Slavoj Žižek: Credit Crunch Another 9/11
Philosopher cum psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek has been making some interesting points in the London Review of Books lately, warning us to be wary of a further erosion of civil liberties during this current crisis:
“There is a close similarity between the speeches George W. Bush has given since the crisis began and his addresses to the American people after 9/11. Both times, he evoked the threat to the American way of life and the necessity of fast and decisive action to cope with the danger. Both times, he called for the partial suspension of American values (guarantees of individual freedom, market capitalism) in order to save the same values.”
Others have raised this point, although nothing has so far emerged to show us that those concerns have been realised. The closest thing to the US government passing opportunistic legislation justified by the patriotic sentiment surrounding the crisis was the massive ammounts of pork barrel attached to the $700 billion bail out bill.
Žižek makes another interesting point as well though, about language in times of market turmoil:
“Faced with a disaster over which we have no real influence, people will often say, stupidly, ‘Don’t just talk, do something!’ Perhaps, lately, we have been doing too much. Maybe it is time to step back, think and say the right thing. True, we often talk about doing something instead of actually doing it – but sometimes we do things in order to avoid talking and thinking about them. Like quickly throwing $700 billion at a problem instead of reflecting on how it came about.”
Žižek’s insistence that leaders have a long hard think about the current crisis, and attempt to provide the public with a reasonable explanation for its causes, is interesting in the light of a comparison between George W. Bush and FDR that Bloomberg make:
“Within days of his inauguration, Roosevelt declared a bank holiday and held the first of his “fireside chat” radio addresses to try to reassure Americans. In the days after Lehman and AIG melted down last month, President George W. Bush was nearly silent, uttering a total of 160 words about the worst financial crisis since Roosevelt’s time.”
Bush may not be the greatest thinker, in which case staying mum to avoid unsettling markets he doesn’t fully understand is probably a good idea. But Žižek is right – the lack of political debate about the US bail out plan has left the immense ideological tensions relating to this simmering away beneath the surface, not discussed, waiting to explode. Sound like a similar scenario? Stay tuned for the ‘ideology crunch’.
Posted by Daniel Stacey in Hot Money | October 14, 2008 12:50PM |