Table Of Content“FEW THINKERS ILLUSTRATE THE CONTRADICTIONS OF “There is great disorder under heaven;
the situation is excellent.” —Mao Zedong
CONTEMPORARY CAPITALISM BETTER THAN SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK.”
H
—THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS E SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK
A
V
E
N
As we emerge (though perhaps only temporarily) from the pandemic, I
N
other crises move center stage: outrageous inequality, climate disaster,
D HEAVEN IN DISORDER
desperate refugees, mounting tensions of a new cold war. The abiding I
S
motif of our time is relentless chaos.
O
R
Acknowledging the possibilities for new beginnings at such moments,
D
Mao Zedong famously proclaimed “There is great disorder under
E
heaven; the situation is excellent.” The contemporary relevance of Mao’s R
observation depends on whether today’s catastrophes can be a catalyst
for progress or have passed over into something terrible and irretrievable. Ž
I
Perhaps the disorder is no longer under, but in heaven itself.
Ž
E
Characteristically rich in paradoxes and reversals, Heaven In Disorder K
looks with fervid dispassion at the fracturing of the Left, the empty
promises of liberal democracy, and the tepid compromises offered by
the powerful. From the ashes of these failures, Žižek asserts the need for
international solidarity, economic transformation, and—above all—an
urgent, “wartime” communism.
ISBN 9781682192832
90000 >
OR Books
www.orbooks.com
Illustration of Slavoj Žižek by Tom Elswijk
9 781682 192832
Cover design by Antara Ghosh
“FEW THINKERS ILLUSTRATE THE CONTRADICTIONS OF “There is great disorder under heaven;
the situation is excellent.” —Mao Zedong
CONTEMPORARY CAPITALISM BETTER THAN SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK.”
H
—THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS E SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK
A
V
E
N
As we emerge (though perhaps only temporarily) from the pandemic, I
N
other crises move center stage: outrageous inequality, climate disaster,
D HEAVEN IN DISORDER
desperate refugees, mounting tensions of a new cold war. The abiding I
S
motif of our time is relentless chaos.
O
R
Acknowledging the possibilities for new beginnings at such moments,
D
Mao Zedong famously proclaimed “There is great disorder under
E
heaven; the situation is excellent.” The contemporary relevance of Mao’s R
observation depends on whether today’s catastrophes can be a catalyst
for progress or have passed over into something terrible and irretrievable. Ž
I
Perhaps the disorder is no longer under, but in heaven itself.
Ž
E
Characteristically rich in paradoxes and reversals, Heaven In Disorder K
looks with fervid dispassion at the fracturing of the Left, the empty
promises of liberal democracy, and the tepid compromises offered by
the powerful. From the ashes of these failures, Žižek asserts the need for
international solidarity, economic transformation, and—above all—an
urgent, “wartime” communism.
ISBN 9781682192832
90000 >
OR Books
www.orbooks.com
Illustration of Slavoj Žižek by Tom Elswijk
9 781682 192832
Cover design by Antara Ghosh
HEAVEN IN DISORDER
HEAVEN IN
DISORDER
ˇ ˇ
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
OR Books
New York • London
All rights information: [email protected]
Visit our website at www.orbooks.com
First printing 2021
Published by OR Books, New York and London
© 2021 Slavoj Zˇizˇek
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any
information storage retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher,
except brief passages for review purposes.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: A catalog record for this book is
available from the Library of Congress.
Typeset by Lapiz Digital Services. Printed by Bookmobile, USA, and CPI, UK.
paperback ISBN 978-1-68219-283-2 • ebook ISBN 978-1-68219-280-1
CONTENTS
Introduction: Is the Situation Still Excellent? 1
1. Was the Drone Attack on Saudi Arabia
Really a Game Changer? 5
2. Who Makes Kurdistan Wild? 8
3. Troubles in Our Paradise 11
4. The Dangers of Sharing a Cup of Coffee With Assange 15
5. Anatomy of a Coup: Democracy, the Bible, and Lithium 18
6. Chile: Toward a New Signifier 21
7. Left Labour’s Loss: A Post-Mortem 38
8. Yes, Anti-Semitism Is Alive and Well—But Where? 41
9. A Perfectly Rational Act . . . In a Mad World 45
10. Winners and Losers of the Iranian Crisis 48
11. Has America Really Lost Its Moral Leadership?:
How the United States Is Becoming a Four-Party System 51
12. A Plea for a Moderately Conservative Left 57
13. The Amazon Is Burning—So What? 61
14. Radical Change, Not Sympathy 66
15. Trump Versus Rammstein 72
16. A Day of Shame Indeed! 79
17. Limits of Democracy 84
18. The Courage of Covid Hopelessness 91
19. Trump’s Barber Paradox 97
20. How to Kill Trump in His Notion 100
21. Democracy Reborn? Not With Joe Biden! 104
22. The State of Things: The Choice 108
23. The “Great Reset”? Yes, Please—But a Real One! 116
24. Christ in the Time of a Pandemic 128
25. First as Farce, Then as Tragedy? 132
26. What Is Trump’s Greatest Treason? 140
27. Here’s To You, Julian Assange! 146
28. Biden on Putin’s (Lack of) Soul 148
29. Class Struggle Against Classism 151
30. “We Have to Live Till We Die”: What Can Rammstein
Tell Us About Life in the Pandemic? 166
31. A European Manifesto 172
32. Which Game Has Stopped Working? 176
33. Light at the End of the Tunnel? 181
34. Three Ethical Stances 186
35. Paris Commune at 150 198
36. Why I Am Still a Communist 212
INTRODUCTION:
IS THE SITUATION STILL EXCELLENT?
One of Mao Zedong’s best-known sayings is: “There is great disorder
under heaven; the situation is excellent.” It is easy to understand what
Mao meant here: when the existing social order is disintegrating, the
ensuing chaos offers revolutionary forces a great chance to act deci-
sively and take political power. Today, there certainly is great disorder
under heaven, with the Covid-19 pandemic, global warming, signs of a
new Cold War, and the eruption of popular protests and social antago-
nisms worldwide naming but a few of the crises that beset us. But does
this chaos still make the situation excellent, or is the danger of self-de-
struction too high? The difference between the situation that Mao had
in mind and our own situation can be best rendered by a tiny termino-
logical distinction. Mao speaks about disorder under heaven, wherein
“heaven,” or the big Other in whatever form—the inexorable logic of
historical processes, the laws of social development—still exists and
discreetly regulates social chaos. Today, we should talk about heaven
itself as being in disorder. What do I mean by this?
In Divided Heaven (1963), Christa Wolf’s classic GDR novel about
the subjective impact of divided Germany, Manfred (who has chosen
the West) says to his love, Rita, when they meet for the last time: “But
even if our land is divided, we still share the same heaven.” Rita (who
has chosen to remain in the East) bitterly replies: “No, they first divided
the heaven.” Apologetic (of the East) as the novel is, it offers the right
insight into how our “earthly” divisions and fights are ultimately always
HEAVEN IN DISORDER
grounded in a “divided heaven”; that is, in a much more radical and
exclusive division of the very (symbolic) universe in which we dwell.
The bearer and instrument of this “division of heaven” is language
as the medium that sustains the way we experience reality—language,
not primitive egotistic interests, is the first and greatest divider. It is
because of language that we (can) “live in different worlds” to our
neighbors, even when they live on the same street.
Today, the situation is not one in which heaven is divided into two
spheres, as was the case in the Cold War period when two global world-
views confronted each other. The divisions of heaven today appear
increasingly drawn within each particular country. In the United States,
for instance, there is an ideological and political civil war between the
alt-Right and the liberal-democratic establishment, while in the United
Kingdom there are similarly deep divisions, as were recently expressed
in the opposition between Brexiteers and anti-Brexiteers . . . Spaces for
common ground are ever diminishing, mirroring the ongoing enclo-
sure of physical public space, and this is happening at a time when
multiple intersecting crises mean that global solidarity and interna-
tional cooperation are more needed than ever.
In recent months, the often alarming ways in which the crisis
of the Covid-19 pandemic is intertwined with ongoing social, polit-
ical, ecological, and economic crises are increasingly apparent. The
pandemic must be treated together with global warming, erupting
class antagonisms, patriarchy and misogyny, and the many other
ongoing crises that resonate with it, and with each other, in a complex
interplay. This interplay is uncontrollable and full of dangers, and we
cannot count on any guarantee in heaven to make the solution clearly
imaginable. Such a risky situation makes our moment an eminently
political one: the situation is decidedly not excellent, and that’s why one
has to act.
2
