Pandemic! 2: Chronicles of a Time Lost - Slavoj Zizek
Published in 2020 by OR Books, New York and London
191 pages
ISBN: 978-1-68219-409-6 (paperback)
Time often seems to be illusory in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of us, in the face of lockdowns, social distancing, and the dramatic shift in day-to-day activities, find ourselves losing track of any meaningful sense of time. Like a dystopian Groundhog Day, we seem to live the same day over and over again, while the meaningful, vibrant experiences that once animated our lives are either completely stripped from us or softly pass us by.
In the wake of the pandemic, many of us around the world have witnessed the failure of our governments to adequately contain or mitigate the virus and its spread. After years of slashing budgets to public health initiatives, along with a distribution system that is all too dependent on private for-profit entities, it should come as no surprise that the global, neoliberal response has been far from adequate. As evidenced through the litany of anti-lockdown protests throughout this crisis, we’ve seen how the logic of capital has secured itself in the Western world, as we willingly sacrifice an ever-fluid “acceptable” number of lives for the sake of the economy. Many of us feel like we are at the end of our rope, bombarded daily with an endless barrage of (mis)information and surface-level, uncritical analyses of the current crisis.
In the early days of the pandemic, Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Zizek, in his book Pandemic!: COVID-19 Shakes the World, offered up some preliminary thoughts on how this global crisis might shape the contours of global politics, as he argued that we face two choices: barbarism or global Communism. In the latest follow-up to this early-pandemic collection of essays, titled Pandemic! 2: Chronicles of a Time Lost, Zizek offers us some more insights into the ways we’ve navigated this crisis. In this series of short essays, Zizek challenges us to critically examine our responses to the pandemic, as per usual through a Lacanian/Marxist/Hegelian perspective.
Overview:
Humorously dedicated “to all those whose daily lives are so miserable that they ignore COVID-19, regarding it as a comparatively minor threat,” Zizek’s latest offering captures the cultural zeitgeist of the summer and early autumn of 2020, giving us a vivid snapshot into what, in retrospect, would now be seen as just before the midpoint of the pandemic (at least in the Global North). Utilizing the pandemic as a springboard for a wide range of musings, Zizek explores the current ideological battles that rage on in the Western world. Highlighting issues such as the ecological crisis (ie. poking fun a bit at the sudden public disappearance of Greta Thunberg and Bernie Sanders during the crisis), the economic crisis (workers being forced to work starvation wages to keep up an ailing economy, putting their lives on the line for the economy), and structural racism (namely, the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent protests), Zizek insists that these crises are interconnected, and the pandemic has only further exposed these tensions that were already lying just beneath the surface. Zizek is convinced that, in the wake of the pandemic, a new form of class struggle will erupt, which will open up new horizons of possibilities.
Always an avid consumer of media, Zizek also provides plenty of pop culture references to anchor his observations, as well as taking the reader on a whirlwind of quick, meandering thoughts, including Elon Musk’s Neuralink project (which is further explored in his other work, Hegel in a Wired Brain), Metal Gear Solid 4, and Gwyneth Paltrow's vagina-scented candle. These entries are typically 3-5 pages in length and are immensely accessible to even the most casual reader. Combining his penchant for pop culture and its political implications, Zizek muses in the opening of Chapter Ten: “We often hear that what we are now experiencing with the Covid 19 pandemic is a real-life case of what was once depicted in Hollywood dystopias. The question is: what movie(s) are we watching unfold in reality?” (77).
Despite our culture’s obsession with dystopian, apocalyptic literature, Zizek notes one crucial difference between it and our current situation: namely, the pandemic’s non-apocalyptic character. It is a crisis that simply drags on with seemingly no end in sight, and demands that we change our way of existing in the world. Zizek’s solution is a new kind of “Communism, or to borrow from Peter Sloterdijk, ‘Co-immunism’ (collectively organized immunity against viral attacks)” (82). We need not have to choose between the survival of individuals and the survival of the economy. This new way of organizing would include a direct mobilization and coordination of global powers, favoring a centrally-planned economy over one that is haphazardly led by market forces.
For Zizek, there’s no point in wishing for a return to normalcy. There’s no reason to go back to the way things were before the pandemic. Instead, we need to be critical of our attitudes and responses to the pandemic, remaining careful not to let ideological drives blind us to new possibilities and horizons of being. Against the movie scripts we avidly consume, “this reality will not follow any of the above movie scripts. We desperately need new scripts, new stories that can provide us with the kind of cognitive mapping, a realist and also non-catastrophic sense of where we should be going. We need a horizon of hope, we need a new post-pandemic Hollywood” (82).
While the bulk of the book is composed of short, snappy essays on our political and cultural landscape, the conclusion and appendix are composed of deep, long-form explorations on power and psychoanalysis. These are by far the most philosophically rigorous and satisfying chapters, and provide an interesting framework for understanding US politics (such as the appeal of Trump’s obscenity, the issues of the liberal fixation on identity politics, and the reactionary right). Zizek applies his famous, idiosyncratic reading of Freud and Lacan to the COVID-19 crisis, interrogating how we continually deny our responsibility to think through the pandemic.
Commendations:
There is much to commend in this small volume of essays. This book serves as a kind of time capsule for 2020, as Zizek quickly comments on the major events of the year, offering his unique and lucid perspective on them. As always, Zizek incorporates a wide array of pop-culture references and humorous anecdotes to illustrate his points, which makes it an incredibly enjoyable and relatable work. While they are not always fully formed or robust, these shorter essays serve as quick and witty introductions to Zizek’s larger body of thought. Additionally, since most chapters are only a couple of pages in length, this book is an incredibly quick read, taking up only an afternoon or two of time to read through.
In contrast to the rest of the book, the final two entries are longer, more complex essays that more fully reflect Zizek’s philosophical ideas. While these are much denser than the work of the book, they are also much more interesting and intellectually satisfying than many of the other chapters. Zizek takes his Hegelian/Freudian/Lacanian framework of understanding ideology and its effects in the world and focuses it on the events of mid-pandemic 2020.
For example, in analyzing the appeal of Donald Trump, Zizek focuses on the role of obscenity, and how it often serves as a mask for violence. Trump was not an external threat that popped up out of nowhere; rather, he is merely a symptom of what is wrong with our social order. According to Zizek, the populist right lacks any form of positive ideology that can replace the liberal status quo that it constantly decries (a point, I believe, only further supported by the January 6th insurrection on the U.S. Capitol, in which far-right insurgents and insurrectionists stormed the Capitol, threatening to hang members of Congress and the Vice President, only to end up taking selfies with police and stealing podiums and other personal items).
On the other hand, Zizek also lambasts the “Politically Correct” liberal left, arguing that they become fixated on moralizing language and symbolic self-flagellation (ie. white liberals insisting that other groups assert their identities while renouncing their own particularized identity, thus further positioning themselves as the universal perspective). He argues that PC liberals attempt to have pleasure while trying to cut off jouissance, or its traumatic excess. In this way, the PC stance stays within the coordinates of liberal ideology, individualizing and policing behavior instead of analyzing the deeper social and economic roots that give rise to such behaviors. Essentially, the liberal wants to have more women and racial minorities in positions of power, while never critiquing these structures of power in the first place.
Thus, for Zizek, the populist right and the politically correct liberal are two sides of the same coin, ultimately feeding off of one another and perpetuating each other’s worst impulses (the right makes an obscene gesture/remark, which the PC liberal responds with moral outrage, which feeds the right’s desire for transgression, rinse and repeat). This is not simply a case of “both-siding” or a call to some milquetoast centrist position; rather Zizek ultimately makes a plea for a thoroughly Leftist response to our current situation, arguing that instead of trying to meet the politically correct demands, we should realize that these criteria are inherent to capitalist society and move in the direction of true socio-economic change. To be sure, this is not a novel or innovative approach in the slightest, but Zizek articulates it remarkably well, and makes a thoroughly understandable and cogent case for a Leftist stance, especially in a time when most voters are disillusioned with traditional politics. Because of this, Pandemic! 2 has aged much better than the first volume, although it is also not without its faults.
Critiques:
There’s always an inherent threat that looms over books that are written about ongoing events. Due to constantly changing circumstances, ideas and predictions that one makes can often age like milk. In his first Pandemic!, Zizek offered a few predictions that have not necessarily stood the test of time. We have not coordinated global efforts to overcome the virus. On the contrary, political and social divisions have only become more antagonistic and reified in the wake of the crisis. While some of the insights in this follow-up are likewise a bit dated, many significant contributions have stood the test of time (highlighting inequality, class divisions, exploitation of labor, etc). Yet, it seems like Zizek is writing as if the pandemic is on the verge of ending, when, in reality, in August 2020, we weren’t even halfway through it. This, combined with the remarks on Trump and the contemporary state of the Biden campaign, make some of Zizek’s thoughts, in retrospect, a bit off the mark (although his critique of Biden’s neoliberal, empty-gesture stances are scathing and still, unfortunately, ring quite true).
Furthermore, the book -- at least in the first 117 pages -- reads like a collection of quick opinion pieces that lack development. They often introduce interesting ideas, yet never really grapple with them in any deep way. Zizek jumps around from topic to topic with incredible speed, and much of it is only loosely connected to COVID-19, which leads a good portion of the book to feel thrown together. While the referencing in his first Pandemic book was awful (utilizing links to Wikipedia articles in the footnotes), this collection somehow manages to be even more appalling. Nearly all of the footnotes are links to various internet articles, including one from quotes.net that he uses to cite a line from Metal Gear Solid 4 (189). Now, if one were reading this on a digital medium, such as a Kindle, then the links could be useful or interesting. But in a paperback context, and without proper sourcing, it is next to useless. I’m not convinced that this book went through any kind of editing process, and while it is more tightly focused than much of Zizek’s other work, it still feels like a meandering collection of hot takes than a fully developed work.
On the other hand, the final two sections are quite philosophically and politically robust and contrast greatly with the rest of the book. While it’s interesting to see Zizek’s particular thoughts on COVID-19, there’s nothing else particularly new here if you’ve read any of Zizek’s other work. While the casual reader might enjoy the short, punchy chapters, they will probably struggle with these last two essays. Inversely, while the academic reader might find these last two essays at least vaguely interesting, they are unlikely to find the bulk of the short chapters satisfying. Ultimately, while it may be a mixed bag, I do think most of the essays, if nothing else, raise interesting questions to be considered, even if they are not fully explored here. For those who want to explore these ideas a bit further, then they can find Zizek exploring them a bit further in other recent works, such as A Left that Dares To Speak its Name and Hegel in a Wired Brain.
Conclusion:
Ultimately, Pandemic! 2 is a quick, entertaining, if an often patchy collection of essays that provide a unique and incisive insight into the past year of dealing with COVID. Zizek, to his credit, offers us new and innovative ways to think about the current crisis, as well as what can point us to new horizons of possibilities. If you’re a fan of Zizek, while there’s not much new theoretical material, it is still a well-worthwhile read to see him make sense of the wild world around us. Also, if you’re new to Zizek and flabbergasted as to why so many people continue to deny the reality of the virus (either its existence or the threat it poses), then this book serves as an accessible entry point into his wider, more complex work.
Personally, I enjoyed this follow-up work more than Zizek’s first volume on the coronavirus crisis, partially since it is more grounded in the reality of how we’ve responded to the viral threat, rather than offering speculative predictions. Zizek is a great companion to commiserate with as the world burns, and, if we take him at his word, the questions he raises will be essential to think through if we hope to imagine and create a new world, one that tarries with the existential threat of capital and climate change, long after the viral threat has abated.