Do Nothing
Sunday, August 16th, 2009It seems Starbucks and (RED) have teamed up for a new marketing campaign they are calling “From Africa To Africa.” For every pound of coffee purchased, Starbucks and (RED) will donate $1 to AIDS relief in Africa.Like U2 and Blackberry, the (RED) Campaign relies wholeheartedly upon capitalism to change the world. They’ve partnered with the likes of American Express, Apple, Converse, Dell, Emporio Armani, Gap, Hallmark and Windows.
Long before I had Žižek’s language to engage with these partnerships, I questioned the efficacy of selling things in an effort to effect change. Ultimately, I suppose, I’m thinking back to the witness of the early followers of Jesus, who, Luke tells us
…were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.
Instead of buying things, these people were selling things in an effort to help others in need. And yet, today’s church seems largely beholden to such capitalist venture.Recently, in a class at Fuller with Erwin Raphael McManus (that I quickly dropped), a student seeking ordination in a mainline denomination asked McManus what he “should do,” after hearing McManus discuss their demise.
McManus’ response, in short, was that this student should finish his degree (if he wants!), but then get involved in business if he really wants to affect change. Citing Tom’s Shoes and To Write Love on Her Arms, McManus counseled this student away from “the church” in favor of business, where real change happens.Talk about a loss of imagination!
Žižek concludes, in Violence: Six Sideways Reflections
To circumscribe the contours of this radical rejection, one is tempted to evoke Badiou’s provocative thesis: “It is better to do nothing than to contribute to the invention of formal ways of rendering visible that which Empire already recognizes as existent.” Better to do nothing that to engage in localised acts the ultimate function of which is to make the system run more smoothly (acts such as providing space or the multitude of new subjectivities). The threat today is not passivity, but pseudoactivity, the urge to “be active,” to participate,” to mask the nothingness of what goes on… Sometimes doing nothing is the most violent thing to do. (Violence,216-217)
Though Žižek would counsel us to “do nothing,” I suspect that isn’t his ultimate hope. Instead, I’d bet the Slovenian critical theorist is encouraging us to do nothing long enough to rethink the confines of capitalist thought and reject it in favor of communism.
Then again, maybe there is a way of life even more radical than he is encouraging us toward, One that changes the world as it changes us.
