What follows from the decline of symbolic efficiency?

At some point, I need to think about what follows from the symbolic efficiency. Here is an initial list:

1. No collective identity (whaddaya mean 'we,' white girl?);

2.  No rights (because they are signifier of collectively recognized commitments--so, extend current debates over right to abortion, right to bear arms, into righs most generally);

3.  No collective resources (as in stories, traditions, holidays--extend critique of Columbus Day or Veterans Day to see point);

4.  Merger of imaginary and Real (point already in Lacan and Zizek, see it in derivatives bubbles and celebrity);

5.  Increase in visual over textual culture;

6.  Increase in affective rather than cognitive appeal (making sense means what feels right);

7.  Increase in performatives (that is, speech acts will try to produce the conditions under which they make sense rather than attempting to address something previously known as reality--see Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney;

8.  Amplification of repetition;

9.  Amplification of repetition--see number 8;

10. Circularity and feedback loops--see number 9;

11.  Experience of imposition and inconvenience as irrational force and violence.

Comments

[Hamlet]

sorry for writing here but i couldn't find your email. Is it possible to ask you few questions (for an interview for a blog)? Thank you

[Alain]

Is there a theoretical reason you posted this twice, with one extra bullet point at the end?:)

[Jodi]

eek! thanks, Alain--I hadn't realized it had posted twice; when I added the last point, Typepad made it a new post rather than saving over the old. thanks for the catch!

[Alain]

A serious question: do you think the recent right wing violence could indirectly be attributed to the decline of symbolic efficiency? If we do not share the same symbolic space, isn't it reasonable to assume some folks will be provoked to violence in order to defend "the American way of life?" On Rachel Maddow tonight, she documented five different incidents where someone had thrown bricks at democratic offices around the country - it seems these people are not only really angry but they believe themselves to have reasons for this anger.

[Jodi]

I absolutely believe that the violence is a result of the decline. A couple of nights ago, though, Maddow suggested that we are in a moment of rare political clarity, where the divisions between right and left (not her terms) were never clearer, where the choice that people could make politically never starker. I don't agree with this insofar as her account of the right position was wrong (no government regulation or intervention; that's wrong because there are things the right wants to regulate, abortion is a big one, same-sex behavior is another big one, and they want to intervene militarily in foreign countries). Yet looking at the decline as an opportunity for creating something else is a good idea. It makes sense that there would be struggle over this something else. But choice doesn't exactly make sense because that tends to presuppose a kind of meta-criterion capable of making the alternatives commensurate.

[Dale]

I especially like your contention that the performative has become a crucial dimension of the decline of symbolic efficiency: the speech act privileging rhetorical effect over claims to truth. The financial crisis is exhibit A in this respect: the reason that the market bubble appeared was due (among other things) to the accumulation of countless speech acts that reinforced investors' libidinal investment in the expansion of the market -- rather than reflecting any genuine evidence of solid market fundamentals.

Similarly, right wing hysteria over the health care bill did not grow out of any revelation of genuine problems with the bill. (For that, we need to look at left-progressive disenchantment with the bill, which I think is wholly warranted). Instead, unfounded claims accumulated steadily, one after the other, with each one creating a truth-effect by virtue of the pleasure that Tea Partiers took in the power of apocalyptic fantasy: death panels, etc. Each fortelling of catastrophe gives the claimant a little bit of a rush, a burst of pleasure that derives (paradoxically) from fearing the worst. These claims, though utterly false, helped to take health care debate out of the boring realm of policy wonkery and reinscribe it within the context of a battle over good and evil. These are the same voters, after all, who read Left Behind novels as historical truth.

[Alain]

Jodi, my only quibble is that even without commensurability, there still is a choice. It is between reasonable corporatists who are willing to make slight accomadations for the masses in need (such as myself) and a proto fascist movement that doesn't want government to help those who are "unworthy." Ofcourse Dale is right that they get a rush out the violence, but ultimately it is a nihilistic movement that could take the country toward civil war.

[Dphourigan]

Hi Jodi, interesting list. Your reflexive twist to repetition reminds me that Zizek's touchstone for such a point tends to be Kierkegaard (most notably in Enjoy Your Symptom). If we are to see repetition as amplified, perhaps it turns its Kierkegaardian categories -- aesthetics, ethics, and religion -- back on themselves... Which poses the distinct problem for the more Hegelian overtones in his work... All food for thought I suppose.

[Jodi]

Dale--very cool exposition; I like it.

Alain--reasonable corporatists v. proto-fascists doesn't describe a choice to be made; it describes a choice that was already made, from within the space of the already made choice. There's even something missing: the fantasy of the non-confrontational, post-partisan, working together, 'pragmatist' who wants to put the fighting and name-calling of 'both sides' behind him.

Dphourigan---that's a very interesting point; I confess that I am weak on Kierkegaard and can't add anything here.

[Alain]

Again, of course you are right. But in my personal situation, this is still a very real (if also very confined) choice. There are real consequences to the limited choices, and false pragmitism of Obama's "Change we can believe in." Billions of dollars invested in local community health centers may mean the difference between life and death for my family. That is no exaggeration. For me, the immediate practical question is if these modest benefits will take effect soon enough to help people like me.

I hope you know I do not mean this to sound "holier than thou" - because I agree with you for the most part. Its just that the differences between the brown shirts and the moderate corporattist is still a difference that makes a difference. I admire theorists like yourself (or Zizek, Badiou, etc) because you are trying to think of something beyond the prison of the now. Its just my family must survive in the now.

As always, thanks for the discussion. Peace.

[andrew]

Jodi (I realize you may not be still following this thread, but what the hell), I wonder what you think of symbolic efficacy in relation to the Right's recent insistence that John Lewis could not have been called racial epithets because there's no cell phone video. This feels like a first of some type in the everything is recorded world, though certainly the idea that epistemology rests exclusively with recorded technology seems consistent with #5.

[Jodi]

Andrew--your point reminds me of similar instances, all of which link to the decline of symbolic efficiency: so, disgusting cattle videos on You Tube, then denounced as fake; Obama's birth certificate stuff, again, no document is valid enough.

[Simon]

I've just stumbled upon your article in IJZS. Right now I've got to get some sleep, but I'm planning on getting creative with it.