At the end of his session, Joe Zizek posed the question, “how important is remembering (or forgetting) revolutionary violence to our modern identities?” following his discussion of collective violence leading to revolution. This question connects directly to both how we’ve responded to the recent requirement of collective passive action, and to how we form modern identities in an increasingly individualised world.
A protester holding a sign from a march against the stay-at-home order in America.
Perhaps for the first time in history, the world has been faced with a challenge that can only be resolved by large-scale inaction, a situation which helps to answer the question of whether we should remember revolutionary violence in our modern identities. In order to eradicate a pandemic the only option is staying inside and remaining inactive. This is a large departure from the revolutionary violence seen in the past as a response to conflicts like the French and American revolution. We can see the importance of forgetting revolutionary action for fighting this enemy thanks to the armed American protests against lockdown which called for access to haircuts whilst further spreading the virus. These protesters perhaps attempted a modern reanimation of the revolutionary violence of the American revolution; however, we can see that this approach is embarrassingly ineffective. Our world has changed drastically and so have the conflicts which we are exposed to; so, if we retain revolutionary violence as a part of our identity and toolkit with which we approach all conflicts, we fail to adapt to our changing circumstances.
Joe’s question specifically relates to how we choose to construct our modern identities in the wake of a history rife with revolutionary violence. In answering this, we must break down how we can create a modern identity in an increasingly individualised world. The modern identity has been developed in a world of easy access to materials and information; however, this has “deprived us of an invaluable sense of community and interdependence that we humans have enjoyed for millions of years.”1 As we depend more on ideas of ideas of the nuclear family and carers we lose sight of community, leading to a modern identity which lacks cohesion. To bring this back to the question, I maintain that we should not merely prescribe revolutionary violence as means of solving all conflicts; instead, we should transform the ideas of collectivism in violence into collectivism in pacifism. Past revolutionary violence bound us together, so I’d argue we should seek to replicate these ideas of community whilst maintaining realistic solutions to modern conflicts.
It is clear that the current events of passive collective action and the ideas of trying to recreate an identity built on community work hand in hand. Rarely do we see the world come together to carry out a task, even if that task is to do nothing. Our modern identity does not need to be so rigid as to completely forget or remember ideas of revolutionary violence. It would instead be more useful to determine how these ideas relate to current conflicts as well as how we construct our identity today.
1: https://littlevillagefilms.com/lack-of-community-in-modern-society/
