ethics o real - interview with alenka zupancicb

SymposiumInterview

Ethics of RealInterview with Alenka ZupanCic

Indigo Global Humanities Project Team

Alenka ZupanCicResearcher at the Institute

of Philosophy of theSlovenian Academyof Sciences and Arts

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Ethics of Real

Indigo: The title of this project is "To-ward the Common Good." And whatwe are attempting to do in this proj-ect journey is to explore, or perhapsreinterpret, the true meaning of "thecommon" and "the good" in our time.Yet here arises the very first wonder:Is there such a thing as the commongood? To what extent is it useful tospeak of thela common good?

Alenka Zupancic: I think first of all weshould not try to define it in some way. Itcan mean many things and sometimes noth-ing. It's definitely a very complicated notion.The very notion of 'good' in philosophy is notsomething that's simply defined. But I thinkwhat really needs to be defined perhaps canbe found precisely along the lines that you'veindicated in your question. 1 think the firstthing to do is to tum this syntax around andsay that it is not that we start from some fullyestablished good or goods and then we try tomake them common or try to find out ways to

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make it common or shared by anyone. I ratherthink that one should perhaps turn the per-spective around and say it is "what is shared"and "common" that is good. I think the 'good'here appears on two levels: we can speak ofsome good that exist in society from food tosocial care, which of course are very real andnecessary for living, but they are not good inmoral or emphatic sense. What is good is pre-cisely when they are part of this general anduniversal sharing. This also means that theyare part of it as also a kind of idea, not sim-ply about having these things but also aboutthinking in an emancipatory way about shar-ing them. I think the good in this sense is pre-cisely on the side of the more common anduniversal paradigm as well as its own belong-ing to some kind of emancipatory politics orsomething like this. So one could say indeedthat nothing is good if it happens only forsome. It could be very good in tale but in cer-tain sense it's not good in this way of havingthis potential precisely of further opening upand perhaps exploding some kind of a space

SymposiumInterview

Ethics of Real

Indigo: One question that popped upin my head is this universality. Egyptis just a case of pursuing the commongood in their Own society. How can wedefine this word universality?

anything else.

AZ: I think there are two ways of thinking,perhaps more than two, but two that are quitedifferent. One, that I would call the "bad" onethat doesn't really lead anywhere, is to consid-er it as a sect, totality or some kind minimalcommon denominator. We could also startfrom the bottom and say, "This is the onlything that we have in common." Then youhave this more relative idea of universal as ahead that can unite different things. But thereal universal or the concrete universal, usingthe Hegelian term, is the immanent processof becoming universal. It's always related tosome kind of antagonism in society. It's notsimply neutral. Jt is something that is verysensitive to the unjust points of SOciety;it is be-ing dose to the crucial divides of a society, tothe crucial antagonism that defines them andtrying to find some kind of realistic relationthat is the principle that opens up and tries toaddress everybody, that, from the beginning,does not exclude anybody, that has the kindof potential to mobilize and activate furtherthinking. So it is a different term of universalthan a static, accomplished, or totalistic one inthe sense that although it is addressed to all,it's not about all. It's not simply making thefinal part of it okay because now that we areall in this train, we are all satisfied. It's always

that feels unable to change or inaccessible forthis kind of common practice or communalpractice and so on. I think that this is also, toa certain degree, a Kantian way of definingthe good, not starting with some fully estab-lished good that one should then try to applyuniversally, but to try to figure out how thereis some kind of universal movement that isgood in itself. Then good is also, of course,what comes from it, or what could come fromit. We can try to think of these two levels ofthe question or project.

As a perspective on an actual eventnow, I was just thinking on my way here howit's really not simply about having access tosomething that is common good. What is go-ing on in Egypt now is a sequence of the com-mon good in itself. In striving towards somekind of politically organized common good,there is some kind of common, universalIyshared articulation between people in justicethat has already taken place there.

I think there's something to be learnedfrom this in how one of the problems todayis that we've lost this capacity to rejoice or tohave some kind of enthusiasm to recognizesomething that is really happening outsideof all the spectacles that are put up here andthere. I do not mean to be moralizing aboutthese people, it's simply the way ideologi-cal segregation works these days. People arecontent with what they have; they have theircommon good, but, at the same time, theydon't know precisely what is most essential inthis common good, which is the very princi-ple of being sensitive to such events which aremuch more important and impacting than

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something that is built from an event becausethe antagonisms exclude some people, but noton the basis of one's own exclusion becausethey don't want to share in this. There will besome kind of a priori rejection of it.

This also means that there are alwayssome concrete forms that one can then findfrom one example to another as to how thisuniversality is articulated in particular casesor in societies or struggles. But it is at the sametime a kind of special opening that is not neu-tral but a lift off of pre-established parametersthat usually divide or structure the symbolicplaces in society as such. It is a kind of emptyplace and at the same time an exposed placebecause it cannot be automatically integratedin one of these movements or parts preciselybecause it's not so easily assignable to someparticular horizon that it remains exposed.Again we could see this in Egypt. They tryto say, "Oh, no, it's the mask of authority." Butit's not reducible to any of these options. It isalso the pure space of politics emerging and itcan end in different ways but one cannot denythat it's something of this sort. In this sense,this is universal. It's not just for them or betterjobs or better government, but it's also somekind of policy emerging and opening spacesso that something can indeed happen.

Indigo: In the context of this univer-sality, I think of the notion of univer-sal love as the practice of the commongood or the practice of universal revo-lution. Che Guevara also commentedabout this strange feeling that love canbe related to a revolution. I wonder

how this love or compassion or ethicalapproach to people, which can be in-terpreted as a new ethics of this time,can practically work in this age of war,terrorism and ecological disasters?

AZ: Although I did a lot of work on the topicof ethics, I would be careful in this general dis-course of turning away from politics to ethics.I would not want to play one against the otherand say that politics is bad or produces arebad things, so we should now investigate thefield of ethics more as a replacement. I reallythink that if we are speaking about commongood in society they both need to be extreme-ly related and interconnected. It's also politi-cal. One cannot simply say that in this per-spective "ethics can save us." I don't think itcan save us without politics as a participatorypractice. It is not the same thing as ethics, butit can be related. Now we must work out howthey are related. One of the relations is the no-tion of practice that you mentioned. Actually,practicing is something that one can do be-cause practicing concretely exists in the worldand keeping faithful to this and trying to ex-pand in this practice which can definitely bea kind of political act. It also needs to be seenas such because one dimension that makes itpolitical is that one needs to be ready to ac-cept the consequences that follow from this.One cannot wash one's hands and say, "I amdoing my own good in the world." At somepoint one needs to also hear, live and thinkon two levels: what am I doing, and what isto become of this. Not that one can control, ofcourse not, but there could be some kinds of

Ethics of Real

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political will in trying to organize the societyin the way that these kinds of engagementsare possible. There are at least their fruits arepreserved or built into the society and are notsimply vanishing as a kind of personal act.The other thing that definitely makes thisshift from simply ethical to political is the no-tion of the cailective, which is not the priority ofan ethical notion. Ethics is perceived as some-thing very individual and solitary but therealso could be a course or some passage to thecollective from ethics. It's definitely a pointwhere these practices exist as practice. Notsimply that it exists because we are directingit towards the other but also because we areconstantly challenging our own standing inthis. It is not simply about the helping others,it's also about changing some things in theway we act in our societies that are necessarilyinvolved in this other beings such as cities. It'snot simply helping them. It very often meansputting to question some of the principles wetake for granted and will remain as such if itis not for this practical engagement. It can bereal and not simply some kind of feeling-goodpractice and say, "I am doing this act and nowI've done something." So it's kind of a trans-formation that is at the same time ethical andpolitical. It has both dimensions.

Indigo: One very interesting notionof ethics in your work is about the re-sponsibility for this infinite supple-ment of others. Would you please tellus a bit more about your approach toethics which can be a related to the no-tion of supplement or a surplus of joy?

Ethics of Real

AZ: A crucial notion in the discussion of eth-ics was precisely the notion of "the Real" thatI took mostly in the sense which allows us,first of aiL to distinguish the Real from reality.We can find it more or less ideologically trans-formed but which is not simply a positionto relating the terms of realties always dis-cursively or ideologically mediated towardssome kind of pure reality. I think one shouldperceive the real as the contradiction point ofreality itself. It's not some kind of a substancefound somewhere else. There is a more or lesscorrupted or misperceived reality but it isprecisely to be seen as the very point of con-tradiction or antagonism of the reality itself.It is what reality needs to constantly cover upin order to function more or less smoothly.It's not something else out there; it is its owninherent contradiction. So perhaps even moreclearly than it is in my book, I would definethe Real in this sense. So ethics of the Realis attentiveness to these points because theyare the points in society that are not finishedyet. There are points that can be 'neurologicalpoints': the points that are simply not donewith but some kind of potential of generat-ing something different or new is still pos-sible. So the first order is to locate these pointsand then step into the process of trying to dosomething with them. This could be definedas the ethics of the Real. Not simply the ethics inthe sense of going forward in a Real beyondall imaginable political or cultural organiza-tions but precisely as this is possible in realityitself. It is the point of the infinite precisely be-cause, at this point, no society is simply closedin upon itself. Some things could be reactivat-


Symposium Interview

ed perhaps very surprisingly.This is the other problem, the eter-

nal question: How do we go around to findthese points and work with them? Sometimessomething simply needs to happen for themto become visible, and then we know what todo. I think one should really not ask this ques-tion of what to do too much because usuallyit's quite clear. Because when things come tothe point of the knife, you know what to do.One of the things where I think ethics is mis-used or very much used in the negative wayin the contemporary discourse is to produceall kinds of dilemmas and to raise fear, to saythat we should first tally all the consequences,to say we cannot know exactly if this is it. So,instead of this, first certitude that comes tomind in certain situation is usually good thatsays this is absolutely wrong, then this meth-od makes you think, 'Perhaps, if I look at theother way then it will be okay ... ' It only servesthe purpose that nothing really happens atthis point where something could happen.In this sense, that is the exact the opposite ofethical questioning and re-questioning basedon a certain recognition, will and readiness toassume this action, to be responsible for this.Of course, nobody can guarantee that yourreflex or decision was right, to say, "Here, Irecognize this and I will fight for it." You de-cide it, and then you are also responsible forthis decision. In this respect this is the wholediscussion of Kantian moral rule. Could itexempt us from responsibility and, as thefamous Eichmann, could we just claim thatwe did something because law commandedit? Of course not. This is the very paradox of

Kantian philosophy. You are fundamentallyresponsible for the rule. It is not simply some-thing that can guarantee ethics for me. It's notsomething that can guarantee ethics. More orless it's a politically correct ground on whichyou are safe to move because you know thatsome things are already established and theyare good or are generally supposed to begood. But look for the point where this is in noway clear, and try to make something there.Usually, these things are already establishedand, for some, it's really relevant, but I don'tthink much can be gained from further insist-ing on this.

Indigo: How can a person or a col-lective gathering of people be trans-formed as ethical subjects?

AZ: One should not look for a recipe whereone could try to define the mechanism or howthis thing could work. One should not takethis and say, "Let's produce ethical subjects."One could even put this more radically thatit only produces elitist subjectivity as such.There is some kind of leap that can never befully accounted for by the history or the lifeof the individuals. So I think one should lookat this not in terms of some kind of evolu-tion or moving towards the ethical, but in amore synchronized way. It's something thatexisted all the time-the way in which I canact as an ethical subject is something that can-not be gradually deduced from my being inthe world. So it's not simply that I will thenonce become subject to a certain extent; every-body already is the subject. It's the other way

Ethics 01Real


Symposium Interview

around. Ifyou practice or are involved in prac-tice, this is the one point that actually exploresthis part and makes it alive in the world-ornot. This is another question. Somehow this isalso why you have also various kinds of criti-cism on how we are enormously guilty, but it'snot about guilt. It's simply about the presentposition that on a certain level we are alwaysmore than what we think. We can be madejust by combining our nature with cultureand our surroundings. There's a leap to some-thing that is not a direct result of all these nat-ural and cultural processes but can exist foritself. It's not important as part of the subjectbut as the part of the subject that is most alive.It's not about trying. Even ethics sometimeshas to start on the outside not simply by try-ing to find out our innermost ethical partiesand trying to force it to become more apparentbut by changing the newspapers and the waythe things are articulated. This is how thingsare influenced and also how the whole ethicalconfiguration can change. These are related,to a certain extent, to your previous project inthe question of values. Values are also aboutthose certain things that certain societies ac-knowledge as available. In some societies,mere survival is not such an achievement asit is perhaps in ours. So it's not simply becausethey are suicidal that people can think aboutrisking their life for freedom. It is not becausethey are ideologically deluded, but because itis a certain set of values that are different. Itcan also be ideological. Not all ideologies arethe same. There are certain ideologies accom-panying a resistance and there is one that onecould be promoting this distance between

Ethics of Real

me and you that can be a figure of a space ofsomething different, something that cannotsimply be reduced to this immediate interest,which forces you only to see the immediate.

Indigo: When does this activism ormovement take place? When peoplebecome secure enough to take risks?Or when the capital of rage is highenough to make change?

AZ: About people feeling secure, I don't thinkthis is any case fundamental. Itis true in a cer-tain context where the minimum of activismcan cost your life and there is not much spacefor it to exist because you could get impris-oned or killed immediately. So in this sense,if you have a space of security that can makethis moment a little bigger and more produc-tive/ this is not bad. But at the same time, if se-curity itself is the condition, then this kind ofactivism has obvious limits. Activism for oth-ers without wanting to reflect our own posi-tion in societies involves introducing the oth-ers whom we want to help. To a certain extent,security should not be the ultimate ground onwhich activism can expand. Activism is aboutstrongly believing in something and makingit concrete in the world, and then I think beingable and ready to take risks for it. Before ask-ing, "What can I do to improve?" one shouldalways look at the present situation and lookat the places where something is happening. Idon't think one should wait for the event. Forexample, Peter Hallward always says thereare all places around the world-Europe isnot the center of the world. That it is only bor-

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ing here or there are bad politics doesn't meanit's like that everywhere. Things are happen-ing differently and this should be the startingpoint of every ethical or political examinationor questioning. Not simply wondering whatto do for ourselves, but to forget ourselvesperhaps and to see where something is reallyhappening and then building more on that. Ithink this is much surer way for improvementto take place.

Indigo: People start activism towardsomething good and it also takes placewhen they think there are somethingevil. How could we define this word'evil' in the 21'1 century?

AZ: I think the very useful way of doing thishere is via Kant because he has this very in-teresting notion of evil which is not at allrelated, and perhaps it has some short com-ings on this account, to any empirical biggeror lesser evil. But it is a way of functioning,which abandons all striving for ethical or po-litical emancipation. For him the radical evilis the act of giving up, or accepting to be re-duced to just nature in thyself. It's the resigna-tion of saying we are just people and we haveour faults and so on. Of course this is true,but one should not perceive it as somethingelse that exists in this world. So it's one wayof approaching this very difficult question itremains a little bit of an abstract but neverthe-less on a philosophical level or ethical level.At the same time, one should not forget thatthe whole question of how evil is definedin present society is, of course, always very

much related to certain political decisions. It'snot simply recognizing evil as such; it's notsimply obvious. It could be true but it couldbe selfish to say this or that terrorist attack isevi I. The time of red brigade where there wasa possibility of saying say there was a doubtin denouncing it as evil. Nevertheless it's pos-sible recognize some potential of a simple evil.But of course I am not saying this is what weseek today in most cases of terrorism. At thesame time the notion of evil or the axis of evilexists as a game where the use of reactionarypolitics uses ethics or ethical fear as a pretext.One could say that is evil politics. I think, inan empirical perspective, the whole questionof what is good and evil is something to beconstantly, not only reinvented but fought for.There is a certain transcendental level to thisquestion and there is also this empirical levelwhere this kind of designation needs to be apart of some kinds of antagonism and fight,and needs to be seen as such. How to defineit is always a very difficult question. There'ssomething about this question that could bereduced to a very banal level.

Indigo: There's an interesting pointfrom your book about fear. How canthis notion of fear be related to makeethics more constructive? Or does fearkill ethics somehow?

AZ: No, I think definitely the second one.Fear is simply a fact of life. Although Kantianethics is often seen as some kind of going be-yond all human endurance and capacity andliving some kind of impossible war. But this

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is not what I read in Kant. Fear is definitelypart of the subjective composition of an ethi-calor political subject. So it does not neces-sarily block ethics because it's not about eth-ics, it's not simply about heroic deeds. Here Iwould very much agree with you but ethics isoften simply about very common work, andlabor. It's not simply going and accomplish-ing something extraordinary. It could be this,but it also could be certain ethics of fidelity toa certain practice of persisting in it althoughyou risk, not necessarily your life, but perhapsyou risk losing or respect or having a certainposition. There are often risks, but at the sametime what is good in Kant is that he tries tomake us see how, in what he would call ethi-cal constitution of the subject, this kind of risk isnot necessarily perceived as such. In this way,I think we get bad Kantian, but I think whathis perspective enables us to say and concep-tualize is why what you perceive as great losschanges with an act of this kind of praclicalengagement on a set of values. It's not thatit's always in looking ahead, this fear is muchbigger or much more paralyzing if put in thiskind of way. In some sense one should thinkof ethics as acting through which one chang-es as in respect to what one was before. Thisis how Kant's statement, "Through an ethicalact one is no longer the same person." hap-pens. Of course this is not some kind of mysti-cal transformation but there's something. Weare not simply some kind of foolish, subjectiveentities that affect the world around us, butthat what we do also changes us and the waywe look at things. So it could be simply saidthat the great fear of losing something trans-

Ethics of Real

forms. What we lose is no longer perceived asa loss when it happens. I think this is the goodethical mobile, not this track or will to go andaccomplish something even if it means theultimate sacrifice. I think this is a little bit tooHollywood-like. It's not the most productiveway towards thinking of what real politics orethics means.

Indigo: Can we be optimistic aboutKant'snotion of perpetual peace whichcan be related to global justice in 21"century, which is quite different fromhis own notion of perpetua 1 peace?How could this notion of perpetualpeace be translated into this time ofglobal capitalism?

AZ: It's a difficult question. I would say thisis not possible today. But that does not meanthat it's impossible. There's something that'sreally impossible from the constellalion thatwe are living now, but something can happenwhere the whole background, the whole pointof the departure changes, and then somethingabsolutely beyond imagination today can be-come real option. I don't think one shoulduse psychoanalysis here to prove how peoplewill never change-perhaps they will neverchange-but nowadays they can change as aspecies perhaps, I don't know. This is not theultimate horizon of what we know about hu-manity.

But perhaps one way to answer yourquestion would be to relate it to the initialdiscussion of the common good because Ithink perhaps one should act in a way that it


Symposium Interview

is not good unless it happens to everybody.This can actually be read on two levels: oneis empirical (to say we already have the goodand now we need to share with everybody)and other is the question of inequality anduncommon (this is necessary for these goodsto be produced, the very system to function).Relating the two huge questions, in a systemwhere the only production of more or lesscommon good always depends also on someparts of humanity being excluded, not onlyfrom sharing in it but in the very production,the problem is bigger. It's not only excludingsome people from using, it's also exploitingsome people in order to produce this good.So, part of that, if a system needs this kind ofinequality and exploitation in order to func-tion, something could eventually be used forcommon good, then I think we could neverenter any possible discussion of a perpetualpeace. Because of course wars are also most-ly politico-economic categories. In this kindof a system, when the question of sharing issystematically asked on the level of what wealready have, perhaps we should redistrib-ute it so that people in Africa will have more.But I think this is not enough if the very sys-tem of producing whatever surplus we haveis constructed in such a way that it needs todeplete for its own perpetuation. Systematicexclusions of some part of the world or in lay-ers of society or classes could never becomea ground for a perpetual peace. I think thisis god and there is also the question, "Peaceis good, but at what price?" If this means asystemic violence of this kind, perhaps wecan have another several centuries without

any wars but there could be real violence andsuffering on other level. It's not only the warthat is violent. So something would have tochange in the very way that this antagonismis organized now. In this respect I am not sooptimistic immediately. But I would not saythat this is the general demotion that nothingcould ever happen otherwise.

Indigo: What is the most urgent theo-retical question you would like tobring about?

AZ: I think perhaps the question of what is acollective and how does it function? I mean,what is more, it's not something to ask to peo-ple, but it's actually should exist there in peo-ple. At the same time this is relating to thisstrange thing that is collective which is notsimply a sum of all the individuals that aregathered there, but this satiated body, whichis more than all these and what one could dostarting from this. I don't think one can go be-yond this familiar founding that one alwaysstarts when everything is over. At certainlevel philosophy is not a collective moment inthis immediate sense. But this does not meanthat it doesn't recognize one or can't say some-thing about it. It is a solitary practice that atthe same time can concern everybody. It canplay some part in also some kind of collectiveorganization of course. But it's not immedi-ately already it. So my urgent question wouldbe" what is a collective capable of?" II.!IllIlIl

Ethics of Real


ethics o real - interview with alenka zupancicb

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