Changes

[[Amish]] [[community|communities]] routinely [[practice ]] the institution of <i>[[rumspringa]]</i> (from the [[German ]] <i>herumspringen</i>, to jump around). At 17, their [[children ]] (who until then have been subjected to strict [[family ]] [[discipline]]) are set free and allowed, solicited even, to go out and [[experience ]] the ways of the "American" [[world ]] around [[them]]. They [[drive ]] cars, listen to pop [[music]], watch TV and get involved in drinking, drugs and wild sex. After a couple of years, they are expected to decide: Will they become members of the Amish community, or leave it and turn into ordinary American citizens? Far from allowing the youngsters a truly free [[choice]] — that is, giving them a [[chance ]] to decide based on the [[full ]] knowledge and experience of both sides of the choice — such a solution is a [[forced choice|fake choice]] if there ever was one. After long years of discipline and fantasizing [[about ]] the illicit pleasures of the [[outside ]] world, when the adolescent Amish are thrown into this world unprepared, they cannot but indulge in extremely [[transgressive ]] [[behavior]], gorging themselves fully on a [[life ]] of sex, drugs and drinking. And since they have never had the chance to develop any [[self]]-regulation in such a life, the wholly new and permissive [[situation ]] inexorably backlashes, generating unbearable [[anxiety]]. Thus, it is a safe bet that, after a couple of years, they will [[return ]] to the seclusion of their community. Indeed, 90 percent of the children do exactly that.

This is a perfect example of the difficulties that accompany the [[idea ]] of a "[[free choice." While Amish adolescents are formally given a free choice, the conditions they find themselves in while choosing make the choice "unfree." In order for them to have a truly free choice, they would have to be properly informed of and educated about all their options. However, the only way to do this would be to extract them from the Amish community, which would effectively render them American.

This deadlock also illustrates the problems with the standard [[liberal]] attitude toward [[Muslim]] [[women ]] who wear veils: They can do it if it is their free choice and not an option imposed on them by their husbands or family. However, the [[moment ]] women wear a [[veil ]] as the result of their free choice (say, in order to realize their own spirituality), the [[meaning ]] of wearing a veil changes completely. For [[liberals]], it is no longer a [[sign ]] of their belonging to the [[Muslim]] [[community]], but an expression of their idiosyncratic individuality. The [[difference ]] is the same as the one between a [[China|Chinese]] farmer eating Chinese food because his village has done so from [[time ]] immemorial and a [[citizen ]] of a Western megalopolis deciding to go and have dinner at a local Chinese restaurant.

A choice is thus always a "[[meta-choice]]," a choice that simultaneously defines and is defined by the [[conditions ]] of the choice itself. It is only the [[woman ]] who does not choose to wear a veil who effectively makes a choice. This is why, in our secular societies of choice, [[people ]] who maintain a substantial [[religious ]] belonging are in a subordinate [[position]]. Even if they are allowed to maintain their [[belief]], this belief is "[[tolerance|tolerated]]" as an idiosyncratic personal choice or opinion. The moment they [[present ]] it publicly as what it is for them (a matter of substantial belonging), they are deemed "[[fundamentalism|fundamentalist]]."

So what does all this have to do with the [[recent ]] [[French]] (and then [[Dutch]]) vote of "No" to the European [[Constitution]]? <i>Everything</i>. The French voters were treated exactly like the Amish youngsters. They were not given a clear symmetrical choice. The very [[terms ]] of the choice privileged the "Yes" vote. The [[elite ]] proposed a choice that was effectively no choice at all — people were called to ratify the inevitable, the [[natural ]] result of enlightened [[expertise]]. The [[media ]] and [[political ]] elite presented the choice as one between [[knowledge]] and [[ignorance]], between [[expertise]] and [[ideology]], between [[post-politics|post-political]] [[administration]] and old political passions of the [[left]] and the [[right]]. The No was thus dismissed as a short-sighted fearful reaction to the emerging new [[postindustrialism|postindustrial]] [[global]] [[order]], an [[instinct ]] to stick to and protect the comfortable [[Welfare]] [[State]] [[tradition]]s — a gesture of [[refusal ]] that lacked any positive alternative program. It is little wonder that the only political parties whose [[official ]] stance was No were those at the extremes of the political spectrum: [[Le Pen]]’s [[Front National]] on the [[right]] and the [[Communism|Communists]] and [[Trotskyism|Trotskyists]] on the [[left]]. Furthermore, we've been told, the No was really a No to many [[other ]] things: [[Anglo-Saxon]] [[neoliberalism]], [[Chirac]] and the present French [[government]], the influx of [[immigrant ]] [[workers ]] from [[Poland]] who lower the [[wage]]s of the French workers, etc. (And before dismissing this last complaint as racist, one should keep in [[mind ]] that this influx of immigrant workers is not the consequence of [[multiculturalsim|multicultural]] "[[tolerance]]." It effectively is part of [[capital]]'s strategy to hold in check the [[demands ]] of workers!)

However, even if there is an element of [[truth ]] in all this, the very fact that the No was not sustained by a coherent alternative political [[vision ]] is the strongest possible condemnation of the political and media elite, a monument to their inability to articulate and translate the people’s longings and dissatisfactions into a political vision. Instead, in their reaction to the No voters, they treated them as retarded pupils who did not get the lesson of the experts: Their self-criticism was that of the teacher who admits that he failed to properly educate his pupils.

So while the choice was not the choice between two political options, neither was it the choice between the enlightened vision of a modern Europe, ready to fit the new [[global order]], and old confused political passions. When commentators described the No as a [[message ]] of confused [[fear]], they were wrong. The main fear was the fear that the refusal itself provoked in the new European political elite, the fear that people will no longer easily buy into their “post-political” vision. For all [[others]], the No is a message and expression of hope—hope that [[Politics ]] is still alive and possible, that the debate about what the new Europe shall and should be is still open. This is why those on the left should reject the sneering insinuation by liberals that, in our No, we found ourselves strange bedfellows with neo-Fascists. What the new populist right and the left share is precisely <i>this</i>: the [[awareness ]] that Politics proper is still alive.

For in fact, there <i>was</i> a positive choice in the No: the choice of the choice itself, the [[rejection ]] of the [[blackmail ]] by the new elite that offered us only the choice to either confirm their expert knowledge or to display our "[[irrational]]" immaturity. The No vote is the positive decision to start a properly Political debate about what kind of [[Europe]] we really [[want]]. Late in his life, [[Freud]] asked the famous question “<i>[[Was will das Weib?]]</i>” ("[[What does Woman want?]]"), admitting his perplexity when faced with the [[enigma]] of [[feminine sexuality]]. Doesn’t the imbroglio with the European Constitution bear [[witness ]] to the same puzzlement: [[Which Europe]] do we want?

To put it bluntly, do we want to live in a world in which the only choice is between the American [[civilization ]] and the emerging Chinese authoritarian-[[capitalist ]] one? If the answer is no, then the only alternative is Europe. The [[Third ]] World cannot generate a strong enough [[resistance ]] to the ideology of the American [[Dream]]. In the present constellation, only Europe can do so. The [[true ]] opposition today is not the one between the [[United States ]] and the Third World, but the one between the [[whole ]] of the American global [[Empire ]] (and its Third World colonies) and Europe.

[[Theodor Adorno]] claimed that what we are getting in the contemporary “administered world” and its “repressive desublimation” is no longer the old [[logic ]] of [[social ]] authority’s [[repression ]] of [[the Id ]] (the individual’s illicit [[aggressive ]] [[drives]]). Rather, we have a [[perverse ]] pact between the punitive Superego’s legally sanctioned social [[authority ]] and the Id’s illicit aggressive drives at the expense of the Ego’s [[rationality]]. Today, something structurally similar is going on at the political level. We have a weird pact between [[postmodern ]] global [[capitalism ]] and premodern societies at the expense of [[modernity ]] proper. The United States is essentially “at home” in Third World countries, exploiting them (economically and culturally) in a true [[relationship ]] of symbiosis: exporting high tech products and food, importing raw [[materials ]] and the products of sweatshops, flooding them with U.S. pop [[culture ]] and appropriating selected “authentic” aboriginal culture and [[arts]]. It is easy for the American multiculturalist global Empire to integrate premodern local traditions. The foreign [[body ]] that it cannot effectively assimilate is European modernity.

So although the French and Dutch No is not sustained by a coherent and detailed alternative vision, it at least <i>clears the [[space ]] for it</i>. This [[void ]] demands to be filled with new projects—in contrast to the pro-Constitution stance that effectively precludes <i>[[thinking]]</i>, presenting us with an administrative-political <i>fait accompli</i>. The message of this No to all of us who care for Europe is: We will not allow anonymous experts whose merchandise is sold to us in a brightly colored, [[liberal-multiculturalist ]] package to prevent us from thinking. It is time for us “Europeans”—both citizens and lovers of Europe—to become aware that we have to make a properly Political decision of what we want. No enlightened administrator will do the job for us.

* [[Thanks, But We'll Do It Ourselves]]. ''In These [[Times]]''. June 19, 2005. <http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2169/>. Also listed on ''[[Lacan]].com''. <http://www.lacan.com/zizekamish.htm>.