Eso’s Chronicles 267 / 7

The King & I

© Eso A.B.

All comments appearing within brackets [ ] are editorial in origin. This blog series begins at 264.

 

NEITHER GOD, NOR NOMOS, BUT KING

 

Having begun this series on the ‘King’ with Slavoy Žižek’s mischievous conjoining of the King with bureaucracy (The King and his Bureaucracy, Ch6, ‘Interrogating the Real’), it is only proper to conclude with the no less mischievous comparison that the pop philosopher makes of subjectivity with “dangerous hubris”, insisting that the claim to “authentic essence of humanity” lies “outside the domain of subjectivity”. Žižek posits the subject of authentic essence in Antigone and its human counterpoint in her sister Ismene.

 

I would call the other name of the “subject” that Žižek imagines—a “mask”. However, Žižek quickly becomes inconsistent and contradicts himself, when he decides to dedicate his book to an old Slovene communist, who in 1943 led an uprising of some 2000 starved Yugoslav prisoners against 2200 Italian soldiers who are their guards.

 

The Slovene prisoners succeed in disarming the Italian soldiers. After the war, the Slovene communist is arrested (no reason given why--by the succeeding communist-Stalinist government) and ten years later, he is forced to participate in the building of a monument that celebrates the uprising he led.

 

It is an ironic story, surely.

 

Knowingly or unknowingly, Žižek then tops off the irony by putting Stalin into role of the ‘King’, while the role of the ‘bureaucracy’ passes to Stalinist  communists, those who are enforcing Stalin’s ‘will to power’.

 

This leaves the reader confused as to why Žižek holds an old communist in such high esteem, for obviously the man revolted against the guards of the prison on the basis of his subjective feelings and decisions. The problem resolves itself only if one assumes that Žižek contradicts himself or Stalinists are the new Catholics.

 

I agree that the monument, the ‘subject’ of the ‘’monumental building project, stands for the ‘mask’ of the old communist and his rebellious comrades, who, I assume, are meant to stand for the ‘authentic essence’ of humanity.

 

But why should one believe that the monument stands also for ‘dangerous hubris’? Is that not like a Catholic priest demanding a pagan to renounce his old Gods (who up to the moment are a part of the man’s subjectivity) for the authentic subject of an ‘outside’ God, aka Nomos https://www.google.lv/#q=meaning+of+Nomos ? And is not Nomos synonymous with such repressive organizations of pacification as the Inquisition, the Gestapo, the KGB, and the CIA/NSA? Is not dismissing subjectivity as ‘hubris’ a matter of continued repression and denial of privacy? Therefore, is the monument not a monument to Homo Sacer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sacer --the man who cannot be murdered, sacrificed, but only killed, because all he is is naked?

 

This brings us to “god” with a small ‘g’, because Catholicity (and Christianity derived from globalist Catholicism) surely discredited god when written with a capital G, and here Žižek and Schmitt discredit him with a small g. So, why not replace the missing figure of Trust with the long neglected figure of King?

 

Would not a King serve the 900,000 Latvians forced into economic exile as de facto ‘homo sacer’ better than the bureaucratic totalitarian democracy, which with the backing of the totalitarian democracy of the EU takes upon itself the authority to make them de facto homo sacer or, in other words, homeless?

 

There will be those who will claim that I would reinstall subjectivity in place of an objective (rational law) government that a Hegelian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegelianism bureaucracy presumes itself to represent. As Schmitt asserted: “all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts”. Here we may remember that Catholic Christianity spent many centuries violently persecuting and inquisitorially repressing an earlier Christianity now identified with Bogomils, Cathars, and Krist-Yans.

 

The repression was necessary because like Žižek (a Hegelist), Catholicism believes human subjectivity to be a hubristic element rather than an inherent element of being human. In short, we have biocentered human beings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biocentrism_(ethics) opposed by virtual or ‘man-made’ human beings, who are created by words imbued with violent attributes gained through innumerable acts (? 900,000) of de facto (unacknowledged de jure) murders.

 

To discuss the means by which the King may return is a task beyond these blogs, which are meant to argue against the totalitarianism of liberal democracy in an attempt to overturn its dictatorial order that has taken the helm in Latvia. Even so, we may say—in agreement with Carl Schmitt—that the nature of democracy is to behold the rights of the rulers and the ruled as one. In other words, this is what makes democracy a charismatic force, whereas today it has become an alien and an enemy.

 

I have argued for the return of humankind to the wood and leaving urbanism as a minimal element, an element to be determined by none other than the post-urbanist age itself (certainly not by a carbon tax).

 

I am arguing that Latvians make a serious attempt to recapture for their political estate the King. In a preceding State (1918-1939), though not the post-Soviet Latvia, Latvians did indeed experiment with the notion of the ‘king’s’ return, even though the word was seldom used. This experiment was enjoined by one of the founders of the national community, Karlis Ulmanis, who became President of the country as a result of a coup d'état in 1933.

 

Ulmanis was condemned as a dictator, and many hold him such to this day. I argue, however, that Ulmanis was ahead of his time, and that political science had not yet made such strides as it has made by our time. Be that as it may, a great many Latvians praise Ulmanis’ leadership, but suffer not expressing the praise because they find themselves under a totalitarian liberal democratic regime, which in turn is under the umbrella of a liberal totalitarian ‘democratic’ regime in European Union.