--- schema_version: "library-reader-v1" source_type: "original_book" title: "Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics" author: null edition: null publisher: null year: null isbn: null library_document_id: "e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8" source_sha256: "569b98cf47059b34d9ea0cd28116e2c02cc6e5dc1d526cdff92bd1ecb4c3c702" pdf_physical_page_count: 229 pdf_physical_page_index_base: 0 range_start: 190 range_count: 10 html_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8?start=190&limit=10" markdown_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8.md?start=190&limit=10" previous_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8.md?start=180&limit=10" next_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8.md?start=200&limit=10" --- # Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics > 页码规则：PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX 是从 0 开始的权威文件物理页索引；PRINTED_PAGE 是页面中识别出的印刷页码，可能为空，二者不得混用。 ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=190 | PRINTED_PAGE=180 See Dean, Publicity's Secret, 72-73. A thorough historical analysis of the contribution would spell out the steps involved in the uncoupling of messages from responses. Such an analysis would draw out the ways that responses to the broadly cast messages of television programs were configured as attention and measured in terms of ratings. Nielsen families, in other words, responded for the rest of us. Yet as work in cultural studies, media, and communicatio�s has repeatedly emphasized, ratings are not responses and provide little insight into the actual responses of viewers. These actual responses, we can say, are uncoupled from the broadcast message and incorporated into other circuits of communication. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1:·Reason and the Rational� ization of Society. 1.5 See Zizek, The Sublime Object ofldeology. Barabasi, Linked, 63. Subsequent page references are given parenthetically in the text. Galloway, Protocol, 33· Zizek, The Plague of Fantasies, 21. This is Qne of my primary disagreements with Guy Debord. In addition to relying on a notion of spectacle more suited to mass than personal media, he views the spectacle as supported by an underlying secrecy. See his Comments on the Society of the Spectacle. For example, the conservative CAT o Institute held a conference in 2004 titled "The Republican Revolution Ten Years Later: Smaller Government or Business as Usual?" 21 Harvey, A Brief History ofNeoliberalism, 49· 22 Ibid., 42-43· 23 Describing the failure of mainstream feminism to fight for welfare guarantees for poor mothers, Gwendolyn Mink writes, ''A white and middle-class solipsism enforced a general feminist silence about the stakes of welfare provisions for poor women, and that silence gave permission to policy-makers to treat punitive welfare reform as a no-lose situation. Welfare reform did not bear directly on the lives of most white middle-class feminists, and so they did not mobilize their networks and raise their voices as they have in defending abortion rights or protesting domestic violence," Welfare's End, 7· 19 180 1 4 NOTES TO CHAPTER ONE 20 ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=191 | PRINTED_PAGE=181 American leftists were not wrong in their critique of the welfare state. Historically, its minimal provisions, trapped within states' discretionary powers, were highly moralistic, biased toward the deserving poor, a category which excluded unwed, nonwhite mothers. The struggle to establish that welfare benefits were owed to poor women-and that states could not impose eligibility restrictions -was a long one, fought through the courts (and sometimes through direct action) by groups united into the National Welfare Rights Organization. In fact, it had been in place barely thirty years when Clinton ended even that minimal entitlement to economic assistance. See .Mink, Welfare's End, chapter 2. Among the key texts in political theory representative of this shift are Ladau and Moufe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy and Cohen, Class and Civil Society. Perelman, The Confiscation of American Prosperity, 56. For a recent version of this retreat from the state, see Critchley, Infinitely Demanding. Critchley writes, "I think politics should be conceived at a distance from the state," 112. Thus, it should come as no surprise that Critchley celebrates the humorous approaches of some contemporary anarchists: "Groups like Pink Bloc or Billionaires for Bush are performing their powerlessness in the face of power in a profoundly powerful way;' 124. This mindset dearly exemplifes the contemporary failure of the left-a failure to take responsibility for power, in fact, a celebration of powerlessness. It also misreads the performance of the Billionaires in particular: participants dress as the very rich and carry signs such as "More Blood for Oil" and "Save our Gated Communities" in order to take the system at its word; they occupy the position of enunciation of the privileged thereby making it visible as such. For a discussion of "taking the system at its word;' see Zizek, Tarrying with the Negative, 237. For a longer discussion, see Dean, Publicity's Secret. Focusing on Stewart Brand, Fred Turner gives a detailed account of this process in From Counterculture to Cyberculture. He writes, "AB they turned away from agonistic politics and toward technology, consciousness, and entrepreneurship as the principle of a new society, the communards of the 1960s developed a utopian vision that was in many ways quite congenial to the insurgent Republicans of the 1990s;' 8. These bils made explicit a convergence of democracy and capitalism. As the 1996 bill afed: "The market will drive both the Internet and the information highway;' Dyer-·Witheford, Cyber-Marx, 34-35· For example, Cass R Sunstein looks t o blogs, wikis, and open-source software projects as "important supplements to, or substitutes for, ordinary deliberation;' lnfotopia, 148. 25 27 2s 24 NOTES TO CHAPTER ONE 181 28 29 30 3 1 ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=192 | PRINTED_PAGE=182 32 Dyer-Witheford, "E-Capital and the Many-Headed Hydra;' 142. 33 The answer to Mark Poster's question, "Can capitalism still justify itself when the consumer is already a producer?" is thus yesj capitalism has always relied on extracting value from and through consumption. See Poster, What's the Matter with the Internet?, 48. 34 Gamson, "Gay Media, Inc.;' 259. 35 Ibid., 26o. 36 Ibid., 270-71. 37 Sunstein condenses deliberation into a simple matter of information in lnfotopia. 38 Graham, Democracy by Disclosure, 140. 39 Shirky, "Is Social Software Bad for the Dean Campaign?" 40 Freud, "Fetishism," 152-58. 41 I draw from Zizek's elucidation of a concept introduced by Claude Levi-Strauss. See Zizek, Enjoy Your Symptom!, 221-23. 42 See Zizek, ·�erword: Lenin's Choice," 181. 43 Laclau, Emancipations, 38. 44 Rogers, "The Issue Has Left the Building: 45 Patelis, "£-Mediation by America Online:' 46 See, for example, Sunstein, Republic.com 2.0. 47 Wark's vision of two great hostile classes of hackers and vectoralists is an \_ important exception to this tend\_ency. See A Hacker Manifesto. 48 For example, see Kahn and Kellner, "Oppositional Politics and the Internet:' 49 Boyd, "The Web Rewires the Movement," 14. 50 Ibid., 16. Two Free Trade 1 As Wendy Brown argues, neoliberalism "is a constructivist project: it does not presume the ontological givenness of a thoroughgoing economic rationality for all domains of society but rather tal'68, the Emotional Month:' In the experience of anxiety, Copjec writes, "One has the sense not only of being chained to an enjoyment that outstrips and precedes one, but also of the opacity of this enjoyment, its incomprehensibility and unassumablity;' 105. Gordon .Bigelow describes the early popularity of the notion of the free market among evangelical Christians in England. They believed the free market carried out the wil of God, rewarding the good and punishing sinners. Be�ause al are born in sin, "the sweat of hard labor, the fear of poverty, the self-denial involved in saving" provided means of atonement. Helping the poor would deny them this opportunity to atone, and thus damn their immortal souls. See Bigelow, "Let There Be Markets:' A fuller account would need to address the importance of global Christian televisioE. networks such as the Trinity Broadcasting Company, televangelism, and the growth of Christian publishing, bookstores, and rock music, the emergence, in other words, of an alternative Christian society alongside and within secular civil society. It would also need to consider the Word-Faith or Name It and Claim It thread of charismatic Christianity (an outgrowth of the doctrine of the power of positive thinking) that urges adherents to choose prosperity. Among the more well-known advocates of the gospel of gaining wealth through Jesus are Kenneth Hagin and Kenneth Copeland. Goldberg, Kingdom Coming, 58. 184 1 5 28 NOTES TO CHAPTER TWO 29 30 3 1 ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=195 | PRINTED_PAGE=185 32 See http:/ /w.enjoyinggodministries.com (accessed November 10, 2oo8); http:/ /www.missionmanitou.com (accessed November 10, 2oo8). 33 For a more thorough elaboration of the superegoic injunction to enjoy, see Zizek, The Ticklish Subject, chapter 6, as well as my Ziiek's Politics. 34 Zizek, The Plague of Fantasies, 21. 35 The notion of the obscene supplement comes from Zizek. For elaboration, see Dean, Ziiek's Politics. 36 Zizek, The Ticklish Subject, 315. 37 I explore the fantasies involved in the complex of ideas around publics and publicity in Publicity's Secret. 38 Passavant, "The Strong Neoliberal State: 39 For elaboration, see Zizek, The Ticklish Subje�t; Dean, Publicity's Secret. 40 Lacan introduces the four discourses following the events of 1968 and elaborates them in Seminar X, in On Feminine Sexualit)'J The Limits of Love and Knowledge, 1972-1973, 16-17. See Fink, The Lacanian Subject, 130; and Dean, Ziiek's Politics. See also ZiZek's discussion of the shift in Lacan, a discussion heavily influenced by Jacques-Alain Miller's reading of Lacan, in Zizek, Organs without Bodies, 101; and Zizek, "Class Struggle or Postmodernism?;' 116- 17. 41 Monbiot, "This is a Dazzling Debunking of Climate Change Science. It Is Also Wildly Wrong:' 42 Suskind "Faith, Certainty, and the Presidency of George W. Bush: 43 Hardt and Negri, Empire. 44 Information available under "Charts & Trends: Household & Family Structure" at http:/ /www.censusscope.org. 45 In 1983, 20 percent of workers belonged to a union. Information available at http:/ /www.bls.gov. 46 For a discussion of civil society and new social movements, see Arata and Cohen, Civil Society and Political Theory. 47 Alexander R Galloway views computer protocols as additional such mechanisms of contemporary control; as conditions for access and communication, protocols encode appropriate behavior in advance, as it were. See Protocol. Galloway's work makes particularly clear why it is the case that "control" should not be thought of in simple binary terms such that something is either under control or not, but should rather be understood as codes, techniques, and arrangements that distribute and manage. 48 Zizek, The Ticklish Subject, 368. 49 Zizek refers to this as the "direct super-egoization of the imaginary ideal;' The Ticklish Subject, 368. For an account of the superego as commanding enjoyment, see Zizek, The Plague of Fantasies, 114, and Dean, Ziiek's Politics, 32-41. so The classic account of ideological interpellation comes from Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses:' 51 Zizek, The Parallax View, 310. NOTES TO CHAPTER TWO 185 ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=196 | PRINTED_PAGE=186 One might want to argue that the illegal imigrant provides yet another imaginary identity. The very use of the term illegal, however, draws our attention to the way that neoliberalism relies on the image of the criminal as a strange attractor for combining those disadvantaged through and by neoliberal globalization. 5 3 See Zizek, "Class Struggle o r Postmodernism?;' 116. 54 Schor, The Overspent American. 55 Brown "Quality of Life;' and Taylor, "The Personal Level"j Frank, Luxury Fever. ss Munck, "Neoliberalism and Politics;' 6s. 57 Miller, A Theory of Shopping. 58 Kane, "The Bankruptcy Bill and Debt Obesity:' 59 Louie," 'Black Friday' Shopping Frenzy:' 60 Garland, The Culture of Control, 10. 6 1 Passavant, "The Strong Neoliberal State:' 62 Garland, The Culture of Control, 15. (Subsequent page references are given parenthetically in the text.) 63 Simon, " 'Entitlement to Cruelty; " 127. The most influential theorization of the centrality of political identity is in the work (together and separately) of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Moufe. In his recent writing, for example, Laclau writes, "The construction of a 'people' is the sine qua non of democratic functioning;' On Populist Reason, 169. Zizek writes, "What prevents the radical questioning o f capitalism itself is precisely belief in the democratic form of the strugle against capitalism;' The Parallax View, 320j original emphasis. THBEE Democracy 1 For a thorough discussion of Zizek's critique of democracy] see Dean, ZizekJs Politics. I am drawing here from Ernesto Laclau's discussion of universalization under conditions of uneven power relationsj see Laclau, "Stucture, History, and the Political:' Laclau argues that when power relations are uneven, universality depends on particularity, on the possibility of a particular element coming to stand for so�thing other than itsel£ The supposition of democracy disavows the incommensurabilty necessary for universality as it presumes itself to be the solution to its problems-the answer to any problem with democracy is more democracy. For elaboration of this point, see Dean, "Secrecy since September nth:' 3 Buchstein and Jorke, "Redescribing Democracy: 4 Habermas, "Discourse Ethics," 66. 5 See, for example, Chambers, Reasonable Democracy. s This point applies to theories of radical democracy such as Laclau's and Moufe's as wel. 7 See Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democtacy, especially chapter 2. 186 64 65 52 NOTES TO CHAPTER THREE 2 ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=197 | PRINTED_PAGE=187 s There are of course good historical reasons for the primacy of " one" discourse. While an adequate account of these reasons is beyond the scope of this essay, such an account would necessarily draw out the connections between scientific discourse, Enlightenment accounts of reason, and critiques of absolutism anchored in a reason with claims to universal validity because of their kinship with science. Thomas Hobbes, then, would figure in such an account. 9 Lacan, On Feminine Sexuality, 16-17; Zizek, Iraq, 131-57. 1 o Zizek, Iraq, 144. 1 1 Ibid. 12 See, for exampl�, "Remarks by the President at the 2oth Anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy;' November 2003, available at http:// www.whitehouse.gov (accessed July 28, 2008) . .t 3 Gutmann and Thompson, Why Deliberative Democracy?, 7 . (Subsequent page references are given parenthetically in the text.) 1 4 Post from February 28, 2005, http :/ /jdeanicite.typepad.com. 1 5 For the sake o f clarity, I've omitted the specific Lacanian formulae for each of these discourses. A thorough elaboration appears in my Zizek's Politics. :ts Zizek, .Iraq, 133 -45. 1 7 Diane Rubenstein also reads Bush's relation to law as perverse. See This Is Not a President, 193- 96. :1 8 Claude Lefort, Democracy and Political Theory. .t9 Text of address available at http:/ /ww.whitehouse.gov. 20 "Bush: 'I'm the decider' on Rumsfeld;' April 18, 2006. Available at http:/ I w.cnn.com. 2 1 In Joan Copjec's words, "The pervert is a pure, pathos-less instrument o f the Other's wil;' Imagine There's No Woman, 229. 22 See Zizek, Tarrying with the Negative, 122-24. 23 Ibid., 122. 24 Ibid. 25 For a more thorough argument on this point, see Dean, "Enemies Imagined and Symbolic:' 26 Zizek, Iraq, 134. 27 Ibid., 139. 28 See Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, 35· 29 Gutmann and Thompson are thus incapable of responding to one of Schmitt's central claims: "The political entity is by its very nature the decisive entity, regardless of the source from which it: derives its last psychic motives. It exists or does not exist. If it exists, it is the supreme, that is, the decisive case, the authoritative entity;' The Concept of the Political, 43-44. NOTES TO CHAPTER THREE 187 ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=198 | PRINTED_PAGE=188 Fou:a Resolve David Frum recounts the process through which Bush's speech was written, highlighting the thinking that went into his adoption of the phrase "axis of hatred" and Bush's chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson's, substitution of "evil" for "hatred:' See The Right Man, 231-39. My theorization here is informed by Slavoj Zizek's reading of Hegel. See, for example, Zizek, For They Know Not What They Do, 33-46, and Zizek, The Ticklish Subject, 88- 89. Susan Friend Harding writes, "Fundamentalists, an" born-again Christians generally, do not simply believe, they know, that the Bible is true and is still corning true, that God speaks to them, and that Jesus dies so that they may live;' The Book of Jerry Falwell, 272. In using the terms believe and know, I am follow:. ing Zizek's account of Lacan's subject-supposed-to-know and subject-supposed-tobelieve. See Zizek, The Plague of Fantasies, 106-9. I am not saying that those who heard Bush's speech necessarily agreed with him. That resolve championed by conservatives was heavily criticized by more moderate, less unilateral voices. Rather, my aim is to account for (provide the conditions of possibility for) the use of a specific phrase. I am attempting to make explicit or bring to the fore the difering and likely contradictory suppositiops that could underlie the sense ofWhite House speechwriters, administration oficials, and political pundits that such a phrase would . capture the mom�nt, accomplish their goals, or res�nate in powerful ways. Perhaps a third possible explanation might be found in what Michael Ro"gin refers to as "political demonology" and the "countersubversive tradition" in American politics. He uses these terms to designate "the creation of monsters as a continuing feature of American politics by the i,n£l.ation, stigmatization, and dehumanization of political foes"; see Ronald Reagan, the Movie and Other Episodes in Political Demonology, xi. While Bush's use of the term evil can be viewed in light of this feature of American politics, my concern is with the actual word evil rather than demonization more generally. For a critique of Rogin's reading of Reagan as a sign (and consequent failure to grapple with what is episternically significant about Reagan as a hyperreal object), see Rubenstein; This Js Nqt a President, chapter 2. See, for example, Nordlinger, '�hcroft with Horns: For an account that emphasizes the loss of a sense and language of evil, see Delbanco, The Death of Satan. See, for example, Kurtz, "Postmodernism Kills." Kurtz, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford Universif:yj insists not only that "postmodernism can kill you" but also that postmodern professors believe "that America is an evil imperialist power which it would be immoral to aid in any way" (emphasis in original). 9 From the standpoint of the hawks in the Bush administration, the link between these regimes is dear: they are rogue regimes bent on developing weapons of mass destruction. These are the three regimes Condoleezza Rice identifies as rogues and threats to U.S. interests in "Promoting the National Interest:' There she urges the United States to mobilize whatever resources it can to remove Saddam Hussein. And she refers to North Korea as the "evil twin of a successful regime just across its border" ( 6o ). Analyzing the first Gulf War, Michael J. Shapiro points out the use of the term weapons of mass destruction as enabling "a geopolitical category that is aimed at saving our identity-afirming cartography:' See Violent Cartographies, 104. Clearly, WMD s function in Rice's essay as the content enabling the category "rogue regime" and securing as well the imaginary moral geography of the "axis of evil:' 188 3 2 4 .1 s NOTES T O C HAPTER FOUR s 7 s ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=199 | PRINTED_PAGE=189 Survey results from "The 2004 Political Landscape;' Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, released November s, 2003 and available at http :/ I people-press.org (accessed July 28, 2008). One who would and does deny the political impact of the religious right is An Coulter, in Slander. Coulter argues that the religious right is a "mythical enemy" created by liberals "to justify their own viciousness and advance their agenda; 211. "Loathing of the religious right has become an end in itself;' she writes, "a consuming passion. Liberals denounce Christian conservatives for being moralistic, for imposing their morality on others, for not separating morality from politics, and for bringing religious zeal to public life-and then work themselves into a frothing frenzy of righteous, moralistic zeal over their own moral excellence for being so rational, calm, and detached;' 24 7. Some of the best studies in this large and fascinating field include Apostolidis, Stations of the Cross, and Harding, The Book of Jerry Falwell. Baugh, The Battle for Baptist Integrity (Austin, Texas: Battle for Baptist Integrity, Inc., no date). Copies may be requested by fax: (512) 327-0944. 14: Frum, The Right Man, 238. 15 Fineman, "Bush and God;' 22 f. 16 See Jane Bennett's and Michael Shapiro's introduction to The Politics ofMoralizing. They write: "The diagnosis of moral depletion-defined as a loss of shared values-makes the most sense in relation to an ideal of cultural life as an organic whole whose parts tend toward a state of equilibrium;' 2. 1 7 Thus, Susan Neiman, powerfuly rereads the history o f continental philosophy as a struggle with the reality of evil in the world. See her Evil in Modern Thought. 1 8 See Zizek's discussion in The Ticklish Subject, 290-97. 1 9 See, for example, Morrow, Evil. This colection o f short pieces o n evil is less an investigation than a set of lists, reflections, and narratives of pain and horror to establish the permanence of evil and the importance of recognizing "evil for what it is;' 13. A typical claim: "Evil is the most powerful won;I in the language, and the most elusive;' 7. 20 Morrow, "The Real Meaning of Evil;' 74. 21 For an account of performative contradictions, see Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, especialy 79-92. For a discussion of the symptom as "a particular elem�nt which subverts its own universal foundation," see Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, 21. 10 1 1 :1 2 1 3 189 NOTES TO CHAPTER FOUR 下一段：[继续读取](https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8.md?start=200&limit=10)