Study Resource 6, Continental Philosophy

Continental Philosophy
Study Resource 6


TOLERANCE AS AN IDEOLOGICAL CATEGORY
Critical Inquiry- Autumn 2007
By Slavoj Zizek
Part 1- The Culturalization of Politics
Culturalization of politics and its cause

The culturalization of politics refers to the process through which subjects of political concern are culturally conditioned and responded to as cultural problems. Series of problems today are considered to be problems of intolerance (a cultural value) and not as problems of injustice, exploitation, inequality (political categories). The solution to societal problems is equality and not justice, political struggle. This is due to the 'culturalization of politics' where political differences which are "conditioned by political inequality, economic inequality" are naturalized or neutralized into 'cultural' differences. Differences are considered a product of different ways of life (aka culture). These ways of living are given and thus, cannot be overcome. Thus, as a response to these differences, I must be tolerant. What is the cause of this culturalization? Zizek points out that this has occurred due to the failure of direct political solutions like socialist projects, Welfare State. In his words, 'Tolerance is their post-political ersatz'. Zizek also mentions Wendy Brown's remarks on tolerance in the latter's book 'Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire' which points out that the spread of tolerance as an ideological response indicates the "general depoliticization of citizenship and power and retreat from political life itself". It shows the failure of the political domain to deal with conflicts through adequate articulation and redressal.
Huntington and identification of culture and nature
Today, culture itself is naturalized and seen as a second nature to individuals. Zizek mentions two extremes on the spectrum of positions on history of mankind:
Francis Fukuyama: He held that the End of History is the capitalist liberal democracy. There is no space for conceptual progress and there are just empirical hurdles to overcome.
Huntington: In his book 'Clash of Civilizations', he mentions that the main political struggle of our century would be the clash of civilizations? In such a scenario, at the end of history, this 'clash of civilizations' is politics. There is no politics but its substitution with naturalized culture. In Huntington's terms, after the end of Cold War, the 'iron curtain of ideology' has been replaced by the 'velvet curtain of culture'- this movement has been called 'Huntington's disease of our time' by Zizek.
Paradoxes of contemporary liberalism and transubstantiation of culture:
Zizek posits three forms of oppositions implicit without contemporary liberalism-
1st Opposition
Those who are ruled by culture, entirely determined by the life-world into which they were born; and
Those who merely 'enjoy' their culture, who move beyond and are free to choose their culture.
2nd Opposition
Culture as isolated decisions of the individuals which cannot be questioned;
Culture itself as the source of barbarism due to the identification of the members with the particular culture conditioned by exclusivity and intolerance towards other culture.
3rd Opposition: The fundamental opposition
Collective: Culture is collective and particular such that it excludes other cultures by definition;
Individual: The individual holds the possibility of universal by transcending over the series of collective particulars that could be attached to her/him.
Relationship between the collective and individual: However, since every individual is on the face-value an 'individual', that is, superficially a 'particular'- there has been posited the need for 'particularization' of the individual, the need for having a particular life-world. The only way to resolve this 'deadlock' of the individual as a possibility of universal and as an appearance of the particular is to divide the individual into universal and particular, public and private ('private' includes the 'safe haven' of family and non-state public sphere of civil society). Thus, culture ceases from its collective role and conditions the private domain. It becomes a "way of life, a set of beliefs and practices, not the public network of norms and rules". Thus, there occurs the transubstantiation of culture: the bread and wine (beliefs and practices of the culture as collective) transform into the body and blood of Jesus (the expression of personal and private "idiosyncrasies").
Basis of analogy: Bread and butter is accessible to all, much like the cultural beliefs and rules but in following it, one has to personalize it as in case of transubstantiation, when one drinks the blessed wine and eats the blessed bread, it is said to be the body and blood of Jesus- a sort of initiation into the cultic culture.
Wendy Brown's arguments against the nature of culture in contemporary liberalism:
Culture as breeding ground of sexual inequality:
Culture is not universal. In the modern western society, there is still an underlying relegation of labor according to the sex which is sustained and maintained through the distinction between public and private- this creates greater male dominance.
Culture as preservation of private domain over collective:
In modern western societies, greater value is given to individual freedom, autonomy etc over collective connection, solidarity, duty to respect the customs of one's community, responsibility for dependent others.
Biased freedom of choice:
Liberalism is intolerant when certain cultures are not given freedom of choice like family rape, child brideship, cliterodectomy and others. However, it does not concern itself with the pressure to remain competitive in the sex market that compels women to undergo cosmetic implants, Botox injects and plastic surgeries among others in our society.
Self-referring paradoxes of tolerating intolerance:
On one hand, the liberalist multiculturalism 'preaches' tolerance towards culture and on the other hand, holds that the true culture is only the individualist Western one, thus making attempts to eradicate any other culture which stands in opposition to their ideas using even military interventions- for instance, US feminists believed that they were helping women of Afghanistan and Iraq by permitting its occupation by US.
However, Brown cannot completely depend on this criticism to put out against multiculturalism. For a radical liberal could say that since she believes in individual choice and tolerance of different cultures, it obliges her to be 'intolerant' towards those culture which prevent choice and tolerance.
Thus, there are limits to tolerance- basically, it is a spectrum. And those who consider themselves tolerant feel that they are supporting intolerance by tolerating it.
Deadlock of liberal idea of 'free choice': Free choice is actually choice in unfree context
Generally, the liberalist idea of 'free choice' says that while the subject is born into a certain tradition, she or he can choose among other alternatives. However, such a choice is non-existent or actually an unfree choice taking into consideration the context within which it is embedded. This context instructs that the only choice which is free is the one which is preached by the individualist Western culture. Consider the following three instances:
1. The only way in which Amish adolescents can be acquainted with the various alternatives to culture they have is when they are uprooted from their Amish community and rendered 'English'.
2. If a woman chooses to wear a veil (as an expression of her spirituality), then it is considered her eccentric/idiosyncratic individuality.
3. The display of religious symbols or prayers in public schools is a sensitive subject.
This leads us to three conclusions about the illusion of 'free choice':
A choice is always a meta-choice
A choice always presupposes the mode within which it is going to be determined- this mode, generally in western culture, propounds that only those choices in line with western culture will be tolerated- thus rendering the 'free' choice unfree.
Neutral frame of public space
The public space becomes a region where one is supposed to be completely cut off from one's root. The act of making a choice to wear a veil or openly advocate one's religion is to blur the line between the public and private spheres. Anyone who voices her religion is considered a fundamentalist. The 'subject of free choice' thus only arises "as the result of an extremely violent process of being torn out of one's particular life-world, of being cut off from one's roots".
Three dimensions of the act of making a choice:
This shows that the act of making a choice has three dimensions-
1. The life-world of the subject: That I emerge from a certain given socio-cultural tradition and thus my life-world is up to a huge extent shaped by it.
2. The private sphere: Here, I can make 'free' choices so far as it does not interfere into the public sphere.
3. The public sphere: Here, the subject is to be completely objective- that is, part of the abstraction 'public'- stripped of one's private inclinations.



The notion of subject in multiculturalism: Philosophical background
Independence from socio-cultural context
Multiculturalism is the child of Cartesianism, also the reflection of Kant's free and autonomous subject. The possibility of making a 'free' choice with completely autonomy and universality (thus, also of rational criticism- the actualization of rationality as such) only arises when one steps out of her socio-cultural background.
Insubstantial nature
Cogito is insubstantial in nature. On one hand, it has a "pure structural function, an empty place". On the other hand, it only arises in the gaps that lie between substantial communal systems. The cogito can only arise when it loses the substantial communal identities it attaches to. This is more inherent in Spinoza's system than in Descartes. Spinoza criticizes Descartes' cogito as a positive ontological entity. He accepted the 'position of the enunciated'- narrowing the possibilities within which free choice arises, he spoke of the interstice of the social space (not just communal).
The distinction between public and private: Kant and Rorty (#Kant as a critique of Rorty)

Kant
Rorty
Public
Sphere of universal Reason
"transnational universality of exercise of one's Reason"
Not only communal but the position as a social being is also extricated. One is only a rational being.
Participation of a singular subject in the Universal.
The subject exercises Reason without constraints: "dimension of emancipator universality outside the confines of one's social identity, of one's position within the order of (social) being"
Sphere of solidarity: Space of social interaction where we obey the rules to avoid hurting others
Difference from Kant-
K: Non-existence of the community and institutional structure in public space where only Reason is the governing faculty
R: the institutional order is the rule which determines our conduct
Private
Sphere of socio-communality: the communal-institutional identifications of the individual: not only communal ties but also the social ties
Sphere of irony: "Space of our idiosyncrasies where creativity and wild imagination rule, and moral considerations are (almost) suspended"

Part 2- The Effective Universality
When we talk about tolerance, we are not implying a condescending tolerance of diverging religions but respect for the other religion on account of them.
Criticism of Wendy Brown's analysis:
Ignores the liberating aspect of experiencing one's own cultural background as contingent
It is only in the ideological space that I can experience my identity as something dependent and discursively 'constructed'.
Distorted essentialist image of western liberalism
Her image of western liberalism is distorted. She attempts to characterize the liberal multiculturalist tolerance as 'essentialist' where 'essentialist' means that our socio-symbolic identity is determined by our natural-cultural essence. However, liberal multiculturalism is anti-essentialist: it only sees its Other as 'essentialist' and thus, 'false' (does not consider the western culture to be essentialist but a matter of free choice)- "fundamentalism 'naturalizes' or 'essentializes' historically conditioned contingent traits". Thus, Brown argues within the region of tolerant liberalism, asking it to raise itself to a self-reflexive level where liberalism would critique its own norms and procedures becoming aware of its own 'intolerant' Eurocentric bias.
Brown fails to apply the self-reflexive move to her own theory
Brown continues to depend upon 'Eurocentric' categories, especially visible in her basic opposition to contingentialism and essentialism. In opposing the liberalist tendency to passively tolerate other cultures, she appeals to the concept of autonomy and rationality which are in themselves foundationally based in liberalism. This tendency towards critique of ideology in itself was born from the liberal matrix that Brown criticizes
Does not take into account the form of 'unfree' choice
Even though the situation could be posited as being worse since oppression itself has become masked as free choice such that our freedom of choice is sometimes simply a mere formal gesture of accepting one's oppression and exploitation. Brown fails take into account the form of such an 'unfree' choice. The form, picking up from Hegel, has an autonomy and efficiency of its own. The form of the choice of a Third World woman undergoing a cliterodectomy or promised to marriage when a small child is not the same as the First World woman 'free to choose' painful cosmetic surgery.
Only a disguise of tolerance
Brown herself seems to be putting up a façade of tolerance towards other culture. One blinds themselves to the oppression of the other culture in the name of 'respect'. Those who chose their way of life- sati, child marriage- should be respected for their choice.
Maintains a standard 'post-modern', 'anti-essentialist' position
Brown continues to hold a standard Marxist level position where she denounces a false university and shows how a position that seems to be neutral and universal is in actuality privileging a certain culture. Foucault's position on notion of sex that it arisen from a multitude of practices of sexuality is politicized and posited in following manner: 'man', the bearer of Human Rights is generated by set of political practices which materializes citizenship, 'human right' as a false ideological universality which masks and legitimizes a concrete politics of Western imperialism and domination.
misrepresentation of capitalism
Brown mistakingly posits liberalism which is an ideology of capitalism as being a particular culture or world. It is today a universal which is not specific to any cultural-symbolic world. It is the name for a truly neutral economico-symbolic machine which operates in the Asian values and others.
Eruption of universal through the particular
Zizek mentions that the non-identification with the positions/particular is a precondition for movement towards the universal.
NOTION OF UNIVERSAL AND PARTICULAR IN MARXISM
Universal is the value of tolerance and of being human while the particular is the culture and situations that determine individual beings. Marxism can tell us in exactly what way the notion of human rights is conditioned to be ideologically bourgeois by pointing to the particular content. This becomes the particular content which takes hegemony over the universal form.
The more important question is how the very form of universality arises. "How, in what specific historical conditions, does the abstract Universality itself become a 'fact of (social) life'? In what conditions do individuals experience themselves as subjects of universal human rights?"
To this, Marx had replied with the commodity fetishism. In the commodity-ridden market, all relations are transactions between "contingent embodiments of abstract-universal notions". My social and cultural background are not considered to define me (are considered contingent in contrast to not necessary) because what really defines me is my capacity to think or work (the locus of free choice- independent of the given i.e. social and cultural traditions to which I belong). For instance, the modern notion of 'profession' implies that I experience myself as an individual who is not 'born into' the line of profession but that what I become depends on play between contingent social conditions and my free choice.
However, it is not enough to only show how certain ideological appearances of a universal legal form are sustained by particular interests (like: bourgeois sustaining ideology of human rights). As Jacques Ranciere had pointed out, no form is a 'mere' form- it has dynamics of its own which marks its traces in the materiality of social life. This explicates the ambiguity in the Marxist notion of the 'gap' between formal democracy (rights of man, political freedom being appearances of universal legal forms) and the economic reality of exploitation and domination (that these universal legal forms have not been actualized and are only present in a biased way).
This gap between the 'appearance' of equality-freedom and the social reality of economic, cultural and other systems has been previously seen in two ways:
Standard 'symptomatic' way (this gap is a symptom of the disease of exploitation and class domination- the form of universal rights, democracy and freedom is just a necessary but illusory form of expression of the concrete social content); or
The 'appearance' of these forms is not 'mere' appearance' but a demonstration of the effectivity of its own: this sets into motion the process of rearticulation of actual socio-economic relations (the relations are now described from the viewpoint of these forms) by way of their progressive 'politicization' (relations are questions through their politicization: questions like 'why shouldn't women vote? Why shouldn't working conditions be of public concern?' are put up). Thus, one should resist the temptation to reduce the forms of freedom or human rights to a mere illusion that is hiding the reality (of exploitation and domination).
REINSTATEMENT OF THE UNIVERSAL AND PARTICULAR
This is the exposition of universal intolerance and particular cultures which stand in an antagonistic struggle.
HERMENEUTIC TEST OF A THEORY: RISE OF UNIVERSALITY FROM PARTICULAR HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The key moment of a theoretical struggle is the rise of universality of the particular life-world. Commonsensically, we are all considered in be grounded in our particular life-worlds such that all universality is irreducibly conditioned by a particular life-world. When we turn this around, the moment of discovery occurs when a universal dimension erupts from within a particular context and becomes 'for-itself', directly experienced as universal. Consider Marx's evaluation of Homer where he says that though his epics are embedded in their historical context, they transcend their historical origin and speak out to all the epochs. The elementary hermeneutic test of the greatness of any work of art is its ability to survive after being uprooted from its original context. While the original context might be the starting point, the true understanding of a work is contained in being able to appropriate it and let it rise from within one's particular life-world. The tension between the universal frame of a thought and its particular historical context is both a part of understanding the thought itself- in the same way, to understand the appearance of universal form of equality-freedom and its 'true meaning' at a particular historical moment is part of its identity.
Marxism hermeneutics presently makes space for the particular bias of abstract universality (effect of particular content on universal form). It needs to make space for that which uncovers universality of what presents itself as a particular position. Particularity can mask universality- in preaching egoism, one is practicing altruism. The universal intersubjectivity of language undermines the message of egoism. In the same way, we should not only put down the particular position of expression which sustains the universal enunciated content (for instance, the white wealthy subject proclaiming the universality of human rights and others) but we must bring out the universality which sustains this particular claim. Every particular contains within itself universality which undermines it. Capitalism is not just universal in-itself, it is universal for-itself in form of the corrosive power which weakens all particular life-worlds, traditions, cultures cutting across them and holding them together. It makes no sense to ask of capitalism- 'is this universality true or a mask of particular interests?' because this universality is directly actual as universality- as the negative force which mediates and destroys all particular content. Thus, Brown mistakingly posits liberalism which is an ideology of capitalism as being a particular culture or world. It is today a universal which is not specific to any cultural-symbolic world. It is the name for a truly neutral economico-symbolic machine which operates in the Asian values and others. Thus, in the rise of capitalism as a neutral matrix of social relations, its originatory umbilical cord with Europe has been broken. (A critique of those who attack Eurocentrism) Within each society, this matrix might be appropriated through different symbols- working as a particular subsystem within the society determined by their social-symbolic relations. It is analogous to the use of same words by different social groups- even though we all talk about 'computers' and 'virtual reality', the scope of meaning of these terms is not the same in San Francisco hacker community or in a working class small town in economic depressions. Thus, capitalism originated in Europe only to take a life of its own later- in such a way that it generates the same formal set of social relations taking over different regions by self-reproduction.
POSITING THE UNIVERSAL INTOLERANCE OF PARTICULAR CULTURES: THE REPRESSED IN ANTAGONISTIC STRUGGLE
As is the case with capitalism, so is the case with the cultures. The intolerance is the universal that arises from the particular cultures such that in spite of our differences, we can identify the antagonism/antagonistic struggle in which we are involved. This means that the struggle is not inter-cultural: the cultures are not the units that come together- it is the "the repressed, the exploited and suffering" who come together in the antagonistic struggle. The actual universal is not the 'deep' feeling that all civilizations share same basic values- it is the experience of negativity, of the inadequacy-to-itself, of a particular identity that forms the actual universality. Thus, the motto for revolutionary solidarity is not "let us tolerate our differences" but that "let us share our intolerance and join forces in the same (antagonistic) struggle".
Following Hegel, Marx also holds that Universality becomes 'for itself' only when the individuals do not fully identify themselves with the series of social situation but experience themselves as forever "out of joint" regarding the situation. The Universality moves towards its actualization only through the non-proper postioning of individuals within its structure. Thus, the way in which an abstract Universality appears and enters into actual existence marks a violent move of dislocating the previous order of social life.
The universality of this struggle is concretized in every historical epoch- such that every epoch has to find its own way of letting the universality erupt through the particular culture. This eruption of universality is not the realization of the neutral frame that unites us all (of the form- "in spite of our differences, we are basically all human..") but the universality that becomes for-itself in the "violent experience of the subject who becomes aware that he is not fully himself"- that there is a profound split in his existence.
Primo Levi- Italian chemist and writer who survived holocaust- often oscillated between the options when asked if he considers himself a Jew or a human. The solution cannot be: precisely as a Jew, he is human- that "one is human, one participates in universal humanity, through one's ethnic identification". Why not? Because it is to the extent that he was not able to identify fully with his Jewishness that he was a human. This means that to the level that one is not able to identify with the positions, to that extent he moves towards the universal.
part 3- acheronta movebo
Acheronat Movebo: "If I cannot bend the will of Heaven, I shall move Hell."
Life-world constitutes of habits governed by meta-rules
The life-world, which resists universality, is made up of habits. The domain of habit is governed by a "complex network of informal rules" which instructs us on how we are to relate to the Other. To know the habits of a society is to know the meta-rules which tell us how we are to apply these habits.
'UN'FREE CHOICE: THE EMPTY GESTURE AND PARADOX OF NECESSITATED CHOICE
Empty gesture
Zizek takes the case of the 'when not to use a choice which is offered'/'polite offer-meant-to-be-refused': the acceptance of such an offer is considered a vulgar blunder. In case of sexual matters also, the explicitly said 'no' means an implicit injection 'do it, but in a discreet way'. This is the model also inherent in political situations where a choice is given on the condition that we make the right choice.
Examples of empty gesture are:
The politeness to reject an offer of promotion that my best friend makes to me after having received it.
To say that 'you owe me no apology' when a friend offers it after having been rude: the friend shows that he cares and you show that you understand his rude behavior
Paradox of necessitated choice
The use of such regulations to form a disguise of free choice is also used in totalitarian regimes: the legal regulations are so severe that every person is guilty of something and then the regime retreats from full enforcement of the laws- this shows that the regime can appear merciful (mercy) and also continue to be a permanent threat to discipline its subjects (potential total culpablization). The glue which holds together these two extremes of the spectrum together is the structure of social life itself. One cannot live without violating the law- bribing or cheating- violation of law is a condition of survival and thus, the perpetual rejuvenation of the totalitarian-regime mercy on its subjects.
Zizek uses the example of disintegration of the Soviet power to show how there is a network of unwritten rules (how to get your work done, who to bribe, what to do to get my child accepted in top-school and so on) beneath the customs and habits (on how to relate to the Other) of the subjects of state and how the collapse of Soviet power left people in a loss to understand what they were to do. Brecht (author of Mother Courage and Her Children), through his plays also unfolded this model of being in the society.
Being part of the society involves the paradox of willing (choosing freely) what is in any case necessary which each of us is to embrace freely- we all must love our country or our parents. This paradox is knit with the notion of empty symbolic gesture- the act of offering which is mean to be rejected.

what is a habit? WHAT IS IT TO BE WITHOUT A HABIT?
To fill an empty gesture (accept the friend's offer of promotion or to say 'Yes. You should be.' when a friend offers an apology) would be to break the social substance itself, to bare the paradoxical nature of the rules and habits.
All the revolutionary-egalitarian figures have been figures without habits: "they refuse to take into account the habits that qualify the functioning of a universal rule". For instance- If all men are equal (the universal rule), then all men are equal and are to be effectively treated as such (without any qualification).
Stating ways in which such a habit could be broken, he mentions the example of early 1980s student weekly newspaper in ex-Yugoslavia which wanting to protest against the fake 'free' elections, also realized that the slogan 'speak truth to power' would not work since the people did know the truth (as was evident by their jokes) and the power would not listen. Thus, instead of directly denouncing the elections as being unfree, they treated them as completely free, as though the results had been really undecided and on the day of election , printed an extra edition with the journal saying- "Latest election results: it looks that Communists will remain in power!"- by treating the elections as free, the people were publicly reminded of their non-freedom.
Habits are what our identities contain: we enact and define what we are as social being, in comparison to our perception of what we are (my perception of myself says that I should accept the promotion my friend is offering me but as a social being, I cannot). Habits embedded in the meta-rules of one's culture and society which also decides our class (upper, middle, lower) determine our identity. All that I am- "my notion of good and evil, of pleasant and unpleasant, of funny and serious, of ugly and beautiful"- my "innermost" beliefs are all out there embodied in practices which reaches the immediate materiality of my body. Satirizing the subtle ways in which the class distinctions are played out/unfolded in the world, Zizek mentions the craze with smell today where classes distinguish themselves from each other on the basis of the type of smell that is emitted. So, upper class people claim to avoid the public transport solely because the neighbor 'smells'. He adds that scientists today have come up with "wind-free" beans to dilute the effect of smell (which will position you in a certain class/category in front of the Other), after a series of other material measures that themselves become standards to judge your position: decaf coffee, alcohol-free beer, fat-free cakes, diet cola.
Source of elimination of habit in oneself: Zizek makes a distinction between the: subject of enunciated and subject of enunciation. The former, in direct negation, want to change the world without threatening their subjective positions. The next step is to negate this negation itself such that the subject is put into question and the source of change is positioned within oneself. Most of the time, we are in the former position- looking out into the world for a source of change. Moreover, we are insincere about our own convictions- 'love thy neighbor', 'don't hit a man when he's down'- we laugh at them- however, we get angry when we see a person from another culture laughing at it. "It is only when you meet someone of a different culture from yourself that you begin to realize what your own beliefs really are."
Institutional birth of habits: "heart of darkness" of habits- The Catholic Church has to deal with cases of pedophilia that arise within it. It refuses to cooperate with the police saying that it is an internal matter. Zizek agrees that it is actually an internal matter- however, way deeper than acknowledged by the church. The Catholic Church, as a socio-symbolic institution constitutes an Unconscious which reinforces such a habit of pedophilia which is in itself required for the Church to exist. "..the very logic of the institution seduces him (a straight priest) into it (pedophilia)". The public institution is in itself sustained by this underbelly. By being part of this practice, which is appropriated as an individual habit later, one proves allegiance to the Church. The identity of the Church priest is to identify with this secret side. Zizek says that the main concern is to understand how the Church systematically creates conditions for such crimes.
Concluding his text, Zizek says that what is difficult to change is this 'obscene underground of habits' and for this reason, the motto of every radical emancipator politics must be "Acheronta movebo"- 'dare to move the underground'!- to undo the habits which sustain the culture of intolerance than to see tolerance (the Heaven) as a solution when indeed, it is only an escape.
27-April-2015


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