LRB · Slavoj Žižek: Berlusconi in Tehran

LRB · Slavoj Žižek: Berlusconi in Tehran.

This doesn’t mean, needless to say, that we should renounce democracy in favour of capitalist progress, but that we should confront the limitations of parliamentary representative democracy. The American journalist Walter Lippmann coined the term ‘manufacturing consent’, later made famous by Chomsky, but Lippmann intended it in a positive way. Like Plato, he saw the public as a great beast or a bewildered herd, floundering in the ‘chaos of local opinions’. The herd, he wrote in Public Opinion (1922), must be governed by ‘a specialised class whose personal interests reach beyond the locality’: an elite class acting to circumvent the primary defect of democracy, which is its inability to bring about the ideal of the ‘omni-competent citizen’. There is no mystery in what Lippmann was saying, it is manifestly true; the mystery is that, knowing it, we continue to play the game. We act as though we were free, not only accepting but even demanding that an invisible injunction tell us what to do and think.

In this sense, in a democracy, the ordinary citizen is effectively a king, but a king in a constitutional democracy, a king whose decisions are merely formal, whose function is to sign measures proposed by the executive. The problem of democratic legitimacy is homologous to the problem of constitutional democracy: how to protect the dignity of the king? How to make it seem that the king effectively decides, when we all know this is not true? What we call the ‘crisis of democracy’ isn’t something that happens when people stop believing in their own power but, on the contrary, when they stop trusting the elites, when they perceive that the throne is empty, that the decision is now theirs. ‘Free elections’ involve a minimal show of politeness when those in power pretend that they do not really hold the power, and ask us to decide freely if we want to grant it to them.

Comments

[Alain]

I have to admit I prefer the original title of this piece as it was floating around different blogs: "Will the Cat above the Precipice Fall Down?" I think it also makes more sense of what is happening in Iran. While clearly the legitimacy of the regime is shattered, it is not clear from this essay in what respect Ahmadinejad is like Burlusconi? In fact, the popular uprising in the wake of the elections would seem to indicate that the situation in Iran is far more vital than what is happening in Italy or the West in general. Nevertheless, I think Zizek is right to point our that in most cases democracy usually never challenges "the transcendental frame" of politics - but that Iran, because of circumstances, may be an exception.

[Lusanda Gwayi]

Hi Jodi,

Im a law student at the University of Cape Town.I have just been assigned to summarize your article on 'Zizek on law'. Any tips, pointers, points to focus on?