Slavoj Žižek

Tarrying with the negative : Kant, Hegel, and the critique of ideology

In the space of barely more than five years, with the publication of four pathbreaking books, Slavoj Žižek has earned the reputation of being one of the most arresting, insightful, and scandalous thinkers in recent memory. Perhaps more than any other single author, his writings have constituted the most compelling evidence available for recognizing Jacques Lacan as the preemient philosopher of our time. In Tarrying with the Negative , Žižek challenges the contemporary critique of ideology, and in doing so opens the way for a new understanding of social conflict, particularly the recent outbursts of nationalism and ethnic struggle. Are we, Žižek asks, confined to a postmodern universe in which truth is reduced to the contingent effect of various discursive practices and where our subjectivity is dispersed through a multitude of ideological positions? No is his answer, and the way out is a return to philosophy. This revisit to German Idealism allows Žižek to recast the critique of ideology as a tool for disclosing the dynamic of our society, a crucial aspect of which is the debate over nationalism, particularly as it has developed in the Balkans—Žižeks home. He brings the debate over nationalism into the sphere of contemporary cultural politics, breaking the impasse centered on nationalisms simultaneously fascistic and anticolonial aspirations. Provocatively, Žižek argues that what drives nationalistic and ethnic antagonism is a collectively driven refusal of our own enjoyment. Using examples from popular culture and high theory to illuminate each other—opera, film noir, capitalist universalism, religious and ethnic fundamentalism—this work testifies to the fact that, far more radically than the postmodern sophists, Kant and Hegel are our contemporaries.

Tarrying with the Negative

In the space of barely more than five years, with the publication of four pathbreaking books, Slavoj Žižek has earned the reputation of being one of the most arresting, insightful, and scandalous thinkers in recent memory. Perhaps more than any other single author, his writings have constituted the most compelling evidence available for recognizing Jacques Lacan as the preemient philosopher of our time. In Tarrying with the Negative , Žižek challenges the contemporary critique of ideology, and in doing so opens the way for a new understanding of social conflict, particularly the recent outbursts of nationalism and ethnic struggle. Are we, Žižek asks, confined to a postmodern universe in which truth is reduced to the contingent effect of various discursive practices and where our subjectivity is dispersed through a multitude of ideological positions? No is his answer, and the way out is a return to philosophy. This revisit to German Idealism allows Žižek to recast the critique of ideology as a tool for disclosing the dynamic of our society, a crucial aspect of which is the debate over nationalism, particularly as it has developed in the Balkans—Žižeks home. He brings the debate over nationalism into the sphere of contemporary cultural politics, breaking the impasse centered on nationalisms simultaneously fascistic and anticolonial aspirations. Provocatively, Žižek argues that what drives nationalistic and ethnic antagonism is a collectively driven refusal of our own enjoyment. Using examples from popular culture and high theory to illuminate each other—opera, film noir, capitalist universalism, religious and ethnic fundamentalism—this work testifies to the fact that, far more radically than the postmodern sophists, Kant and Hegel are our contemporaries.

Did somebody say totalitarianism? : five interventions in the (mis)use of a notion

Totalitarianism has always had a precise strategic function: to guarantee the liberal democratic hegemony by dismissing the Leftist critique of liberal democracy as the two-faced twin of Right-wing dictatorships. Instead of providing yet another systematic exposition of the history of this notion, Zizek looks at totalitarianism in a way that Wittgenstein would approve of - finding it a cobweb of family resemblances. He reveals the consensus view of totalitarianism, in which it is invariably defined in terms of four things: the holocaust as the ultimate, diabolical evil; the Stalinist gulag as the alleged truth of the socialist revolutionary project; the recent wave of ethnic and religious fundamentalisms to be fought through multiculturalist tolerance; and the deconstructionist idea that the ultimate root of totalitarianism is the ontological closure of thought. Zizek concludes that the devil lies not so much in the detail but in what enables the very designation totalitarian: the liberal-democratic consensus itself.

Against the Populist Temptation

551 1. Many pro-European commentators favorably compared the readiness of the new Eastern Europeanmembers of the union to bear financial sacrifices to the egotistic, intransigent behavior of the U.K., France, Germany, and other old members; however, one should also bear in mind the hypocrisy of Slovenia and other new Eastern Europeanmembers; they behaved as the latest members of an exclusive club, wanting to be the last allowed to enter.While accusing France of racism, they themselves opposed the entry of Turkey. Against the Populist Temptation

Tolerance as an Ideological Category

The Culturalization of Politics Why are so many problems today perceived as problems of intolerance, not as problems of inequality, exploitation, injustice? Why is the proposed remedy tolerance, not emancipation, political struggle, even armed struggle? The immediate answer is the liberal multiculturalist’s basic ideological operation: the culturalization of politics. Political differences, differences conditioned by political inequality, economic exploitation, and so on, are naturalized and neutralized into cultural differences, different ways of life, which are something given, something that cannot be overcome, but must be merely tolerated. To this, of course, one should answer in Benjaminian terms: from culturalization of politics to politicization of culture. The cause of this culturalization is the retreat and failure of direct political solutions (the welfare state, socialist projects, and so on). Tolerance is their postpolitical ersatz.

For a leftist appropriation of the European legacy

Abstract This article focuses on Jacques Ranciere ‘s opposition between the two facets of the political: the ‘police’ (maintaining social order) and politiciza‐tion proper (in which an excluded element—demos, ‘le troisieme etat, a dissident Forum—asserts itself as the immediate embodiment of the Whole of Society). After analysing different modalities of the ‘repression’ of this gesture of politicization (from arch‐politics to todays postmodern post‐political ‘identity‐politics ‘), the article proposes a reading of the disintegration of Eastern European Socialism as a moment of authentic politicization, and then proceeds to oppose globalization and universalization: universalization is the key moment of the political ‘short‐circuit’ between the Whole and its excluded Part, while globalization (the newly emerging ‘post‐political’ global order) presents perhaps the strongest threat to politics proper yet.

The Ongoing “Soft Revolution”

What, however, if there is nopuzzled look, but enthusiasm,when theyuppie reads about impersonal imitation of affects, about the communication of affective intensities beneath the level of meaning (“Yes, this is how I design my advertisements!”), about exploding the limits of self-contained subjectivity and directly coupling man to a machine (“This reminds me of my son’s favorite toy, the Transformer, which can turn into a car or an action hero!”), or about the need to reinvent oneself permanently, openingoneself up to a multitude of desires that push us to the limit (“Is this not the aim of the virtual sex video game I amworking onnow? It is no longer aquestion of reproducing sexual bodily contact but of exploding the confines of established reality and imagining new, unheard-of intensive modes of sexual

Conversations with Zizek

Introduction. 1. Contexts and horizons: Opening the Space of Philosophy. 2. The Madness of Reason: Encounters of the Real Kind. 3. Subject of Modernity: Virtuality and the Fragility of the Real. 4. Tolerance and the Intolerable: Enjoyment, Ethics and Event. 5. Miracles do happen: Globalization(s) and Politics

Schlagend, aber nicht Treffend!

Things look really bad forme inErnesto Laclau’s response (Laclau,“Why Constructing a People Is theMain Task of Radical Politics,”Critical Inquiry 32 [Summer 2006]: 646–80) tomyessay “Against thePopulistTemptation”. I have again and again “utterly missed the point” (p. 654) ; I am “entirely unaware” (p. 654) of the theoretical consequences of the concepts I use; I have “not understood even the ABCs of the theory of hegemony” (p. 664); my reproaches are “pure invention” (p. 658) and do not possess even a “tentative plausibility” (p. 663), so that against me it is sufficient to evoke “an argument that any undergraduate knows” (p. 660); I “systematicallydistort Lacanian theory” (p. 657); I need to “go and do [my] homework” (p. 680); my concrete political references are “pure delirium” (p. 680); one finds in several places in my text “cheap tricks” (p. 649 n. 3); my procedure is “dishonest” (p. 678 n. 19). Is there not something slightly surprising in this obviously excessive subjective animosity? In academia, a polite way to say that we found our colleague’s intervention or talk stupid and boring is to say, “It was interesting.” So if, instead, we tell a colleague, “It was boring and stupid,” he would be fully justified to be surprised and ask, “But if you found it boring andstupid, why did you not simply say that it was interesting?” This unfortunate colleague would be right to take the direct statement as involving something more, not only as a comment about the quality of his paper but as an attack on his very person. So the difference between Laclau and me is that while Laclau tells me that my text is boring and stupid, I am telling him politely that his is interesting.

Critical ResponseIA Symptom—of What?

level, one can easily fabricate endless similar and similarly tasteless variations: Hitler, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Judith Butler agree that. . . . From such passages, one can guess the general tenor of Harpham’s evaluation of me—my true face is the advocacy of terror and violence without