homogenising template

Zizek - "My big worry is not to be ignored but to be accepted".

Slavoj Zizek was on French television the night before last! Or at least, a video clip of him, speaking French. He said that ‘old school’ French intellectuals like Badiou reach a wider English-speaking audience than the “new school”, including Bernard Henri-Levy (oops, that’s Bernard-Henri Lévy), present in the studio. BHL said Badiou’s voice has been totally silent on big issues (Kosovo). Irrespective of his personal karma, BHL spoke convincingly, suggesting the West use the Olympics as leverage to put pressure on China to stop buying oil from the Sudan. He reminded us that while we are discussing the French Presidential Elections, in Darfur there is a huge population being excluded from history, who have no state at all.

Zizek intrigues me. I sometimes wonder whether to take him seriously or not, but it doesn’t occur to me to wonder how rich he is. There is no big Other who has all the answers, we have to learn to think for ourselves. With BHL, the silver spoon seems to taint his discourse, or, rather, my ears. Whatever he says I am not really listening, because I am looking at him and imagining his discourse to mean “just because I am filthy rich doesn’t mean we can’t all be equal without me giving up any of my wealth”. In contrast to “God is dead but my hair is perfect” Lévy, I remember how exciting it was recently to watch Arianne Mnouchkine in an interview, and thinking how impressive she was spiritually, how her appearance did not draw attention to itself and stop her message from getting across.

Rwanda came and Rwanda went. Darfur is here. How can we be so aware of a situation and yet not be able to affect it?

I google Darfur, come across a number of sites where I can sign a petition and make a donation. Is that it? Once again do = pay. If you can’t pay you can’t do anything. Yet if you can pay, that is all you can do. You can’t even be sure that your money will make it to destination. I click on a link called “Darfur crisis: How to help”- the date is July 2004. I wonder how many children have died since then. How many inconsolable mothers?

At the opposite end of the smotherlove scale, Lionel Shriver’s “We have to talk about Kevin” comes to mind.

If I overcome my personal demons it won’t save Darfur. It won’t make the world a better place. But it won’t do anyone any harm either.

Walter Benjamin: “It is half the art of storytelling to keep a story free from explanation as one reproduces it.”

At the moment I am more interested in what is not written than in what is written.

First of all because what is left out is often the very reason behind the writing, the thing that cannot be said or written about but that creates the compulsion to write. The thing that demands to be expressed indirectly.

Secondly, because saying too much makes writing unreadable, like loving too much makes life unliveable.

Rather than the words, any words, being a triumph over the silence of nothingness, it is this particular pattern of words that is a triumph over the homogenising template