Slavoj Zizek: The Left’s Fidelity to Castro-ation
1984:
Zizek is the Orwell of the Cuban Castroization:
"All of the above mentioned stories do not change the sad fact that the Cuban revolution did not produce a social model relevant for the eventual Communist future. I visited Cuba a decade ago, and on that visit I found people who proudly showed me houses in decay as a proof of their fidelity to the revolutionary “Event”: “Look, everything is falling apart, we live in poverty, but we are ready to endure it rather than to betray the Revolution!” When renunciations themselves are experienced as proof of authenticity, we get what in psychoanalysis is called the logic of castration. The whole Cuban politico-ideological identity rests on the fidelity to castration—no wonder that the Leader is called Fidel Castro!
The true tragedy is that the very remaining authenticity of the Cuban revolution made it possible for the Castro brothers' government to drag on endlessly and meaninglessly, deprived of the last vestiges of an emancipatory potential. The image of Cuba one gets from someone like Pedro Juan Gutierrez (in his “dirty Havana trilogy”) is telltale. The Cuban common reality is the truth of the revolutionary Sublime: the daily life of struggle for survival, of the escape into violent promiscuous sex, of seizing the day without any future-oriented projects."
