Democracy – in the way the term is used today – means that, whatever electoral manipulation takes place, every political agent will unconditionally respect the results. In this sense, the US presidential elections of 2000 were, despite appearances, effectively ‘democratic’: in spite of obvious electoral manipulation, and of the absurdity of the fact that a couple of hundred votes in Florida decided who would be president, the Democratic candidate accepted his defeat. When, in the weeks of uncertainty after the election, Bill Clinton said, ‘The American people have spoken; we just don’t know what they said,’ the remark should have been taken more seriously than it was meant: even now, we don’t know the ‘true’ result – and maybe this is because there was no substantial ‘message’ behind the result.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
What Zizek knows about Election Fraud
In light of this, a reminder of what he was writing in 2004:
"For people like Zizek, social upheavals in what they call the Third World are a matter of theoretical entertainment. It is an old tradition that goes back all the way to Sartre on Algeria and Cuba in the 1950s, down to Foucault on Iran in the 1970s. That does not bother me a bit. In fact, I find it quite entertaining -- watching grown up people make complete fools of themselves talking about something about which they have no blasted clue. " - Hamid Dabashi in Al-Ahram weekly
ReplyDeletethe "open letter" as performance of pedantry fad is curious...and can be funny; the seem to have decided their own "positions", which are totally divorced from any activity or any agitation regarding policy, are nonetheless newsworthy; the spectacle of Zizzy and Judith Butler writing little notes to "the Iranian government" with advice and admonishments, as Goldman Sachs completes its coup d'état, has an amusing quality of fragmented biopic performance piece, but the multiply hysterical demands (a short letter can scarcely decide which Master to apply to first, the main thing being to emphatically not notice imperialist machinations or the global finance coup at all, as we're reporting imaginitively "on the ground in Tehran") of Zizek's latest in the Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/15/letters-iran-disputed-presidential-election
is another which the sincerest fans may insist for a while is a transparent, cheap Zizz knock-off before having to concede that the designation is nonsensical, it's all genuine fraud and 100% authentic imitation.