Comradely Greetings by Slavoj Žižek Read Free Book Online Page A

that we need to find a way of joining this game without checking our beliefs at the door. We can definitely profit from the ping-pong being played between an egalitarian-emancipatory “deterritorialization” and the postmodern, capitalist one. But we have to stay brave, energetic, and stubborn—we can’t walk away from the fight. Sparring is how you build endurance, how you learn to be quick on your feet and develop a sense of humor. Unlike the old Left, we can’t just reject capitalism out of hand—we’ll get further by playing with it, teasing till it’s been perverted. Perverted, I mean, in the sense of being turned to face us, enlisted into our cause.

    Don’t waste your time worrying about giving in to theoretical fabrications while I supposedly suffer “empirical deprivations.” There’s value to me in these inviolable limits, in my being tested this way. I’m fascinated to see how I’ll cope with all this, how I’ll channel it into somethingproductive for my comrades and myself. I’m finding inspiration in here, ways of evolving. Not because but in spite of the system. Your thoughts and anecdotes are a help to me as I negotiate this conundrum. I’m glad we’re in touch.
    I await your reply.
    Wishing you luck in our common cause,
    Nadya

“Beneath the dynamics of your acts, there is inner stability”
Slavoj to Nadya, June 10, 2013
    Dear Nadya,
    Let me begin by confessing that I felt deeply ashamed after reading your reply. You wrote: “Don’t waste your time worrying about giving in to theoretical fabrications while I supposedly suffer ‘empirical deprivations.’ ” This simple sentence made me aware of the falsity of the final turn in my last letter: my expression of sympathy with your plight basically meant, “I have the privilege of doing real theory and teaching you about it while you are basically good for reporting on your experiences of hardship” … Your last letter abundantly demonstrates that you are much morethan that, that you are an equal partner in a theoretical dialogue. So my sincere apologies for this proof of how deeply entrenched male chauvinism can be, especially when it is masked as sympathy for the other’s suffering, and let me go on with our dialogue.
    First just a minor remark. I deeply appreciate your point about the advertising industry—I am myself so tired of the purist pseudo-Marxist critique of advertising as part of commodity fetishism that I am almost tempted to propose the following guideline: a critical social theorist who is not able to enjoy advertisements should not be taken seriously … But let me now pass to our key
differend
. (Sorry that I use so many quotes—but others have formulated things much better than I am able to.) Your central point is that the anti-hierarchical structures and rhizomes of late capitalism are a deceiving facade that conceals hierarchical structures and normalization: beneath all the glitz of free creativity there is the same old static, centralized, and hierarchic material production base. With this I fully agree … up to a point. I, of course, agree that beneath the much-celebrated postmodern dynamics of global capitalism lie deeply entrenched structures of domination and exploitation. But are these structures of domination and exploitation still “the same old static, centralized, and hierarchic material production base”? Permit me to quote here a well-known passage from
The Communist Manifesto
which is valid today more than ever:
    The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relationsof society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the