Table Of ContentThe Final Countdown: Europe, Refugees and the Left
edited by Jela Krečič
Edited by Jela Krečič
Copy editor: Jeff Bickert
Contributors: Boris Buden, Mladen Dolar, Saroj Giri, Boris Groys,
Agon Hamza, Jamil Khader, Jela Krečič, Robert Pfaller, Frank Ruda,
Alenka Zupančič, Slavoj Žižek
Published by IRWIN, Ljubljana and Wiener Festwochen, Vienna
Design: New Collectivism
Printed by Tiskarna Januš d.o.o., Ljubljana, 2017 in 3000 copies
ISBN 978-961-90851-2-7
The book is supported in part by Arbeiterkammer Wien and
the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia.
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The FINAL countdown : Europe, refugees and the left
/ [contributors Boris Buden ... et al.]; edited by Jela Krečič.
- Ljubljana : Irwin; VFenna : Wiener Festwochen, 2017
ISBN 978-961-90851-2-7 (Irwin)
1. Buden, Boris 2. Krečič, Jela
289881344
Published on the occasion of the
NSK State Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale
9 Jela Krečič
The Final Countdown or
Lessons to Be Learned from Comedy and Antihumanism
21 Alenka Zupančič
Back to the Future of Europe
33 Boris Groys
Contemporary Europe:
In Search of Cultural Biotopes
49 Robert Pfaller
White Lies, Black Truths:
Elements of Adult Communication
67 Mladen Dolar
Who is the Victim?
79 Saroj Girl
Parasitic Anti-Colonialism
103 Boris Buden
The One Too Many:
On How Democracy Ends in Sophistry
129 Frank Ruda
First as Tragedy, Then as Tragedy?
Jamil Khader
143
Beyond the Biopolitics of the Refugee:
Totality, Global Capitalism, and the Common Struggle
Agon Hamza The Refugee Crisis and the
167
Helplessness of the Left
187 Slavoj Žižek
Terrorists with a Human Face
Jela Krečič The Final Countdown or Lessons to Be
Learned from Comedy and Antihumanism
If we had to propose a single word that marked the beginning of the 21st
century, that word would surely be crisis. This new century opened with
the 9/11 attacks, and the so-called terrorist crisis has been in play ever
since, indeed continues to this day. The world also saw several natural
disasters, among them the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, with almost a
quarter of a million people killed, which in turn produced an exceptional
humanitarian crisis. In 2008 came the financial crisis, which began in the
Americas and Europe and soon evolved into a full-blown economic crisis
that hit comparatively marginal countries like Greece especially hard.
The Middle East remains a place of permanent crisis, with the focus shift
ing from Afghanistan to Iraq and on through Tunis, Egypt and Palestine
to Syria. The turmoil in Syria and environs came with and was followed
by the so-called refugee crisis, when tens of thousands of refugees from
devastated parts of the Middle East fled to Europe seeking asylum. Last
year, with Great Britain's decision to part ways with the European Union,
we began speaking of the EU crisis. And though all of these crises are
quite different, they all share a common denominator—they are all part
of the body of crises that constitute the new normal. Crisis—or the state
of crisis—is here to stay; it is permanent. If and when one crisis passes,
it is only so that another crisis can take its place.
Crisis has become a way of life. Think only of politics in the West, which
seems to consist largely in the politics of managing one crisis or another,
while the frame of every crisis and its solution remains intact. In other
words, while everybody is sacrificing something (Europeans their wel
fare state, Arabs their secular traditions) in order to overcome the crisis
at hand, the social and economic foundations that led to the crisis remain
the same. The existing order has become a prolonged system of crisis
management, with its one unchangeable and untouchable dominant:
neoliberal capitalism.
9
Never before have we seen so much outspoken criticism aimed at neolib
eral capitalism and the crises it produces as we find today. At the same
time, never was there a firmer (unconscious) conviction that there is
simply no alternative to the prevailing global system. Perhaps this com
bination is not as paradoxical as it may appear. The need to constantly
point out social injustices, to identify the victims of the global capitalist
order, is perhaps closely connected to a sort of superstitious belief that
nothing can or will really change, and that the real catastrophe will not
materialize as long as we remain conscious and vigilant.
Today, particularly in the West, we can discern two attitudes towards the
crises. One is the more or less cynical attitude of the ruling politicians
who are "just" managing the crisis. This position is a rightist one, even
if it is manifested in and by nominally "leftist" governments; the only
difference the rising rightist populism brings to this managerial aspect of
politics is the urge to blame some form of otherness (immigrants, LGBT
community, etc.) for all of the present crises currently unfolding. Today's
predominant leftist attitude has been largely reduced to lamenting the
unjustness and cruelty of capitalism or wringing their hands over the
ignorant, ordinary people who are falling for politicians like Donald
Trump. But this reaction of the Left's is not, however, self-evident—it begs
interpretation, especially if we consider the fact that the most tangible
result of the 2008 financial collapse is an even stronger, and more brutal
version of capitalist exploitation and domination.
As a result, we could say that, behind and beneath the great prolifera
tion of crises our media is only to happy to bombard us with—economic,
financial, ecological, refugee, moral—the foremost crisis is the crisis of
the Left, which cannot seem to find a way out of the discourse of crisis
imposed by the managing elite. The fact that the Left so often complains
about its own incapacity, its own internal fights and conflicts, only goes
to show that today's Left dwells in its own crisis. It seems to find a cer
tain enjoyment in maintaining the moral high ground, in displaying the
ability to recognize and put on record all the world's injustices, while
at the same time it is thoroughly unable to provide any real political
strategy or alternative.
If the cynicism of the ruling elites and the lamentations of the defeated
Left are the principal answers to today's theoretical and political dead
locks, how can we escape the debilitating and immobilizing power of
10 The Final Countdown...
