Violence, Slavoj Zizek

Philosopher Slavoj Zizek wrote a book titled Violence. I have not read it but intend to once my queue of reading shortens. In the meantime I'm watching an interview in which he discusses the content of the book and think that I'll add some questions and commentary as I go.

I think that what he is saying here makes a lot of sense. The violence that is used to keep things the way that they are is usually not seen. What he means here is not that it is literally invisible, but that it is seen as acceptable and doesn't carry the same visceral discomfort that is associated with other types of violence. The violence that maintains the current homeostasis must be analyzed and stopped if deemed necessary. As a socialist I think that is a given; I'm just re-stating. The question that comes to my mind in this case is: where is the state of society in which there is no longer a need - or the smallest need - for this violence of systemic preservation?

I can see that there are several possibilities, not all good. An example of an outcome that meets this criteria, yet I find unfavorable would be the goal of IngSoc in Orwell's 1984. In that scenario the system was set up such that the amount of violence needed to maintain the system was becoming smaller as time went on. Obviously, that is not my goal but it is one answer to the question. Another would be a system that enabled everyone's rights to be expressed without disadvantaging others. Such a system, I think would also reduce the amount of systemic violence necessary.

I chose those words carefully since I have no doubt that some amount of systemic violence is necessary for the maintenance of any system, unfortunately.




In this section he uses the term Divine Violence to denote violence that is seen as acceptable because it is used to challenge the violence used to maintain that system. It is another way of saying revolutionary or rebellious violence. He then goes on to say that this type of violence, emancipatory violence, should be supported. I'm not sure if he meant to put the qualifier "sometimes" before that but I'm not going to put words in his mouth there. I would agree if that qualifier were added.

After that he goes on to say that when Divine Violence changes from being about emancipation to being violence on behalf of someone or something other than the needs and wants of those perpetrating and those immediately connected to them it becomes something called Mythic Violence. This, he says, is what religious, idealistic - as in Idealism not conviction -, and other such violence can be called as a category. He used the violence on behalf of Stalin as an example of Mythic Violence.

He also points out that "non-violent" action is still violence, which I think is pretty obvious. Even the establishment of the language we use with each other implicitly contains violence. Note that Zizek is not of the opinion that all violence should be eradicated. I think that too.


I'm going to be honest here, I'm not entirely sure what he means or that I interpreted him correctly. What it sounded like he was saying was that for multi-culturalism to exist in any sustainable way we must have certain common rules of interaction with that other culture. This would breed some sort of unity despite cultural differences, enabling true collective decision making. Without these commonalities the political sphere becomes a tool for the domination of one culture over another which defeats the whole purpose of allowing the other culture to exist neighboring the dominant.

That I understand, but the establishment of those customs may very well be changing the other culture and thus defeating some of the purpose of multi-culturalism. This is where he seems to be saying liberals and conservatives but heads in particular. The liberals want so desperately to not offend or alter the other culture so they either feel guilty or alter their own. The conservatives seek to dominate the other culture to preserve their own, most defensively some offensively.

I'm not sure where Zizek stands.

The liberal values of tolerance and understanding are perversions of the actual values that those words represent in a usual sense. What they mean by tolerance is to keep the other culture completely separate. What they mean by understanding is dismissing one's own morality and allowing the other to use theirs without criticizing it.



Zizek then starts to comment on the popularity of single-issue politics. He says that when the USSR and social democratic states were defeated the popular sentiment went against mass political movements. This pervaded all through the 1990s until, he claims, September 11, 2001. The attacks mobilized the public into wishing to push an entire worldview onto those they viewed as enemies.

I can see how that may be the case, and if it is then it also opened the door for leftist collective action. While a pure leftist collective movement has not formed the Occupy movement at least shows that it is possible to gain some support for mass action on some level that may not have been possible a decade ago.

State repression is the result of class division. Whenever differential and unaccountable authority becomes systemic, the privileged elements invariably erect barriers to entry and utilize such as mechanisms for self-preservation. There is an inverse proportion between the prevalence of egalitarian social relations and the degree of state sanctioned "violence."

In any case, Noam Chomsky, Antonio Gramsci, and Karl Marx have all analyzed this issue in a more superior fashion than Žižek.