to
the present global individuality have no limit.
There is no escape from its demand whether you live in an advanced
Capitalist nation or just in a corner of the Third World. Once yielded to the manifestation
of ‘burning enjoyment’, the individuals unconsciously collapse into a
bottomless abyss that carries a black hole effect to which, subsequently, all
that they have so far constructed as symbolic entity upon which their present
character is built are being relentlessly absorbed never to return. The Habermasian ‘life world’ of rational
integrity through societal modernization seems completely turned upside down
since the ‘one that reaches into the depth of organic substance’ (Habermas
2007, 12) of a particular community deliberately decides to take things for
granted. Most of this is not their fault but just an essential by-product of yielding
to the call of the symptomatic systemic demand to ‘enjoy’. Everybody has unquestioningly become victims of
this symptom which is mostly propagated and intensified through the
commoditization of life and through virtual social networks. Predominantly
through the unregulated and digitalized technological devices what they ask the
individual to do now is not to hide and control his desire but to be too open
about it. To add to this, the number of deaths simply caused by social media
(mainly Facebook) is on the rise in the Third World, and rather than enhancing
‘Habermasian communication’ for higher level of rationality, the social media
are creating absolute havoc in the life-world. The ‘excessive proximity’
generated by these virtual media gives no space for individuality and its
‘unexposed substance’ (something that we never want to reveal to another) which
actually creates the balance between private life and social life. Rather, in
the present digital context, ‘the subject’ and ‘the desire’ become too close to
each other so that the subject has nothing to seek for or to hide. The present
global Capitalistic framework has completely lost all the control and
regulatory capacities that the world once had on its subjects and, as a
temporary escapism, the only resort that
Capitalism could now turn to is (as it
has always historically proved) totalitarianism at least for a ‘false’ regain
of its glory.
An individual is always ‘split’
between conscious awareness and the unconscious; what he consciously says and
does about politics or social life and a set of unconscious believes that
govern how they ‘actually’ live. The civilizing subjects necessitate a certain
founding ‘sacrifice’ to be made. This is called ‘castration’ of jouissance;
to the extent that a human subject is civilized, there is a ‘cut’ from the
primal object of his desire. To
dismantle this significant equilibrium, the present post-capitalist society has
been promoting a new sexualized transgressive model (a trap) of ‘enjoyment’.
The socio-political Law that the politicians were careful about at least few
decades back is the very essence through which they derive a pervert
‘transgressive pleasure’ (enjoyment) today. It is the same violation that the
so called public too expects in return for their leaders to ‘perform’ (very
much like the pervert role of that of the Hollywood actors). So, we all are
caught in a kind of a paradoxical pervert cobweb where there is no ‘exit’. The politicians are actually not stupid but
they all unconsciously pay a servitude to some unknown demand from their own
public ‘to enjoy’ (that is why the number of viewers in certain underground
paparazzi web site constantly increases). Rather the politicians are conscious
of what they actually do. The role of the ‘virtual underground’ is to ‘reveal’
the very dilemma of our existence by saying ‘My God, look at what they do; they
violate the very essence of our politics’ and, at the same time, giving that
unknown pleasure to the public (in other words, ‘this is how they enjoy’). Hence,
the media world, one can say, is the most pervert entity of all. As Zizek says, the function of media is that they 'hold the balls of the one who tries to rape his wife in order that the balls get dirty' but they do not dare to cut them.
In the above context today, there
is no space for someone to reach ‘satisfaction’ (somewhat similar to Rolling
Stone’s popular rock song in the 60s) because the only satisfaction
propagated in the global media is ‘transgression’ (violate and enjoy). In the previous world one reaches his
satisfaction by being obedient to the Law, the governing agent of our desire. Now
we know that central agent which regulates our desire is dead and everything is
allowed and everything is absorbed to the entity of enjoyment. As said in the standard Kantian version where
the ethical subject is torn between the universal moral law and a particular
‘pathological impulses, now in this pervert guidebook of limitless drive to
enjoy, there is no ‘inner struggle between complying with the law and
succumbing to “pathological” temptations’ (Zizek 2008, 208). In this new world
view, it is ‘the spilt’ that is being erased from the subject. Hence you will
never feel guilty or ashamed of violating whatever that was previously agreed
as societal values (you can import Ethanol or Heroin, do money laundering,
murder innocent people and opponents, steal public funds, relentlessly suppress
struggles for freedom and discard human rights etc.). According Zizek, ‘the
spilt, therefore, does not take place between moral law and pathological
desires but between enjoyment and pleasure’ (208) and the pleasure principle is
always confronted with some ‘radical evil’ (‘the play’ that is popularly
exploited by virtual media).
One reason why many people
(including Zizek himself) around the world loved Barak Obama is that he made
himself ‘an exception’ (not because he emerged from some mystified and
exorcized African entity to save us from some urban evil of the world). What is that exception? Unlike the Bush
administration which propagated Christian values (such as anti-abortion) in
determining modern complex human behavior, Obama came up with certain rational
and secular human values. When the former George Bush (Jr.) politics relied on
‘postmodernism’ (reverting to history and to the comfort of orthodox
Christianity) which led to bind conservatism, Obama’s choice was secularism
(including a humanistic approach to health care policy and some other
utilitarian liberal needs etc.). He
opted for rationalism which seriously considered the relevance of the
application of ethical politics rather than taking refuge in fundamentalist
popularism through which he could easily have earned some more Christian votes.
In this case, Obama becomes a Habermasian example of advanced Capitalism where
science truly functions as ‘an agent of informed common sense’ (Harbermas,
2007, 105). As a veteran politician he could sense the ‘secular borderline’
between politics and religion and believed in political common sense of as a
founding ground for dignified human life.
Hence, Obama could be considered as the most authentic and ontologically
rational politician who reached the most powerful position in global politics
in the recent times where the mode of production has gained a completely
different pace.
It is understandable that marriage
has its own limitations which sometimes have be overcome (if emotionally
possible) through rational means. ‘Since we have no objective knowledge of
values beyond moral insight’ (Habermas 2007, 90) the moral self-understanding
is an instrument (perhaps the only instrument) which not only determines the
destiny of those who are in conflict with each other but those who observe and
learn out of it for their future. To quote Habermas in this regard,
‘As long as the
moral point of view for what is a just solution to action conflict prevails,
the morality of equal respect for each, and solidarity with all, can be
justified from out of the reservoir of
rational reason alone’ (94).
What is arguable here is not that
Obama unfortunately confronted with a crisis in his marriage but how he
actually deals with it in an American post-secular context and beyond. He
should not forget the fact that some millions around the world look at him as a
role model (one can argue that they also must have the moral self-understanding
to determine what is good for them). Emotionally,
he may feel vulnerable and whatever media display in the recent months should
not surely disrupt his subjective existential consciousness of his own choice.
From a secular point of view, he enjoys the total freedom to walk away from
Michelle but his cession to seduction right in front of her in bare public is
morally unacceptable (be it in Mandela’s funeral or somewhere else). If there
is a hint of narcissist ‘revenge’ from his part, again that is attributed to
perversion (consciously performing ‘it’ for the eye of the other). His act actually disrupts the cohesion of the
political community and its moral integrity (a dialogue that is deliberately
avoided by standard media), which de-socializes out existing understanding
about higher values. He should have avoided this reactionary attitude and the
individual situation of ‘the life project of every single person’ (Habermas
2007, 56) would have been a much standard and exemplary case in reference.
And he could not avoid it i.e.
the truth of the Zizekian disavowal theory. He knew it but he did it. That is
how Obama became a role model of Cynicism. A character well trained, well
disciplined, well educated to be the President of United States ‘could not
resist it’. In this case, structurally, the function of rationality is ‘argue
as much as you will but obey’ (Zizek 2008, xxii). One can still remember how he
‘argued’ about the right and wrong of his opponents, the then politics and
policies, values and what is good for America’s future during the election
campaigns. That is how his slogan ‘change’ (which everybody has now forgotten)
gained momentum and finally some universal meaning. People trusted him on the basis of the
authenticity for his organic and material representation of what he stood for
and advocated for. He gained some global popularity on the signifier of the
solidarity between the discourse and the representation; not just because, as
popularly believed, he is the first Black to reach the Presidency. Now when
popular virtual media circulate images of Obama either with Beyonce or former Danish
Prime Minister, what immediately comes to mind is the Bakhtin’s carnivalesque suspension
of social hierarchy which gets dissolved in the pervert gaze of the other. When
he becomes the Law that enjoys itself, and identified himself with a
specific form of transgression of the Law (specific form of enjoyment),
‘the code of honor’ that he is going to receive is that the community
recognizes himself as ‘one of us’ (Zizek 1994, 55). The mega ‘change’ that was hailed by a
character who seemed to refuse to partake in the obscene superegoistic
underside of the contemporary American day-to-day life once upon a time, from a political point of
view, finally ended up by being ‘a just another American’.
1.
Habermas, Jurgen (2007). The Future of Human
Nature. London. Polity.
2.
Zizek, Slavoj (1994). The Metastases of
Enjoyment: Six Essays on Woman and Causality. London. Verso.
3.
Zizek, Slavoj (2008). Enjoy Your Symptom.
London. Routledge.
