2011-07-09 - Is Assange the Quotworld-spirit Embodiedquot a Hegel Scholar Reports From the IekAssange Troxy Gig

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Is Assange the "world-spirit embodied"? A Hegel scholar repoPublished on openDemocracy (http://www.opendemocracy.net)

Is Assange the "world-spirit embodied"? A Hegel scholar

reports from the iek/Assange Troxy gig

Petri Autio, 09th July 2011Subjects:

OurKingdom [1]

Culture [2]

Ideas [3]

Internet [4]

England [5]

London [6]

Networked Society [7]

Petri Autio [8]

WikiLeaks combats the hidden but constant brutality of institutionalized violence, not just by thenews content it brings to light but by disturbing the formal functioning of power itself: it has the

power to circumvent the oblique ways in which information flows and thereby rewrite the very rules

which regulate how rules can be violated. The critical task is to keep this disruptive strength alive.

After firing off his rapid salvo of ideologico-critical nuggets on the 1st of July at Cadogan Hall [9] in

London, Slovenian philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj iek revealed what he considers his

favourite meeting between a famous thinker and a famous agent of change.The thinker [10] in

question was, of course, the great philosopher of freedom Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and the

protagonist Napoleon Bonaparte, the year 1806. Hegel, then on the cusp of completing his first

major work, The Phenomenology of Spirit, long enthused about Napoleon as the "world-spirit

embodied." That is to say precisely as an agent (a capable one, to be sure) only contingently thrust

into the world's limelight, pursuing his own aims - mostly oblivious to the true extent of the societalchanges the processes he nominally leads are engendering - but nonetheless producing

emancipation in his wake.

It is only all too tempting to link this anecdote to the proceedings on the very next day, when iek

(who is himself on the verge of completing a book on Hegel) met with the founder of WikiLeaks,

Julian Assange, for a two-hour conversation moderated by the award-winning journalist Amy

Goodman of Democracy Now! The flow of the relaxed event, held at the Troxy in Eastern London in

front of over 9000 onlineviewers [11] on top of the nearly 2000 present in the hall, was carefully

balanced: Goodman set the scene clearly and posed questions about the past and present of

WikiLeaks to Assange, Assange then gave measured and factual responses, after which iekwas

let loose to try and elucidate what he saw as the broader significance of WikiLeaks and the replies

given.

Although the atmosphere at the Troxy was very genial, and iek generally enthusiastic about

WikiLeaks (as he was in the London Review of Books article [12]he published about it), there was a

distinct tension between the rather standard Enlightenment rhetoric employed by Assange (more

facts, a more complete historical record, better educated journalists) and the significantly more

radical conclusions the philosopher was drawing. This is why - whilst it should no doubt be read in a

similar light as ieks own remarks on his position during the conversation (I feel now like that

Stalinist commentator: the leader has spoken, I provide the deeper meaning) - the ventured analogy

nevertheless contains a kernel of truth beyond its bombast: defining the emancipatory significance

of phenomena should not be left to the actors alone.

To illustrate: in response to Goodman's initial question on the significance of the Iraq war logs,

Assange primarily emphasized the concrete revelations WikiLeaks had provided. He mentioned the

400.000 cables leaked, 15.000 previously unreported deaths revealed, a video of an American

helicopter mowing down civilians, and so on. In contrast, iek went far enough to say that even if

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WikiLeaks had not revealed a single new thing, it should be considered game-changing. Why?

Because of the very way it functions. For the philosopher, our democracies not only have rules

regarding what can be revealed, but also rules which regulate the transgression of those first rules

(the independent press, NGOs, etc). The contention then is that WikiLeaks operates outside both

these sets of rules, and that there is the source of its power.

In this way, the reply was firmly anchored in the key trope iek haschampioned [13] since his first

major work in English: that ideology in today's "post-ideological" world is not dead, but rather morepowerful than ever -alive not so much on the level of knowledge but in the ways it structures social

reality itself. In other words, we can play a game of where I know that you know (about, say, the

everyday violence that underpins our free society), and you know that I know, although only so far.

Once confronted with information in a naked enough way, the we (the public) can no longer ignore

its false cynical distance to it. Or so iek contended using as an example the difference between a

husband knowing abstractly about his wifes infidelity contrasted with the visceral reaction to

seeing a picture of the act itself. WikiLeaks, he argues, does just this.

That Wikileaks is disruptive is amply shown by the vast reaction against it, whether through the

calls (which Goodman listed) to label Assange a terrorist and assassinate him, in the financial

blockade enacted by Mastercard and Visa (which, as Assange pointed out, have been deemed

unlawful), or by the seemingly extralegal way his extradition is being handled. Here, iek pointsout, the innocence of the accusers is anything but innocent; they decry the violence of WikiLeaks

revelations, themselves oblivious to the military, economic, political and social framework of

everyday violence that goes unmentioned in public discourse. The violence of leaks is on a formal

level, and precisely this is at the root of the Slovenes exclamation to Assange: Yes, you are a

terrorist, but by God, then what are they?

By casting WikiLeaks as a emancipatory, even heroic, phenomenon under constant threat we get to

the true import of the initial analogy: just as the French armies did not fully bring the kind of lasting

social liberation many expected from them, and just as Hegelian philosophy was grossly distorted

and misappropriated after his death, the danger remains that whatever disruptive power WikiLeaks

has will be defused, or even hijacked to work against its original liberating potential. If this is so

then what, precisely, can be done to prevent this?

Sadly, sharp answers were lacking at the Troxy and time ran out before the audience could grill the

all-too-friendly participants with questions. iek did voice his main concern, however: the risk of

WikiLeaks being directly domesticated into the functioning of the official system via a rhetoric of

accepting the projects principle whilst only allowing the right figures to run it.

This I would nonetheless take away as the key message: WikiLeaks should not be seen as merely

another chapter in investigative journalism and free flow of information, but a positive, subversive

emancipatory force by virtue of the way it operates outside the system of secrets and allowed

revelations. What then remains ahead is the hard task of keeping this subversive strength alive.

Remember, by 1814 Hegel had re-appraised the great emancipatory power he had once

encountered, as a "genius destroyed by mediocrity."

SideboxesRelated stories:Wikileaks: the truth is not treason [14]

Cupid's freedom: how the web sharpens the democratic revolution [15]

US power, wikileaks, student protest, Christopher Hitchens and openDemocracy under attack: moral

authority, or authoritarianism? [16]

Country or region:England

City:London

Topics:Culture

Ideas

Internet

This article is published by Petri Autio, and openDemocracy.net under a Creative Commons

licence [17]. You may republish it with attribution for non-commercial purposes following the CC

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Created 07/09/2011 - 07:32

Links:

[1] http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom

[2] http://www.opendemocracy.net/topics/culture

[3] http://www.opendemocracy.net/topics/ideas

[4] http://www.opendemocracy.net/topics/internet

[5] http://www.opendemocracy.net/countries/england-0

[6] http://www.opendemocracy.net/cities/london

[7] http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/collections/networked-society

[8] http://www.opendemocracy.net/author/petri-autio[9] http://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/slavoj-zizek

[10] http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/letters/1806-10-13.htm

[11]

http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/609-slavoj-zizek-and-julian-assange-in-london-with-amy-goodman

[12] http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n02/slavoj-zizek/good-manners-in-the-age-of-wikileaks

[13] http://www.versobooks.com/books/348-the-sublime-object-of-ideology

[14] http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/ryan-gallagher/wikileaks-truth-is-not-treason

[15]

http://www.opendemocracy.net/openeconomy/tony-curzon-price/cupids-freedom-how-web-sharpens-

democratic-revolution

[16]

http://www.opendemocracy.net/tony-curzon-price/us-power-wikileaks-student-protest-christopher-hit

chens-and-opendemocracy-under-at

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