Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2001 13:22:10 -0500
Subject: Zizek and multiculturalism
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Just a few words to keep this conversation alive... Mohammed says plenty
of insightful things below. I'd agree that Zizek often writes of
liberal pluralism and toleration as a kind of grounding for
multiculturalism. I think this is allowable. That model works if one
thinks of pluralism as a "hands off," distant respect for otherness. MC
then moves beyond pluralism into Saeed's recognition of management and
advocacy. This is the moment Zizek questions.
If culture is bound to race and ethnicity, then MC's preferential
advocacy veers close to an indirect racism. That observation is why we
have lawsuits over Affirmative Action. I'd agree with Mohammed that
seeing this connection doesn't get us very far. If working for equal
rights for an ethnic-based culture means to some critics that one is
doing racial rather than cultural work, then so be it. I'm not so sure
that the terminology is all that important. I think Zizek's more
nuanced point is how does a deep, strong MCer find the common ground
from which to advocate for their perspective? Mohammed's suggestion of
a "not-yet" filled contestable center is tempting, but what are the
ground rules for the contesting parties? Can one enlist reason here
without the prejudicial instrumentalism and political elements that
Weber and the Frankfurt school outlined a few generations ago? After
all, Zizek reminds us, the subjectivity necessary for reason is
rootless, universally "void."
The problem isn't so much that MCers are closet Eurocentrists; instead,
what we think to be the root of our identity gets undercut by reason's
inability to be a subject to itself. We can't get at the root of
identity because we're always conscious of mediation.. There is no
direct access to the consciousness of subjectivity. This may be tedious
to some, but it does make it difficult to ground political action.
Hence, Zizek seems uninterested in where the center is located because
that answer won't resolve the problem of a rootless subjectivity, nor
will it help reveal if debate between unequal participants can have
authentic or only constructed common ground. If the latter, then
questions of justice and dignity remain defined only locally, only
within the boundaries of particularist cultures. A constructed ethics
only opens boundaries and definitions when it is beneficial to the
culture in question. In order for a debate on human rights to be
authentic, for example, all parties should agree that this concept of
rights transcends their particularist definition. Otherwise the outcome
might be practical, but it won't be principled in a strong fashion. I
think this is the problematic that Zizek is trying to unravel...
Lou <lcaton-AT-wisdom.wsc.ma.edu>
Mohammed BEN JELLOUN wrote:
> Saeed wrote:
> "Multiculturalism is a managerial concept. It is usually the white
> Western subject that becomes multicultural but still remains the
> managerial subject of multiculturalism, the subject governing the
> discourses of multiculturalism -- the one who has transcended his
> racism and therefore wants to be congratulated for it without losing
> control of the multicultural archive."
>
> Saeed, Zizek, and I all agree on that liberal multiculturalism is
> Eurocentric patronizing. There is not much to add to that.
> However, Saeed and I don't agree with Zizek when, going much further,
> he conflates multiculturalism with racism. Lastly, we diverge, me on
> the one hand, and Saeed (I'm not so sure about it) and Zizek
> (definitely) on the other hand, as to the nature of multiculturalist
> "discourses;" while I strongly oppose Nietzschean to liberal
> multiculturalism, they don't care about their difference.
>
> Indeed, besides his crudest propaganda and flawed deduction (racism>
> difference> mc), Zizek has an earlier (see text bellow) somewhat
> different and slightly more elaborated argument. His reasoning may be
> summed up as follows: Multiculturalism is "indirect racism" because
> the distance taken by the universal multiculturalist subject is a
> patronizing attitude. Moreover, this multiculturalism involves the
> paradox of a patronizing Eurocentrism without roots, not even in its
> own culture, in the way of a colonizing without the colonizer coming
> from some particular nation state. Hence, the questions I ask: (I) Is
> any and every such a (Eurocentric) patronizing (indirect) racism; (II)
> is any and every kind of multiculturalism a (Eurocentric) patronizing?
>
> (I)
>
> As to the question of whether every such a (Eurocentric) patronizing
> is (indirect) racism, Zizek insists that it doesn't matter if the
> center of an imperial structure is "full" or "empty;" it doesn't
> matter if the center is "inside" or "outside" the structure; it
> doesn't matter as long as we have a "privileged universal position."
> Thus, as long as we have a center, it doesn't matter if we "fill" it
> with our particular race, ethnic group, territory, nation state,
> ideology, policy, etc. or with merely general abstract principles.
>
> Zizek couldn't care less about gradations; his bizarre and absurd
> conclusions show how bad he is at scales practising. For example, it
> doesn't matter for him if the center is one of a coercive empire or a
> voluntary association, if it's about the "internal" center of a
> federation or the "external" center of a confederation, if it's about
> a general moral principle (the idea of respecting the Other or the
> equality of chance for all cultures) or an international legal one
> (the idea of equal sovereignty and a law of peoples).
>
> I must say that, if the man means seriously that the so much popular
> idea of national self-determination (and I can speak here for the
> African peoples) is a racist (or indirect racist) idea, he must be
> simply and shamelessly insulting all and every postcolonial--not to
> mention the still colonized--human being.
>
> (II)
>
> As to the question of whether any and every kind of multiculturalism
> is a (Eurocentric) patronizing, it is clear enough that Zizek's
> criticism is directed basically at liberal pluralism and liberal
> toleration. Zizek says: "... the multiculturalist is not a direct
> racist, he doesn't oppose to the Other the _particular_ values of his
> own culture..." He says also that the universal multiculturalist
> subject... "is already thoroughly 'rootless', that his true position
> is the void of universality." Let me ask these questions: Is
> multiculturalism and internationalism impossible without patronizing?
> Do we have to be rootless to be multiculturalists?
>
> What if the "patronizing" center is not “outside” and if our
> multiculturalist is rooted “inside”? Indeed, our multiculturalist need
> not be some ghostlike neutral observer. So, besides being
> multiculturalist, he’s committed to, and he improves, one of the
> worldviews involved in the structure, namely the point of view of his
> own culture. And, besides being a perspectivist, he believes only one
> perspective at a time--his--can be true. And yet, he's no absolutist
> or fundamentalist; he believes instead worldviews must be proven in
> fair contests. He's actually heroic and risks taking, giving
> challengers a real chance, requiring no internal restrictions on their
> cultures, insisting only and always on being challenged by them.
>
> Finally, does the discourse of national self-determination necessarily
> involve a (Eurocentric) patronizing, as suggested in Zizek? I don’t
> think so, not if we can think of a center that _is not_ yet; if the
> center is still an empty place where everything is to be defined; if
> it's an arena where nothing is settled once and for all. Not if the
> center is a contest, and if the "patronizing" is democratic and
> consented. Not if the (liberal) self-determination; the prerequisites
> of freedom of (international) access and equality of (international)
> chance, is there for enabling an (agonistic) self-overcoming.
>
> And I definitely don’t think so, as we cannot afford to decline an
> "offer" that is being open only a short time to come; that is, as
> world "liberals" already threaten to withdraw it for the sake, as they
> say, of the individual "human rights."
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Mohammed
>
> ----------
>
> Here’s the text! Note that, while the recent poor attack on
> multicultural _difference_ draws on purely Zizekian resources, this
> earlier attack on multicultural universalism was rather
> post-structuralist in its approach:
>
> "And, of course, the ideal form of ideology of this global capitalism
> is multiculturalism, the attitude which, from a kind of empty global
> position, treats _each_ local culture the way the colonizer treats
> colonized people--as 'natives' whose mores are to be carefully studied
> and 'respected'. That is to say, the relationship between traditional
> imperialist colonialism and global capitalist self-colonization is
> exactly the same as the relationship between Western cultural
> imperialism and multiculturalism: in the same way that global
> capitalism involves the paradox of colonization without the colonizing
> Nation-State metropole, multiculturalism involves patronizing
> Eurocentrist distance and/or respect for local cultures without roots
> in one's own particular culture. In other words, multiculturalism is a
> disavowed, inverted, self-referential form of racism, a 'racism with a
> distance'--it 'respects' the Other's identity, conceiving the Other as
> a self-enclosed 'authentic' community towards which he, the
> multiculturalist, maintains a distance rendered possible by his
> privileged universal position. Multiculturalism is a racism which
> empties its own position of all positive content (the multiculturalist
> is not a direct racist, he doesn't oppose to the Other the
> _particular_ values of his own culture), but nonetheless retains this
> position as the privileged _empty point of universality_ from which
> one is able to appreciate (and depreciate) properly other particular
> cultures--the multiculturalist respect for the Other's specificity is
> the very form of asserting one's own superiority.
>
> What about the rather obvious counter-argument that the
> multiculturalist's neutrality is false, since his position silently
> privileges Eurocentrist content? This line of reasoning is right, but
> for the wrong reason. The particular cultural background or roots
> which always support the universal multiculturalist position are not
> its 'truth', hidden beneath the mask of
> universality--'multiculturalist universalism is really
> Eurocentrist'--but rather the opposite: the strain of particular roots
> is the phantasmatic screen which conceals the fact that the subject is
> already thoroughly 'rootless', that his true position is the void of
> universality."
>
> Slavoj Zizek ("Multiculturalism, Or, the Cultural Logic of
> Multinational Capitalism," _New Left Review_ 225, Sept.-Oct. 1997: p.
> 44)
>
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HTML VERSION:
If culture is bound to race and ethnicity, then MC's preferential advocacy veers close to an indirect racism. That observation is why we have lawsuits over Affirmative Action. I'd agree with Mohammed that seeing this connection doesn't get us very far. If working for equal rights for an ethnic-based culture means to some critics that one is doing racial rather than cultural work, then so be it. I'm not so sure that the terminology is all that important. I think Zizek's more nuanced point is how does a deep, strong MCer find the common ground from which to advocate for their perspective? Mohammed's suggestion of a "not-yet" filled contestable center is tempting, but what are the ground rules for the contesting parties? Can one enlist reason here without the prejudicial instrumentalism and political elements that Weber and the Frankfurt school outlined a few generations ago? After all, Zizek reminds us, the subjectivity necessary for reason is rootless, universally "void."
The problem isn't so much that MCers are closet Eurocentrists; instead, what we think to be the root of our identity gets undercut by reason's inability to be a subject to itself. We can't get at the root of identity because we're always conscious of mediation.. There is no direct access to the consciousness of subjectivity. This may be tedious to some, but it does make it difficult to ground political action. Hence, Zizek seems uninterested in where the center is located because that answer won't resolve the problem of a rootless subjectivity, nor will it help reveal if debate between unequal participants can have authentic or only constructed common ground. If the latter, then questions of justice and dignity remain defined only locally, only within the boundaries of particularist cultures. A constructed ethics only opens boundaries and definitions when it is beneficial to the culture in question. In order for a debate on human rights to be authentic, for example, all parties should agree that this concept of rights transcends their particularist definition. Otherwise the outcome might be practical, but it won't be principled in a strong fashion. I think this is the problematic that Zizek is trying to unravel...
Lou <lcaton-AT-wisdom.wsc.ma.edu>
Mohammed BEN JELLOUN wrote: