Thirteen years later, this plea for a linguistic reclamation of Eurocentrism can read as a problematic gesture, especially when read alongside the xenophobic rhetoric spewing forth from the mouth of today's European Union (e.g., footnotes 1 and 2). Eurocentrism is a word inexorably bound to a violent history of exclusion. One could easily say the same of "Los Angeles," two words tied to a problematic history of violence and exclusion. So it's no surprise, then, that Occupy Los Angeles has had some difficulty occupying the words "Los Angeles" in the way Zizek might want. Many people at City Hall are rightly hesitant to set aside the particulars of their experiences, in service to some overarching symbolic fiction (995). Perhaps Zizek had forgotten that, as in Plato's Republic, the people are not supposed to be aware of the lies which enable their universalizing truths.
But perhaps Zizek simply lacked the language to express his "new mode of repoliticization" (1009). Such language is found, in part, through the rhetoric of occupation, of squatting temporarily on space--real or virtual--as an exercise in political redefinition. As when Native Americans occupied Alcatraz for nineteen months (Nov. 1969 to June 1971), the rhetoric of occupation relies on neither symbolic fiction nor historical ignorance. Instead, occupation constitutes a collective gesture of (re)interpretation, presented as spectacle, both against and within an existing social hierarchy and structure of power. This linguistic gesture can be self-aware of its own limited truth claims and yet still afford the possibility for collective political action, precisely because occupation relies upon the particular identites of specifc people in specific places.
Perhaps the best contemporary example of the language of occupation is the phrase, "We are the 99%," which is the central rhetorical gesture of the Occupy Movement as a whole. In the strictest sense, this phrase is logically impossible: for it to be "true" it would have to be spoken simultaneously by roughly 310 million Americans (many of whom cannot or would not agree with those speaking the phrase). But this phrase was not designed to be true. Instead, it was designed by people who were and are excluded from any "firmly determined place in the hierarchical social edifice", to connect to other similarly excluded people by falsely "present[ing] themselves as representatives [and] stand-ins... for the true universality" (988).
What differentiates this rhetorical gesture from Zizek's is simple enough: instead of appropriating the already existing discourse surrounding nationhood (Europe, America), the Occupy Movement is forcibly inserting new language into our political discourse. This insertion is not occuring through representation (reading), but by inspiring acts of representation (writing). It is not an occupation of a word, but of a page.
When Zizek spoke at Occupy Wall Street, just a month ago, he told those present an old joke. (see footnote 3 for the video.) Here's how the New York Observer's Aaron Gell summed it up:
He told... an old Eastern Bloc joke... about a dissident who’s about to be sent to a work camp in Siberia. Since he knows his letters will be censored, he tells his friends he’ll write to them using a simple code: Blue ink for the truth, red ink for lies. His first letter arrives, and it’s a glowing report of life in the camp—a lovely apartment, great food, beautiful women. Then he concludes, 'The only thing we can’t get is red ink.'After Zizek tells the joke, he says to the occupiers: "You're the red ink."
The Occupy Movement is about expanding political discourse in a way that allows people to talk about lies. This kind of thing doesn't necessarily require the substitution of one lie for another; it merely requires the use of appropriate tools. Supposedly, those tools are available to all Americans, waiting like pens on a dusty table. Whether or not this is true--whether the ink is blue or red, whether the paper is actually there--will depend upon the American, the table, the chair.
This is to say that, for all his merits, Zizek's essay (and his joke) misses the mark. The Occupy Movement is not red ink, nor is it a ghastly severed hand rewriting "Europe" in another color. The Occupy Movement is the American Bodies Politic, beginning to return home and finding... something... sleeping in their beds. It is not a person, it has no body, but there it is, sleeping peacefully. Zizek has seen that something, has witnessed its snoring, and so have the occupiers at Zuccotti Park. "We can see," Zizek said to them, "that for a long time we allowed our political engagement... to be outsourced. We want it back."
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(1) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1321277/Angela-Merkel-Multiculturalism-Germany-utterly-failed.html
(2) http://www.whatsonxiamen.com/news15201.html
(3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEUZNfOtPlE
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