Western Desire for the Decomposition of Peripheral Politics

In a kind of simple world systems analysis, we may say that the world has one pole which is the core (the west), and the other regions (“third world”, “developing nations” etc) collectively known as the periphery. This is a very simplified analysis: for one, it seems to suggest that things from the core flow out onto the periphery, and that the core and periphery are linked by an intimacy in which everything that is present in the core eventually makes its way into the periphery. This transportation of things from the core to the periphery, however, only occurs in the sphere of goods, services and cultural practices, but does not occur in the sphere of politics; rather, the periphery has to fight for true political change, even when it is democracy that they are seeking. It is as if the west wants to dominate the rest of the world in its trade practices, in the sphere of economy, but ceases to intervene when the issue is just the political sphere, the political mechanism and the political apparatus. In any case, even when it does attempt to intervene into the political, its attempts are half-hearted, meaning that it only wants to intervene into politics when trade, commerce and the economy are involved; in all honesty, politics is of a secondary concern to the west.

But, can we go so far as to say that the west wants, in the peripheral regions, an anarchic decomposition of politics? Can we say that the west is waiting for the moment when politics in the periphery is nonexistent, so that it can infiltrate the peripheral territories at will for its more economic ends? No is the answer, for the west may want political decomposition, but it will not get it today, and so we have a Lacanian scenario with regards to the logic of desire: the western desire is political decomposition, but it will not get it, and hence political decomposition maintains as a desire, that is, desire can be sensed between the fantasy of political decomposition and the peripheral resistance to this scenario. The west will not get a decomposition of politics, a death of the political, no matter how much it desires it; or rather, it desires the decomposition of politics precisely because it will not get it. In this reformulation of desire we can note the weakness of western desire today compared to how it led to conquest and violence in colonial times. Western desire is no longer strong, no longer a driving force, rather, a kind of artificial image of western desire is maintained by inserting a fake desire in between the fantasy and the reality.  

The important question is: why does the peripheral other remain as other, to continue to exist and live as other, rather than being completely destroyed through western desire? How does the periphery resist western desire? In today's world, it is not so much the west actively imposing its ideas and practices among people, but rather, it is more about the periphery actively mimicking the western—and mimicking to such a great degree of accuracy that the peripheral region literally re-presents the west: one need only think of how accurately the national capitals of the world's poor places represent western values and aesthetics. Privileged places and populations of the periphery become too accurate a picture of the west. And this mimicry begins at the political level, that is, not at the level of objects of trade such as cars and houses, but at the level of the models of western politics: democracy, authoritarianism, isolationism and so on. This accurate re-presentation is problematic because it implies a form of independence from the west, an independence which begins with the political mechanism and which the west fears will eventually spread to independence in goods and services, in the economy, in commerce, in production....a form of isolation from the west which begins with political mechanisms becoming independent...There is quite a paradoxical situation where independence occurs because the periphery mimics, rather than in the attempt to resist such a mimicry. And hence the periphery can resist desire: by re-presenting the west with its own image, by blurring the lines between self and other, by showing oneself to not be different (and 'female') but same (and 'male'). Western desire is resisted by showing the oppression of the periphery to be a kind of suicide on the part of the west.  

The west assumes, it seems to us, that the political mechanism and political actors of the peripheral population are most easily influenced by ideas of independence and isolation. Hence, the west is divided about how to respond to the political mechanisms of the periphery: on the one hand, it sees these political mechanisms as a joke, as flimsy and weak, but on the other hand, the political is very important because it can influence other social actors and institutions to isolate themselves from the west, for instance, on the issue of free trade. And hence we arrive at an important image: the west has to take the joke (the joke of the periphery's political mechanism) the most seriously, and therefore, what is most serious in the periphery is precisely the joke. In a psychoanalytic vein, as Freud said, the (western) analyst is the one person who does not laugh at the joke.