we humans cannot ever be sure that we believe: ultimately, we only believe that we believe: The formula of a regime which only imagines that it believes in itself nicely captures the cancellation of the performative power (symbolic efficiency) of the ruling ideology: it no longer effectively functions as the fundamental structure of the social bond. And, we may ask, are we not today in the same situation? Do todays preachers and practitioners of liberal democracy not also only imagine that they believe in themselves: in their pronunciations? In fact, it would be more appropriate to describe contemporary cynicism as representing an exact inversion of Marxs formula: today, we only imagine that we do not really believe in our ideology-in spite of this imaginary distance, we continue to practise it. We believe not less but much more than we imagine we believe. Benj amin was thus indeed prescient in his remark that everything depends on how one believes in ones belief. ~ Slavoj Zizek, First As Tragedy, Then As Farce . . .
Posted on: Tue, 03 Dec 2013 19:40:20 +0000
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