In comedy there are no sacred cows. And when it comes to mythology, comedy doesn’t hesitate to smash this or that myth. Jewish comedy is well known for its iconoclasm. And perhaps this has a root in Judaism’s resistance to mythology and idolatry as well as its prohibition of images. It may also have to do with Judaism’s interest in textual interpretation which shows that this or that story poses questions or is linked to another narrative (something we often see in Midrash). Both Franz Kafka and Woody Allen are, without a doubt, Jewish iconoclasts. They parody myth by way of their own revisions, but they differ in terms of the insights that they offer to the reader. While Kafka gives the reader deeper insights into faith, self-doubt, existence, and consciousness with his parodic revisions of myth, Allen gives his readers or viewers a sense of how a New Yorker has better things to do than get caught up in this or that ridiculous myth. In these comedic revisions, Woody Allen is out to sell a way of life not prompt deep reflection.
In a piece entitled, “Fabulous Tales and Mythical Beasts,” Allen takes aim at several different kinds of mythological creatures, fantastic places, and myth itself. Like any joke, he starts with a serious reflection, but ends with an ironic punch line:
A wise man in India bet a magician that he could not fool him, whereupon the magician tapped the wise man on the head and changed him into a dove. The dove flew out the window to Madagascar and had his luggage forwarded.
…The magician said that in order to learn the trick one must journey to the four corners of the earth, but that one should go in the off-season, as three corners are usually booked. (178, The Insanity Defense)
In another mythological rewrite, Allen takes aim at an imaginary place called “Quelm,” (which sounds like, Chelm, a place populated by schlemiels). It is “so distant from Earth that a man traveling the speed of light would take a million years to get there, although they are planning a new express route that will cut two hours off the trip”(178).
In each punch line, Allen looks to ground the listener in the here and now of the New York Jewish attitude toward the hardships of life and getting by:
In addition to these obstacles on Quelm, there is no oxygen to support life as we know it, and what creatures do exist find it hard to ear a living without holding down two jobs. (179)
While Allen’s iconoclasm is funny and grounds us in the here and now, it can be construed in a negative manner since it doesn’t take myth as a basis of reflection. It rejects it wholeheartedly. The problem with iconoclasm is that when it is not done with a proper sense of humility, it could possibly come across (to some) as self-serving or even dishonest. Citing Aristotle, Leo Strauss argues that “irony is a kind of dissimulation, or untruthfulness. Aristotle therefore treats the habit of irony primarily as a vice”(51).
But, as I note elsewhere, Strauss doesn’t think that Aristotle is right:
Yet irony is the dissembling, not of evil actions or of vices, but rather of good actions or of virtues; the ironic man, in opposition to the boaster, understates his worth. If irony is a vice, it is a graceful vice. Properly used, it is not a vice at all. (51)
Strauss’s qualification of Aristotle is telling. It suggests that irony is a neutral term and that it has a “proper” use. Citing Aristotle against Aristotle, Strauss argues that “irony is…the noble dissimulation of one’s worth, one’s superiority”(51). In other words, humility and irony do not contradict each other; in fact, they aid each other.
Reflecting on this, one can argue that even though Woody Allen isn’t using irony like Kafka (in order to tap into this or that depth while effacing a myth), he is also making a “proper” use of irony since the punch line dissimulates the superiority of myth. His punch lines convey the humility of the New York everyman who is just trying to survive. The “speaker” in these pieces is the “ironic man” and his “noble dissimulation” conveys his only virtue which is to be a New Yorker. But let’s not fool ourselves: each punch line is a sales pitch for a way of life which lives in the wake of myth and perhaps even philosophy. After all, both are interested in origins. (As Aristotle also notes in “The Metaphysics,” philosophy and myth start with wonder.)
I’ll leave the reader with a Woody Allen joke that takes both myth and philosophy as its target. Allen’s joke suggests that, in the world of the New Yorker, the philosopher (as much as the myth-lover) doesn’t exist:
Legend has it…that many billions of years ago the environment was not quite so horrible – or ate least no worse than Pittsburgh – and that human life existed. These humans – resembling men in every way except for a large head of lettuce where the nose normally is – were to a man philosophers. As philosophers they relied heavily on logic and felt that if life existed, somebody must have caused it, and they went looking for a dark-haired man with a tattoo who was wearing a Navy pea jacket.
When nothing materialized, they abandoned philosophy and went into the mail-order business, but post rates went up and they perished. (179)
Dan Miron, one of the greatest living scholars of Yiddish literature, has argued that Yiddish literature took on a project that was consistent with Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment), on the one hand, and the modernist concept of the artist on the other. In his book A Traveler Disguised: The Rise of Modern Yiddish Fiction in the Nineteenth Century, Miron convincingly argues that Mendel Mocher Sforim should in fact be regarded as the real origin of Modern Yiddish fiction and that Sholem Aleichem followed Sforim’s lead.
Miron’s brilliant argument starts off with pointing out the main problem for the Eastern European Haskalah; namely, that Yiddish, as a language, was not “beautiful.” It is, in the view of the German Haskalah, an ugly “caliban” language. It is inferior to Hebrew. But if the Haskalah wanted to reach the Jewish masses, so as to educate and improve them, then it would be ridiculous to use Hebrew; after all, Yiddish, not Hebrew, was the language they were most familiar with. That said, many Haskalah writers turned to Yiddish but none succeeded because they didn’t find a way of, in Miron’s words, “dramatizing” Yiddish.
For Miron, Mendel Mocher Sfroim, whose real name was S.Y. Abromovitsch, succeeded because he saw himself as a clown of sorts. He took on an ironic, schlemiel-like narrator who spoke directly to his audience. The irony is not that he is a clown but that he is an actor and can take on any personality. He is and is not one of the people; Abromovitsch is not Mendel Mocher Sforim but he acts as if he is. Sholem Aleichem does the same. And this brings out a kind of irony about everything is said.
By being a comic narrator, Yiddish fiction becomes modern. To be sure, comedy and the presence of the comic artist in the text, for Miron, make Sforim and Aleichem’s fiction modern. And, as a modern critic, Miron points this out for his modern readers. We must, in effect, be aware of the irony behind this; namely, that the artist is “tricking” us.
Citing Y.L. Berdichevski, Miron argues that the modern Yiddish writer needs to be a circus performer of sorts. He is a “mimetic genius” who is able to convey his views while, at the same time, appearing to be one of the people:
First, he is a dedicated artist. To achieve his goal, he must absorb himself in his work, “lose whatever he possesses in it.” Second, he is a mimetic genius. He evokes comparisons from one distinct area, that of theater or even the circus. One may compare him to a tightrope dancer who skillfully keeps his perilous balance between the historical bias of the language toward the exclusive mentality of the “the Jew” and his own intellectual bias toward “foreign” ideas and concepts. One may even compare him to a ventriloquist who is able to assume a voice or voices distinctly different from his own master and with mimetic subtlety, with such accuracy of nuance, as to make them express his own “ideas” without letting his audience become aware of his trick. (84)
In other words, the schlemiel – like its author – is double. The schlemiel appears naïve and absent minded but in reality is not. Schlemiels are and are not alienated from the community. They are a part of it and yet they are the odd ones out. In other words, the schlemiel, like the author, walk a tightrope and this provides them with a form of aesthetic freedom in a community that would, otherwise, not accept their “foreign” views.
By walking the tightrope, common Yiddish readers are indirectly exposed to a kind of theatricality. And it is this theatricality that, according to Miron, has an educational and an aesthetic purpose. Comedy, in effect, allows the artist to be an insider and an outsider to his own culture. And this duplicity is something that the artist ultimately would like to inculcate in his readers. In mimicking characters in the ghetto, one gains a distance yet, at the same time, this mimicry is endearing. It shows that the author wants to be a part of his people and by accepted by them; yet, by way of a dramatic form of comedy (theatricality) the author is free from them. The vehicle of this comic closeness and distance is the schlemiel. His mimetic genius is that of the author. Moreover, for Aleichem and Abromovitsch, who both had a version of the Haskalah project, humor was the best means for teaching “mimetic genius” as a means of becoming…modern.
Given the emphasis on Enlightenment values and thinking, we often don’t see or hear anything about comedy or theatrical mimesis as a key ingredient. Miron is novel in this claim. His claim is interesting when read against Leo Strauss who has argued, in the introduction to Philosophy and Law, that the Enlightenment’s main weapon is mockery. The difference between the two is that the narrators and schlemiels of Sforim and Aleichem’s books don’t mock their characters directly. Their art is the art of indirect caricature. It is the work of the “mimetic genius” who can speak like all of us but who, ultimately, is caricaturing what we all take for granted. It is, as Antonin Artaud might say, a “theater and it’s double.” The schlemiel’s comedy is his mask.
One of the things I love about the work of Leo Strauss is his suggestion that we read philosophers or religious thinkers like Plato or Maimonides as one would read a good novel. One of Strauss’s most important essays is entitled the “Literary Character of The Guide to the Perplexed.” And the core of his literary method is to make very close readings of the text so as to listen for contradictions and allusions to something other than what is said on the surface. In other words, he looks for the esoteric by way of paying close attention to the exoteric aspects of the texts. To be sure, the cracks on the surface always suggests deeper meanings. And when these deeper meanings compete with the philosophical or religious meanings of the text, the reader is forced to consider which meaning is more important for the author. Strauss, in truth, believes that true intelligence is to be found in a text that prompts the reader to ask the right questions. He claims that the person who responds to these prompts in the text becomes a part of a “community.” And for Strauss the literary device that prompts the most intelligent questions and fosters community is irony. His reading of irony, to be sure, has us pay close attention to not just what irony is but what it does. And in doing so, it also makes us play closer attention to his own text with all of its ironies and allusions. By exposing us to such ironies, he exposes us to a world of rich textual and intellectual possibilities.
A text that demonstrates Strauss’s approach to irony is his essay “On Plato’s Republic,” which appears in his book The City of Man. At the outset of the essay, Strauss plays the ironist by playing out the question of how one should read Plato. First he makes a claim, then he negates it; but after doing this, he brings up the claim again, and negates it once again. This process does much to put our assumptions about Plato into question:
Whereas reading the Politics we hear Aristotle all the time, in reading the Republic we hear Plato never. In none of his dialogues does Plato ever say anything. Hence, we cannot know from them what Plato thought…But this is a silly remark: everyone knows that Plato speaks through the mouth..of his Socrates, his Eleatic stranger, his Timaeus, and his Athenian stranger….But why does he use a variety of spokesmen?He does not tell us; no one knows the reason. (50)
After saying all this, Strauss plays on the reality of how he sounds in front of other scholars and he simply gives up. He acts as if it makes sense to accept the assumption that Socrates is Plato’s spokesperson when we can clearly see that he is in conflict with this. And this comes out in the sentence following his decision to conform:
We do not wish to appear more ignorant than every child and shall therefore repeat with childlike docility that the spokesperson for Plato is Socrates. But it is one of Socrates’ peculiarities that he was the master of irony. (50)
This “but” changes everything since it suggests that whatever Socrates says is not what appears to be. So to with our reading of Plato: perhaps Socrates is teaching us is that although he appears to be Plato’s spokesman he’s really not. Perhaps, Strauss muses, Plato didn’t have “a teaching” and never really “asserted anything”? But, following this, he says that this can’t be the case. It is “absurd” to think this.
However, the question lingers even after he states this.
The next paragraph, hinting at this lingering question, is all about irony. Strauss defines it immediately: “Irony is a kind of dissimulation, or untruthfulness. Aristotle therefore treats the habit of irony primarily as a vice”(51). But Strauss doesn’t think that Aristotle is right:
Yet irony is the dissembling, not of evil actions or of vices, but rather of good actions or of virtues; the ironic man, in opposition to the boaster, understates his worth. If irony is a vice, it is a graceful vice. Properly used, it is not a vice at all. (51)
Strauss’s qualification of Aristotle is telling. It suggests that irony is a neutral term and that it has a “proper” use. Citing Aristotle against Aristotle, Strauss argues that “irony is…the noble dissimulation of one’s worth, one’s superiority”(51). In other words, humility and irony do not contradict each other; in fact, they aid each other.
Strauss goes so far as to equate wisdom with irony and to argue that “it is humanity peculiar to the superior man”(51). Moreover, irony is selective. It speaks “differently to different kinds of people”(51). And, at its best, it evokes questions rather than answers. However, not everyone is prompted by this or that irony to ask questions; hence, it speaks differently to different people.
For this reason, Strauss suggests that we read Plato’s dialogues not in terms of their philosophical content, alone; rather, one should also read them in terms of who was being spoken to and who was not being spoken to in this or that irony:
One must postpone one’s concern with the most serious questions (the philosophical questions) in order to become engrossed in the study of merely a literary question. (52)
And by doing this, we realize that there is a deep connection between what he calls the “literary question and the philosophical question”(52). In other words, literature and philosophy can be brought together by way of the questions evoked by irony.
Strauss goes even further and argues that the “literary question, the question of presentation, is concerned with a kind of communication”(52). And this communication, through irony, is a “means of living together.” In other words, irony creates a kind of community of the question (to play on Derrida’s opening to his famous essay on Levinas, “Violence and Metaphysics”).
However, instead of taking this to the next level, Strauss keeps it within academia: “The study of the literary question is therefore an important part of the study of society”(52). He goes on to argue that this is more than a simple literary question: it is a “quest for truth, a common quest, a quest taking place through communication.” This suggests that literature and philosophy have a “common quest” for truth. However Strauss redirects this by arguing that the “literary question properly understood is the question of the relation between society and philosophy.”
This redirection is telling since it suggests that by reading for irony in philosophy we can better address the “question of relation of society and philosophy.” For Strauss, this implies that there is something about irony that is related to the question of community and truth.
What, in fact, is the true kind of community?
Strauss’s reading of irony suggests that by reading for irony and communicating this irony to others we create a kind of ironic community. Although he doesn’t use these terms his work suggests a community of the question which is based on a “common quest for truth.” Moreover, as we saw above, if done “properly,” this community will evince a kind of humility instead of a kind of a snarky kind of arrogance.
What I love about this meditation is the fact that it gives great weight to being a close reader of the text. To be sure, Strauss gives the act of literary criticism vis-à-vis the religious or philosophical text the highest value possible since it is, for him, the basis of creating a community of the question based on the “common quest for truth.”
I think many of my colleagues and readers should take this lesson to heart since I have never seen a greater vindication of irony and its meaning in any text I have read. (However, if I am missing something, please do let me know.) And this bodes well for Schlemiel Theory since the readers of the schlemiel will understand that the ironies of this comic character also seem to be going in the same direction. To be sure, we don’t read novels, stories, and poems on the schlemiel – with all of their ironies -because they are funny; we read them because we are in search of truth and we are looking to create a community of the question.
In an essay on Moses Maimonides entitled “The Literary Character of The Guide to the Perplexed,” Leo Strauss suggests that we read Maimonides as we would read a good novel: we should look for textual contradictions and read into the relationship of one “chapter heading” to another. In other words, he believed that Maimonides was communicating secrets to Joseph – Maimonides student for whom he dedicates The Guide to the Perplexed – by way of allusions. There is a precedent for hinting at secrets in the Talmud. It points out that secrets regarding the Maaseh Merkavah (the “Work of the Chariot,” an allusion to Ezekiel’s famous chariot) and Maaseh Bereshit (the “Work of Creation”) should neither be communicated in public nor directly. They are private teachings and they can only be alluded to in the teaching itself.
Reading Robert Walser’s “Fritz Kocher’s Essays,” I cannot help but think of Strauss’s reading. To be sure, Walser’s chapter headings are well-placed and are very suggestive of a secret that Walser wishes to communicate to his readers. The secret he wishes to communicate is deeply entrenched in the space between childhood and adulthood and it is published in the wake of death. To be sure, this space and post-mortem situation inform the framework through which these fictional “essays” are communicated: as I pointed out in a previous blog entry, these essays are written by a boy on the cusp of manhood and it is published in the wake of his death by someone who found them worthy of sharing. And, as I noted, this framework suggests a tradition which is being passed from person to person by way of allusion.
In this blog entry, I’d like to briefly address the first three chapter headings – together with their contents. I find compelling evidence in them that a secret is being alluded to, a secret that is to be found between the spaces of youth and adulthood. Within these spaces, the question of what it means to be human is addressed in an esoteric manner. But the esoteric is cloaked by way of the comic.
The first essay written by Fritz Kocher is entitled “Man.” In this essay, Fritz Kocher draws up what he thinks man is or rather should be. He notes a distinction between man and animal that goes back to Aristotle and the Bible but he finds a contradiction in it:
Man should stand above his fellow creature, the animal, in all things. But even a foolish schoolboy can see people acting like irrational animals every day. Drunkenness is as hideous as a picture: Why do people indulge in it?…Such cowardice is fitting for a thing as imperfect as Man. We are imperfect as everything. (4)
Following this, Kocher is distracted from the highness of man to what makes man so imperfect. In the midst of his meditation, which surely makes him feel a sense of horror, he makes a promise not to become an animal: “I promise loud and clear: I want to be a steady, upright person”(4).
Taking on a moral tone, he states that he will “imitate” only great things. But all of this collapses when he “blurbs”:
Secretly, I love art. But it’s not a secret anymore, not since right now, because now I’ve been careless and blabbed it. Let me be punished for that and made an example of. What makes a noble way of thinking not want to freely admit itself? (4)
In this moment, we can see that Kocher has a conflict between being a “man” and being an “artist.” He sees the latter as immoral and punishable, but he doesn’t agree with this valuation. Since he doesn’t want to deal with this conflict, he changes subject and says that the one thing he fears most is “baseness.” But, after saying this, he goes off on tangent that contradicts this claim: he says he wants to be famous, meet beautiful women, etc and be reckless.
For saying this, he says, right in the essay, that he will likely get an F for “writing like this” in an essay. But he is ok with this since “every word comes from the heart.” This, he says, is the most important thing about man: “if he wants to be human, he cannot do without it.” The intelligence of the heart is the greatness of man. However, after stating this, his thoughts turn to his fear of getting drunk and looking base. And from there he turns to the importance of being industrious. But, if we read properly, we can see that these concerns and everything in his essay is ancillary to being a person who has a heart. And the secret of this person, it seems, is that he (Fritz Kocher) is an artist.
The next chapter/essay heading – and its contents – provide evidence for this supposition. The essay – as the author readily admits – is poorly written. He leaps from topic to topic. But his distractions are telling:
I like Autumn….Soon the snow will be falling. I love snow too, even if it’s not nice to wade around in it too long with cold wet feet. But why else are there warm felt slippers and heated rooms for later? Only the poor children tug at my heartstrings – I know they have no warm rooms in their houses. How horrible it must be to sit around and freeze. I wouldn’t do any homework (5)
What we find in this passage is a mind that wanders from thing to thing; however, there is a pattern. As one can see, he ends up thinking about things that pain him and then he moves on. And when, later, he drifts into a meditation on Autumn colors, he muses on the possibility of someday becoming an artist (which as we learned above, was his secret desire). But this reflection is different. In this one, he is not so much romantically inclined with being an artist as disappointed with what kind of artist he would become. He tells the reader that he will most likely fail at being an artist. But he stops himself short of being depressed by noting that one shouldn’t worry about “something that hasn’t happened yet.”
After saying this, Kocher drifts into description of things he sees as sounds. He muses on this and finds it fascinating. The feeling of mixing the two, in fact, inspires him. But after taking it to his limit, his rational self kicks in:
Green in midsummer is a many-voiced song with all the highest notes. Is that true? I don’t know if it’s right. Well, the teacher will surely be so kind as to correct it. (6)
After thinking this, he starts thinking about how he can’t do math and how he would never want to be a businessman. Instead of counting apples, he’d rather have an apple for a grade.
Perhaps Walser is suggesting that the artist is childish, full of heart, distracted, and self-conscious. We can find these suggestions between the chapters/essays depicting “man” and “autumn.” In contrast to the previous two essays, the next chapter/essay, entitled “The Fire,” is deadly serious and it lacks the distraction of the previous two. Moreover, in contrast to the other two, this essay comes with an image of a fire eating up a building.
The chapter articulates a sense of wonder before the suffering and death of others. Kocher is also fascinated by the fact that someone could risk their lives to save them. The one who saves them is also the opposite of an adored hero; he is a non-descript man who pops out from the street: “a thin young man in shabby clothing”(9). When he saves them and leaves a mother and child on the sidewalk, Kocher tells us that he “disappears without a trace.”
He isn’t an anti-hero so much as a hero who is barely visible.
How does this fire and this “thin young” hero who “disappears without a trace” relate to Kocher’s desire to be an artist? Is Kocher an artist for remembering the fire and the person who saved the innocent from death? Is he an artist for thinking of the poor children who don’t have a home or warm slippers?
These questions are to found in-between the chapter headings. And they suggest or allude to different answers. By reading Robert Walser like Leo Strauss would read Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed, we can see that Walser thinks there is wisdom to be found in the child’s reflections. However, they may also be reflections of a distracted mind. The best way to find out is, in a midrashic sense, figuring the relation between one chapter heading and another or between one distraction and another.
In the next blog entry I want to address why, in the wake of this fire and its depiction, Kocher turns to the theme of friendship.
I ended yesterday’s blog with a reflection on President Obama’s last words on trust and cynicism. Here are the President’s last words:
And so, these men and women should inspire all of us in this room to live up to those same standards; to be worthy of their trust; to do our jobs with the same fidelity, and the same integrity, and the same sense of purpose, and the same love of country. Because if we’re only focused on profits or ratings or polls, then we’re contributing to the cynicism that so many people feel right now.
How, I wondered, was the President’s comic routine related to this crisis in trust and the “cynicism that so many people feel right now?” In yesterday’s blog, I argued that the schlemiel was used, in effect, to regain trust. But let’s be clear here. The humor used by the self-deprecating schlemiel has nothing to do with satire or sarcasm. To be sure, much of what the President was doing was self-deprecating. This kind of humor doesn’t cause cynicism. On the contrary, it does its best to challenge cynicism and to recover some kind of hope (however bleak it may be). The schlemiel evokes a belief in goodness, innocence, and simplicity while, at the same time, juxtaposing it against dishonesty, deception, and violence. Because the Schlemiel (at least in its traditional variety) evokes some kind of hope (however little it may be) in the midst of depravity, it makes sense why the President and his writers would turn to the schlemiel. The schlemiel preserves a kind of naivite.
In contrast to the humor of the schlemiel, however, there are other forms of humor which, to be sure, look to exacerbate cynicism. Slovoj Zizek, who, in academia and beyond it, is thought of as an ‘academic rock star’ of sorts, is well known for his delight in humor. He is less known, however, for his explorations of humor and cynicism.
In his book, The Sublime Object of Ideology, Slovoj Zizek pits cynicism against what the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk calls kynicism. Zizek’s reading of cynicism is much different from President Obama’s. And his privileging of kynicism over cynicism brings this out. Hope is not an option; kynicism is.
Writing on Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, Zizek notes that “what is really disturbing” is the “underlying belief in the liberating, anti-totalitarian force of laughter, of ironic distance.” In other words, the emancipatory aspect of sarcasm, for Zizek, is disturbing because “in contemporary societies, democratic or totalitarian, that cynical distance, laughter, irony, are, so to speak, part of the game. The ruling ideology is not to be taken seriously or literally”(28). On the other hand, taking ideology literally, and not laughing, is “tragic.” In this scenario, Zizek seems to be in a double bind as laughter and sarcasm are too ideological for him. Yet, on the other hand, he prefers laughter to taking ideology seriously.
But there is a problem, since even laughter and sarcasm are ensnared by ideology, they are guilty of being naive. Zizek cites Marx who says that “the very concept of ideology implies a kind of basic, constitutive naivite: the misrecognition of its own presuppositions, of its own effective conditions, a distance, a divergence between so-called social reality and our distorted representations, our false consciousness of it”(28).
But, contrary to Marx, Zizek claims that the point is not to unmask ideology – so as to see reality “as it really is.” Rather, “the main point is to see how the reality itself cannot reproduce itself without this so-called ideological mystification. The mask is not simply hiding the real state of things; the ideological distortion is written into its very essence”(28).
Following this insight, Zizek asks: “Does the concept of ideology as naïve consciousness still apply to today’s world?”
His answer, of course, is no. Ideology is no longer to be thought of as naïve. Zizek argues that it knows it is lying. It is deceptive. But, more importantly, “ideological distortion” is not separate from reality; it is “written into its very essence.”
Citing Peter Sloterdijk, Zizek argues that “ideology’s dominant mode of functioning is cynical, which renders impossible…the classic critical-ideological procedure. The cynical subject is quite aware of the distance between the ideological mask and the social reality, but he none the less insists on the mask.”
In other words, things have, literally, changed. Ideology is no longer innocent or naïve. It is deliberate. And it cannot be unmasked since it is “written into the very essence” of reality. Paraphrasing Sloterdijk, Zizek says that “they know very well what they are doing, but still, they are doing it.” In other words, if everything is ideology, everyone is lying. No one believes in ideology, yet they act as if they do while knowing full well they don’t.
Taking into consideration what Zizek is saying, we would have to say that our assessment of cynicism is wrong. Cynicism is not based on distrust of the government. No. For Zizek, cynicism is knowing that you are lying while acting “as if” you are telling the truth. This masking operation, for Zizek, discloses a near universal dishonesty that touches everything that advances freedom, justice, equality, etc. According to his logic, we act as if these ideals, principles, etc are real when, in fact, we know they are not.
In a surprising turn Zizek excludes himself from the all-encompassing cynicism that touches all reality by aligning himself with what Sloterdijk calls kynicism: “Kynicism represents popular, plebian rejection of the official culture by means of irony and sarcasm: the classical kynical procedure is to confront the pathetic phrases of the ruling official ideology – its solemn, grave tonality – with everyday banality and to hold them up to ridicule, thus exposing behind the subtle noblesse of ideological phrases the egotistical interests, the violence, the brutal claims to power”(29).
Zizek notes that the kynical procedure does not play according to the rules of logic. It is “more pragmatic than argumentative: it subverts the official proposition by confronting it with the situation of its enunciation; It proceeds ad hominem”(29).
Zizek notes that what we have today is a battle between cynicism and kynicism: “Cynicism is the answer of the ruling culture to this kynical subversion: it recognizes, it takes into account, the particular interest behind the ideological universality, the distance between the ideological mask and the reality, but it still finds reasons to retain the mask”(29).
Given this “logic,” Zizek would say that upholding “individuality,” “freedom,” “justice,” and even “rights” by the “ruling culture” is cynical. It is a mask. Zizek would say that they all don’t really believe in these things but act “as if” they do. And for his reason, they are all cynical: “the model of cynical wisdom is to conceive probity, integrity, as a superior form of dishonesty, and morals a supreme form of profligacy, and truth as the most effective form of a lie”(30).
The kynical person, in contrast, discards the “mask.” Moroever, the kynical person laughs. But, somehow, this laughter is pure of ideology. This is odd, since, at the beginning of this section (as we note above) Zizek says that emancipatory laughter and sarcasm (which sounds a lot like kynic laughter) are wholly ideological. Here, somehow, sarcasm (as kynicism) is not.
On the one hand, laughter, satire, and sarcasm are a “part of the game.” On the other hand, they are the epitome of popular revolt. Can we say that neither cynicsm nor kynicism are naïve? Wouldn’t it be naïve, according to Zizek’s standards, to think one can simply throw off the ideological mask and escape cynicism? Isn’t it the case that they both know that what they are doing is a lie but do it anyway? To be sure, isn’t Zizek saying that all ideology today is dishonest and nothing escapes it? Wouldn’t that also include kynicism? Or is kynicism beyond ideology and dishonesty?
If kynicism goes by way of the ad hominem and not by way of argument, is it beyond ideology?
To be sure, Zizek explicitly notes kynicism’s dishonesty when he says that kynicism deliberately uses ad hominem arguments to mock the ‘ruling culture’ (which includes the culture of the Enlightenment). Kynicism doesn’t argue. It attacks and it knowingly tells lies. But, and here is the question, does it do so while holding up a mask? Do the kynics sarcastically mock the ruling ideology while acting “as if” they are “right,” “true,” and “just”? If they do, then they are also wearing a mask and they too are cynical.
So, what is the meaning of all this dishonesty? And, given what the President said the other night at the Correspondents’ Dinner, is there any way to end cynicism if both sides are engaged in some sort of deception – knowing that they don’t believe in justice, rights, truth, etc but act ‘as if’ they do?
To be sure, given his love for sarcasm, it seems as if Zizek prefers kynicism over cynicism. But isn’t Zizek caught in the lie of ideology, too? Didn’t he say that sarcasm plays the same game? Zizek certainly celebrates mockery in his work and encourages satire, but a close reading of The Sublime Object of Ideology shows us that he also recognizes the sarcasm may not be free of ideology.
This recognition is fundamental to understanding what is at stake. The truth of the matter is that Zizek’s appeal to kynicism is an attempt to leave the Enlightenment and its rhetoric of emancipation behind. To do this, he looks for a kind of sarcasm that is free of emancipation or any enlightenment ideal. How is this possible? Is the sarcasm he affirms simply a violent force that denies all truth and no longer acts ‘as if’ it is anything? A “naked” kind of sarcasm free of any Enlightenment ideal?
In the introduction to his book Philosophy and Law, Leo Strauss argues that the Enlightenment’s main weapon against orthodoxy is humor. And in many ways, Strauss agrees with Zizek:
As Lessing, who was in a position to know, put it, they attempted by means of mockery to ‘laugh’ orthodoxy out of a position from which it could not be dislodged by any proofs supplied by Scripture or even by reason. Thus the Enlightenment’s mockery of the teachings of the tradition is not the successor of a prior refutation of these teachings; it does not bring to expression the amazement of unprejudiced men at the power of manifestly absurd premises; but it is the refutation: it is in mockery that the liberation from ‘prejudices’ that had supposedly been cast off is first accomplished; at the very least, the mockery is the admittedly supplementary but still decisive legitimation of liberty acquired by whatever means (30).
Were the Enlighteners kynical, did they really (cynically) believe in freedom and rights, or did they naively believe in freedom and rights? After all, Strauss claims that they knew they had no real argument with Orthodoxy but preferred, instead, to mock it. Strauss’s reading implies that the Enlightenment doesn’t really have a full grasp of its principles but acts “as if” it does for purely pragmatic reasons. Like the kynics that Zizek writes of, Strauss’s Enlighteners also use ad hominem arguments and sarcasm to challenge the “ruling ideology.” But there is one difference: they do so in the name of “liberty.”
In effect, Zizek is telling us that all forms of political humor battle cynicism with kynicism. Kynicsm is not interested in self-deprecating humor, which looks to re-instill trust. And if we take Zizek’s words on ideology seriously, we would have to say that, in the end, it’s the same result. Cynicism and kynicism are both caught up in ideology, but an ideology that is not simply naïve but rather dishonest.
For Zizek, no one really believes in the truth anymore. We only act “as if” we do. Zizek suggests that “the people” are all kynical. He suggests that their sarcastic rebellion against the ruling culture, which acts “as if” truth, justice, freedom, etc exist (and defend it), is somehow pure. But, wait, doesn’t this rebellion act as if it is just? Aren’t many latter day rebels naïve? Or are they just acting “as if” they believe in justice? Perhaps we’re all being duped?
By not looking into it deeply, Zizek implies that all popular sarcasm directed against any group in power is just. But isn’t the act of speaking truth to power an act that is based on Enlightenment ideals? And how can one justify activism that is supported by kynicism? Is that activism…random?
Is the difference between kynicism and cynicism the fact that cynicism acts “as if” truth, justice, etc are real while kynicism doesn’t waste its time with such self-deceptions?
What I find most interesting is Zizek’s brief moment of reflection on subversive laughter and its possible destructiveness. His hesitation is ultimately left behind for the revolution. His laughter is a laugh that is, seemingly, not based on any truth. Nonetheless, the appeals for justice and truth made my many kynics disclose some form of ideology. So, what is it? Is kynicism deceiving itself or not? Is its only purpose to sarcastically destroy any ruling ideology in the name of noting save…destruction. Or does it act “as if” it challenges the ruling ideology in the name of progress, justice, etc? Zizek’s laugh, it seems, is unsure of whether or not it is based on truth or deception. It originates in a humor that is not seeking to end cynicism so much as exacerbate it. For if ideology is inescapable, so is the impulse to act “as if” justice, truth, and freedom exist when one “knows” that they don’t. If we take Zizek to the end of his thought on sarcasm, this is the conclusion.
And with this, I return to my original concern regarding the use of comedy in the political sphere to battle cynicism. Will the political use of comedy produce trust or dissolve it? For Zizek, sarcasm, not self-deprecation, is the choicest of all comic weapons. His strategy is completely different from President Obama’s insofar as the President played the schlemiel while Zizek plays the kynical comic.
Schlemiel Theory 