Why Nihilism is enough

Our generation is perhaps the first where it is expected and encouraged to be a revolutionary. The tired and inappropriate regurgitation of the supposed dichotomy between establishment and disestablishment is a misleading as that between left and right. Sub-culturally alternating teenage school girls, belching liberal newspaper executives, guilt ridden teenage Trotskyite and failed presidential candidates are all equal in the expectation that their lives should amount to reeling the chaotic forces in the universe under some sort of democratic harmony. The intellectually capable among us will be able to distinguish the mass appeal of some revolutionary goals over others. All but the most gullible know Kony 2012 was a scam. The horrendous marriage of commercial strategy, youth pop culture and post-Victorian ethics should be enough to make even the likes of Bob Geldof nauseous. The less serious the subject matter the more inappropriate the means of mobilisation are. When you’re dealing with niggers it becomes perfectly acceptable to quite literally offer pre-packaged revolutionary solutions, in standard, premium and deluxe means of delivery.



Supporters of the increased tendency of today’s youth to “think about the world”, will often acknowledge the potential for manipulation and opportunism of those who would use further their own geo-political agenda under the guise of altruistic motives, but will regulate such phenomena as the natural expected backlash against the previous all pervasiveness of  post-modern  cynicism. Its detractors such as Badiou and Zizek would challenge the assumption that such a movement represents a clear break from post-modernism at all, merely amounting to the reformulation of disparate failed phenomena, stripped of their contexts and revitalised in a shallow momentary aesthetic. I would not be so dismissive when considering the increasing optimistic (and misplaced) desire among today’s youth to save the world, especially in relation to a very real and conscious retaliation against the remnants of post-modernist ideals which have degenerated into the almost universally lamented hipster movement. Instead, I believe that the emergence of the likes of the “New Sincerity” movement represent nothing more than a militant revitalised positivism that potentially justifies unwarranted transgression against the individual, group and nation in the name of a poorly defined and deliberately simplified humanism.





A call to slavery: In the service of the invisible master   

 

Back in undergraduate Sociology, we were given a lamentable compulsory course on Social and Political enquiry which included a sizable portion on the call for a militant anthropology as a refreshing break from post structuralist cautionary discourses against the very dangerous game of imposing relative values on a subject deemed (on the whim of the researcher) to be anthropologically worth considering. It was interesting that the only justification for this break by the lecturer was that everyone was fed up with all this post-modern crap. Fatigue is a good enough reason as any to assume and experiment with a different strategy for approaching the social world but is it enough as the only reason? And more importantly, can it justify encouraging a potentially historically irresponsible attitude towards social research in general.



 The first thing one should make clear is that social scientists don’t set social trends, and any claim that it is the sociologists/philosophers/anthropologists mandate to change the world should be confronted. While the likes of Zizek rightfully point out the position of a philosopher as the modest interpreter, I don’t exactly believe it’s correct for the social scientist to merely jump on the bandwagon of already existing socially occurring phenomena (Wall street protests, Arab revolution) and speaking at political rallies while at the same time hiding behind the role of the modest observer.  It’s really no wonder than a philosopher of such an impenetrable school as Lacanian psychoanalysis is an international superstar among the student left. You can’t call yourself a communist, flirt with revolutionary movements, attend Marxism 2011 and then complain about misconceptions of the role of the philosopher. Infact, the danger in this fallacy was highlighted by none other than Martin Heidegger who despite (quite unfairly) being strongly associated with the political, refrained from any notion that it was the philosophers duty to bring about change in the world. In his critique of Marx’s famous praxis, “The Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point is to change it”, Heidegger points out that the call for any change in the world in predicated upon the change in the conception of the world. That is that Marx’s praxis is itself limited to his own interpretation of the world. As Zizek himself points out, “words matter, they matter because they define the contours of what we can do”. What remains modest then in appearing on Al-Jazeera during the Egyptian revolution with that modern embodiment of Islamic banality, Tariq Ramadan and rambling about a region you have little familiarity with?



I have to reaffirm that I’m not against non-experts from expressing their opinion on a region or topic they haven’t been awarded a stamp of approval by the university to dissect, what would be the point since it seems everyone is invited to the theoretical laboratory which houses the mangled, assaulted body of the Middle East. And I would argue there is definite value to Nietzsche’s distaste for the ant-like scholars who are devoid of the lightness in touch and the freedom of spirit in regarding things. But Zizek is moving beyond merely regarding things! Is there not a point when an actively partisan stance betrays the (admittedly post-structuralist) philosophical imperative to read and interpret?    



While social scientists don’t set trends, they have the potential to give an activity a stamp of intellectual approval. Beginning with Nancy Schepur-Hughes and her self-righteous crusade against the injustices she would unravel, there has been a trend for academics to engage in popular activism with little concern for the inferred values unquestionably taken to heart is always existing universal truths, to be imposed on the subjects of academia (and beyond) by pen (and by any logical conclusion, sword). Unlike Erving Goffman’s far more subtle, cynical (a key term in today’s account for the fatigue people have with post-modernism) account of psychiatric institutions in the 1950s, the likes of Hughes abandons the fortress of responsibility and allows herself to be consumed by a movement that respects no distinction between the roles that such a position affords. And like those people who take it upon themselves to save the world, the intellectual quite literally becomes unable to save him/herself. In this very Nietzschean sense, the crusading intellectual and activist is as oppressed as his/her beloved other, utterly imitable and devoid of self.