First as Tragedy, then as Farce by Slavoj Zizek

Author:Slavoj Zizek
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Verso

The circle of postcolonial dependence is thus closed again, and food-dependency will only be exacerbated.

Are we thus not gradually approaching a global state in which the potential scarcity of three basic material resources (oil, water, and food) will become the determining factor in international politics? Is not the lack of food—which makes itself visible in (for the time being) sporadic crises here and there—one of the signs of the forthcoming apocalypse? While its occurrence is overdetermined by a multitude of factors (growing demand in fast-developing states like India and China; harvest failures due to ecological disturbances; the use of large parts of arable land in Third World countries for export products; the market-determined use of grains for other purposes such as biofuel), it seems clear that this is not a short-term issue which can be quickly overcome with the appropriate market regulation, but is rather the sign of a long-term problem impossible to solve by means of the market economy. Some apologists for the new world order point out that the lack of food is in itself an indicator of material progress, since people in the fast-developing Third World countries earn more and so can afford to eat more. The problem nonetheless is that this new demand for food pushes millions towards starvation in those countries lacking such fast economic growth.

Does the same not go for the forthcoming energy crisis, and the looming shortages in water supply? In order to approach these problems adequately, it will be necessary to invent new forms of large-scale collective action; neither the standard forms of state intervention nor the much-praised forms of local self-organization will be up to the job. If such problems are not solved one way or another, the most likely scenario will be a new era of apartheid in which secluded parts of the world enjoying an abundance of food, water and energy are separated from a chaotic “outside” characterized by widespread chaos, starvation and permanent war. What should people in Haiti and other regions blighted by food shortages do? Do they not have the full right to violent rebellion? Communism is once again at the gates.

Clinton is right to say that “food is not a commodity like others. We should go back to a policy of maximum food self-sufficiency. It is crazy for us to think we can develop countries around the world without increasing their ability to feed themselves.” There are, however, at least two points to add here. First, as was noted earlier with regard to Mali, while imposing the globalization of agriculture on Third World countries, the developed Western countries are taking great care to maintain their own food self-sufficiency with financial support for their own farmers, etc. (Recall that financial support to farmers accounts for more than half of the entire European Union budget—the West itself has never abandoned the “policy of maximum food self-sufficiency”!) Second, one should note that the list of products and services which, like food, are not “commodities like others” extends much

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