The Encounter
Dr. Seuss is so easy to read not just because of the sing-song rhythms of his poetry, but because it is always so comfortingly personal. “The Sneetches” is about understanding and cooperation, The Cat in the Hat is about personal responsibility, and the story that we will look at now, The Zax, seems to be a cautionary tale about the price of irrational stubbornness (or about irrationality in general). The tale is simplicity itself. It begins with an encounter in the desert.
So the argument ensues, with each Zax appealing to his traditions and education. “For I live by a rule/that I learned as a boy back in South-Going School./Never Budge! That’s my rule. Never budge in the least! /Not an inch to the West! Not an inch to the East!“Finally — and this this is the “lesson” that the story imparts — the world just expands around them, ignoring them and leaving them in this fruitless deadlock.
The Culture
So, alright children, play nicely with your friends. Do not insist too strongly on your rights. Another good conduct story. But there is much more to this story when we bring in JacquesLacan and Slavoj Zizek, who both insist on the creative power of the impossible deadlock. We will talk more about this in the future, but for now let us ask if the world has actually ignored the deadlocked zaxes. It looks more like the world has build itself around their deadlock, almost as if a deadlock was needed in the first place in order for a world to have an anchoring point (what Lacan has called a point-de-capiton, or a “quiliting point”). Those zaxes must stand there in order for the rest of the world to continue.
So outside of Dr. Seuss, can we see this deadlock playing itself out? What about the contrast we see lately between “bipartisanship” and “gridlock” (just another name for “deadlock”). We all knew that Obama’s rhetoric of bipartisan cooperation was wishful. No one expected Republicans to have an political epiphany. So there will be no cooperation (except from the three Republican senators who voted for the stimulus package.) There will always be the progressive Democrats and the Right-Wing Republicans facing each other, two Zaxes in a desert standoff.
But this is no cause for lament. On the contrary. It is exactly what makes action possible. Sometimes the action is disastrous (iraq war) and sometimes it founds a new world (the New Deal). But note the paradox: it is the deadlock itself that serves as the unmoving mover of the subsequent action. Why is this? I think it is because every deadlock (in keeping with its name) is a little potential death sentence, a place where disaster can strike, the world can dissolve, the destructive powers of nature or history can come flooding in. It is precisely this disaster that must be averted, defended against, and — to return to Freud — repressed. Yet it is in the defense against disaster (and defense is another word for “repression”) that much can be created. We embrace Obama as a redemptive figure precisely because of what we might call the virtual power of the disaster.
This is why, at the moment, I am loving Rush Limbaugh and the American Far Right. The more they dig in their heels, the more angry becomes the rhetoric, the more strongly the rest of the country will react against the disaster that they embody, and the more they will embrace not deadlock but action. And yes, I am arguing that an ultimately reasonable course of action (economic stimulus, bank privatization, health care, reregulation) can be driven by the irrational deadlock. And yes, I am arguing that the disaster of terrorism (the deadlock of the Bush administration) has now transformed itself into the disaster of the reaction against terrorism. Political philosophies that can, indeed must, be deadlocked can serve as the virtual ground for real politically progressive action.
The question remains, are both of the Zax Republicans?
Perhaps it is their difference that binds them. It’s a vast, empty landscape out there, but the two characters are drawn together. This reminds me of Texas where drivers stay dangerously close on the interstate even though there is plenty of room for solitary navigation.