<b>- 09/25/2003 - HEINER MUELLER OUT OF JOINT</b><br><br> {{BSZ}}by Slavoj Zizek<br><br></font><font face="courier" size="-0"><tt></tt></font><div align="justify"><font face="courier" size="-0"><tt>The documentary on Heiner Mueller and his staging of Hamlet in 1989, "Zeit aus den Fugen," deploys the entire scope of his reticence to embrace German unification and the simple direct transposition of the BRD model on the DDR. What distinguishes Mueller is that he went much further than those who just complained how the unique chance of developing a third way beyond state socialism and global capitalism was missed: Mueller questioned the a priori legitimacy of free elections themselves, proposing a risked comparison with 1933 ("free elections also brought Hitler to power"). What this just the display of the arrogance of a fake dissident whose narcissism was hurt when the masses rejected the alternative of democratic socialism? Was Mueller himself thrown out of joint? Or can his stance be defended? these terms. Now that the 10<sup>th</sup> anniversary of Mueller's death is approaching, it is perhaps the time to revisit this question. My aim here is to take Mueller's stance seriously as a THEORETICO-POLITICAL position, not just as a pseudo-radical chic allowed and excused in advance to the eccentric artist, and to see if it can be justified on The case against Mueller seems clear.<br><br>
The first thing one can reproach him with is that he succumbed to the temptation of catastrophism, of perceiving the situation (in 1989) as one of utter despair (recall his statements from those years that he just wants to drown himself in alcohol and drugs). A lot of today's claims on how the XXth century was the most catastrophic in the entire human history, the lowest point of nihilism, the situation of extreme danger, etc., forgets the elementary lesson of dialectics: the XXth century appears as such because the criteria themselves changed - today, we simply have much higher standards of what constitutes the violation of human rights, etc. The fact that the situation appears catastrophic is thus in itself a positive sign, a sign of (some kind of) progress: we are today much more sensitive to the things which were going on also in the previous epochs. Recall feminism: only in the last 200 years was the situation of women progressively perceived as unjust, although it was "objectively" getting better. Or recall the treatment of disabled individuals: even a couple of decades ago, the special entrances which enable them the access to restaurants, theatres, etc., would have been unthinkable.<br><br>
