Kameraad Mhambi

When Gavin Evans and I had a beer he said how he had come to be estranged from Marxism, Leninism and the ideas of Hegel.

Last Wednesday I attended a talk by Slavoj Zizek, one of the most celebrated and entertaining modern intellectuals. Zizek wants to rehabilitate Marxism and even Stalinism, at least and only in the spheres of environmental degradation and bio-technology he says. Or at least that is what I understood him saying.

Zizek also wants to rehabilitate ideology in general, or at least make us aware that our current post-ideological world is an insidious kind of ideology itself, even stronger and harder to challenge because it is unaware of itself in a way that that other ideologies like that of psychoanalysis, fascism and Marxism is not. It is an ultimate truth, the most dangerous kind of ideology. Zizek wants us to go back to ideologies with isms, isms ate ideologies that dare speak its name.

But what is ideology? Mirriam webster defines it as:

1 : visionary theorizing
2 a : a systematic body of concepts especially about human life or culture b : a manner or the content of thinking characteristic of an individual, group, or culture c : the integrated assertions, theories and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program

Zizek has a great way of demonstrating how today’s ideology works. He points to Donald Rumsveld’s Iraq wat statement on what we know. Rumsveld said in response to questions about why weapons of mass destruction had not been found yet that there are known knowns – things we know we know. there are known unknowns – things we know we don’t know. And then there’s unknown unknowns – things we don’t know that we don’t know.

Zizek points out that Rumsveld missed a fourth combination. Unknown knowns – things we don’t know that we know. That is modern ideology and causes us to make mistakes like the Iraq War.

In this video Zizek makes this point in his inimitable way.

And here is the original (with some caned laughter).

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