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Who said Basque difference?

Imanol Galfarsoro

University of Leeds

16th March 2011

Research Seminar of Hispanic Studies

LCHAM College

University of Birmingham

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The paper presented in this seminar is a new re-working of two previous conference papers.

“Nationalism or, the political logic of liberal democracy in (late) modernity: Reflections on (post)nationalism and diaspora politics

Conference, 12th –13th June 2007 University of Surrey

CRONEM (Centre for Research on Nationalism, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism)

Nationalism and National Identities Today: Multidisciplinary Perspectives

Antagonism, Contingency, Universality… and Absent Centre: Towards the Radical Emptying of Basque Ethnic Substance [in Joseba Sarrionaindia's Tales from seven

count[r]ies]

Academic Conference, 12-14th April, 2010 London- KCL.

Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland; Parallel Session: 1 Monday 12th

April 10.30-12.30.

Basque Panel: Nationalism and Multiculturalism: On the Politics of Antagonism, Hegemony, and Terror with Joseba Gabilondo and Juanjo Olasagarre.

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Who said Basque difference?

Reflections on identity, politics, identity politics, nationhood and multiculturalism (as well as on the power of certain illusions of reality)

We are often reminded that we live in the era of globalization. Unprecedented

financial, technological, cultural, ideological and human exchanges are constantly

taking place all around us (A. Appadurai, 1990, 1996). As the world has

irremediably opened up into a borderless network society (M. Castells, 2000a,

2000b) relevant questions emerge regarding culture, identity and national

consciousness. In this context questions such as the following must me

answered: what is the point in closing down political expectations to single

territorially based identities? What is it with such particularistic stubborn

attachments that essentialist and homogeneous notions of national and cultural

‘difference’ routinely bring to the fore? What is it with such irrational and

passion ridden (pathological) identification with a petty local ‘ethnic’ substance?

In other words: Where lies the political logic for such an insistence on narrow

(‘minded’) narratives longing for a particular national form? Consider, for

instance this assertion by Slavoj Žižek:

It is usually stated with regret that one cannot begin to live in peace and true pluralist democracy because the very continuing persistence of nationalist obsessions and their usually suspect corollaries arising under the guise of parochial provincialism, racism and xenophobia, terrorism and violence, anti-Semitism, anti-feminism, homophobia…i

This statement is indeed worth considering. For when addressed to

someone from the “separatist” Basque region of Spainii it is precisely at this level

of interpellation that the political game is often played out; a level of

interpellation, moreover, whereby an additional explicit question together with

an implicit demand are at their strongest. The explicit question is this: instead of

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wasting our time in imagining closed national communities, are there not much

more important and pressing matters going on in the world deserving our

intellectual priority and attention?

As a matter of fact, I could not agree more with this invitation to find the

righteous ethical place in the global arena. There are indeed forms of political

and cultural activity (even activism), which are certainly more worthy of our

effort than others. However, this appeal to privilege important human questions

over the trivia of our petty-local identities does not only constitute a true

reminder of what global misery is really all about. If anything, it also requires a

further qualification. Just as I was preparing this seminar on the Identity Politics

of Basque Difference, it so happened that, in the face of such an unimportant

topic, my fourth baby girl was also teething mad, poor little thing! And on the

face of this very worrisome occurrence, there is neither Japanese earthquake,

tsunami and nuclear catastrophe put together, there is no Libyan crisis, no

violation of fundamental human rights, in fact, which will turn my distant

compassionate concern about human suffering into a committed urge to helping

the destitute or ridding the world of injustice. My main concern, here and now,

my main pressing worry, even as we speak, is my baby girl! Nothing else! And

her well-being is certainly far more important than worrying about changing the

world, let alone, more to the point, dispelling both liberal-humanist and radical

intellectuals alike of any shadow of a doubt as to my own political convictions. In

this respect, my own (subject) position in regards to the question of identity

politics and Basque difference, which happens to be our topic today, is quite

unimportant indeed.

Yet, at the same time, leaving aside petty family affiliations, liberal and

radical intellectuals alike must also be reminded, nevertheless, of two major

fallacies inherent to their self-styled committed predicament in favour of

resolving ‘important global issues’. In our particular case, these fallacies are

required to be duly exposed before anything else, because they often short-

circuit all things Basque in particular, but also European or Western in general.

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The fallacies of ‘petty localism’ and ‘First World privilege’

We often hear that direct political and intellectual intervention in rich, First

World countries amounts to a capriciously shameless game played out from an

extremely privileged position. As Zizek states:

Every exclusive focus on First World topics […] cannot but appear cynical in the face of raw Third World poverty, hunger and violence.

As Zizek puts it somewhere else, moreover, “The symbolic efficiency [efficacy] of

illusions regulates activity which generates social reality”.iii Hence the symbolic

efficiency of this widely mobilised piece of political rhetoric is all too obvious in

the concrete Basque situation. In fact, when we hear that “[T]here are much more

important things going on in the world” the main aim, obviously, remains to

disarm the legitimacy of certain ongoing and precise civic claims and political

demands taking place within the concrete Basque context of intervention, which

is obviously also European and hence First Worldiv. Yet as Zizek continues:

On the other hand, attempts to dismiss First World problems as trivial in comparison with “real” permanent Third World catastrophes are no less a fake – focusing on the “real problems” of the Third World is the ultimate form of escapism, of avoiding confrontation with the antagonisms of one’s own society v.

Therefore, the fallacy ultimately leading towards NOT confronting the

antagonisms of one’s own society on the basis of a rather spurious gradation

(global / local, north / south, rich / poor) of binary priorities has to be disarmed.

In addition, the case must also be put forward, as Zizek indeed does it, that:

A particular, localized socio-political struggle is at the same time the struggle in which the fate of the entire universe is being decided.vi

In other words, there is no direct access to the universal if it is not through

precise and concrete particulars. That is to say: the particular socio-political

struggle for national independence taking place in the Basque country also

speaks of, and shapes the universal dimension of social justice as fought out in

this concrete location.

Furthermore, in reference to Europe (and the critique of Eurocentrism) it

is also worth recalling here Dipesh Chakrabarty’s hints and advice for

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“Provincializing Europe” (2001) from a subaltern, postcolonial perspective. In

this seminal book he did not only reminded us, for instance, that the discipline of

history must be constantly interrogated and is only one way among many of

approaching the past. By attempting to provincialise history and democratise

historiography, he also accounted for both the inadequacy yet indispensability of

the European intellectual tradition.

On this account, Žižek once issued “A leftist plea for ‘Eurocentrism.’”

There fe insisted on the potential of democratic politisation as the true

progressive and radical European legacy (UE 206). Europe’s truly radical

political legacy and traditions could still allow overcoming, Žižek argued, the

post-political procedural (and supposedly neutral) framework of pluralist

negotiation and consensual regulation promoted by liberal democracies. Instead,

this radical European legacy could…

…Open the way for a return of the political proper, that is, the reassertion of the dimension of antagonism that, far from denying universality, is consubstantial with it (UE 198).

On listening to this I hope that the audience in this seminar is also able to grasp

the following split: on the one hand, there are many Eurocentric paradigms that

must be shaken from that sense of superiority informing their intellectual

practice; on the other hand, there are clear instances, nevertheless, key

intellectual players and political movements etc of the European tradition that

cannot be entirely discarded. At stake here is an overall insistence on the

irreparable character of the various splits we have to confront and explore. This

also requires an understanding that while I shift between two perspectives

(South Asian SubalternBasque discredited / subordinate; Global

Eurocentric) I also try to discern in each the echoes of its opposite. In this

sense the ‘narrow’ focus ‘limited’ to dealing with the Basque question within the

European context allows for a further double movement, which is not extent of

certain paradoxical overturns.

The first movement stems from following Zizek’s approach and hence

deploying discourses articulated in strict terms of universal political and civic

rights through the particular Basque struggles over such political signs as

freedom or democracy, to mention only two important ones. The signifiers of

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these political signs, needless to say, are empty by definition and in the process

of filling them in with meaning they are always open to hegemonic articulations

(E. Laclau & Ch Mouffle, 1985; E. Laclau 1990, 1996, 2005.) Most importantly, the

way these concepts are filled in also provides an insight of how particular

struggles for meaning fit into the totality of the liberation struggles that are

taking place in today’s world constellationvii.

The second movement consists of arguing in favour of deploying

discourses of indifference to Basque cultural difference (A. Badiou, 2001, 2003.)

Why? Because, ultimately, Basque cultural difference is mostly presented

nowadays in strictly multiculturalist qua post-political terms; that is to say, in

terms of responding to the problematic of how to manage (or indeed

mismanage) “Basque ethnic difference” within the overall constitutional patriotic

context (J. Habermas, 1994, 2001) of two particular national-state structures.

National identity and multiculturalism

Once the structure of the split that informs this intervention has been clarified, it

is now time to resituate the debate within the confines of the implicit demand

alluded to earlier. For as I have already spoken of my ‘origins’, the mysterious

workings of this implicit demand speak of how I am also somehow expected to

decry the dark reverse that Basque ‘ethnic’ nationalism constitutes of a thriving

European democracy; to depict, furthermore, all the dirty details that distort the

image of a great ‘civic’ European nation such as Spain which, following its

internationally acclaimed transition from dictatorship to democracy, baths now

in freedom and prosperity… and, like Zizek himself in the cases of East European

‘ethnic nationalism’, I in no way intend to disown such a demand either. viii

Having said this, however, Zizek again here: the first thing to do when

discussing national identity and nationalism is not to be distracted with the

would-be ‘anti-nationalist’ and ‘cosmopolitan’ babble to which we all have grown

accustomed (UE). After all, ample evidence exists of how by way of constantly

and adamantly refusing, mocking, denouncing, demonising, criticizing and

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suppressing nationalism we only show the pleasure, fascination, attraction and

appeal that nationalism exerts upon ourselves. Therefore, we should be the first

to acknowledge that this attitude we often adopt of the self-proclaimed

cosmopolitan and anti-nationalist intellectual is deeply suspicious.

To move on: as soon as we plunge into the question of nationalism,

nationalist exclusions etc and by extension, of the supposedly opposite notions of

cosmopolitan citizenship or multiculturalist respect and tolerance of the other

etc, the opportunity also arises of dealing with the second fallacy alluded to

earlier.

Imperatives of rigour, ethics of alterity

We are now entering into the thick of the Basque question. Earlier we spoke of

the fallacy consisting of dismissing ‘local’ struggles or Eurocentric, First World

concerns as both unimportant and/or capricious. Once the limits of this

approach, both liberal-humanist and radical, to deal only with the grave

problems of the world is dismantled, the second fallacy arises as soon as the

Basque question itself is accepted as a reluctant topic of discussion. This fallacy,

needless to say, stems from automatically linking the Basque national question

with violence and terrorism. Yet, in turn, this automatic link also allows bringing

to the fore some relevant reflections by Ernesto Laclau, and Alain Badiou which

are added to those of Zizek himself. In his book On Popular Reason, Laclau states

the following:

There is an ethical imperative in intellectual work, which Leonardo [de Vinci] called ‘obstinate rigour’. It means, in practical terms – and especially when one is dealing with political matters, which are always charged with emotion – that one has to resist several temptations. They can be condensed into a single formula: never succumb to the terrorism of words.ix

Laclau then quotes Freud’s appeal not to concede to faint-heartedness, a main

form of which “in our time is the replacement of analysis with ethical

condemnation” (249). The theme of “Basque terrorism” (sic.) is particularly

prone to this type of exercise. As such, there is nothing wrong, obviously, in

condemning terrorism, but always following Laclau:

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The problem begins when condemnation replaces explanation, which is what happens when some phenomena are seen as aberrations dispossessed of any rationally graspable cause. (250)

One is well aware of the obvious political interest for not trying to diminish the

discursive and symbolic appeal that the negative emotional connotations of

terrorism possess. We have already mentioned how the symbolic efficiency of

illusions regulates activity, which also generates social reality. In the Spanish

context the propensity of reading everything under the umbrella of “Basque

terrorism” works indeed wonders as an emotionally charged fantasy or

delusionary fetish, which indeed generates obvious social reality.

In this context, Laclau’s appeal to the value of rigorous rational

explanation can hardly be met. Instead Badiou’s uncompromising outburst on

his Ethics (2001) may fill in the void. Badiou reacts angrily against the “ethical

‘delirium’” and the “moralizing sermons” that are still “busily confusing politics

with the hypocrisy of a mindless catechism”:

The enemy dominates everywhere. The presumed ‘rights of man’ [are] serving at every point to annihilate any attempt to invent forms of free thought […] The infamies of Western capitalism as the new universal model [are imposed by] the intellectual counter-revolution in the form of moral terrorism. (E., liii- lv).

For Badiou the blackmailing effect of this moral terrorism shows itself at its best

when the universal reality of the market economy meets with two dimensions he

criticizes heavily.

(1): the ethics of alterity which refer to Jaques Derrida’s ‘ethical turn’

(1994) through his readings of Emmanuel Lévinas’ ethics of the other (1948,

1972). This reading leads Derrida to the idea of openness to the “alterity of the

Other” which is, in turn, understood to be crucial to the multiculturalist debates

on identity politics and the politics of difference and multiplicity (more later.)

(2): the relativistic fantasies of multiculturalism which, according to Zizek

now, should be left behind because they are based on the comfortable opposition

often established between the ‘openness’ of liberal-democratic tolerant

universalism, on the one hand, and religious, ethnic, nationalist, and / or organic

fundamentalist ‘closure’, on the other. According to Žižek, this opposition, “fails

to take into account their interconnection, that is, the way the supposedly

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neutral liberal-democratic framework produces nationalist closure as its

inherent opposite.” (UE 20)

To summarise, therefore, Laclau and Badiou, and Zizek as well, doubt

about the very morality of deploying the discourse of liberal-humanist ethics for

the purposes of eliminating political and intellectual dissent. In fact, for these

authors, (1) the first requirement to develop critical thinking is to call into

question the very standard of humanist civilised normality that the universal

liberal democratic framework constructs in order to secure the self-righteous

up-holding of its own high morality. Then (2), the second requirement is to

confront liberal democracy’s own self-appointed internal and external

uncivilised monsters (anti-cosmopolitan nationalism, xenophobia, religious

intolerance…) so to speak, but to confront them rationally, though explanation

and not condemnation.

It is thus once these requirements are clear that we can venture into the

final part of this seminar which will begin with (1) an analysis of the ambiguous

and contradictory nature that defines the modern notion of Nation and will end

dealing with (2) the question of multiculturalist difference.

The nation’s pre-modern phantasmatic presence

The modern notion of Nation is not only ambiguous and contradictory. In fact,

that nationalism itself is a complex object of study materialises in the fact that

the very concept of nation has proved "notoriously" and "extremely" difficult to

define; - as both Benedict Anderson (1983) and Peter Alter (1989) respectively

emphasised quite awhile ago. Peter Alter said that nationalism is ambiguous

because it is polymorphic and multiform, and conceals within itself “extreme

opposites and contradictions: it can mean emancipation and it can mean

oppression.” Nationalism is then a controversial object because, as a conclusion

of the mentioned ambivalence, it can be considered as an anomalous historical

development or even as a political aberration, which becomes, he continues,

“synonymous with intolerance, inhumanity and violence. (...) And yet at the

same time, it could just as often engender hopes for a free and just social order”.

This is why, as a conclusion, his main proposal remains that “only with

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reference to a concrete historical context can we say what the term actually

does or should signify.”x Moreover, this is why Benedit Anderson adds to Alter’s

suggestive invitation for individualised inquiry the following supportive appeal;

namely to “do our best to learn the real, and imagined, experience of the past” xi

The past indeed is key to narratives of national building. In a seminal

reader published under the title of Nation and Narration; Homi K. Bhabha's

introductory lines state: "Nations, like narratives, lose their origins in the myths

of time". Geoffray Bennington’s contribution to the same volume revolves

around the proposals that "the idea of the nation is inseparable of its narration"

and that "at the origin of the nation we find the history of the nation's origin."xii

In this sense, myths constitute the narratives of foundation of the nation. Myths

build the necessary buttresses to uphold the national constructions which,

nevertheless, are always historically determined. The mythical meanings

endorsing the idea of .a national identity are always constructed and

reconstructed through discourse in concrete and determined conditions of

historical specificity.

To this extent, Benedict Anderson's central argument becomes relevant

here: Nationality, nation-ness or nationalism are not only "cultural artifacts" of a

particular kind. The nation itself is "an imagined community". The nation is

imagined, created, why not even invented and fabricated as Ernest Gellner

(1983, 1987) or E. Hobsbawn (with R. Terence, 1983; 1990) often point out. In

fact what matters to understand the construction of a national identity is not that

a nation is merely imagined and invented. What is important is the ways in

which the nation is 'imagined' and 'narrated'. The ways, that is, in which nation-

ness is retold and rediscovered: The nation is reinvented through history,

memory and desire. The nation is narrativised through imaginative literature,

both written and oral. The nation is re-articulated through ideological and

political work et cetera

Following Žižek’s argumentxiii, however, the overall ambiguity of nations

also lies in the very fact that they are often perceived wrongly as ‘leftovers from

the past’ when in fact their place is constituted by the very break from the past.

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On the one hand, ‘Nation’ designates the modern community delivered

of traditional ‘organic’ ties: a community in which the pre-modern links that

connect the individual to a particular land, family lineage, religious group and so

on are broken; the traditional corporate community is replaced by the modern

nation-state whose constituents are ‘citizens’, that is, people as abstract

members, not as members of particular land holdings, for example.

On the other hand, ‘Nation’ can never be reduced to a network of purely

symbolic ties: there is always a surplus that sticks to it: to define itself, ‘national

identity’ must appeal to a contingent materiality of ‘common roots’.

In short, ‘Nation’ designates both the instance by means of which

traditional ‘organic’ links are dissolved and the ‘reminder of the pre-modern in

modernity’, the form long standing organic deep-rootedness acquires within the

modern post-traditional universe, the form ‘organic substance’ acquires within

the universe of abstract and rational subjectivity. The crucial point is to

conceive of both aspects in their interconnectedness: it is the new ‘bond’

brought about by the modern Nation that renders possible the disengagement

from traditional organic ties.

The ‘Nation’, therefore, is a pre-modern leftover that functions as the

inner condition of modernity itself, as its inherent impetus to its progress.

Hence the futility, I would argue, of a further, and yet again comfortable

division that standard scholarship tended to establish once between ‘ethnic

nationalism’ and ‘civic patriotism’ (John Hutchinson & A. D. Smith, 1994, 1996,

W. Connor, 1978, 1992). A past division and indeed an intellectually and

scholarlu overcome division, which, nevertheless, still works wonders when

applied to our own particular Basque case;- wonders and illusions which create

realities.

Basque ‘ethnic nationalism’ vs. Spanish “civic, constitutional patriotism’

In fact, placing emphasis on the opposition between Basque ‘ethnic nationalism’

and the ‘civic patriotism of the Spanish democratic state’ is a classic and is still a

must in the realms of the Hispanist commentariat, whether it be under the form

of vulgar and cheap journalistic narratives or otherwise more intellectually

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driven scholarly accounts. Either or, these narratives and accounts go by and

large like this:

On the one hand, we encounter the civic side of the equation where

norms of rational behaviour prevail: universa(list), cosmopolitan, democratic,

open, generous… In addition, civic patriotism is also the natural place for all

acceptable values to prosper, ranging from peace, tolerance and pluralism to

equality and freedom; not to mention the defence of diversity, solidarity,

individual human rights and multicultural integration of the other (regions,

emigrants, ethnic minorities…).

On the other side of the equation, secessionist terrorists thrive on a-

historical and homogeneous definitions of identity whereby particular(ist),

tribal, closed and petty narrow-minded instances of a people emerge which

represent themselves in intrinsically fundamentalist, intolerant and

authoritarian terms. What we have here, therefore, is the defence of an organic

community prone to reclaim spurious and nebulous collective historical rights

seeking nothing else but mono-cultural privilege and the exclusion of the other

on the primordialist, millenarian and messianic basis of a romantic cultural

obscurantism leading to chaos, violence and ethnic cleansing…

Yet, one needs not be a brilliant mathematician to know that sums do not

add up in this highly recognisable litany of angelic pluses and diabolic minuses.

On this account, it would be perhaps preferable to infer another commentary;

namely that this is indeed how the illusion of reality takes hold and how reverse

racist nationalism works today in our globalised world; at this reflexive and

concealed level whereby one should be very careful with journalists and

politicians but also intellectuals and scholars placing much emphasis on the

reality of their own democratic credentials without allowing others the same

access to that illusion.

In this respect, the true Spanish democrat would not be the one adopting a

highly recognizable patronizing attitude along the way of saying: “Come on

now, give up on referring to such lamentable historical accidents as Franco’s

dictatorship, that’s old news, and acknowledge at once that ours constitutes the

only state-bound reality duly structured institutionally to sustain the principles

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of a modern, democratic and open citizenship”. On the contrary, the true

Spanish democrat would rather be the one who stops treating Basques as a

primitive tribe in the Pyrenees, and is instead prepared to defend the

proposition that Basques posses exactly the same democratic substance and

potential to sustain the same principles and political / institutional structures as

anybody elsexiv.

On account of the above epistemological requirement, moreover, for

Spanish democracy not to be to democracy what military intelligence is to

intelligence, and hence for a Spanish democrat to be both truly democratic and

intelligent, this also amounts to a further ontological movement to take place. It

amounts, namely, to allowing exceptionalist notions of Basque cultural difference

‘to disappear’ in order to open the space for pure political equality to emerge

and manifest itself fully.

Indifference to difference: On why, however, multiculturalism is not

necessarily the whole answer either

Therefore, a true defender of Spanish democracy should allow Basque cultural

difference to dissolve. In other words, he or she should allow for the ideal of

political equality pure and proper (civil rights, self-determination, right to be

equal…) to emerge and manifest itself fully. Moreover, this overall attitude in

favour of the political proper over the cultural as difference would also require

more critical approaches beyond well-intentioned discursive fantasies

articulated around overly benign ideas of a democratic and multiculturalist

Spain. To be ‘respectful’ of minority home nations, seeking ‘integrative’

measures to accommodate migrant populations, or to develop new forms of

gender identity politics, say, are hardly innovative in themselves, should this not

be accompanied with a clear sense that politics and post-politics are not the

same. In other words, therefore, that while post-politics refers to the mere

administrative management of cultural differences politics as such is always

articulated around a central / principal antagonism whereby the relativistic

necessity and pluralistic contingency of particular struggles for (national,

gender…) recognition and against discrimination (racism, sexism…) can be re-

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enacted through discourses of equality and social justice as well as ideals of

truth and universalism.

This is indeed what Badiou suggests in his severe critique of

multiculturalism. For Badiou multiculturalism wants to respond to the apparent

complexity and multiplicity of being and “its great ideal is the peaceful

coexistence of cultural, religious and national ‘communities’, the refusal of

‘exclusion’ (Ethics, 26). However, always according to Badiou, the world is not

as complex as we are often made to believe. If fact, as he claims in “Saint Paul:

The Foundation of Universality”, ([1997] 2003) our world is perfectly simple. On

the one side, the rule of abstract homogeneization imposed by capital has finally

configured the world as a vast, extended market (world-market). On the other

side, a culturalist and relativist ideology accompanies the ongoing process of

fragmentation into a myriad of closed identities. This affirmation of identity

always refers back to language, race, religion or gender, and demands the

respect and recognition of one’s own communitarian-cultural singularities.

Yet the false universality of monetary abstraction and homogeneity has

absolutely no difficulty in accommodating the kaleidoscope of

communitarianisms – of women, homosexuals, the disabled, Arabs! In other

words, both processes, i.e: financial globalization or the absolute sovereignty of

capital’s empty universality and identitarian protest or celebration of

particularist differences are perfectly intertwined: the two components of this

articulated whole are in a relation of reciprocal maintenance and mirroring.

Moreover, through the infinite combinations of predicative traits,

communitarian identities are turned into advertising selling points -Black

homosexuals, disable Serbs, moderate Muslims, ecologist yuppies… (9-13).

Therefore, as Badiou claims: certainly, the empirical existence of

differences cannot be denied as such: “there are differences. One can even

maintain that there is nothing else” (98). And back to the Ethics, moreover:

Infinite alterity is quite simply what there is. Any experience at all is the infinite deployment of infinite differences. Even the apparently reflexive experience of myself is by no means the intuition of a unity but a labyrinth of differentiations, and Rimbaud was certainly not wrong when he said: ‘I am another’. There are as many differences, say, between a Chinese peasant and a young Norwegian professional as between myself and anybody at all, including myself. (E 25-26)

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Hence when always according to Badiou “Contemporary ethics kicks up a big

fuss about ‘cultural’ differences….

What we must recognize is that these differences hold no interest for thought, that they amount to nothing more than the infinite and self-evident multiplicity of humankind, [as obvious in the difference between me and my cousin from Lyon as it is between the Shi’ite ‘community’ of Irak and the fat cowboys of Texas]. (E 26)

Enter here Zizek’s own take on multiculturalismxv and very much in tune with

Badiou, for Zizek, multiculturalism constitutes (or defines) a specific

postmodernist cultural logic with regard to identity politics, which all too

“simply designates the form of subjectivity that corresponds to late capitalism”:

The ideal form of ideology of (this) global capitalism is multiculturalism, the attitude which, from a kind of empty global position, treats each local culture as the colonizer treats colonized people – as ‘natives’ whose mores are to be carefully studied and ‘respected’. […] In other words, multiculturalism is a disavowed, inverted, self-referential form of racism, a ‘racism with a distance’ – it ‘respects’ the Other’s identity, conceiving of the other as a self-enclosed ‘authentic’ community towards which the multiculturalist maintains a distance made possible by his / her privileged universal position. Multiculturalism is a racism which empties its own position of all positive content [while] retain[ing] this position as the privileged empty point of universalism from which one is able to appreciate (and depreciate) other particular cultures properly – multiculturalist respect for the Other’s specificity is the very form of asserting one’s own superiority (170-1).

Following Žižek’s argument, multiculturalism does not conform a recipe

containing any kind of subversive potential for progressive, let alone ‘radical’

identity politics. The (still) ongoing and largely self-serving celebration of

dispersed, fragmented, plural and hybrid or hyphenated identities do not

conform effective forms to challenge ‘fundamentalism’, to contest ‘essentialism’

or to disrupt ‘fixed identities’.

On the contrary, set against the entire project of cultural studies which,

with the celebrated ascendancy of contemporary post-structuralist, post-

colonial, post-Marxist and post-national discourses, rests on the radical

pluralization of cultural identities, for Žižek this form of identity politics amounts

“ultimately (to) fight(ing) a straw-man” (27). It amounts to fighting a straw-man

because the empty point of universality to which Žižek alludes in clear reference

to Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985)

is already occupied or filled in by a particular content.

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To illustrate this point let us finish with the case of British

multiculturalism, since we are here in Birmingham. You will all agree that in the

case of British multiculturalism there is no such a thing as the Anglo-Saxon (or

English) ethnic minority competing for recognition at a level par with African-

Caribbean, Muslims, Gay and Lesbian, people with disabilities, Scots, Welsh,

Irish… in order to define what Britishness is. It is rather this particular content

(Englishness) which has historically exerted the hegemonic function and

succeeded in overwhelmingly calling the shots, so to speak, by both stepping

outside the chain of differences and secretly filling in the empty point of

universality through the very medium of the (supposedly neutral) British

national institutions (state, media, cultural establishment etc). Britishness is thus

the absent centre, the unmarked political sign; it is as Stuart Hall pointed out the

empty signifier, the norm, against which ‘difference’ (ethnicity) is measured”xvi;

and I would argue that this is indeed still so regardless of some new reactive

English identity consciousness raising exercises, as it were, on some

compensatory grounds such as: if the Scots have St Andrews why not St George?

If the Welsh have an Assembly we also want a Parliament, etc.

So, finally, in order to translate this case of British multiculturalism into

the Spanish context it is perhaps time to come up with some concluding

questions which I also hope will help then to animate the debate.

Concluding questions

In this seminar we have first talked away the fallacies of ‘petty localism’ and

‘First World privilege’ in order to allow ourselves speaking about national

identity and multiculturalism within the context of Basque, Spanish, European,

First World and also, tangentially, global politics. Methodologically we have

placed emphasis on the imperative of rigour and reason in order to tackle

polemical questions which are always short-circuited with high amounts of

emotional investment and bias. Such is obviously the case when discussing the

nation, which has been presented as carrying its own pre-modern phantasmatic

presence into modernity. Then opposition often established between Basque

18

‘ethnic nationalism’ vs. Spanish “civic, constitutional patriotism has also been

de-constructed while it has also been established that the ethics of alterity and

the politics of multiculturalism rest on more problematic grounds that often

accounted for in overly celebratory approaches to the question of difference. In

this context, moreover, some basis has also been established to account for

promoting forms of indifference to Basque cultural difference in order to place

more emphasis on the notions of political equality and social justice.

So, finally, we shall now conclude as we started, that is to say, by posing a

couple questions albeit in an inverted form since now it is not me being asked

but I am rather the one posing them while slightly shifting the emphasis from the

nation on to the questions of multiculturalism and democracy. Hence: Could the

Spanish democrat alluded to earlier think of Basqueness as being at the centre of

a multiculturalist strategy of its own which would indeed contemplate an open-

minded spirit of respect and tolerance of the other as well, of course, as the

ensuing celebration of diversity and minority cultures, hybridization,

multicultural education etc? In other words, could this same Spanish democrat

contemplate Basqueness deploying the very logic of the unmarked, of the empty

signifier or the absent centre able to occupy a privileged universalist position

and able hence to respect, say, the particular mores and customs of the Spanish

ethnic minority in the Basque country? As Zizek states in a recent paper called

“Multiculturalism: The reality of an illusion”:

The truly unbearable fact for a multiculturalist liberal is an Other who effectively becomes like us, while retaining its specific features”.

To finish, however, I would also like to dispel any cloud of concerned

doubt regarding both my suffering daughter’s teething problems as well as my

own parental ethics that will necessarily inform (part of) her future education:

The reality of my own illusion remains firmly universalist which is obviously an

impossibility yet still also a necessary structuring ideal or political fantasy that, I

think, we should all still strive for.

Thank you for listening

19

REFERENCES:

Alter, Peter 1989 Nationalism, London, New York, Melbourne, Auckland: Edward Arnold. Anderson, Bennedict 1983 Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London, New York: Verso. Appadurai, Ardun, 1990 “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy” in Mike Featherstone (ed) Global Culture. Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity. London, Newbury Park, New Delhi: SAGE Publications, pp. 295-310) also in: Jana Evans Baziel and Anita Mannur (Theorizing Diaspora, US, UK, Australia: Blackwell Publishing) pp. 25-48, (and/or Public Culture, 2 (2) pp.1- 24). 1996 Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press). Badiou, Alain. 1988 L’être et l’événement (Paris: Editions du Seuil) 2001 Ethics 2003 Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism (Stanford: Stanford University Press [1997] Bhabha, Homi K.,( ed) 1990 Nation and Narration, London, New York: Routledge. 1990 “Introduction: Narrating the nation” in Bhabha, Homi K. (ed)(1990) Nation and Narration, London, New York: Routledge, pp. 1-9. Bennington, Geoffrey, 1990 “Postal politics and the institution of the nation” in Bhabha, Homi K. (ed) (1990) Nation and Narration, London, New York: Routledge; pp.121-137. Castells, Manuel. 2000a Materials for an exploratory theory of the network society. British Journal of Sociology Vol. No. 51 Issue No. 1 (January/March 2000) pp. 5-24. 2000b The Rise of the Network Society, Second Edition. U.S.: Blackwell Publishing. Connor, Walker 1994 “A Nation is Nation, is a State, is an Ethnic Group, is a…”, in Hutchinson, John & Anthony D. Smith (eds) Nationalism, Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. pp. 36-46; from Ethnic and racial Studies, vol1, no. 4, 1978 1994 “When is a Nation”, in Hutchinson, John & Anthony D. Smith (eds) Nationalism, Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. pp. 154159; from Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol13, no. 1, 1992 Chakrabarty Dipesh. 2001 Provincializing Europe, Princeton, PUP, 2000 Derrida, J.

1994 Specters of Marx (New York and London: Routledge Classics Galfarsoro, Imanol

2008 “Cuando la capacidad de asombro ya no da más; GARA: 2008-02-25 http://www.gara.net/paperezkoa/20080225/64356/es/Cuando/la/capacidad/de/asombro/ya/no/da/mas/

2009 “ Porque tenemos todo el derecho del mundo”; GARA 2010-03-01 http://www.gara.net/paperezkoa/20090221/123241/es/Porque/tenemos/todo/el/derecho/del/mundo/

2009 Globalización, identidad nacional, cultura y...fútbol” GARA: 2009-02-21 http://www.gara.net/paperezkoa/20100301/185633/es/Globalizacion/identidad/nacional/cultura/y...futbol/

Gellner, Ernest

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1983 Nations and Nationalism, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell). 1987) Culture, Identity and Politics, (Cambridge, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, Sydney: Cambridge University Press). Habermas, Jürgen. 1994 "Struggles for Recognition in the Democratic Constitutional State”, in A. Gutmann (Ed) Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics (Princeton, NJ., 1994),. 2001 The Postnational Constellation. Political Essays (Cambridge UK, Polity). Hall, S. 2000 “Conclusion” in B. Hesse Un/settled Multiculturalism “ (London, New York: Zed books) pp. 209-241. Hesse, H. 2000 Un/settled Multiculturalism “ (London, New York: Zed books) Hobsbawn, Eric, Ranger, Terence (ed) 1983 The Invention of Tradition, (CUP: Cambridge). Hobsbawn, Eric 1990 Nations and Nationalism since 1780, (Cambridge, New York, Port Chester, Melbourne, Sydney: Cambridge University Press, Canto). Hutchinson, John & Anthony D. Smith (eds) 1994 Nationalism, (Oxford, New York, Oxford university Press). 1996 Ethnicity Oxford, (New York, Oxford university Press). Laclau E., Ch. Mouffle 1985 Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, (London, New York: Verso) Laclau, Ernesto. 1990, New Reflections on the Revolutions of our Time. (London. Verso) 1996 Emancipation(s), (London, New York: Verso) 2005 On Popular Reason, (London, New York: Verso

Lévinas, E. 1948 Le Temps et l'Autre. (Paris: PUF) 1987 Time and the Other, trans. R. Cohen. (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press) 1972 Humanisme de l'autre homme (Montpellier: Fata Morgana) Žižek, Slavoj 2000 The Ticklish Subject, (London, New York:Verso) 2005 Conversations with Zizek (UK, USA, Polity) 2006a The Universal Exception, (London, New York, Continuum) 2006b The Parallax View (Cambridge, MIT Press) 2009 a First as Tragedy Then As Farce (London, New York: Verso) 2009b “Multiculturalism: The reality of an illusion”: http://www.lacan.com/essays/?page_id=454

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NOTES

i S. Zizek, Universal Exception [UE] (2006a), p.20 ii This is the standard mode of presentation in the British mainstream media. iii S. Zizek, First as Tragedy Then as Farce, (2009) p.78. iv To be more precise, political rhetoric here works thus as downright propaganda as such civic claims and political demands refer to certain ongoing and precise struggles against exclusion from the democratic process (civic claims) and in favour of self-determination, freedom and equality (political demands). v S. Zizek, The Paralax View (2006,) p.129 vi Conversations with Zizek (2005) vii In this respect it is worth bringing here the contents of an interview given by Zizek on this precise issue which I translated from Basque into both Spanish and English. See at the bottom of this link: “La fuerza del universalismo está en vosotros los vascos, no en el Estado español” The force of universalism is in you Basques, not in the Spanish state http://basque.criticalstew.org/?p=2496 viii Although in a sense I am also glad that people with a proven “anti-nationalist” and radical socialist record such as Tariq Ali do precisely that on my behalf. See: http://basque.criticalstew.org/?p=5661 and / or go directly to comment 2: http://basque.criticalstew.org/?p=5661#comment-1979 and click the video. ix E. Lacalu, On Popular reason [PR] 2005, p. 249) x P. Alter (1989) Nationalism (1989) pp. 2-5. xi B. Anderson,Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism,(1983) p.146. xii H. K. Bhabha, “Introduction: Narrating the nation” (1990) p. 1 & G. Bennington, “Postal politics and the institution of the nation” (1990) p. 132 & p. 121; both in H.K. Bhabha, (ed)(1990) Nation and Narration, London, (1990). xiii S. Zizek, Universal Exception, (2006a) pp. 20-21 xiv I explain these points further in the following journalistic articles in Spanish, GARA: 2008-02-25 - Cuando la capacidad de asombro ya no da más; GARA: 2009-02-21 - Porque tenemos todo el derecho del mundo; GARA 2010-03-01 - Globalización, identidad nacional, cultura y...fútbol xv S. Zizek, “Multiculturalism, or, the cultural logic of multinational capitalism” Universal Exception (2006) pp. 151-182). Zizek’s overall argument is first stated in his seminal work The Ticklish Subject (2000, p. 216) xvi S. Hall “Conclusion” in B. Hesse Un/settled Multiculturalism “(2000) p. 221 (2000: 221)