Beneath the pavement, the beach

Three years after the 2005 riots in the suburbs of France post-Marxist sociologist, Slavoj Zizek, wrote that the rebellion was meaningless and without "any positive utopian vision."

Enter: a post-ideological era.

It's not that we no longer have ideologies, of course, but the dominating capitalist ideology has disguised itself so well that the ruling class can get away with unfounded impassés. We say "economy" instead of "capitalism"; we say "journalism" instead of "spectacle"; "community policing" instead of "racial profiling", etc.

Above all, what better proof is there of capitalism's triumph in the last three decades, Zizek asks, than the disappearance of the very term "capitalism"? Or perhaps the disappearance of an anti-capitalist narrative? And the disappearance of an "anti-social" narrative, where social unrest - especially 'violent' unrest - is "anti-social", and violent social stratification is ordinary.

"The fact that there was no program in the burning of Paris suburbs tells us that we inhabit a universe in which, though it celebrates itself as a society of choice, the only option available to the enforced democratic consensus is the explosion of (self-)destructive violence."

This is the most difficult task for us. To be able to explain why - what looks like "self-destructive violence" - is actually a tremendous breakthrough. There is a tendency, however, to see unplanned explosions of revolt as "without program". Zizek contrasts the suburb riots with May 1968's positive utopian vision in France. But it is true that even in 1968, the social rupture had no clear objectives most of the time either.

"The fact was that to anyone who asked rationally enough 'What do you want?' I had no answer," said a radical recalling the first Night of Barricades. "I couldn't say that I didn't even know who these comrades were, couldn't say that I was demonstrating for the sake of demonstrating."

In other words he couldn't say whether the outburst had any program, at least that he was aware of. The promise of a better world lying beneath the cobblestone street can seem like a surreal joke, once it failed to meet its objectives. Having expected nothing less than the overthrow of the dominant social order, the surreal then turned on itself.

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