Zizek on Race: Toward an Anti-Racist Future- Zahi Zalloua
Published in 2020 by Bloomsbury Academic, London UK
ISBN: 978-1-3500-9420-8
In the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmed Aubrey, Elijah McClain, and so many others, the BLM movement and the population's response to police brutality have once again returned to center stage within the American (and indeed, global) discourse. Following the path set by the protests fueled by the deaths of Trayvon Martin in 2012 and Eric Garner and Michael Brown in 2014, the BLM movement and local protests have spread like wildfire, as the movement has seen a significant rise in popular support within the past month. The topics of systemic racism and police brutality are currently at the forefront of popular discourse, and many people are just now being introduced and exposed to anti-racist theories and practices. Critical Race Theory, Privilege Theory, Postcolonialism, and Afro-Pessimism, once topics of discussion within a niche of academia, are now finding their way into the broader cultural zeitgeist. Accordingly, in the wake of this growing awareness of systemic racism, Cushing Eells Professor of Philosophy and Literature and Professor of French and Interdisciplinary Studies at Whitman College Zahi Zalloua has taken these concepts and analyzed them through a distinctively Zizekian framework. In his 2020 book, Zizek on Race: Toward an Anti-Racist Future, Zalloua combs through the work of Slovenian philosopher and firebrand Slavoj Zizek, as he attempts to construct a cohesive anti-racist Zizekian stance and utilize it to critique and strengthen other anti-racist theories and praxes.
Overview:
Like many Leftist thinkers, Zizek is skeptical of racial progress. Zalloua argues, however, that Zizek does not treat racial inequality merely as an inevitable consequence of capitalism. Refusing to fall into either the liberal tendency to fetishize race or committing the classical Marxist mistake of essentializing class above all else, Zalloua insists that Zizek often seeks to bolster anti-racist critiques by revealing the power dynamics inherent within capitalism and class distinctions. For Zalloua, “a Zizekian anti-racist critique ‘tarries with the negative’ by practicing a skeptical hermeneutics that resists both the traps of postraciality and the lures of identity politics - which in their own ways fill the void in the self and the social, displacing or covering up the problem of economic exploitation” (18). As such, the chapters within this book act as a sort of interlocutor with various sets of theories, offering gentle critiques and showing how they can be utilized for emancipatory political ends.
In the first chapter, Zalloua examines the liberal adoption of privilege theory, in which the undeserved privileges of certain groups (particularly whites) must be acknowledged and disavowed/curtailed. In a line of critique, Zalloua argues that the enjoinder to “check your privilege” has become more of a symbolic, rhetorical gesture, in which one can thus engender a sense of enjoyment from disavowing their privilege. Arguing that it is an inadequate frame for social change, Zalloua posits that a Zizekian response could be found in a shift from “checking your privilege” to the psychoanalytic injunction to “check our fantasy.” Through the prism of neoliberal tolerance, privilege theory attempts to democratize privilege, “to increase access to the system so that others can also reap its benefits,” (33) and fails to acknowledge the role of jouissance and the superego injunction to enjoy, placing the blame on individual shortcomings (“check your privilege”) and thus fetishizing our own attempts self-critique, turning them as ends unto themselves. Through disciplining others as well as oneself, there arises a form of illicit satisfaction, allowing us to critique others and ourselves without addressing the socio-political framework that structures our lives, turning whiteness into a reified thing that can be identified and denounced, rather than a set of power relations that structure our systems. In this way, privilege theory provides us with the fantasy of intervention and action, allowing us to occupy a space of interpassivity, in which we can parade around our self-critique and then do nothing to change the coordinates of our way of life. In response, Zalloua utilizes Zizek’s concept of ressentiment and Marcuse’s “undeserved happiness” as a way to foster a collective desire that short circuits the logic of neoliberalism and builds a collective, universalist response.
In Chapter Two, Zalloua examines the figure of the Other and the ethical/political implications that the Other forces us to confront. To do this, Zalloua utilizes the current refugee crisis in Europe as a case study. As opposed to both the autoimmune response of right-wing groups who treat the refugee as subhuman and the common sympathetic liberal response that advocates for open borders and unquestionable hospitality, Zalloua turns towards Zizek’s use of the Biblical injunction “Love thy neighbor.” In doing so, Zalloua pits Zizek against Derrida, Levinas, and Caputo as he examines the racialization of the Other through the lens of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Zalloua argues that the deconstructionists' deference towards the Other’s particularity is not enough; rather, “an ethical response to the plight of the real neighbor must pass through universality” (51). Examining Zionism, Anti-Semitism, and the Israeli occupation of Palestine, Zalloua makes the case that the liberal deconstructionists are projecting a fantasy of frictionless capitalism and not acknowledging that “refugees are the price humanity is paying for the global economy” (65). Thus, both the Left and the Right’s paradigms must be rejected; the answer is neither pure hostility nor pure hospitality. Rather than merely offering humanitarian aid that prolongs and obscures the problem, we must instead reorient our focus onto the causes of global suffering and injustice, and seek to build solidarity through a thoroughly Leftist, anticapitalist restructuring of our global economic system.
In Chapter Three, Zalloua attempts to tackle postcolonial theory’s tendency to conflate culture with politics. Zalloua finds it rather suspicious that postcolonial critiques became academically fashionable during a period where global capitalism was left to ravage the Third World unchecked (74). While postcolonialism rightly denounces Western modernity and its false universality that justifies neocolonial, racist ideas, Zalloua argues that it also doesn’t go far enough. In his critique, Zelloua posits that postcolonial theory often succumbs to a hasty anti-Eurocentrism, which Zizek counters with a doubling down on his Marxist approach that emphasizes a path of “concrete universality” (to borrow a term from Hegel). Once again drawing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a living case study, Zelloua brings Zizek in conversation with Frantz Fanon to examine how the figure of the Palestinian has been racialized. He argues for a form of binationalism as a way to build a universal project, calling on both nations to renounce any fantastical notion of a pure nation-state, which would short-circuit exclusivist nationalism. Thus, postcolonialism, while offering a valid critique of Western colonialism, often fails to deliver a universal politics by retreating into particularism and a nostalgic desire to return to pre-colonial/indigenous reality. Instead, “the shift from difference as experiential rootedness (the stuff of tribalism and identity politics) to difference as experiential relatedness helps to revive a universalist humanist framework where what ultimately matters is to be treated humanely” (81, emphasis mine).
In Chapter Four, Zalloua examines Critical Race Theory (CRT), which holds racial progress with suspicion and argues that the racial order sustains itself and reproduces its social structures when the interests of minorities must first pass through a white framework. In this way, according to CRT, white liberals can get the benefit of feeling good about racial progress and postraciality while still upholding racist structures of power. Zalloua argues that Zizek’s perspective often complements CRT’s skeptical view of racial realism nicely, but Zizek also takes up the problem of racist fantasy, analyzing how they project the problem of global capitalism onto an external Other. As opposed to CRT, Zizek doesn’t rule out the possibility for “transcendent change,” as he explicitly links the black struggle in America to the Palestinian struggle in the Israeli occupation. Zalloua also takes up Zizek’s notion of “divine violence” to examine the logic of riots, arguing that they reveal our inability to articulate an alternative system since we live as if our only options are to either play by the rules or lash out in an outburst of violence. Zalloua, while recognizing and celebrating CRT’s ability to expose white, Western racial fantasies and the criminalization of the black body, Zalloua argues that it can’t stop at the realm of the Imaginary (unmasking the images that fuel the politics of fear) and the Symbolic (uncovering the way civil rights laws serve white interests). Rather, it must also reckon with the antagonism of the Real, which “can only be done by politicizing and mobilizing the excluded, the racialized subjects of global capitalism” (124).
In Chapter Five, Zalloua takes the work of Frank B. Wilderson III to task by critiquing various aspects of Afro-Pessimism, which concerns itself with “the uniqueness of the constitutive exclusion of blackness” and focuses on the “crushing reality of blackness and the metaphysical suffering of blacks” (126). Zalloua doesn’t necessarily disagree with Afro-Pessimism’s radical skepticism regarding racial progress or its analysis on the construction of blackness as a way for white societies to find coherence. Rather, Zalloua is hesitant to wholly endorse it, as he fears it runs the risk of ontologizing and dehistoricization race and becoming a separatist ideology, which Zalloua argues leads to a dead-end, ineffective politics. Ultimately, Zalloua doesn’t want to exclude the possibility of solidarity among people, even amid their racial differences. Unlike Wilderson, Zalloua does not believe that the world is beyond redemption; he believes that the Left needs to organize and mobilize various proletarian positions across racial lines (aka. linking the struggle of American black lives with the Palestinian cause and the refugees in Europe) to rewrite the coordinates of existence and transform the grammar of our suffering. In a challenge to Afro Pessimists, Zalloua writes, is to “truly see the figure of the black not as a fetish but as a candidate for the ‘part of no-part,’ which means, at the very least, to see the struggle of blacks as part of a global struggle against suffering and the destruction of lives” (142).
Finally, Zalloua’s work is bookended by two short essays: one written by Slavoj Zizek himself and the other addressing the current BLM movement. In the former, Zizek gives a brief introduction to the work, introducing the Hegelian concept of “concrete universality” and connecting his thoughts on race to the MeToo movement and LGBTQ+ activism. In the latter, Zalloua gives us a few pages regarding the Black Lives Matter movement, and its necessity as a step toward inhabiting the universal, as the fight against racism is to secure justice and equality for all. Zalloua categorizes BLM as an Event that has the chance to reorient the symbolic field, if only we remain true to its call for emancipation and work to build global solidarity with proletarians of various strata.
Commendations:
There are several aspects of this work that are worth commending. First of all, I do think that putting Zizek’s work in dialogue with contemporary discourse on anti-racism is a fruitful and worthwhile endeavor. Zizek has often written about issues such as the refugee crisis, riots in London and Paris, and the binational possibility of peace between Israel and Palestine. Yet, Zizek hasn’t (at least to my knowledge) commented very much on current race relations in the United States, aside from a few lectures online and a couple of his chapters in his latest book, A Left that Dares Speak its Name. Even so, Zizek often relates minority struggles together, singling out that “X” of Malcolm X and the “+” in LGBTQ+ as signifiers of a retreat from finding one’s identity in some sort of primordial roots, and rather taking on the role of the universal “Non-All” and building a new, radically emancipatory collective movement. Zalloua accomplishes a novel feat in putting Zizek’s work (which can often come across as blunt at best and purposefully inflammatory at worst) into context, mining his books from across the decades to tease out a, properly Zizekian anti-racist stance. In short, it is a wonderfully engaging practice to take Zizek’s corpus and put it in conversation with specialized topics such as Critical Race Theory, Afro-Pessimism, and Postcolonialism.
In addition, I do find Zalloua’s gentle critiques of these theories to be rather persuasive. Throughout the chapters of this book, two central arguments arise: (1) that we need to pay attention to the role of jouissance (excess enjoyment) when assessing racism’s prevalence and unfortunate appeal, and (2) to confront racism, we must infuse a proper philosophy of race with negative dialectics and a universal dimension to construct an emancipatory political movement. Zalloua is charitable to the theories that he critiques, acknowledging their role in pointing out real, systemic racism in our society and their avenues for social change.
Yet, Zalloua’s focus on building solidarity and his attentiveness to the exploitative nature of capitalism keeps us from either treating race as an impassable ontological category on one hand or falling into simple, reductionistic class essentialism on the other. It is in this commitment to solidarity that appeals to me most, as he writes, “Solidarity movements (all but ruled out by Afro-Pessimism) are not an option but a necessity” (148). By focusing on the role of surplus enjoyment in the perpetuation of everyday racism, Zalloua’s treatment of Zizek helps us gather a psychoanalytic insight into the struggle against racism in our world today, no matter which form it takes or where it comes from (whether the overt racism of the New Right or the subtly racist Liberal Multiculturalist).
Also, in connecting it to global struggles such as Palestinians in the Middle East and refugees in Europe, Zalloua broadens the conversation on race and racism beyond American discourse and into the global situation. Over and over again, Zalloua reiterates his stance toward the antagonism between Israel and Palestine as he advocates for a binational solution. This continuous return to the Palestinian struggle with Israeli occupation should come to no surprise when one looks at Zalloua’s previous work, which has dealt with this topic extensively. Even so, Zalloua provides a compelling critical analysis of the Israeli occupation, connecting it with anti-racist struggles over here in the States.
Finally, it should be noted that this is an extensively well-researched book. While reading, one cannot help but notice the sheer amount of references that Zalloua packs into each page. Because of this, the length of the main content of the book is also deceiving; over ⅓ of the book’s total bulk (90 out of 242 pages, to be precise) are footnotes and references. Yet, this commitment to direct quotations and paraphrasing comes at a bit of a price.
Critique:
Despite the book’s utilization of a wide array of sources, the text itself ends up being rather dense. There are easily over 120 references per chapter, and the text can consequently come across as a bit clunky and unnatural at times. In terms of content, it’s not the most easily accessible book out there, as one would have to be well versed in Lacanian theory as well as Hegel’s dialectical materialism to track with some of the finer points of Zalloua’s argument. For someone who is vaguely interested in what Zizek’s thoughts on race might be, this is not the best starting point. Rather, it is written for those who are already familiar with Zizek’s work and are interested in how it might be put into dialogue with contemporary discussions of race and racism.
Furthermore, Zalloua tends to defend Zizek to a fault, even amid more troubling issues. Zizek has been accused of a wide array of charges, including the accusation in a scathing Current Affairs article claiming that Zizek is “a racist and reactionary whose intellectual product is worthless.” This particularly vicious charge arises from Zizek’s treatment of Muslim minorities, primarily in his work, Against the Double Blackmail. While I do agree that Zizek often finds a kind of perverse pleasure in provocation (more often than not to his detriment), I do not think that many of the charges in the article (including racism) come from a clear understanding of Zizek’s thought (especially when put in context). Zizek does have some troubling spots here and there, and to be fair Zalloua does address one or two of these issues in this book and attempts to put Zizek in his full context. Yet, Zalloua does not touch on this issue of Muslim minorities and Zizek’s commentary on their tension with their European neighbors. Zalloua merely comments on the issue of Muslim refugees in Europe, and while this is a book on race and not religion, one cannot deny that there is an intersectional overlap and between these two categories, especially since they are often conflated in the racist imagination.
On a similar note, although Zalloua connects the emancipatory struggle to other marginalized groups, he doesn’t (unlike Zizek in the preface) address the connections to LGBTQ+ struggles (though I understand the thorny issues with conflating racial discrimination with marginalized sexualities). Throughout the book, Zalloua’s proposed way forward is to build solidarity through the universalized particularity of the “Non-All,” but there’s no radical vision of how exactly to overcome these deadlocks in society aside from uniting against capital. Towards the end of the book, Zalloua briefly addresses this by emphasizing the importance of staying true to the Event while recognizing its contingency and possibility of failure. To his credit, this is commendable, as Zalloua does address this sense of uncertainty and precarity towards the future of racial progress.
Yet, when I finished the book, I could not help but think that the critique felt a bit incomplete. How do we go about building solidarity across proletarians of different backgrounds? What avenues are available for us to build frameworks of communication and mutual support between the fight against racism in America to the Palestinian struggle? How can we stay true to the Event of BLM and work to build anti-racist coalitions around collective suffering without diminishing the unique nature of black suffering? Surely, these are questions that we must strive to wrestle with, and at the very least, Zalloua’s work helps us begin to articulate ways of moving forward together.
Conclusion:
Overall, Zizek on Race provides us with a robust analysis of racism and its remedies through the work of Slavoj Zizek and his interlocutors. Zalloua’s gentle criticism and self-reflection, as well as his commitment to solidarity, are necessary and worthwhile endeavors. While it is far from the most accessible work out there, it is still a constructive critique of our current anti-racist efforts, and how we might be able to move forward to build communities of solidarity and progress united around a common struggle (namely, one centered around a fundamental lack, or void). While there is much to be said around the potential next course of action, at the end of the day, Zalloua simply gives us a wide berth of psychoanalytic theory and some potential avenues through which we can begin to build a sense of global solidarity. It is ultimately up to us to make it real.