Žižek: Most people want to be passive

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek during his lecture “Replying to my Critics” describes the structure of power in the postmodern world, answering to Alain Badiou and Elisabeth Rudinesco’s idea of reinventing the master.

Firstly, he talks about participatory democracy. It really struck me when he said that “The vast majority of people want to be passive”. Protesters all over the world are trying to change a system that destroyed economies and subjugated people intentionally through financial means. Now, we are asking for a more active participation. After all, it is unfair to be allowed to give our opinion once every four or five years, isn’t it?

However, as Žižek points out, people get tired of constant participation. Even though this is necessary at the beginning of a revolution, most of us want a state that runs smoothly and does its work without disturbing us.

Slavoj Žižek

 Another problem Žižek notes, is the fact that engaged citizens don’t really know what they are asking for. We are dissatisfied with capitalism or neo-liberalism but we don’t know how we could replace these systems. And he is right. Most of us are fighting for an unknown better world, a utopia or are looking for the suitable leadership. As the philosopher aptly says: “good politicians are not the ones who listen to the people but they are the ones who tell people what to want”.

This discussion reminds me of ancient Rome, at the imperial times. The opposition merely wanted a decent emperor and it was not actively criticizing the system itself. They didn’t want to get rid of the emperor but they merely wanted an emperor of their own standards, namely a wise emperor, who lived according to the teachings of Stoicism. That is why they were called “stoic opposition” as they wanted the emperor to become a philosopher king and to rule the state without falling victim to passions or pleasures. In other words, they wanted to have a master but a moral master. And this is quite convenient to everyone, one might think.

 Žižek doesn’t mention the Romans and I suspect he doesn't agree with them. Badiou and Rudinesco want to revive the idea of the master but they don’t mention the Romans either. The see the master as a construct of modernity. “The master is the one that allows the individual to become subject”, Badiou writes. The crisis of the master is the crisis of the subject, they said but the master has now been replaced by many “small bosses”, according to Rudinesco.

 Without a master we cannot have emancipation, because the subject is only developed through fidelity to the master. This is the paradox of the philosophers: the need of totalitarianism to avoid fascism and achieve emancipation.

 There is an element of truth though to these, Žižek points out. We no longer have a patriarchal master figure of authority in today’s type of subjectivity. Even totalitarian leaders like Hitler and Stalin are not patriarchal master figures, philosophers of the early 1930s and 40s noticed. The post-oedipal postmodern subjectivity of constantly reconstructing the self fits into modern relations of domination. Modern authority is not hierarchic. On the contrary, it is faceless and multitudinal. And oppression can be even worse even if we don’t have a master, the Slovenian philosopher claims.

The Romans made things much easier. Of course they didn’t have our preoccupations or a world as complex as ours. Besides, the vast majority of the people didn’t even have the right to an opinion. But this discussion makes me feel that the idea of the good master, with some important alterations, lives on. Average people would be satisfied with one master that is kind and just, right?

Talking about totalitarian regimes whose masters are not versions of the patriarchal master but are mother figures, the philosopher gives the example of North Korea. The totalitarian authority in North Korea is a mother. The propaganda they have is strictly focused on the female and the leader/ party is the mother of the people.

“You can question the symbolic order of the Father, but can you question the Mother? In a patriarchal structure you can challenge the authority of the master. That is why I say the Left should reinvent the master. We have to talk of emancipatory politics as a politics that challenges the structure of the master as well as the polymorphous decentralized power that we witness today,” Žižek concludes. And he is right. The Romans cannot, unfortunately, offer us a solution. They didn’t have one for themselves either.

No matter how convenient masters may be, they don’t offer any solution to real problems. We have to be able to imagine a society without a master neither as one boss nor as a polymorphous structure of authority. And, we have to bear in mind that this rejection of direct democracy does not mean that we surrender to hegemonic structures. As the Slovenian philosopher says, there is nothing conservative if a person wants to remain passive. Leftists want people to participate more and more, and this according to Žižek, has to change. The revolution that is really difficult to make is the one that changes people’s everyday lives. And here is when we need to react violently, Žižek says. Not by using force per se but by uprooting the system and changing our everyday lives drastically.