The Danger of Pseudo-Activity | Clarissa's Blog
To withdraw into passivity with the expectation that this will have an automagic impact is a kind of idiocy. You're not part of a great pantheistic universe which will notice your absence of engagement. People refuse to vote and then think the universe will register their absence and get all upset and repent. Zizek may be aiming for a rather more subtle and complex stance which can be found in shamanism in terms of don Juan's "not doing" or Bataille's notion that the superficial transcendence of the Nazis invading France can be defeated with "our immanence". But that is not passivity. That is biding your time and in a way stepping out of the linear sequence of time, so as to gather one's energies to be used tactically when the exact right time approaches. Immanence is like a bear hybernating. It's underestimated, because one does not know there is a bear there at all, so those with a superficial transcendence discount it in their calculations. Then one day, the bear appears, baring its teeth. She has stepped out of time for a while and is now back in the play, but the enemy has already miscalculated.
And can you see? That is a very different thing from passivity?
To withdraw into passivity with the expectation that this will have an automagic impact is a kind of idiocy. You're not part of a great pantheistic universe which will notice your absence of engagement. People refuse to vote and then think the universe will register their absence and get all upset and repent. Zizek may be aiming for a rather more subtle and complex stance which can be found in shamanism in terms of don Juan's "not doing" or Bataille's notion that the superficial transcendence of the Nazis invading France can be defeated with "our immanence". But that is not passivity. That is biding your time and in a way stepping out of the linear sequence of time, so as to gather one's energies to be used tactically when the exact right time approaches. Immanence is like a bear hybernating. It's underestimated, because one does not know there is a bear there at all, so those with a superficial transcendence discount it in their calculations. Then one day, the bear appears, baring its teeth. She has stepped out of time for a while and is now back in the play, but the enemy has already miscalculated.
And can you see? That is a very different thing from passivity?
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