A Prophetic Vision of Haiti’s Past - Los Angeles Review of Books

8/18/2019 A Prophetic Vision of Haiti’s Past - Los Angeles Review of Books

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A Prophetic Vision of Haiti’sPast lavoj Žižek

N W T O L A R ? A R C H I V C T I O N C H A N N L A O U T

I G N I N D O NA T

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APRIL 17, 2016

JRMY MATTHW GLICK’ The Black Radical

Tragic: Performance, Aesthetics, and the Unínished

Haitian Revolution i a ook we were all waiting

for without knowing it. Onl now, aឃer ᇻnding

it, do we know what we were waiting for. In

order to get an idea of it tremendou

achievement, one ha to take it title and

utitle erioul and conider the three topic

the indicate. Firt, Glick i concerned with the

immanent tragic dimenion of the radical

(revolutionar) proce. econd, he elaorate

thi tragic dimenion through a erie of

hitorical cae, om the German Peaant’ War

to Cua and Vietnam, whoe focal point i the

Haitian Revolution. Third, the matter of anali

i not hitorical realit ut it echoe in artistic

texts, pla, novel, and ᇻlm. Thee three topic

form a true Hegelian llogim where each

term mediate the two other.

o wh doe Glick focu on art performance(theater and cinema) in dealing with thi

complex political topic? A quote om Édouard

Gliant provide the ke: “Martinican realit

can onl e undertood om the perpective of

all the poiilitie, aorted or not, of thi

Relation.” That’ wh one need narrative

The BlackRadical Tragic

Jerem Glick

Pulihed 01.15.2016NYU Pre

296 Page

Jerem Glick

Pulihed 01.15.2016

NYU Pre

296 Page

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ᇻction, om Gliant to O’Neill, om

ientein to Fanon. Art pla with poile

alternative and thu provide the dene

cowe againt the ackground of which the

realit of what happened acquire it true

proᇻle. We thu get, a enjamin would haveput it, “a prophetic viion of the pat,” a pat

portent of future tragic poiilitie. Although I

will focu in thi review on ome aic political

and theoretical dilemma touched on Glick,

I cannot emphaize enough the irreitile

charm of hi reading of ergei ientein’

deate with hi tudent on how to hootDealine’ ecape through a window, of Paul

Roeon’ acting and inging.

A for the tragic dimenion, Glick goe much

further than the tandard notion of

revolutionar traged. Marx and ngel locate

the traged of a revolution in the ᇻgure of ahero who come too earl, ahead of hi time,

and who i therefore detined to fail, although,

in the long view, he tand for hitorical

progre. Their exemplar ᇻgure i Thoma

Müntzer. For Glick, contrat, traged i

immanent to a revolutionar proce. It i

incried into that proce’ ver core anddeᇻned a erie of oppoition: leader(hip)

veru mae, radicalit veru compromie,

and o on. For example, the gap etween

leader(hip) and mae, their

micommunication, emerge necearil. There

i no ea wa out. Glick quote a touching

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paage om Édouard Gliant’ pla Monsieur

Toussaint (Act IV, cene V) where Touaint,

laughing in delirium, adl reሊect upon how

he “can arel write”: “I write the word

‘Touaint,’ Macaia pell out ‘traitor.’ I write

the word ‘dicipline’ and Moe without even aglance at the page hout ‘trann.’ I write

‘properit’; Dealine ack awa, he think in

hi heart ‘weakne.’ No, I do not know how to

write, Manuel.”

(Note the iron of how thi paage refer to

the racit cliché aout lack people who cannotwrite.)

The ackground of thi paage i the tenion

in the revolutionar proce a reሊected in

peronal relation: Touaint’ nephew Moïe

advocated the uncompromiing ᇻdelit to lack

mae and wanted to reak up large etate,while Touaint himelf wa poeed a fear

of mae and aw it a hi tak to retain

dicipline and to run the production proce

moothl, o he ordered Moïe to e executed

for edition. Dealine later triumphed and,

aឃer the etalihment of a lack tate,

proclaimed himelf emperor of Haiti,introducing a new form of domination (a well

a ordering the maacre of all remaining white

inhaitant of Haiti) in the ver triumph of the

revolution. In order to grap thee tragic twit,

it i crucial to count the crowd (which, in the

theatrical dispositif , appear a choru) a one of


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the active agent, not jut a the paive

commentator of the event. The title of chapter

two of Glick’ ook i therefore, quite

appropriatel, “ringing in the Choru.”

o wh Haiti? For Glick, the Haitian Revolutioni not jut an aritrar example ued to

articulate a general revolutionar dnamic, ut

a kind of nodal point, a ingularit that

revererate in all other later revolutionar

attempt. True, the Haitian Revolution i not

the eginning, ut alread a repetition.

However, it i a repetition in the Hegelianene, a repetition that i not jut a cop of the

original ince it elevate the contingent original

into a univeral event. The French Revolution

ecame a world-hitorical event with a

univeral igniᇻcance onl through it

repetition in Haiti where the lack lave led a

ucceful reellion with the goal to etalih aee repulic like the French one. Without thi

repetition, the French Revolution would have

remained a local, idioncratic event.

ut there i another tenion, which exploded in

an exemplar wa in the Haitian Revolution,

the one etween lack lieration and univeralemancipation whoe pole are the “univeralit”

Touaint and Dealine, the agent of the

maacre of all non-lack in Haiti. Among the

et page in Glick’ ook are thoe where he

directl addree thi iue. If I undertand

him correctl, hi line of thought reemle the


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poition exempliᇻed Malcolm X. While in

prion, the oung Malcolm joined the Nation of

Ilam, and, aឃer hi parole in 1952, he engaged

in it truggle, advocating lack upremac and

the eparation of white and lack American.

For him, “integration” wa a fake attempt of thelack to ecome like the white. However, in

1964, he rejected the Nation of Ilam and, while

continuing to emphaize lack elf-

determination and elf-defene, he ditanced

himelf om ever form of racim, advocating

emancipator univeralit. A a conequence of

thi “etraal,” he wa killed three Nation of Ilam memer in Feruar 1965. When

Malcolm adopted X a hi famil name, there

ignaling that the lave trader who rought the

enlaved Aican om their homeland rutall

deprived them of their famil and ethnic root,

of their entire cultural life-world, the point of

thi geture wa not to moilize lack people toᇻght for the return to ome primordial Aican

root, ut preciel to eize the opening

provided X, an unknown new (lack of)

identit engendered the ver proce of

laver, which made the Aican root forever

lot. The idea i that thi X, which deprive

lack people of their particular tradition, oឣera unique chance to redeᇻne (reinvent)

themelve, to eel form a new identit much

more univeral than white people’ profeed

univeralit. Although Malcolm X found thi

new identit in the univeralim of Ilam, he

wa killed Mulim fundamentalit. Therein


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reide the hard choice to e made: e, lack

people are marginalized, exploited, humiliated,

mocked, alo feared, at the level of everda

practice; e, the experience dail the

hpocri of lieral eedom and human

right, ut in the ame movement theexperience the promie of true eedom with

regard to which the exiting eedom i fale —

it i this eedom that fundamentalit ecape.

What thi mean i that, in the truggle for

lack emancipation, one hould leave ehind

the lament for the lo of authentic Aicanroot. Let’ leave thi lament to TV erie like

the one aed on Alex Hale’ Roots. To put it in

peculative Hegelian term (and one of the

great point of Glick’ ook i it continuing

reference to Hegel), the true lo i the lo of

the lo itelf: when a lack Aican i enlaved

and torn out of hi root, he doe not onl loethee root. He mut alo realize that he never

had thee root. What he, aឃer thi lo,

experience a hi root i a retroactive fanta,

a projection ᇻlling in the void. And the ame

hold for human right. Ye, univeral human

right are eឣectivel the right of white male

propert owner to exchange eel on themarket, exploit worker and women, a well a

exert political domination. However, thi i

onl half of the tor. When we experience the

gap etween the fale univeralit of human

right and the particular injutice thi

univeral form jutiᇻe, thi gap hould not


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puh u to renounce human right and

eedom a fake, ut to egin to truggle for

their content. I the entire truggle for human

right not alo the truggle for thi content?

Firt, women (eginning with Mar

Wolltonecraឃ) demanded the ame right, thenthe lave in Haiti did it in the ᇻrt ucceful

lack upriing (for which the are punihed

even toda).

Glick i here ver precie: while advocating

univeral emancipation, he doe not neglect it

mediation with the topic of lack Power. Theet tool to think thi mediation i provided

Hegel’ notion of “determinate negation.” In a

political proce, thi mean that it i not

enough to directl aert univeralit againt a

particular identit — the peciᇻc path to

univeralit matter. Which particularit i

negated in a new univeralit? If, in a conሊictetween univeralit of human right and lack

identit, the univeralit i directl the white

lieral one, then lack people are called to join

it, to acriᇻce part of themelve. The white-

lieral univeralit i therefore falel

univeral, which i wh univeralit had to

proceed a growing out of the lack Powerproce. The paradox i thu that the

overcoming of lack identit politic ha to

proceed a a doule negation. Ye, one hould

negate excluive lack particularit, ut one

hould imultaneoul negate the hegemonic

white univeralit, which ecretl privilege


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principled No to uropean lackmail wa

immediatel followed a Yes to the

“mediation.”

Glick mention here Georg Lukác, the great

advocate of “mediation” who, in 1935, wrote“Hölderlin’ Hperion,” a weird, ut crucial,

hort ea in which he “praie Hegel’

endorement of the Napoleonic Thermidor

againt Hölderlin’ intranigent ᇻdelit to the

heroic revolutionar utopia:”

Hegel come to term with the pot-Thermidorian epoch and the cloe of the

revolutionar period of ourgeoi

development, and he uild up hi

philooph preciel on an undertanding

of thi new turning-point in world hitor.

Hölderlin make no compromie with the

pot-Thermidorian realit; he remainfaithful to the old revolutionar ideal of

renovating “poli” democrac and i roken

a realit which ha no place for hi

ideal, not even on the level of poetr and

thought.

Lukác i here referring to Marx’ notion that

the heroic period of the French Revolution wa

the necear enthuiatic reakthrough

followed the unheroic phae of market

relation. The true ocial function of the

revolution wa to etalih the condition for

the proaic reign of ourgeoi econom, and the


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true heroim reide not in lindl clinging to

the earl revolutionar enthuiam, ut in

recognizing “the roe in the cro of the

preent,” a Hegel liked to paraphrae Luther,

that i, in aandoning the poition of the

eautiful oul and full accepting the preenta the onl poile domain of actual eedom.

It i thu thi “compromie” with ocial realit

which enaled Hegel’ crucial philoophical

tep forward, that of overcoming the proto-

Facit notion of “organic” communit in hi

System der Sittlichkeit manucript and engaging in

the dialectical anali of the antagonim of the ourgeoi civil ociet.

It i oviou that thi anali of Lukác i

deepl allegorical: it wa written a couple of

month aឃer Trotk (another ᇻgure that

appear in Glick’ ook) launched hi thei of

talinim a the Thermidor of the OctoerRevolution. Lukác’ text ha thu to e read a

an anwer to Trotk. He accept Trotk’

characterization of talin’ regime a

“Thermidorian,” ut give that decription a

poitive twit. Intead of emoaning the lo of

utopian energ, one hould, in a heroicall

reigned wa, accept it conequence a theonl actual pace of ocial progre. For Marx,

of coure, the oering “da aឃer” which

follow the revolutionar intoxication ignal

the original limitation of the “ourgeoi”

revolutionar project, the falit of it promie

of univeral eedom. The “truth” of the


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univeral human right are the right of

commerce and private propert. Lukác’

endorement of the talinit Thermidor implie

(argual againt hi conciou intention) an

utterl anti-Marxit peimitic perpective.

The proletarian revolution itelf can alo echaracterized the gap etween it illuor

univeral aertion of eedom and the enuing

awakening in the new relation of domination

and exploitation, which mean that the

communit project of realizing “actual

eedom” necearil failed.

I ee a third wa eond the alternative of

principled elf-detruction and compromie:

not ome kind of “proper meaure” etween

the two extreme ut focuing on what one

might call the “point of the impoile” of a

certain ᇻeld. The great art of politic i to

detect it locall, in a erie of modet demand,which are not impl impoile ut appear a

poile although the are de facto impoile.

The ituation i like the one in cience ᇻction

torie where the hero open the wrong door

(or pree the wrong utton) and all of a

udden the entire realit around him

diintegrate. In the United tate, univeralhealthcare i ovioul uch a point of the

impoile; in urope, it eem to e the

cancellation of the Greek det, and o on. It i

omething ou can (in principle) do ut de

facto ou cannot or hould not do it. You are

ee to chooe it on condition you do not actually


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choose it .

Toda’ political predicament provide a clear

example of how la verite surgit de la meprise, of

how the wrong choice ha to precede the right

choice. In principle, the choice of leឃit politici the one etween ocial-democratic

reformim and radical revolution, ut the

radical choice, although atractl correct and

true, i elf-defeating and get tuck in

eautiful oul immoilit. In Wetern

developed ocietie, call for a radical

revolution have no moilizing power. Onl amodet “wrong” choice can create ujective

condition for an actual communit propect. If

it fail or if it ucceed, it et in motion a

erie of further demand (“in order to reall

have univeral healthcare, we alo need…”),

which will lead to the right choice. There i no

hortcut here, the need for a radical univeralchange ha to emerge through uch mediation

with particular demand. To directl egin with

the right choice i therefore even wore than to

make a wrong choice. It i a verion of the

eautiful oul, amounting to a poition that

a, “I am right and the mier of the world,

which got it wrong, jut conᇻrm how right Iam.”

uch a tance relie on a wrong

(“contemplative”) notion of truth, it totall

neglect the practical dimenion of truth. In hi

(unpulihed) eminar XVIII on a “dicoure


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which would not e that of a emlance,”

Lacan provided a uccinct deᇻnition of the

truth of interpretation in pchoanali:

“Interpretation i not teted a truth that

would decide e or no, it unleahe truth a

uch. It i onl true inamuch a it i trulfollowed.” There i nothing “theological” in thi

precie formulation, onl the inight into the

properl dialectical unit of theor and practice

in (not onl) pchoanaltic interpretation: the

“tet” of the analt’ interpretation i in the

truth eឣect it unleahe in the patient. Thi i

how we hould alo (re)read Marx’ Thei XI.The “tet” of Marxit theor i the truth eឣect it

unleahe in it addreee (the proletarian), in

tranforming them into emancipator

revolutionar uject. The true art of politic

i thu not to avoid mitake and to make the

right choice, ut to commit the right mistake, to

elect the right (appropriate) wrong choice.

Would Glick accept thi concluion? He

decrie “the revolutionar leaderhip a

vanihing mediator” a “the onl reponile

vanguard model.” And he conclude that

“[p]olitical work in order to qualiថ a radical

work hould trive toward it redundanc.” Hecomine here a oer and ruthle inight into

the necear tragic twit of the revolutionar

proce with the unconditional ᇻdelit to thi

proce. He tand a far a poile om the

tandard “anti-totalitarian” claim that, ince

ever revolutionar proce i detined to


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degenerate, it’ etter to atain om it. Thi

readine to take the rik and engage in the

attle, although we know that we will proal

e acriᇻced in the coure of the truggle, i

the mot preciou inight for u who live in

new dark time.

¤

Slavoj Ž i ž ek is a Slovenian philosopher and critic. He

is a professor at the European Graduate School,

International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the

Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London,

and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology,

University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His books include

Living in the nd Time, Firt a Traged, Then

a Farce, In Defene of Lot Caue, and others.

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A Prophetic Vision of Haiti’s Past - Los Angeles Review of Books