Following Reason by Manolopoulos Mark;

Author:Manolopoulos, Mark;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

Given that Žižek’s definition of systemic violence is somewhat vague (necessarily so – somewhat like our definition of leading), let’s recall how he relates it to a case of agential conflict. The 2005 Paris riots involved the burning of dwellings and vehicles, as well as clashes with police. These acts may be characterized as subjective violence. No demands were made by the Muslim rioters. So why did the riots occur, and why did it lack any programmatic dimension? What are we to make of this violence? Žižek proposes:

The Paris outbursts were thus not rooted in any kind of concrete socio-economic protest, still less in an assertion of Islamic fundamentalism. One of the first sites to be burned was a mosque – which is why the Muslim religious bodies immediately condemned the violence. The riots were simply a direct effort to gain visibility. A social group which, although part of France and composed of French citizens, saw itself as excluded from the political and social space proper wanted to render its presence palpable to the general public. Their actions spoke for them: like it or not, we’re here, no matter how much you pretend not to see us. Commentators failed to notice the crucial fact that the protesters did not claim any special status for themselves as members of a religious or ethnic community striving for its self-enclosed way of life. On the contrary, their main premise was that they wanted to be and were French citizens, but were not fully recognised as such … [T]he message of the outbursts was not that the protesters found their ethnic-religious identity threatened by French republican universalism, but, on the contrary, that they were not included in it, that they found themselves on the other side of the wall which separates the visible from the invisible part of the republican social space.

(Žižek 2008: 76–77)

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