Zizek on Western Buddhism and Authentic Fundamentalism

A friend flagged me a ten year old piece by Slavoj Zizek on the relationship between global capitalism and Westernized forms of Buddhism that advocate milquetoast exercises in  "retaining an inner distance and indifference toward the mad dance of accelerated process, a distance based on the insight that all this social and technological upheaval is ultimately just a non-substantial proliferation of semblances that do not really concern the innermost kernel of our being."

Making the necessary changes, that's pretty close to my argument in AH that the search for authenticity is an attempt at carving out an inner space of original meaning, hiving the self off from the disenchanted world of liberalism/secularism/capitalism. We also seem to agree on the upshot of that move, which is that "although 'Western Buddhism' presents itself as the remedy against the stressful tension of capitalist dynamics, allowing us to uncouple and retain inner peace and Gelassenheit, it actually functions as its perfect ideological supplement." That is to say, Western Buddhism/authenticity-seeking is not an antidote to the modern world, but a chief driver of its worst excesses.

But that all comes in the opening paragraph, and the rest of the piece is typical Zizek -- moments of real insight larded with pretentious musings that don't go anywhere. He quickly  abandons the idea of Western Buddhism and its relationship to capitalism, and instead wanders into a debate about the difference between a symptom and a fetish, then slides into a long excursion into our views on Tibet. I guess there's a connection there, but I don't really see it.

But then he comes back to something interesting at the end, when he distinguishes authentic fundamentalists from those fundamentalists who look on with a combination of horror and envy at the activities of sinners. For Zizek, this is the difference between the Amish and the Moral Majority, though there is obviously room for a riff on forms of Islamic fundamentalism as well. He concludes, then, with this not entirely crazy consideration of multiculturalism (my emphasis added):

Moral Majority fundamentalists and tolerant multiculturalists are two sides of the same coin: they both share a fascination with the Other. In the Moral Majority, this fascination displays the envious hatred of the Other's excessive jouissance, while the multiculturalist tolerance of the Other's Otherness is also more twisted than it may appear—it is sustained by a secret desire for the Other to remain "other," not to become too much like us. In contrast to both these positions, the only truly tolerant attitude towards the Other is that of the authentic radical fundamentalist. ­

The remaining question, then, is whether one can be authentically multicultural, on Zizek's terms? I think so. It seems to me that Zizek is relying on a rather narrow, and perhaps more European, notion of multiculturalism that rests on the notion that cultures are encouraged to retain their traditions as much as possible, and that asking them to assimilate is to do violence to their authentic identities. To the extent that that is how European multiculturalism works, perhaps Zizek has a point. But it isn't how multiculturalism has to work, and it certainly is not how it functions in a country like Canada. I've explained how Canadian multiculturalism works in a column for Maclean's, and explore the consequences for these differing Euro and North American approaches in a followup piece online, about assimilation rates for Muslims.

The invention of Tibet

Spiked online editor Brendan O'Neill is on a road trip to Tibet. In a new dispatch, he explores the serious disconnect between the popular western image of Tibet as a place of peace, stillness, and spirituality, and the reality he sees on the ground on Lhasa. It`s interesting throughout, but I especially liked this bit at the end:

What connects the old imperialists with the new Tibetophiles is their desire to have Tibet as a ‘buffer state’ – only where the imperialists wanted to use Tibet to protect their material interests against China and Russia, the new lot want to use it to protect their emotional interests, to preserve an idea of innocent, childlike humanity so far uncorrupted by modernity.

Both sides have indulged in borderline racist fantasies that are all about themselves rather than reality.