Žižek solves an enigma
I only saw the end of Enigma when it was on TV last weekend, but the dénoument was interesting. Basically, to make the villain sympathetic, we discover that his betrayal of the war effort is motivated by outrage at a massacre of Poles committed by the USSR early on in the war. That is to say, the attrocities committed by the Stalinism are held to count as at least some sort of justification for what is, objectively, siding with Naziism. This is an interesting example of Žižek’s point that comparing actually existing socialism with fascism tends to end up as apologetics for fascism.
I think Žižek’s basically right, although he slightly weakens his point by suggeting that it is wrong to say that “it is even possible to compare rationally the two totalitarianisms.” His real point is, I think, slightly more limited in that it is “the ‘pure’ liberal attitude towards Leftist and Rightist ‘totalitarianism’” which is a-priori false. This liberal attitude sides (as liberalism inevitably does) with the actually existing (as Badiou would say, the situation) rather than with the possible (or, even better, the apparently _impossible_ — the void, in Badiou’s Lacanian terminology). So the liberal position compares the _effects_ of the two totalitarianisms and so in the last instance sides with fascism which, and this is not coincidental, presents the lesser threat to the established order.
What Žižek thinks is essential for radical politics is to compare positions in terms of their _possibilities_. This, incidentally, is what I mean when I (probably far too often) rant about ‘moralism’. A moral evaluation of an event concentrates on its effects in the contingent circumstances in which it happened to come about; a political evaluation is precisely the opposite, opening up consideration of the consequences if an event is repeated in current or future circumstances.
Charlotte Street explains what Žižek is getting at and also points out Clive James’s attempted ‘response’ to Žižek. I particularly love how it completely passes him by that Žižek might actually be arguing against liberalism. Incidentally, I think my comment about moralism above explains the quotation marks that so enrage Clive James.
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