The pseudo-pious path to secular salvation

The increasingly trendy Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek is no stranger to controversy, championing two ideological and intellectual traditions, each loaded with enough anti-individualist implications to upset the most tolerant of liberal sensibilities. That is of course, Marxism albeit in a somewhat provocative and unconventional approach and the Lacanian tradition to which he adheres to much more seriously. With two films now under his belt, numerous appearances on News programmes discussing everything from the Egyptian revolution in Al-Jazeera to Julian Assange on Russia Today, Zizek has accumulated a large following among the intellectual left (something he claims to despise) and spawned many imitators with amateur Freudians haphazardly coupling psycho-sexual analysis with the crisis of capitalism, suddenly becoming a prominent phenomena among the left. It is no wonder then that Hamid Dabashi's accusation of Orientalist clichés appearing throughout Zizek's work was met with such distain among intellectual leftists. The issue that caused such controversy was Zizek's position on the Tiger economies appropriation of Capitalism, spelling the effective ideological end of any inherent democratic character contained within it.

Zizek is without doubt a profound thinker, and perhaps the only leftist ideologue worth listening to today if for the simple fact alone that he completely disturbs the ideological entrenchment and uncreatively of the current left by arguing primarily from a non-Marxist perspective and one alien to the antiquated Trotskyist-anti-revisionist rivalry. That being said the limitations to it's usefulness become embarrassingly clear when he steps outside his comfort zone and lays out his often reductionist accounts to a theological or cultural phenomena beyond the scope of his anti-metaphysical mission to arrange the world comfortably within framework of his progressive-Lacanian worldview where any local peculiarities, sacred traditions or historical ambiguities are parodied, used as a sort of intellectual canon fodder to further Zizek's own conclusions by perversely arguing that the numerous traditions of the worlds not only serve to prove the supremacy of Zizek's progressive atheistic socialist worldview, but render themselves useless in the process.

Such is the case in Zizek's "A perverts guide to ideology", where in critiquing Scorsese's The last temptation of the Christ he provokes faithful and faithless alike with the statement that in order to become a true Atheist, one must first become Christian. Whether this is to be seen as part of an already existing tradition among outwardly atheist intellectuals warming up to Christian theology  as Habermas did with the Pope, fascinated by the cognitive substance of religion is unclear. Zizek's position is unfortunately more reminiscent of Geert Wilders in his atheistic appropriation of the Christian legacy of Europe. It's no secret that Zizek is pro-European and yet it seems with the lack of any substantial secular unifying force to call upon, Zizek has opted for a Theo-nationalist reading of Europe as the predecessor to a progressive atheist community.

Zizek's position of the ontology of the crucifixion is in contradiction to both a traditional Christian perspective as well as Freud's position on the primordial patricide and the guilt-obedience complex that lingers on in Christian teaching. So while the crucifixion in Zizek's philosophy is an ultimately liberating moment, heralding the death of God as the proof of his love (resolving the problematic old-testament divinity) and imbuing the believer with the holy spirit, it is in psychoanalysis a mere solidification of the primal obedience brought about by the guilt in having murdered ones archetypal father. Zizek is clearly departing from Freud, following Kautsky in his assessment that the crucifixion was not only atheistic in nature but revolutionary. In fact it reminded me of Ahmad Shamlou's poem where he describes Christ forced to carry the cross as an exemplar of revolutionary responsibility and the crucifixion as the archetypal commitment to a revolutionary cause.

He was relieved
By the mercy he found in his soul
And like a proud swan
He looked into his own purity

The problem lies in reading the crucifixion as a resolution to a problematic theology. And here Zizek's orientalism is somewhat more evident as he laments the morbidity of the distant and harsh Semitic monotheistic divinity as somehow harmonious with the irresponsible, emotional faculty within the believer. "If God exists then everything is permitted". Perhaps it is useful that Zizek is in fact disregarding the dubious "Judeo-Christian" character of Europe by regulating the former to it's actual anti-idealised position in pre-modern Europe as a Semitic morbidity but instead of transcending both Euro-centrist and Orientalist discourses of Semitic monotheism, he lapses into both. This premise rests entirely on God's role as the Big-Other, the non-existent father who is oblivious to his own death.

That is he makes no distinction between the genuinely transcendental and the worldly ideological justification for social change. Zizek explains the monstrosity of 20th century Communism by arguing as many have that the whole affair was more or less religious, in a strict literal eschatological sense and the believer had merely been redeemed as an agent of historical progress. Of course, dialectical materialism is just that, materialism worlds apart from an orientation towards an intersectionary sacred dimension. The aims of the first are undoubtedly worldly with the eventual horizon set on the end of totalizing historical narrative. It is a sort of secular millenarianism which even in it's religious variety is utter heresy given the fact that it transposes divine knowledge to a non-messianic or non-prophetic personality. That is, theology only becomes a morbidity when it's ultimate vision is in commanding a change in the earthly dimension.

As far as Zizek is concerned, what Sufis call Fana fillah, extinction in the sacred or the apophatic Theoria of the Eastern orthodox tradition cannot exist and it is a shame that a former Heideggerian cannot recognise the ontological separateness between the two. Unlike Zizek's position whereby God's death is known but unacknowledged, placing a revolutionary responsibility on the believers shoulders "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace but a sword", the metaphysicists responsibility arises from the death of his Ego, the meditation of the thaumatological moments of his tradition (the resurrection, scripture etc.)  and the acknowledgement of the real which is ironically reminiscent of Lacan's own hatred towards Ego psychology and the need to painfully have the patient acknowledge his own helplessness, however damaging it may be.      

 

Apophatic Theology and concealment in the Islamic tradition

 

 

 

It’s revealing that the tired and mundane discourse on Islam, whether in its parental protectionist British variant or as a principled concern in the case of North America revolves entirely around a largely unchallenged dichotomy between a “moderate” and “fundamentalist” Islam. This has no doubt alarmed Muslims that found themselves caught in an imaginary crisis, an inauthentic dialectic alien to what are serious challenges to the Islamic faith as a whole. These essentialist distinctions that the likes of Mahmood Mamdani have beautifully challenged and conscious attempts to fabricate a critical juncture in Islamic history whereby the two irreconcilable poles emerge which unlike Orientalism which can be said to be a misguided obsession with extrapolation, is a more insidious and an explicit messianic imperative to throw the veil over the crumbling legacy of Descartes by subjecting the world’s second largest ( and until recently untouched by this “reformist” tendency) religious tradition to the same destructive fanaticism that has afflicted western Christianity. Some in Western Muslim communities have struck to reclaim the label “fundamentalist”, itself an inapplicable label to Islamic sects, quite rightly defending reactionary theology as the most legitimate mode through which the sacred can be experienced. The problem however lies in refusal to ground the reaction in a traditional Islamic theology, instead championing the literalist and puritanical reformist streak which ironically resembles more closely the imagined “fundamentalism” of the neurotic analysts in the west than it does any fundamental truths within Islam.

 

This week, the Jihadi plague which taints all it bloats into from its host in North Syria have declared a new blasphemy which surpasses even apostasy and heresy. A child was promptly executed for joking about the prophet to whom the perpetrators loudly proclaimed, “he who insults god is given three days to repent, and he who insults the prophet is executed immediately”. This is wholly significant, not only in that it is the now official doctrine of those most in a position to produce Islam in recent times but in that it effectively translates into the mass consciousness of Muslims in the West who as we are all familiar, wholly obsessed with the prophet and not as an ideal, or principle but as threatened idol whose provocation requires a relentlessly hostile defence. Are Muslims playing the “Muhammad card” in the same way Fr. Richard Rohr locates the elevation of Christ from the Trinity to a pseudo-pagan titan as a serious error within Christianity? Indeed, the comparability of the Cross and by token the trinity and the Shahada as the revealing of the celestial hierarchy through the meeting of the eternal with the historical and the association of both symbolisms with the masters of their respective eras (Christ and Muhammad) is no new phenomena. Is this then a Romanisation of Islam? I believe the actual process is far more degenerative and while the distortion of the trinity in Christianity wasn’t enough to vanquish the transfiguring light of the eternal Christ, the segregation and elevation of Muhammad from the Shahada risks collapsing the language of Islam entirely.

 

Two points must be clarified before proceeding, given that Muhammad’s position in the hierarchy isn’t quite comparable to “The Son” in the trinity despite their celestial correspondence to the Universal intellects. The “elevation” of Muhammad from the Shahada is actually degradation given that the prophets while both human (nasut) and spiritual (lasut), is not the latter incardinated into the former. The Shahada operates within the realm of faith and sustains the hududs (horizons) of the celestial realm; therefore a manipulation of any exoteric component of the Shahada disrupts and nullifies its ontological significance. The Heideggerian notion of “World withdrawal” is useful in illuminating the process in which the symbolic prophet is reduced to a totem and robbed of the significance of his recognition. The declaration of faith is catalogued and museumised, and although it is not historical in the sense that it is still projected into present possibilities, it is in danger of losing its function in “opening” or clearing. In removing Muhammad from the two negations and affirmations, they have not removed Islam from Muhammad but instead removed Muhammad from Islam. Within the authenticity of Muhammad within the Shahada, as the master of divine inspiration then the figure is reduced to an aesthetic, an undead apparition, driving men to relish in a highly eroticised violence as offering to this alien intruder of the Islamic tradition.

 

Some Sufi orders in their wisdom recognised the fallacy in presentation of the historical figures of Islam in the literalist tradition as Nasut. The Bektashi’s for example through their upholding of the concept of Haqq-Muhammad-Ali both conceal and clear the space of Gnostic revelation. Though this is often misunderstood as Trinity, it occupies the same space in the realm of faith among similar horizons in the celestial realm. The saying of the Prophet;

 

“Ana madinat al Ilm wa Ali babu’ha (I am the city of knowledge and Ali is the gate)”

 

 Is evidence of the vital importance in recognition and veneration of the hududs in the understanding of concepts and symbolisms pertinent to the realm of faith. Also at the first, this seems a hopeless descriptive endeavour to codify the divine, it is given it’s dualistic revelation a far more conservative a cautious approach than the literalist tradition which disrupts the exoteric manifestation through anthropomorphising the divine without thought to the dimension  of lasut within these phenomena. An opening line in a Bektashi nefes should explain the inseparability of the historical figures of Islam more clearly:

 

“God forbid that anyone should see them as separate from one another. Muhammad is Ali, Ali Muhammad”

 

Curiously the Muhammad of both traditions is the transfiguring light (as is Christ); the relationship between the resurrector (Qa’ism), the prophet (Nur al Nabi) and the gate (Bab) is worth meditating on. Is this however Apophatic? Or is it at least more so than the current dominant trends within Islamic discourse? Perhaps a more general Sufi tradition not exclusive to any particular Sufi sect is more convincing, that of Dhikir (remembrance). As Henry Corbin explains, many forms of Dhikir consist on the repetition and meditation of the first statement of the Shahada, that is the negation (Nullus Deus) both as a guard against the Nafs (ego) by rejecting all claims and pretence to divine authority or immunity. Borrowing again from Heidegger, it is the unconealment of the Shahada which conceals and the exclusive power of the one paradoxically conceals its nature. We cannot simply disclose anything we wish from the Shahada nor can we ignore its esoteric function, what are not present lies in an unimaginable cosmic abyss.

 

It is in this sense that we should perhaps repeat and meditate upon the first principle of the declaration of faith “La ilaha” before we are ready to carry the burden that the affirmation entails.             

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.