Reading Zizek: Against Human Rights

Pic Source: zizek.uk/popes failure

The choice is always meta-choice i.e. beyond the choice –compulsion

Zizek begins with the recognization of three major assumptions- opposition to fundamentalism, freedom of choice and pursuit of happiness, and defense against power for which the human right is exercised. These are the common beliefs that the liberal-capitalist society assumes to be protected. Zizek believes that the fundamentalist feature which is generally associated with the Islamic degeneracy is actually the outcome of the Western capitalist societies. Religious intolerance and the ethnic violence is the product of the West. He gives an example from a report of an Italian traveler N. Bisani who visited Istanbul and found a church in the middle of the mosques which was opposite to the intolerance of London and Paris. This is how Zizek challenges this argument by showing with evidence that non-modern Turkey and Balkan in the early phase of modernity were more tolerant. Zizek argues that the association of destructive psyche with the Balkans is nothing but the reflection of their (Western European) own psyche. The Balkanic mentality is repressed in their subconscious mind which is strange to them as well. Thus, the first issue, opposition to fundamentalism, to appeal human rights by liberal-capitalist society is something that is found within themselves and what they combat is with their own otherness in the form of Balkans. The extremist behavior is dynamically structured in the subconscious of the western European and it is their own ego that they want to eliminate or it is the alter ego which is suppressed in their psyche.

Zizek then moves to deal with another issue that is the so-called freedom of choice. He cites an example of the adolescents of Amish community who were told to make choice between their community and the developed American society after their sudden inclusion in the American developed society for some time. But they were unprepared for the later and chose the first. This is not the freedom of choice rather the compulsion. The decision is followed by the necessity not the choice. It seems as if it is a choice but in the depth it is pseudo-choice without any freedom. Similarly, in the freedom of choice there lies the possibility of being a fundamentalist. The choice is always meta-choice i.e. beyond the choice –compulsion. He gives an example of a Muslim woman who wears the veil out of her own choice but the moment she unveils herself out of her choice she is taken as an idiosyncratic and abnormal. And where does the freedom of choice lie? Here, Zizek sounds like the existentialist philosopher like Kierkegaard who in his book Stages on Life’s Way says “I am aware of freedom in my choice only when I surrender myself to necessity and in surrendering to forget it” (Kierkegaard, 1845).

Zizek, now, turns to the politics of jouissane or the pursuit of pleasure. Here, Zizek redefines the concept of pleasure and the legitimacy when he brings forth the western and Islamic concept about the female body. It is the women’s right to expose their body i.e. free sexuality is legitimized in the western ideology. In contrast to it, control of sexuality is legitimized as the defense of women’s dignity in the Islam. And both of these societies enjoy with this distinction. So, even the concept of jouissance differs from community to community and to reduce them in one single definition is the crime of reductionism. We cannot make the universal measuring rod to exercise human rights. Here, Zizek is closer to the post modernist idea of multiple truths instead of single Truth, multiple realities instead of the Reality and the relative truth rather than the transcendental truth. Likewise, the meaning of the jouissance comes from its absence i.e. pain, like the meaning of the day comes from the night. Zizek argues that “absolute jouissance is a myth, that it never effectively existed, that its status is purely differential”(Zizek, 2005). Thus, the meaning is always deferred/delayed and differed as Derrida describes “Defferance on the one hand, it indicates difference as distinction, inequality, or discernibility; on the other, it expresses the interposition of delay” (ed. Adams, 1990). While describing the sexual pleasure, Zizek writes that “true jouissance is neither in the act itself nor in the thrill of the expectation of pleasure to come, but in the melancholic remembrance of it” (Zizek, 2005). So the western concept of jouissance does not include the pleasure in true sense.

Another issue that Zizek deals with is the use of human rights against the power or as the defense from power. Zizek begins with the question that if the fundamentalism and the pursuit of happiness lead toward the contradictions, these acts are not defense against the power? He presents the different views about power and protest. Zizek says that Marx complicated the notion of ‘power’ when he talked about the bourgeois and the proletariat class not as fix but like liquid. Zizek compares it with the Lacanian signifier where the meaning moves from one definition to another and rather than the meaning there comes the chain of signifiers. Along with the defense of power Zizek brings the uses of human rights on the ground of humanity or the humanitarian. But the issue of human rights even in the humanitarian ground is also not interest free. There is always interest of some group, class or society. It is influenced by the certain political ideology. Zizek writes, “The celebration of ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Yugoslavakia took the place of a political discourse” (Zizek, 2005). Zizek further says that “the ostensibly depoliticized politics of human rights as the ideology of military interventionism serving specific economic-political ends. As Wendy Brown has suggested apropos Michael Ignatieff, such humanitarianism presents itself as something of an anti-politics, a pure defense of the individual against immense and potentially cruel or despotic machineries of culture, state, war, ethnic conflicts, tribalism, patriarchy, and other mobilizations or instantiations of collective power against individuals ” (Zizek, 2005). But in reality it is political, full of interest, a tool of the powerful and a new form of colonialism. Even the so-called universal human rights are not interest free; they are loaded by the western interest. Zizek while talking about multiculturalism and universality talks about the avoidance of food from McDonalds in India as it uses the fat from the beef and the corporation assurance of not using the beef-fat may suggest the acceptance of Other but “we do not accept the Other as such. We implicitly introduce a certain limit. We test the Other against our notions of human rights, dignity and equality of sexes…we say we accept your customs which pass this test. We already filter the Other, and what passes the filter is allowed” (Zizek & Daly, 2004). This process of logical interference shows how universality is derived. Thus, human right is not something that Kant defines aesthetic art as disinterested, free from prejudice. It is rather the full of political and the utilitarian concerns (Guyer, 2000). So, the so-called discourse of human rights in the third world countries is no more than seeking legitimate way to intervene politically, economically, culturally in the new world scenario. The Marxist reading of universal human rights as the “right of white, male property owners to exchange freely on the market, exploit workers and women, and exert political domination”(Zizek, 2005).

Bibliography

Adams, H. (ed.) (1990). Critical Theory since Plato. United States: Wadsworth Publishing.

Guyer, P. (ed.) (2000). Critique of the Power of Judgment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Parker, I. (2004). Slavoj Zizek. London: Pluto Press.

Zizek, S. (2005). Against Human Rights. New Left Review. New Left Review. July-August. P.115. Available from: http://www.newleftreview.org. [accessed: 31^st november 2010]

Zizek, S. & Daly, G. (2004). Conversation with Zizek. Oxford: Polity Press.