ŽIžEk and the Construction of Unfreedom, Essay Example

In the introduction to “Welcome to the Desert of the Real,” Slavoj Žižek writes that “we ‘feel free’ because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.” While Žižek may not be the first to express this philosophical point of view, he lends heft to this assertion in the essay “Passions of the Real, Passions of Semblance” by contextualizing it within the events of September 11, 2001 (specifically the attacks on the World Trade Center, and the fundamental meaning of those events for those who perpetrated them, those who experienced them firsthand, and those who lived through them vicariously or felt their repercussions). As Žižek examines the challenges we face as we try to make meaning from these events, he broadens his scope –sometimes too broadly- to include a discussion about the very nature of what is real and what is, as he describes it, semblance. From the televised images of planes flying into the WTC to Hollywood-created images of virtual destruction, Žižek shows us how what is real and what is semblance are often funhouse mirrors that reflect and distort each other. While Žižek covers a lot of rhetorical ground in “Passions of the Real,” his core intention is to examine the phenomenology and social implications of the WTC attacks. Žižek asks readers to consider how we make meaning of the events in our lives; he begins by noting that “all the main terms we use to designate the present conflict – ‘war on terrorism’, ‘democracy and freedom’, ‘human rights’, and so on- are false terms, mystifying our perception of the situation instead of allowing us to think it” (p 2).  The symbols we create to use in social discourse about 9/11 are inherently meaningless; the way we use words like “democracy” and “freedom” rarely aligns with any literal definition of such terms. These symbols are infused with whatever meaning we construct for them, and end up meaning almost anything but “freedom” or “democracy.” Žižek’s assertion that “we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom” is borne out in the endless conversations about “the war on capital-t Terror” that have little, if anything, to do with either war or terrorism.

Our freedom is shaped, defined, and limited by our involvement in a ceaseless, amorphous, and ultimately impossible-to-define “war” that, by its very nature, can never be legitimately examined. The reality of the planes flying into the WTC is reduced to a two-dimensional image on our television screens –what Žižek describes as, among other things, the ultimate snuff porn film- while our collective reaction and response to that those events is explained, excused, and obfuscated with the label “war on terror.” By attempting to fit so many things into the catch-all phrase “war on terror,” we end up with nothing at all besides the empty, meaningless phraseology.

Žižek looks to a number of elements of popular culture as a mechanism for explaining how we make meaning out of events like 9/11, and how the real nature of the WTC attacks is subsumed by the semblance of it. As Žižek points out, those who coordinated the WTC attacks were motivated entirely by the symbolic nature of their actions. The desired effect of the WTC attacks was not the immediate, practical damage they caused; it was, instead, their “theatrical spectacle” (p. 9). Though Žižek’s essay was written a year after the attacks, it could just as easily have been written today, at least in terms of his discussion about how the “theatrical spectacle” of 9/11 has been both presaged and echoed in popular culture. It seems that virtually every major Hollywood film released in the past decade contains one or more scenes showing a city –usually New York; occasionally San Francisco or Los Angeles- being decimated by some daunting enemy. If the Godzilla films of the 1950s and 1960s served as allegories for the atomic bombings in Japan, the Godzilla of today embodies the existential fears of terrorism, global warming, and any other threats we can neither see nor, in the end, avoid.

Some of Žižek’s arguments at times seem specious, or at least incomplete. His position that the WTC attacks were an effort on the part of the perpetrators to wake the American people up from their consumerism-driven fog have some merit, but fail to address the imperial presence of the United States in the Middle East, and the notion that the WTC attacks were motivated, at least in part, by the hope that a wounded American public would demand of its leaders a withdrawal from the region. To be fair, this does not undermine Žižek’s position so much as it highlights how he offers one of many perspectives on a complex situation. It also underscores his ideas about how what is real and what is not is shaped by so many competing forces. For any American who has asserted that the WTC was attacked because some amorphous, hazy Other “hates us for our freedom,” such an explanation is entirely real.

Because Žižek examines how words can be used to obfuscate and strip away meaning, it is impossible not to consider similar arguments from other writers. In Orwell’s future world of 1984, the government’s ideals are embodied in the slogans “War is Peace,” Freedom is Slavery,” and “Ignorance is Strength” (p.2). The citizens living under the ceaseless gaze of Big Brother also lack the language to articulate their unfreedom. If “war” is “peace,” then neither word means anything, yet these and other “newspeak” words are the only means by which Winston Smith and the other members of The Party can speak to each other. These meaningless, empty words become the currency of the meaningless, empty ideology of The Party. What Orwell missed –and what Žižek understands- is that the totalitarian apparatus of Big Brother’s government is unnecessary; we willingly, even eagerly, construct our own unfreedom.

Works Cited

Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. 1st ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1949. Print.

The Pervert’s Guide To Ideology. USA: Sophie Fiennes, Slavoj Zizek, 2012. film.

Z?iz?ek, Slavoj. Welcome To The Desert Of The Real!. 1st ed. London: Verso, 2002. Print.