The Real of Violence, Cynicism, and the "Right of Distress"

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1 The Cynic’s Naivety

The cynicism of those in power is today often so direct and open that there seems to be no need for the critique of ideology: why should we lose time and engage in arduous “symptomal reading,” discerning gaps and repressions in the public discourse of those in power, when this discourse more or less openly and shamelessly admits its particular interests? There are nonetheless multiple problems with this thesis. However, such a cynical notion of society in which those in power brutally admit what they are doing is by far not sufficient: precisely when they openly and “realistically” admit that it is ultimately all about power, money, influence, or whatsoever, they err to the extreme, their realism without illusions is the very form of their blindness. What they fatefully underestimate is the efficiency of illusions which structure and sustain their ruthless power games or financial speculations. At the beginning of Hitler’s rule, it was the big capitalist cynics who told themselves “let’s allow Hitler to take over and get us rid of the Left, and then we’ll get rid of him.” The financial crisis of 2008 was not brought about by the cynical bankers who acted upon the “greed is good” principle, not by blinded idealists. Therein resides the limit of Sloterdijk’s old formula of cynical reason “they know what they are doing, and they are nonetheless doing it”: they are blind for the illusions inherent to the brutal “realist” stance.

Recall Marx’s brilliant analysis of how, in the French revolution of 1848, the conservative-republican Party of Order functioned as the coalition of the two branches of royalism (orleanists and legitimists) in the “anonymous kingdom of the Republic.” [1] The parliamentary deputees of the Party of Order perceived their republicanism as a mockery: in parliamentary debates, they all the time generated royalist slips of tongue and ridiculed the Republic to let it be known that their true aim was to restore the kingdom. What they were not aware of is that they themselves were duped as to the true social impact of their rule. What they were effectively doing was to establish the conditions of bourgeois republican order that they despised so much (by for instance guaranteeing the safety of private property). So it is not that they were royalists who were just wearing a republican mask: although they experienced themselves as such, it was their very “inner” royalist conviction which was the deceptive front masking their true social role. In short, far from being the hidden truth of their public republicanism, their sincere royalism was the fantasmatic support of their actual republicanism – the royalists

deceived themselves concerning the fact of their united rule. They did not comprehend that if each of their factions, regarded separately, by itself, was royalist, the product of their chemical combination had necessarily to be republican /…/ Thus we find these royalists in the beginning believing in an immediate restoration, later preserving the republican form with foaming rage and deadly invective against it on their lips, and finally confessing that they can endure each other only in the republic and postponing the restoration indefinitely /die Restauration aufs Unbestimmte vertagen/. The enjoyment of the united rule /der Genuß der vereinigten Herrschaft/ itself strengthened each of the two factions, and made each of them still more unable and unwilling to subordinate itself to the other, that is, to restore the monarchy.[2]

Marx describes here a precise case of perverted libidinal economy: there is a Goal (restoration of the monarchy) which embers of the group experience as their true goal, but which, for tactical reasons, has to be publicly disavowed; however, what brings enjoyment are not multiple ways of obscenely making fun of the ideology they have to follow publicly (rage and invectives again republicanism), but the very indefinite postponed of the realization of their official Goal (which allows them to rule united). Recall how it is when, in the private sphere, I am unhappily married, I mock my wife all the time, declaring my intention to abandon here for my mistress whom I really love, and while I get small pleasures from invectives against my wife, the enjoyment that sustains me is generated by the indefinite postponement of really leaving my wife for my mistress. And, back to politics, were today’s Party of Order not the Us Republicans during the time of Ronald Reagan? Their orleanists were new tech liberal capitalists, and their legitimists tea Party fundamentalists – they hated each other, but they knew they can only rule together, so each of them endlessly postponed the measures they really care about (ban on abortion, etc.). This is the formula of today’s cynical politics: its true dupes are the cynics themselves who are not aware that their truth is in what they are mocking, not in their hidden belief. As such, cynicism is a perverted attitude: it transposes onto its other (non-cynical dupes) its own division. This is why, as Freud pointed out, the perverse activity is not an open display of the unconscious, but its greatest obfuscation.

There is one thing about Henry Kissinger, the ultimate cynical Realpolitiker, which cannot but struck the eye of all observers: how utterly wrong were all his predictions. When news reached the West about the 1991 anti-Gorbachev military coup, he immediately accepted the new regime (which ignominiously collapsed three days later) as a fact; etc.etc. – in short, when Socialist regimes were already a living dead, he was counting on a long-term pact with them. What this example perfectly demonstrates is the limitation of the cynical attitude: cynics are les non-dupes who errent; what they fail to recognize is the symbolic efficiency of the illusions, the way they regulate activity which generates social reality. The position of cynicism is that of wisdom – the paradigmatic cynic tells you privately, in a confidential low-key voice: “But don’t you get it that it is all really about… /money, power, sex/, that all high principles and values are just empty phrases which count for nothing?” In this sense, philosophers effectively “believe in the power of ideas,” they believe that “ideas rule the world,” cynics are fully justified in accusing them of this sin – however, what the cynics don’t see is their own naivety, the naivety of their cynical wisdom. It is the philosophers who are the true realists: they are well aware that the cynical position is impossible and inconsistent, that cynics effectively follow the principle they publicly mock. Stalin was a cynic if there ever was one – but precisely as such, he sincerely believed in Communism.

2 Demystifying Violence Read More