May 68 seen through the eyes of today
by Slavoj Zizek
What is utopian to think that the present capitalist system can reproduce indefinitely. The catastrophe is looming. Hence the relevance of the May '68 slogan: "Be realistic, demand the impossible."
One graffiti appeared on the walls of Paris in May '68 said: "Structures do not walk down the street!". But Jacques Lacan's response was that that was precisely what had happened in 1968: the structures were on the streets. The most visible and explosive events were the result of a structural imbalance, the transition from one form of domination to another in terms of Lacan, the discourse of the master discourse of the university.
of sexual liberation has survived sixty tolerant hedonism easily incorporated into our hegemonic ideology, today, not only permitted but ordered to enjoy sex, and people who do not make you feel guilty. The urge to seek radical forms of enjoyment (through sexual experiments and drugs or other methods to induce a trance) emerged in a particular political moment: when "the spirit of 68" was running its political potential. At that critical moment (mid-seventies), the only option left was direct and brutal thrust into the real, which assumed three main forms: the search for extreme forms of sexual enjoyment, the turn to the reality of inner experience (Oriental mysticism) and leftist political terrorism (Red Army Faction in Germany, Red Brigades in Italy, etc.). Bet of leftist political terrorism was, in a time when the masses are embedded in the ideological dream of capitalism, the normal criticism of ideology no longer useful, so the only thing that can awaken the use of raw reality of direct violence, l'action directe.
Lacan remember the challenge of the student demonstrators: "As revolutionaries, you are a hysterical looking for a new master. And ye shall have. "And we had, in the guise of love" permissive "postmodern whose dominance is even greater because it is less visible. Although there is no doubt that this transition was accompanied by many positive changes, it is sufficient to mention the new freedoms and access to positions of power for women, "there is no choice but to insist on the crucial question: maybe it was the passage of a" spirit of capitalism "to another all that really happened in 68, and all the drunken enthusiasm freedom was only a way to substitute one form of domination with another?
Many factors indicate that things are not so simple. If we look at our situation from the perspective del 68, debemos recordar su verdadero legado: el 68 fue, en esencia, un rechazo al sistema liberal-capitalista, un no a todo él. Es fácil reírse de la idea del fin de la historia de Fukuyama, pero la mayoría, hoy día, es fukuyamaísta: se acepta que el capitalismo liberal-democrático es la fórmula definitiva para la mejor sociedad posible y que lo único que se puede hacer es lograr que sea más justa y tolerante. La única pregunta que cuenta hoy es: ¿respaldamos esta naturalización del capitalismo, o el capitalismo globalizado actual contiene antagonismos lo suficientemente fuertes como para impedir su reproducción indefinida?
Dichos antagonismos son (por lo menos) Four: the imminent threat of ecological catastrophe, the inadequacy of private property for so-called "intellectual property" socio-ethical implications of new techno-scientific advances (especially in biogenetics) and new forms of apartheid , the new walls and ghettos. On September 11, 2001, the Twin Towers fell, 12 years earlier, on 9 November 1989 the Berlin Wall fell. November 9 announced the "Roaring Nineties", the dream of the "end of history" Fukuyama, the conviction that liberal democracy had won, that the search had ended, that the arrival of a world community was around the corner, that the obstacles to this happy ending worthy of Hollywood were merely empirical and contingent (local pockets of resistance whose leaders had not yet realized that he had spent his time). By contrast, 11-S is the great symbol of the end of Clinton's Roaring Nineties, the symbol of the coming era, in which there are new walls everywhere, between Israel and the West Bank, around the European Union , on the border between Mexico and the United States.
antagonisms The first three mentioned above affect the elements that Michael Hardt and Toni Negri call "commons", the common substance of our social being whose privatization is a violent act to that should be resisted by all means, even violence, if necessary. Are the common elements of external nature are threatened by pollution and exploitation (oil, forests, natural habitat), the common elements of internal nature (the biogenetic inheritance of humanity), and common elements culture, immediately socialized forms of capital 'knowledge', especially the language, our means of communication and education, but also the common infrastructure of public transport, electricity, mail, etc..
have permitted the Bill Gates monopoly, we would be in the absurd situation that a particular individual possessed literally whole fabric of our network software essential communication. What we are gradually realizing the potential destructive, even self-annihilation of humanity itself, that will come true if given carte blanche to the capitalist logic of enclosing these common elements. Nicholas Stern is right to characterize the climate crisis as "the greatest market failure in human history." Does the need for space for a global political action is able to neutralize and channel market mechanisms do not replace a proper perspective communist? Thus, the reference to "common elements" justify the resurrection of the idea of \u200b\u200bcommunism, we can see the "confinement" progressive of these common elements as the proletarianization of those with it are excluded from its own substance.
Thus, in contrast with the classic image of proletarians who have "nothing to lose but their chains," we're all at risk of losing everything, the threat is that we see reduced to abstract empty Cartesian subjects, devoid of any substance, deprived of our symbolic substance, our genetic base manipulated beings languishing in uninhabitable environment. This triple threat to our whole being makes us all, in a sense, proletarians, and the only way not to become so is to act in advance to prevent it.
What better condenses the real legacy of the formula 68 is Soyons Realistes, demandons l'impossible! ("Be realistic, demand the impossible"). The true utopia is the belief that the current global system can reproduce indefinitely, the only way to be truly realistic is to provide what, in the coordinates of this system has no choice but to seem impossible. Slavoj Zizek
is Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst and author, among other books, Iraq. The tea provided and Cultural Studies. Reflections on Multiculturalism (with Fredric Jameson). Translated by María Luisa Rodríguez Tapia.
Article published on May 5, 2008 in the newspaper El Pais Section "Opinion": http://www.elpais.com/articulo/opinion/Mayo/68/visto/ojos/hoy/elpepiopi/ 20080501elpepiopi_12/Tes
Some slogans of May '68: http://www.dim.uchile.cl/ ~ Anmore / ideas / graffiti.html
And for those who arrived this article will soon post on its counterpart in architecture.
Patricio De Stefani C.
www.aparienciapublica.org
________________________________ AMERICA has a rest, Where You Want to Be
