Boletín de la NEL hacia el VI Encuentro Americano de Psicoanálisis de la Orientación Lacaniana
XVIII Encuentro Internacional del Campo Freudiano
HABLAR CON EL CUERPO
LAS CRISIS DE LAS NORMAS Y LA AGITACIÓN DE LO REAL
Buenos Aires, 22 y 23 de noviembre de 2013
EN ESTE BOLETÍN:
Editorial.- Johnny Gavlovski
El Cuerpo del Analista.- Raquel Cors Ulloa
OPINIONES Y COMENTARIOS
COMENTARIO AL TEXTO DE JESSICA JARA "DE PROPAGANDAS, PUBLICIDAD, SINTONIZADOS Y SINTONÍA".-Carmen Navarro-Nino
·COMENTARIO AL TEXTO DE JESSICA JARA, "DE PROPAGANDAS, PUBLICIDAD, SINTONIZADOS Y SINTONÍAS".- Paula Alejandra Del Cioppo
"Mi cabeza como una gran canasta
lleva su pesca
deja pasar el agua mi cabeza
mi cabeza dentro de otra cabeza
y más adentro aún
la no mía cabeza
mi cabeza llena de agua
de rumores y ruinas
seca sus negras cavidades
bajo un sol semivivo
mi cabeza en el más crudo invierno
dentro de otra cabeza
retoña"
Blanca Varela
)
Editorial
Es esta edición de BORDES traemos un trabajo de Raquel Cors, analista de la NEl, residente en Santiago de Chile, y dos comentarios sobre el trabajo de Jessica Jara publicado en números anteriores.
De Freud a Lacan la noción de que el artista se representa a sí mismo. Desde Miller a Las Meninas y el planteamiento de Cors sobre el delicado tema de "El Cuerpo del Analista", de un cuerpo esfumado, representado, desvanecido "en el reflejo al fondo del cuadro, de él no queda sino su lugar, ese lugar al que cada espectador viene a inscribirse". Espectador o… un analizante en el caso que nos ocupa. "El lugar es el lazo" enseña Miller, un lazo desde donde debemos saber ubicarnos.
Y de allí la importancia de preguntarnos por ese cuerpo, este, el del analista, donde se escucha "el ronroneo de lalengua"
Ilustramos su trabajo no sólo con la referencia de Miller, "Las Meninas" sino con "Mujer saliendo del psicoanalista", obra de Remedios Varo, quien hace preguntas con la representación del misterio de los rostros, de la mirada, con su costurero en la mano, relojes y el rostro del analista con algo que se esfuma, que la acompaña, que se desecha, que se hila junto a los pasos que da, en su vuelta al día a día
J Gavlovski
Mujer saliendo del psicoanalista (Fragmento)
Remedios Varo (2012)
El cuerpo del analista
Raquel Cors Ulloa
NEL
El parlêtre adora su cuerpo porque cree que lo tiene. En realidad, no lo tiene, pero su cuerpo es su única consistencia - consistencia mental, por supuesto, porque su cuerpo a cada rato levanta campamento.[2]
J. Lacan
Dice Miller[3] que todo caso clínico -a sabiendas que en psicoanálisis, el caso clínico no existe, no más que la salud mental- debería tener la estructura de Las Meninas de Velázquez, pues el pintor se representa a sí mismo, con pincel en mano junto a los demás seres sobre el lienzo. Es así que no está solo representado sino esfumado, desvanecido en el reflejo al fondo del cuadro, de él no queda sino su lugar, ese lugar al que cada espectador viene a inscribirse.
En su curso "El lugar y el lazo"[4] precisando la homofonía en francés del et "y" y el est "es", o sea que el lugar es el lazo, Miller dice que la tentación del psicoanalista es la de volverse un clínico, también recuerda que Lacan ya había considerado al clínico como aquel que no podía caer más bajo, es decir un sujeto que se separa de lo que ve, de los fenómenos que se producen, y que, por estar desapegado, llega a "adivinar los puntos clave y a ponerse a teclear en el asunto" clínico. Una preciosa advertencia para introducir que el lugar del analista es un lugar donde se establece un lazo; siempre y cuando, dice Lacan, sepamos también de qué modo estamos atrapados en el asunto, nosotros mismos que formamos parte del teclado en el que tecleamos.
Qué pasa si no llegamos a tocar nuestra propia nota, ni si quiera a rozarla con una pincelada, más allá de la representación, como en el cuadro de Velásquez? Y mucho menos a ocupar una función de vertedero - de goce, lugar donde se establece un lazo? Nada fácil sin la báscula que el lugar del analista procura para que la relación del lazo y el lugar esté en su sitio (place).
Silvia Salman (AE) analista de Escuela, transmite en algunos de sus testimonios la experiencia que atravesó su cuerpo en el análisis: Un cuerpo huidizo, que en vez del "dibujo animado", pasó al ánimo de amar en su sinthome "encarnada".[5] Cada AE en su estilo, transmite a la comunidad su testimonio; cada analista desde su vacío desea gracias un cuerpo que funciona, renovado.
El cuerpo del analista, su presencia en-cuerpo,da pie al cuerpo del que se trata en la experiencia analítica; lugar donde se pone el cuerpo que habla solo si se lo pone al asadero. El cuerpo del analizante que habla, cuerpo de goce que habita en el ronroneo de lalengua -que no está hecha para decir sino para gozar- es un cuerpo por el que pasan cosas, sustancia gozante que puede ir a cualquier sitio, pero es preciso un determinado lugar donde alguien lo espera, y solo en ese lugar, en presencia del cuerpo del analista que encarna algo no simbolizable del goce, el analizante entrará, pagará (goce), y saldrá, para después volver a empezar. Un cuerpo supuesto gozar permite su resonancia, sustancia que en un análisis se lee, y si se lee es porque se trata del goce de un cuerpo viviente, un cuerpo que a partir de un significante fue marcado y enfermado por la palabra del Otro.
Es así que lo traumático dejó las marcas permanentes a revelar. Y como lo infinito no es indefinido, una análisis implicará un trayecto y sus tiempos lógicos, y localizará lo oscurecido de la comprensión, gracias al punto de inflexión transferencial en la posición del analista, ya sea como el muerto, sinthome, semblante de objeto, santo, o trauma - más allá del saber y más acá del goce. Enfatiza Lacan en el Seminario 19 – que todo padre (parent) traumático está en suma en la misma posición que el psicoanalista. La diferencia es que el psicoanalista, por su posición, reproduce la neurosis, mientras que el padre (parent) traumático la produce inocentemente.[6]
Si Lacan sitúa el cuerpo en relación al "tener" -lejos de Aristóteles que lo hizo tan armoniosamente- y propone dejarlo en lo que es, un acontecimiento de cuerpo, ligado a lo que se tiene,[7] es quizá una vía a investigar para el próximo Enapol que se ocupará, entre otros temas, del cuerpo que "realmente" le interesa al psicoanálisis, el de un cuerpo vivo -ya no sujeto dividido- sino el de un parlêtre que es hablado y habla, pues el Otro del goce es el cuerpo, no hay goce del Otro, solo hay goce del cuerpo propio.
Santiago 1 de Julio de 2013
OPINIONES Y COMENTARIOS
Comentario al texto de Jessica Jara "De propagandas, publicidad, sintonizados y sintonía".
Carmen Navarro-Nino
El artículo que nos presenta Jessica Jara destaca varios asuntos que atañen a la época compleja "del otro que no existe". Entre otros, apunta a destacar el daño que ha hecho y hace la propaganda. Podemos decir, la propaganda al servicio y en manos de un amo, duerme la consciencia de muchos y para algunos queda disminuida por una inmensa ilusión.
Cabe afirmar que la propaganda fue uno de los instrumentos que llevaron y sostuvieron a Hitler en el poder. En la época anterior al establecimiento del régimen Nazi, el joven Hitler trabajó en el raro "Departamento de Educación y Propaganda". Llama la atención que en los inicios de su campaña política hacía propaganda y en sus discursos amenazaba (objeto voz) con propiciar una guerra civil en Alemania si no le apoyaban. Muchos ciudadanos, como es lógico, querían evitar una guerra civil y algunas compañías e industrias contribuyeron monetariamente con el partido y con la campaña política de Hitler, que lo llevaron a ganar las elecciones y a la toma del poder en Alemania. La mayoría de los empresarios asustados colaboraron y aportaron grandes capitales. Nos preguntamos: Evitaron así una guerra civil? No, solo ayudaron al dictador y amo hacia el horror.
Como sabemos hubo algo peor, millones de muertes inocentes. Todos fueron despojados de la paz y de sus derechos. Quedaron afectados para siempre sus vidas, el país y sus familias.
El miedo a que un líder pueda desatar una "guerra civil" es el desencadenante de una parálisis y ese miedo ayuda al delincuente-abusador a establecer de manera sólida, con amenazas, el control de un país y de sus instituciones de gobierno.
Hoy en la posmodernidad hay la tendencia a decir que la propaganda es una obscenidad sostenida por mentiras. Saberlo a veces, no nos salva de sus efectos. A mayor énfasis propagandístico vemos menores cualidades en la "realidad" anunciada. La propaganda tiene el propósito de vender una idea y utiliza imágenes de felicidad que atraen a los sujetos. Venden lo que no está o sobrevaloran un objeto o idea. Se hace el peor uso de la palabra y del lenguaje. Jacques Lacan (1953) en "Función y campo de la palabra y del lenguaje en psicoanálisis" nos recuerda la importancia del "don de la palabra":
"...La experiencia psicoanalítica ha vuelto a encontrar en el hombre el imperativo del verbo como la ley que lo ha formado a su imagen. Maneja Ia función poética del lenguaje para dar a su deseo su Mediación simbólica. Que os haga comprender por fin que es en eldon de la palabra donde reside toda la realidad de sus efectos; pueses por la vía de ese don por donde toda realidad ha llegado al hombrey por su acto continuado como él la mantiene. Si el dominio que define este don de la palabra ha de bastar a vuestra acción como a vuestro saber, bastará también a vuestra devoción. Pues le ofrece un campo privilegiado..."
El texto de J. Jara presenta varios comentarios que tocan la angustiosa realidad que nos ha tocado vivir en los inicios del siglo XXI. Cuando decimos vivir, hablamos del cuerpo, del deseo, hablamos de vida, de las dificultades que le atañen, de las maneras de vivir, del amor líquido, del síntoma, de la castración…
Como nos apunta Jessica Jara, "…lo que no cambia es el sueño de eliminar el malentendido". Así es, cada sujeto tiene que vérselas con sus dificultades y con la "no proporción sexual" (J. Lacan). Conviene estar solo un poco ilusionados, como "guerreros aplicados", soñar con resolver el malentendido mientras se construyen caminos en un análisis y con mucho entusiasmo, vivir.
------
COMENTARIO AL TEXTO DE JESSICA JARA, "DE PROPAGANDAS, PUBLICIDAD, SINTONIZADOS Y SINTONÍAS"
Paula Alejandra Del Cioppo
Asociada NEL México
Jessica Jara se refiere a una cuestión central: ¿qué ha cambiado y qué permanece del discurso del amo en la época del Otro que no existe? Paralelamente reflexiona en torno a la diferencia que introduce la ética del psicoanálisis en tanto discurso crítico del ejercicio del poder, la manipulación del otro y la propaganda como herramienta al servicio de éstos. Para abordar estos asuntos retoma algunos ejemplos cinematográficos como la película El Triunfo de la Voluntad (1935) de Leni Riefenstahl y El Gran Dictador (1940) de Charles Chaplin. La primera como ejemplo de la obra artística al servicio de la propaganda política y la segunda como denuncia de la "locura colectiva" propiciada por el fascismo mediante la distancia crítica que permite la comedia.
La comparación entre ambas películas -y los entrecruzamientos entre arte y psicoanálisis- permiten establecer una analogía entre ideología y fantasma, por un lado, y entre el arte y las sutilezas del discurso analítico, por otro. Esto último en términos de la capacidad de conmover el sentido para lanzar al sujeto al terreno de lo inquietante, de lo inclasificable, de lo que no lo deja en un lugar cómodo. En palabras de Jara, de lo que "no sintoniza" y por ello convoca a la reeducación, a la terapia o a la eliminación. Así podríamos pensar que Riefenstahl tomó demasiado en serio el culto a la belleza, el ideal de la vida como arte y la disolución de la enajenación[8], de la misma manera que el neurótico se aferra a la seguridad del marco de sentido que le confiere si fantasma. Sin embargo, los ideales del fantasma y la ideología tienen un reverso de sufrimiento y horror. Tanto el arte como el psicoanálisis nos advierten que la belleza, lejos de los ideales de armonía promovidos por el fascismo, se relaciona con la complejidad. Finalmente, bordear lo complejo requiere de cierta tolerancia o gusto por lo que no encaja, así como del efecto cómico que propicia algún uso de los semblantes para soportar la presencia de un real.
Comité organizador BORDES:
Piedad Ortega de Spurrier, Marcela Almanza, Elida Ganoza, Johnny Gavlovski E., Ruth Hernández
PRORROGADO EL PLAZO DE PRESENTACIÓN DE PROPUESTAS DE INTERVENCIÓN:
EL NUEVO PLAZO ES EL 8 DE SEPTIEMBRE
Propuestas de intervención
XII Jornadas de la ELP
"Goce, culpa, impunidad"
De los laberintos de la culpa a la política del síntoma
Ejes de trabajo: 1. La clínica del goce y el discurso del deseo 2. La institución como comunidad de goce 3. Los laberintos de la culpa 4. Castigo, autocastigo, impunidad 5. Clínica y política
Propuestas de intervención: Las ponencias de las salas simultáneas tratarán de las incidencias clínicas que Goce, culpa, impunidad tienen en los sujetos que hacen la experiencia del discurso psicoanalítico. Los proyectos de intervención deberán incluir un título y un argumento de 3.000 caracteres, se hará constar el eje preestablecido en el cual cada trabajo se inscribe. La fecha límite de envío de los proyectos es el 29 de julio de 2013. Nuevo plazo, 8 de septiembre La comisión científica seleccionará un máximo de 40 trabajos y propondrá un lector para cada uno de los proyectos aceptados. La función del lector será la de debatir con el autor para encontrar, siempre que sea necesario, la buena manera de poner en relieve lo que este último desea transmitir. Las ponencias finales no deberán exceder los 7.500 caracteres (con espacios) y la fecha límite de entrega es el 6 de octubre de 2013. Tanto los proyectos como las ponencias finalizadas se enviarán, en los plazos indicados, a: Xavier Esqué, esque@ilimit.es, con copia a Antoni Vicens, avicens@me.com
con el cuerpo. La crisis de las normas y la agitación de lo real
Jueves 8 de agosto - 21:00hs
Interlocución: Juan Carlos Indart
Expositores:
Guillermo Belaga: Bipolaridad. Manía. Melancolía
Ennia Favret: Cuerpo cosmético
Adela Fryd: El niño amo
Coordina: Ricardo Seldes
En correspondencia con las Escuelas NEL y EBP, iniciamos una serie de Noches de la Escuela para presentar el VI ENAPOL. La primera fue en junio, una excelente noche a sala llena donde presentaron Raquel Vargas, Marina Recalde y Fernando Vitale, con la interlocución de Graciela Brodsky. Esta será la continuación de esa serie, y tal como fue situado en esa ocasión, nuevamente se presentará un estado de trabajo correspondiente a la Conversación.
La Conversación es un dispositivo de investigación inter-escuelas en el que tres pequeños grupos de trabajo, uno de la EOL, otro de la EBP y otro de la NEL, trabajan sobre un tema específico, están en diálogo entre sí durante este año, y presentarán sus resultados durante el ENAPOL.
Para esta ocasión Guillermo Belaga, Ennia Favret y Adela Fryd, acompañados por sus interlocutores, presentarán el estado en el que están actualmente sobre el tema de su investigación, en interlocución con Juan Carlos Indart, quien comentará sus textos y dialogará con ellos, y con la coordinación de Ricardo Seldes.
Secretaría de Internet del Directorio de la EOL | Responsable: Cecilia Rubinetti
SOME BEWILDERED CLARIFICATIONS Slavoj Žižek Since Noam Chomsky's "Fantasies" (Sunday, July 21, 2013, http://www.zcommunications.org/fantasies-by-noam-chomsky) present themselves as a reaction to my reply to his interview with a critical dismissal of my work, a brief clarification is needed. What Chomsky refers to as my "reply" is a non-authorized and not accurate transcription of my answer to a question from the public during a recent debate at Birkbeck college in London. As it would be clear from a full transcription, at that moment I didn't even know about Chomsky's attack on me – I was just asked what do I think about his total dismissal of my work (together with that of Lacan and Derrida) as a case of fanciful posturing without any foundation in empirical facts and scientific reasoning, and I improvised a reaction on the spot. Chomsky's remark that I "cite nothing" to justify my claim about his inaccuracies is thus ridiculous – how could I have done it in an improvised reply to an unexpected question? Probably to illustrate my disrespect for facts, Chomsky also dwells on the characterization of Obama that I wrongly attributed to him; there is no mystery about it, upon learning about my mistake, I unambiguously apologized – here is the text of my apology (from Harper's magazine): In attributing to Noam Chomsky the statement that Obama is a white guy who took some sun-tanning sessions, I repeated an untrue claim which appeared in Slovene media, so I can only offer my unreserved and unconditional apology.
I would like to add that, even if the statement I falsely attributed to Chomsky were to be truly made by him, I would not consider it a patronizingly racist slur, but a fully admissible characterization in our political and ideological struggle. There are African-American intellectuals who allow themselves to be fully co-opted into the white-liberal academic establishment, and they are loved by the establishment precisely because they seem "one of us," white with a darkened skin. This is why, I think, the statement I falsely attributed to Chomsky does NOT amount to the same as Silvio Berlusconi's misleadingly similar characterization of Obama as beautiful and well tanned: Berlusconi's remark dismissed Obama's blackness as an endearing eccentricity, thus obliterating the historical meaning of the fact that an African-American was elected President, while the remark I falsely attributed to Chomsky, if accurate, would point towards the ambiguous way Obama's blackness can be instrumentalized to obfuscate our crucial political and economic struggles."
I added the long second paragraph not to qualify my apology, but to make it clear that I never accused Chomsky of making a racist comment (as was Berlusconi's quip). I find it a little bit mysterious why Chomsky dwells on this event which, if anything, proves my respect for empirical facts, i.e., my readiness to admit a mistake when I am empirically wrong! So is Chomsky ready to apologize when he reaches the lowest point of his attack in his claim that, in my reproaches to him concerning the way he deals with Khmer Rouge atrocities, I endorse the
"distinction betweenworthy and unworthy victims. The worthy victims are those whose fate can be attributed to some official enemy, the unworthy ones are the victims of our own state and its crimes. The two prime examples on which we focused were Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge and the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in the same years. /…/ to this day, those who are completely in the grip of western propaganda adhere religiously to the prescribed doctrine: a show of great indignation about the KR years and our accurate review of the information available, along with streams of falsification; and silence about the vastly more significant cases of ET and Cambodia under US attack, before and after the KR years. Žižek's comments are a perfect illustration."
All I can say is that I simply agree with these lines (with the exception of the last sentence, of course). Not only do I agree, but I was making the same point repeatedly, even mentioning East Timor, as in the following passage from my Welcome to the Desert of the Real:
»Why should the World Trade Center catastrophe be in any way privileged over, say, the mass slaughter of Hutus by Tutsis in Ruanda in 1999? Or the mass bombing and gas-poisoning of Kurds in the north of Iraq in the early 1990s? Or the Indonesian forces' mass killings in East Timor? Or...«
The claim that I in any way endorse the »distinction betweenworthy and unworthy victims" is thus patently wrong. I only have to add that I see an important difference between Cambodia and East Timor. In the latter case, we were dealing with a foreign military intervention and occupation (Indonesia with the US support) whose aim was simply to colonize and exploit the occupied country, while in the case of Cambodia, violence was perpetrated by a politico-military organization of Cambodian people themselves mobilized by a well-articulated radical Millenarian vision (to erase the ideological past and build a New Man, inclusive of closing all schools, liquidating intellectuals, prohibiting all religions, and undermining family ties). Furthermore, one should also bear in mind that the US attitude towards Khmer Rouge cannot be reduced to a demonizing condemnation: to counter the increased Soviet influence after the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge regime by the Vietnamese intervention in 1979, the US and China together supported the Khmer Rouge regime as the sole legitimate representative of Cambodia in the UN – all of a sudden, Khmer Rouge were not so totally bad… But this seems to me also a relatively minor point. What brings us to the heart of the matter is Chomsky's accusation that I rudely misrepresent his position: according to me, he (Chomsky) claims
"that 'we don't need any critique of ideology' – that is, we don't need what I've devoted enormous efforts to for many years. His evidence? He heard that from some people who talked to me. Sheer fantasy again, but another indication of his concept of empirical fact and rational discussion."
For me, on the contrary, the problem is here a very rational one: everything hinges on how we define "ideology." If one defines and uses this term the way I do (and I am not alone here: my understanding echoes a long tradition of so-called Western Marxism), then one has to conclude that what Chomsky is doing in his political writings is very important, I have great admiration and respect for it, but it is emphatically not critique of ideology. Let me indicate what I mean by this. What I had in mind when I spoke about his stance towards Khmer Rouge was, among other passages, the following lines from Chomsky's and Herman's "Distortions at Fourth Hand« from The Nation (June 6, 1977):
»Space limitations preclude a comprehensive review, but such journals as the Far Eastern Economic Review, the London Economist, the Melbourne Journal of Politics, and others elsewhere, have provided analyses by highly qualified specialists who have studied the full range of evidence available, and who concluded that executions have numbered at most in the thousands; that these were localized in areas of limited Khmer Rouge influence and unusual peasant discontent, where brutal revenge killings were aggravated by the threat of starvation resulting from the American destruction and killing. These reports also emphasize both the extraordinary brutality on both sides during the civil war (provoked by the American attack) and repeated discoveries that massacre reports were false. /.../ To give an illustration of just one neglected source, the London Economist (March 26, 1977) carried a letter by W.J. Sampson, who worked as an economist and statistician for the Cambodian Government until March 1975, in close contact with the central statistics office. After leaving Cambodia, he writes, he 'visited refugee camps in Thailand and kept in touch with Khmers,' and he also relied on 'A European friend who cycled around Phnom Penh for many days after its fall [and] saw and heard of no ... executions' apart from 'the shooting of some prominent politicians and the lynching of hated bomber pilots in Phnom Penh.' He concludes 'that executions could be numbered in hundreds or thousands rather than in hundreds of thousands,' though there was 'a big death toll from sickness' - surely a direct consequence, in large measure, of the devastation caused by the American attack. /.../ If, indeed, postwar Cambodia is, as /Lacouture/ believes, similar to Nazi Germany, then his comment is perhaps just, though we may add that he has produced no evidence to support this judgement. But if postwar Cambodia is more similar to France after liberation, where many thousands of people were massacred within a few months under far less rigorous conditions than those left by the American war, then perhaps a rather different judgement is in order. That the latter conclusion may be more nearly correct is suggested by the analyses mentioned earlier.
/.../ We do not pretend to know where the truth lies amidst these sharply conflicting assessments; rather, we again want to emphasize some crucial points. What filters through to the American public is a seriously distorted version of the evidence available, emphasizing alleged Khmer Rouge atrocities and downplaying or ignoring the crucial U.S. role, direct and indirect, in the torment that Cambodia has suffered. Evidence that focuses on the American role /.../ is ignored, not on the basis of truthfulness or scholarship but because the message is unpalatable.«
I think the quoted passage confirms that my improvised resume of Chomsky's position about Khmer Rouge atrocities (»No, this is Western propaganda. Khmer Rouge are not as horrible as that.") is a correct one. I do not agree in any way with those who accuse Chomsky of sympathizing with Khmer Rouge, although I find the parallel between Cambodia after the KR takeover and France liberated in 1944 very problematic. Did de Gaulle after the liberation of Paris order its complete evacuation? Did his government reorganize entire social life into collective communes run by military commanders? Did it close down schools? If anything, de Gaulle's first government was way too tolerant, (among other problematic measures) admitting legal continuity between the Vichy years and the new republic, so that all laws enforced by the Vichy regime (and they were numerous!) remained valid if they were not explicitly revoked. But apart from this particular point, I have some further problems with Chomsky's and Herman's old text. I agree that one should approach reports on humanitarian crises or genocidal violence in Western media with a great measure of skepticism: they are as a rule heavily biased due to political and economic interests. However, although Chomsky claims he doesn't pretend to know what actually went on in Cambodia, the bias of his own description is obvious: his sympathies lies with those who try to minimize and relativize Khmer Rouge atrocities. This bias is ideology - a set of explicit and implicit, even unspoken, ethico-political and other positions, decision, choices, etc., which predetermine our perception of facts, what we tend to emphasize or to ignore, how we organize facts into a consistent whole of a narrative or a theory. And it is this bias which displays Chomsky's ideology in selecting and ordering data, what he downplays and what he emphasizes, not only in the case of Cambodia but also in the case of post-Yugoslav war (his downplaying of the Srebrenica massacre), etc. To avoid a misunderstanding, I am not advocating here the "postmodern" idea that our theories are just stories we are telling each other, stories which cannot be grounded in facts; I am also not advocating a purely neutral unbiased view. My point is that the plurality of stories and biases is itself grounded in our real struggles. With regard to Chomsky, I claim that his bias sometimes leads him to selections of facts and conclusions which obfuscate the complex reality he is trying to analyze.
Today we know that the accusations against the KR regime were mainly true. Chomsky's answer would probably have been that such heavy accusations have to be grounded in precise empirical facts, and that in the case of Cambodia back in the late 1970s such facts were sorely missing. While there is some truth in this claim (especially with regard to the devastation caused earlier in Cambodia by the US Army), I have again some problems with it. There is a thin line that separates justified doubt about media reports from comfortable skepticism which allows us to ignore or downplay atrocities. One can easily imagine a similar line of argumentation in the late 1930s about the Nazi atrocities or the Stalinist purges: we don't have enough reliable data, we should not pretend to know what really goes on in these countries, so it is advisable to doubt Western press reports… (and in both these cases, as well as in the case of Khmer Rouge, later knowledge confirmed the worst fears). One may add that a similar tactic is used by companies and organizations which want to downplay the environmental or health risks (we don't really know for certain about global warming, about the health risks of smoking…). So how can to decide in such cases? It is here that the analysis of ideology can be of some help – the point I made in my improvised reply to Chomsky:
»For example, concerning Stalinism. The point is not that you have to know, you have photo evidence of gulag or whatever. My God you just have to listen to the public discourse of Stalinism, of Khmer Rouge, to get it that something terrifyingly pathological is going on there. For example, Khmer Rouge: Even if we have no data about their prisons and so on, isn't it in a perverse way almost fascinating to have a regime which in the first two years ('75 to '77) behaved towards itself, treated itself, as illegal? You know the regime was nameless. It was called "Angka," organization — not Communist Party of Cambodia — an organization. Leaders were nameless."
My underlying thesis is here that no effective ideology simply lies: an ideology is never a simple mystification obfuscating the hidden reality of domination and exploitation; the atrocious reality obfuscated and mystified by an ideology has to register, to leave traces, in the explicit ideological text itself, in the guise of its inconsistencies, gaps, etc. The Stalinist show trials were, of course, a brutal travesty of justice concealing breath-taking brutality, but to see this, it is not necessary to know the reality behind them – the public face of the trials, the puppet-like monstrosity of public confessions, etc., made this abundantly clear. In a homologous way, one doesn't have to know how Jews really were to guess that the Nazi accusations against them were a fake - a close look at these accusations makes it clear that we are dealing with paranoiac fantasies.
The same goes for liberal-capitalist violence, of course – I have written many pages on the falsity of humanitarian interventionism. One does not need to know the brutal reality that sustains such interventions, the cynical pursuit of economic and political interests obfuscated by humanitarian concerns, to discern the falsity of such interventionism – the inconsistencies, gaps and silences of its explicit text are tell-tale enough. This, of course, in no way implies that the disclosure and analysis of facts are not important: one should bring out to light all the details of their atrocious brutality, of ruthless economic exploitation, etc. - a job done quite well by Chomsky himself. However, in order to explain how people often remain within their ideology even when they are forced to admit facts, one has to supplement investigation and disclosure of facts by the analysis of ideology which not only makes people blind for the full horror of facts but also enables them to participate in activities which generates these atrocious facts while maintaining the appearance of human dignity.
There is another refined point to be made here. Often, one cannot but be shocked by the excessive indifference towards suffering, even and especially when this suffering is widely reported in the media and condemned, as if it is the very outrage at suffering which turns us into its immobilized fascinated spectators. Recall, in the early 1990s, the three-years-long siege of Sarajevo, with the population starving, exposed to permanent shelling and snipers' fire. The big enigma here is: although all the media were full of pictures and reports, why did not the UN forces, NATO, or the US accomplish just a small act of breaking the siege of Sarajevo, of imposing a corridor through which people and provisions could circulate freely? It would have cost nothing: with a little bit of serious pressure on the Serb forces, the prolonged spectacle of encircled Sarajevo exposed to daily dose of terror would have been over. There is only one answer to this enigma, the one proposed by Rony Brauman who, on behalf of the Red Cross, coordinated the help to Sarajevo: the very presentation of the crisis of Sarajevo as "humanitarian," the very recasting of the political-military conflict into humanitarian terms, was sustained by an eminently political choice (basically, taking the Serb side in the conflict). Especially ominous and manipulative was here the role of Francois Mitterand:
"The celebration of 'humanitarian intervention' in Yugoslavia took the place of a political discourse, disqualifying in advance all conflicting debate. /…/ It was apparently not possible, for Francois Mitterand, to express his analysis of the war in Yugoslavia. With the strictly humanitarian response, he discovered an unexpected source of communication or, more precisely, of cosmetics, which is a little bit the same thing. /…/ Mitterand remained in favor of the maintenance of Yugoslavia within its borders and was persuaded that only a strong Serbian power was in the position to guarantee a certain stability in this explosive region. This position rapidly became unacceptable in the eyes of the French people. All the bustling activity and the humanitarian discourse permitted him to reaffirm the unfailing commitment of France to the Rights of Man in the end, and to mimic an opposition to Greater Serbian fascism, all in giving it free rein."
One can see how my perception of the Yugoslav conflict differs from Chomsky's. However, I agree with the general thrust of his argument which is that one should analyze the depoliticized humanitarian politics of "Human Rights" as the ideology of military interventionism serving specific economico-political purposes. As Wendy Brown develops apropos Michael Ignatieff, such humanitarianism "presents itself as something of an antipolitics – a pure defense of the innocent and the powerless against power, a pure defense of the individual against immense and potentially cruel or despotic machineries of culture, state, war, ethnic conflict, tribalism, patriarchy, and other mobilizations or instantiations of collective power against individuals." However, the question is: "what kind of politicization /those who intervene on behalf of human rights/ set in motion against the powers they oppose. Do they stand for a different formulation of justice or do they stand in opposition to collective justice projects?" Say, it is clear that the US overthrowing of Saddam Hussein, legitimized in the terms of ending the suffering of the Iraqi people, not only was motivated by precise politico-economic interests, but also relied on a precise idea of the political and economic conditions of the post-Saddam Iraq (Western liberal democracy, guarantee of private property, the inclusion into the global market, etc.). The purely humanitarian anti-political politics of merely preventing suffering thus effectively amounts to the implicit prohibition of elaborating a positive collective project of socio-political transformation. Jacques Ranciere proposes here a salient comparison of human rights with charity donations: "/…/ when they are of no use, you do the same as charitable persons do with their old clothes. You give them to the poor. Those rights that appear to be useless in their place are sent abroad, along with medicine and clothes, to people deprived of medicine, clothes, and rights. /…/ if those who suffer inhuman repression are unable to enact Human Rights that are their last recourse, then somebody else has to inherit their rights in order to enact them in their place. This is what is called the 'right to humanitarian interference' – a right that some nations assume to the supposed benefit of victimized populations, and very often against the advice of the humanitarian organizations themselves." Consequently, what today, in the predominant Western public speech, the "Human Rights of the Third World suffering victims" effectively mean is the right of the Western powers themselves to intervene – politically, economically, culturally, militarily - in the Third World countries of their choice on behalf of the defense of Human Rights. My disagreement with Chomsky's political analyses lies elsewhere: his neglect of how ideology works, as well as the problematic nature of his biased dealing with facts which often leads him to do what he accuses his opponents of doing.
But I think that that the differences in our political positions are so minimal that they cannot really account for the thoroughly dismissive tone of Chomsky's attack on me. Our conflict is really about something else – it is simply a new chapter in the endless gigantomachy between so-called continental philosophy and the Anglo-Saxon empiricist tradition. There is nothing specific in Chomsky's critique – the same accusations of irrationality, of empty posturing, of playing with fancy words, were heard hundreds of times against Hegel, against Heidegger, against Derrida, etc. What stands out is only the blind brutality of his dismissal – here is how he replies when, back in his December 2012 interview with Veterans Unplugged, he was asked about the ideas of Lacan, Derrida, and me:
"What you're referring to is what's called 'theory.' And when I said I'm not interested in theory, what I meant is, I'm not interested in posturing – using fancy terms like polysyllables and pretending you have a theory when you have no theory whatsoever. So there's no theory in any of this stuff, not in the sense of theory that anyone is familiar with in the sciences or any other serious field. Try to find in all of the work you mentioned some principles from which you can deduce conclusions, empirically testable propositions where it all goes beyond the level of something you can explain in five minutes to a twelve-year-old. See if you can find that when the fancy words are decoded. I can't. So I'm not interested in that kind of posturing. Žižek is an extreme example of it. I don't see anything to what he's saying."
And he goes on and on in the same vein, repeating how he doesn't see anything to what I'm saying, how he cannot discern in my texts any traces of rational examination of facts, how my work displays empty posturing not to be taken seriously, etc. A weird statement, measured by his professed standards of respect for empirical facts and rational argumentation: there are no citations (which, in this case, can be excused, since we are dealing with a radio interview), but also not even the vaguest mentions of any of my ideas. Did he decode any of my "fancy words" and indicate how what one gets is "something you can explain in five minutes to a twelve-year-old"? There are no political references in his first attack (and in this domain, as far as I can see, I much more often than not agree with him). I did a couple of short political books on 9/11 (Welcome to the Desert of the Real), on the war in Iraq (Iraq: the Borrowed Kettle), on the 2008 financial meltdown (First as Tragedy, then as Farce), which appear to me written in a quite accessible way and dealing with quite a lot of facts – do they also contain nothing but empty posturing? In short, is Chomsky in his thorough dismissal of my work not doing exactly what he is accusing me of: clinging to the empty posture of total rejection with no further ad?
I think one can convincingly show that the continental tradition in philosophy, although often difficult to decode, and sometimes – I am the first to admit this - defiled by fancy jargon, remains in its core a mode of thinking which has its own rationality, inclusive of respect for empirical data. And I furthermore think that, in order to grasp the difficult predicament we are in today, to get an adequate cognitive mapping of our situation, one should not shirk the resorts of the continental tradition in all its guises, from the Hegelian dialectics to the French "deconstruction." Chomsky obviously doesn't agree with me here. So what if – just another fancy idea of mine – what if Chomsky cannot find anything in my work that goes "beyond the level of something you can explain in five minutes to a twelve-year-old because" because, when he deals with continental thought, it is his mind which functions as the mind of a twelve-years-old, the mind which is unable to distinguish serious philosophical reflection from empty posturing and playing with empty words?
