Shoplifters of the World Unite - Slavoj Žižek on the meaning of the riots

[flamingdem]

http://www.lrb.co.uk/2011/08/19/slavoj-zizek/shoplifters-of-the-world-unite

excerpt:

We live in cynical times, and it’s easy to imagine a protester who, caught looting and burning a store and pressed for his reasons, would answer in the language used by social workers and sociologists, citing diminished social mobility, rising insecurity, the disintegration of paternal authority, the lack of maternal love in his early childhood. He knows what he is doing, then, but is doing it nonetheless.

It is meaningless to ponder which of these two reactions, conservative or liberal, is the worse: as Stalin would have put it, they are both worse, and that includes the warning given by both sides that the real danger of these outbursts resides in the predictable racist reaction of the ‘silent majority’. One of the forms this reaction took was the ‘tribal’ activity of the local (Turkish, Caribbean, Sikh) communities which quickly organised their own vigilante units to protect their property. Are the shopkeepers a small bourgeoisie defending their property against a genuine, if violent, protest against the system; or are they representatives of the working class, fighting the forces of social disintegration? Here too one should reject the demand to take sides. The truth is that the conflict was between two poles of the underprivileged: those who have succeeded in functioning within the system versus those who are too frustrated to go on trying. The rioters’ violence was almost exclusively directed against their own. The cars burned and the shops looted were not in rich neighbourhoods, but in the rioters’ own. The conflict is not between different parts of society; it is, at its most radical, the conflict between society and society, between those with everything, and those with nothing, to lose; between those with no stake in their community and those whose stakes are the highest.

Zygmunt Bauman characterised the riots as acts of ‘defective and disqualified consumers’: more than anything else, they were a manifestation of a consumerist desire violently enacted when unable to realise itself in the ‘proper’ way – by shopping. As such, they also contain a moment of genuine protest, in the form of an ironic response to consumerist ideology: ‘You call on us to consume while simultaneously depriving us of the means to do it properly – so here we are doing it the only way we can!’ The riots are a demonstration of the material force of ideology – so much, perhaps, for the ‘post-ideological society’. From a revolutionary point of view, the problem with the riots is not the violence as such, but the fact that the violence is not truly self-assertive. It is impotent rage and despair masked as a display of force; it is envy masked as triumphant carnival.

[Lost-in-FL]

1. Thanks for this piece! nt

[flamingdem]

2. Lots of food for thought about how to enact change

and even more about how to fail to enact change.

* It takes a philosopher to sort it out!

[snagglepuss]

3. This has got to be the best analysis of the riot I have read. I have avoided

discussing the riot because like Zizek, I have been dissatisfied by comments from the right and the left. In my opinion the rioters were simply failed capitalists aping successful capitalists, not interested improving anyone's situation but their own. Like Zizek states people in far worse conditions than the rioters have organized into political forces with clear agendas.


:kick:

[flamingdem]

6. I agree this is the first article that articulated what it was about

"envy masked as triumphant carnival" is one loaded statement.

It's about time the world recognizes that the future will be full of those without wanting more and playing to win, any way they can, and it might not be in the way we expect.

Excellent statement about aping capitalism, it encompasses the primitive drive involved.


>>> quote

From a revolutionary point of view, the problem with the riots is not the violence as such, but the fact that the violence is not truly self-assertive. It is impotent rage and despair masked as a display of force; it is envy masked as triumphant carnival.

[snagglepuss]

9. Someone once wrote back in the late 70s, early 80s (I believe it was Richard Sennett)

that victims were now cast as heroes. An unfortunate mindest as it ignores the very real fact that victims often become victimizers. I have at times wondered whether the lot of the poor and alienated would have improved had sociologists and/or the Left emphasized the destructive potential of downtrodden people, and spun social spending as a way for the "haves" to protect their own interests.

[flamingdem]

11. That's an interesting twist, maybe the case can be made right now!

Obama could attract the teabaggers even.

[flamingdem]

12. Something learned by getting to know

"revolutionaries" from other countries ... this is probably obvious to some but it wasn't to me ... all they wanted was the same stuff I already had ... nice home, appliances, job ... that was NOT what they advertised with their graphics and manifestos ... but over time it became clear this was the gist of it.

I guess this is kind of obvious too ... the leaders tended to be university educated ... the followers working class. The benefits of "revolution" gave leadership positions to the educated and the working class ended up a bit better off.

Of what benefit is it to lead the underclass in England today? I suspect that the intellectuals do not see a winning game there so they hold back. In general youth is risk averse compared to the old days, they value their lives.. not so much those of the collective if they even envision such an entity.

[Davis_X_Machina]

4. Not an insurrection? Not a revolution?

Not something to sigh over and wish we had the stones to do here?

I'm so confused.

[flamingdem]

7. It is happening here - see Philadelphia, Washington DC flash mob lootings nt

[Davis_X_Machina]

14. Those aren't lootings...

...those are blows against the empire. Or so people keep telling me.

[flamingdem]

17. otherwise known as the "five finger discount" without much chance of getting caught! nt

[Davis_X_Machina]

18. My Brit friend called it..

..."a boot sale, and everything is Ł0.00."

[bemildred]

5. Interesting.

"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all." Mario Savio, Sproul Hall Steps, December 2, 1964

[flamingdem]

8. The point of the article is the opposite - this is not articulated rage

it's envy and aping of capitalism, no social movement agenda involved.

At least we have the union struggles in the USA that still articulate issues, but it's about money for the most part, survival, not much vision for a broad social movement.

[bemildred]

15. Articulated rage, inarticulate rage, it's the rage that makes it go.

No rage, no riot.

[flamingdem]

16. Are you sure it's rage? I think that's part of it but it's cut with opportunism

.. as in if everyone else it doing it - it's not so bad.

The kids on the East coast are mostly under 18, so rage is not making them flash mob and loot..imo

[Karenina]

10. I love this guy! Don't always agree with details BUT MUST HEAR HIM! n/t

[Demeter]

13. I think I'll have to read and think about this

But anything too hard to understand is usually BS, same as anything too hard to believe is BS.