The Crisis of Redundancy

A Productive Look: The Crisis of Redundancy

It is wise to consider the predictions of critics, naysayers, doomsday prognosticators with the skeptical distance they deserve, especially when they champion their predictions after the fact. Arguably, the maxim applies to Nouriel Roubini, who has received much attention of late for his oft-publicized economic foresight. Much media praise has been lavished on the NYU economist, now known as “Dr. Doom,” for having successfully predicted the housing bubble’s burst and our well known economic collapse that ensued. His knowledge of economics surely surpasses my own, and likely that of most of his readers. Yet in the face of his successful predictions, our skepticism questions, “isn’t there inevitably someone claiming that the sky is falling?” And once the sky does indeed fall, won’t someone receive praise? Knowledgeable Roubini undoubtedly is, but lucky as well. Economic predictions, however dire or bright, only appear, so goes the skeptical charge, to have been conjured from a crystal ball retrospectively.

The particular achievement of Roubini’s predictions has now found its obverse in the nearly universal achievement among American news media outlets. Theirs’ appears in the business and politics headlines declaring the sky is falling, while everywhere we look, the sky is quite obviously falling. We know we are living amidst an economic recession, “the worst since the Great Depression” so the clichéd truism goes; yet we continue to hear such recurrent statements nonetheless. Informative, surely they are – isn’t that the democratic function we assign news media – but a thoroughly redundant transmission of information. Just this last week, for example, following the G-20 meeting in London, FoxNews opened its article: “World leaders on Thursday clinched a $1.1 trillion deal to combat the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression…”[1] The rhetorical maneuver is subtle, indeed seemingly banal. Yet between Roubini’s predictive luck and FoxNews’ informative redundancy, there operates a similar logic. Whereas praise for the economist was applied from the future predicted to the prediction of the future, the self-praise on the part of news media applies to itself. The logic of both is circular: the future foretold corroborates the foretelling. And the circularity tightens in the case of news media: the future foretold becomes auto-corroborating; the foretelling of the future coincides with the present. Isn’t this the weight behind the claim that we are living through “the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression” – that there is no end in sight?

When sharpened with a critical edge, the charge of redundancy may transform into suspicion of the self-fulfilling prophecy generated by news media. Won’t the perpetual invocation of the superlative – the worst crisis – only serve to secure the vicious cycle of perceived perpetuity that foments the perpetual economic state? But surely, there is an economic crisis, and we leave amidst it; neither shutting one’s mouth nor closing one’s ears hardly charges the reality. What warrants critical (re-)consideration, however, is the function the superlative serves in respect to its ideological consequences.

Journalists’ deployment of this form of redundant statements serves a facile rhetorical function. It provides a smooth transition from the state of the economy to the “news” that, in whatever way, responds to that state. A readerly basis of familiarity is established in order to segue into whatever follows. We can chide journalists for their unimaginative prose, but my claim goes beyond simply forsaking the rhetorically ornamental.

Redundantly insisting on the economy’s failure instills the notion that this failure is given. It is not simply that the economic crisis is true (indeed it is), but that its truth transcends any divergence of interpretations. The market’s transcendence over our lives has been well noted: it elevates as a reified structure that affects our individual lives so severely; yet, we typically find ourselves unable to affect its trends in a reciprocally consequential manner. In other words, the state of the market appears objective. An object that looms over us and warrants the objective analysis of impartial experts. Hence, the diagnosis of its failure is the concern of economists, and so too are its suggested remedies, transferred to politicians in the form of “bailouts” and “stimulus packages.” By redundantly asserting the severity of the crisis, news media secure the semblance of its objectivity by figuring the market as the object upon which politicians, ostensibly informed by economists, act by legislative intervention. We easily forget, however, that the “economy” is not a thing, but a placeholder that describes the conglomeration of our actions and interactions. Figuring the economy as an object of economists’ and politicians’ actions occludes the fact that it already reflects a modern history of political decisions. Consider a recent Wall Street Journal article:

"The economy is still under severe stress," with many job losses, "so we've still got a lot of work to do," Mr. Obama added, suggesting there will be additional actions unveiled by his administration over the coming weeks to counter economic hardship.[2]

Notice how “the economy” is rendered the object of “additional actions.” Politics operates as the subject, which in turn asserts its will over the ailing economy. The de-politicization of economics ensues. There is little return to nor reflection upon the political actions that still resonate throughout the market. Political decisions undoubtedly contributed to the economy’s meltdown. Yet, the above passage demonstates, in exemplar fashion, the figuration of economics as that realm outside of politics. The political demand is to act. The economy is to be acted upon. The political options we confront are thus between action (swift action at that) and no action, while forgetting that the latter is really no option at all. In his analysis of the initial bailout proposals last year, Slavoj Zizek reflects on the market’s de-politicized objectivity:

What all this indicates is that the market is never neutral: its operations are always regulated by political decisions. The real dilemma is not ‘state intervention or not?’ but ‘what kind of state intervention?’ And this is true politics: the struggle to define the conditions that govern our lives. The debate about the bailout deals with decisions about the fundamental features of our social and economic life, even mobilising the ghost of class struggle. As with many truly political issues, this one is non-partisan. There is no ‘objective’ expert position that should simply be applied: one has to take a political decision.[3]

By eliding the nature of political economy, instead rendered the economy, the rouse of false choices – action versus inaction – paralyzes a truly democratic politics. Once our options become action versus inaction, shouldn’t we leave decisions to the men of action? But the problem is not simply the illusory heroism of such political men of action, coming to save the economy that had been tied down to the train tracks.

The ideological rouse manifests most clearly in the medicinal tropes of health mobilized to ensure the economy’s perceived neutrality outside the partisan domain of politics. If the economy is sick, just as when our body is sick, the natural course of action is to cure it. And it is the doctor who administers the cure. Of course, there is no room for debate; the sick body demands a remedy. Debate (especially of the political sort) only forestalls the patient’s recovery. What relates the sick body to the doctor’s remedy, and by analogy, the economy to the politicians’ intervention, is the transparent immediacy of action. The obfuscation of politics results, which can be read, in its patency, in Thomas Friedman’s column:

Our country has congestive heart failure. Our heart, our banking system that pumps blood to our industrial muscles, is clogged and functioning far below capacity. Nothing else remotely compares in importance to the urgent need to heal our banks.[4]

Friedman advances the all-too prevalent medicinal trope that fortifies the veil of redundancy that cloaks our perceptions of the economic crisis. Again, the implicit options are between healing (action) and not healing (not acting), tempered by the demand for urgency.

Redundancy denotes what is needless, but moreover, it depends upon the impossibility of opposition. “Did you know that my unmarried friend is actually, after all, a bachelor?” – “Surely, your statement is redundant. What else could he be?” By redundantly insisting on the economy’s failure, news media have secured a redundancy of politics, but not simply the annoying sort that leaves asking “whats your point?” There is an ideological twist. Instead of the impossibility of opposition, politics now leaves us with, via the action versus inaction binary, an opposition to the impossible. Inaction becomes the demon from which politicians and economists save us, which means they save us from the specter of a ghost that never actually haunts us. What we’re left with is their action and our acquiescence. Therein lies the true crisis of political economy.

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[1] “G-20 Leaders Develop Trillion-Dollar Crisis Plan.” Foxnews.com. April 2, 2009.

[2] Judith Burns, “Obama Highlights “Hope” in Struggling Economy.” Online.wsj.com. April 10, 2009.

[3] Slavoj Zizek, “Don’t Just Do Something, Talk.” London Review of Books. October 10, 2008.

[4] Thomas Friedman, “This Is Not a Test. This Is Not a Test.” nytimes.com. March 10, 2009.