Zizek: The function of unattainable utopia

What is a utopian ideal? What do we do with it?
The logical answers appear to be: a vision for a better future that we should strive to actualise.
But what about utopias that simply cannot be brought into reality? What is their function?

In September last year, Benjamin Kunkel of the New Statesman wrote a brief review of Slavoj Zizek's (Verso, 2012) book The Year of Dreaming Dangerously. The political leaning of the article's publisher suggests that we would encounter a celebratory espousal of the brilliance of its object's author; however, the title indicated otherwise - The unbearable lightness of Slavoj Žižek’s communism. The author is basically frustrated by the fact that, despite the Slovenian's furious and brilliant critique of advanced capitalism, he proposes no concrete alternative. His visions of a communist utopia are obscure and undefined. To Kunkel's credit, he does propose a few somewhat-solid ideas for the future -

"Imagine, in any case, a society whose productive assets are, in one way or another, the property, as Marx said, of “the associated producers”. Such a society might also entail, let’s say, strict depletion quotas for both renewable and non-renewable natural resources; welfare guarantees not only for workers but for people too young, old or ill to work; and democratic bodies, from the level of the enterprise and locality up to that of the state, wherever it hadn’t withered away."

- which make his critique of Zizek's "unbearable lightness" more credible. Indeed, he is only able to criticise this philosopher's work on the basis of these solid alternatives - his thesis is founded on the assumption that some concrete proposals for a communist utopia actually exist. Without this assumption, the article in its actual form couldn't exist. Kunkel's proposals are the condition of possibility of the critique he builds.

In this way, I would argue that Kunkel and Zizek are actually very similar - my thesis here is that the latter's "unattainable utopia" is the condition of possibility of his furious criticism of advanced capitalism.

I came across this phenomena in Zizek's Living in the End Times (Verso, 2010). After some hundreds of pages of pure rage directed at reality, the author draws his attention to the possibility of a better future. In true Zizekian style, his supposedly concrete ideas of utopia come from literature - Kafka, Platonov and others - and the reader gets the impression of a vague world beyond the world, an obscure, unattainable dreamscape. For example, he introduces Kafka's short story about Josephine, a performer in a community of mice who, despite her beautiful voice and huge, captive crowd, is not a celebrity. While she is up on stage, all the worker-mice listen - when she is finished, they practically ignore her, she is accorded no special status. While this post-celebrity, egalitarian world is no doubt a beautiful idea, we are left asking: how? How would this actually work on a societal level? And how would we get there?
 

Zizek doesn't care to answer. Well, that isn't exactly true - the non-answer is on some level intentional, or at least functional. Rather, he cares not to answer. So then what is the function of this impossible utopia and the unexplained transition? The gap between the real world and Zizek's ideal one is essentially the genesis of his furious, brilliant criticism.

Indeed, every critique of concrete reality is enunciated from the position of a different, ideal world. For example, those of us who criticise US foreign policy are essentially taunting the state's leaders with the gap between the reality of this policy (brutal, violent self-interest) and its articulated ideals (freedom, peace, justice, etc). The argument is conducted from the world of the ideals - we are angry precisely because reality doesn't align with the way we believe it should be. (At this point, I should mention in passing Etienne Balibar's assertion [from Politics and the Other Scene - Verso, 2002]: the best way to reinforce a dominant ideology is to criticise the reality which it supports on the basis of its ideals - so by whingeing about the injustice of US foreign policy we are actually supporting this country's hegemony). We are effectively positioned on this ideal world, directing our anger at the real one - we must be in this position in order to criticise actual reality.

Very few of us on the left deny that Zizek makes many good points about the deficiencies of capitalism. But very few of us are impressed by the alternatives he proposes. Our frustration at the latter comes from a very linear idea - that good criticism should naturally lead to good, concrete proposals. But it doesn't actually work like that - the fact that Zizek's mind dwells in a perfect, undefined, impossible utopia means that he will be enraged by pretty much anything which falls short of this utopia in the real world - and that includes pretty much everything in existence. He converts this anger into a logical argument with lucid brilliance. This is the structural function of his stupid utopianism - if he enunciated a practical, attainable, vision for the future, he could not make the heavy critiques that he does, he would not be so enraged by capitalism (the question of which comes first - the ideal or the anger - is irrelevant for this discussion). The very impossibility of Zizek's utopia, which Kunkel criticises, is the condition of possibility of his belligerent work.

The next question is: so what?
If Zizek doesn't provide practical answers to the problems that he uncovers, the criticisms that he makes seem ultimately pointless. 

At this point, we must remember that his writings don't exist in isolation - there are other authors, other people, out there. And Zizek's pertinent criticisms of capitalism pave the way for others to propose concrete solutions - someone might read his work and say, for instance, "hey, the way that multinational corporations are implicated in the disintegration of the Congolese state is pretty messed up - we should lobby for these corporations to stop promoting the exploitation of workers by warlords". Someone will read the criticism, interpret the problem, and create a practical answer.
So we arrive at a paradoxical conclusion: Zizek's impossible utopianism is the condition of possibility of a concrete, attainable one.

Kunkel's review, in a way, is testament to this - his thesis about the Slovenian philosopher's vagueness allows him to enunciate some ideas for concrete communism.