Zizek 6

Slavoj Žižek and the Real Subject of Politics
Author(s): R. Moolenaar
Source: Studies in East European Thought, Vol. 56, No. 4, The Many Faces of Slavoj Žižek's
Radicalism (Dec., 2004), pp. 259-297
Published by: Springer
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R. MOOLENAAR
SLAVOJ ZIZEK AND THE REAL SUBJECT OF POLITICS
ABSTRACT. Slavoj Zizek's refusal to sketch an alternative to the global

liberal-capitalist order, combined with his claim that there is an urgent need
for a repolitization of, most of all, the economy, raises the question of the
possibility of radical political thought and action. Considering fundamen
talisms and politically correct multiculturalism not as oppositional, but as
correlative to the 'depolitization' of post-modern societies, Zizek invokes the
emancipatory legacy of Europe in an attempt to reinvent Marxism in a way
similar to what Lenin, thrown into an open situation, had to do in 1917
between the revolutions. A single question confronts political philosophy
today: is liberal-capitalist democracy the ultimate horizon of our political
practice, or is it possible to open up the space for another political articu
lation? The key to a repolitization is to identify with the "symptom" of the
existing global order's false claim to Universality, with the excluded "part of
no part" who politicizes it's predicament by claiming to stand for the real
universal. In order not to discard political struggle as "unrealistic", today's
cynical "realist" consensus must be broken. Taking things as they "really
are" has become the dominant ideological mode that keeps people from
thinking about alternatives. The remedy is to show that things never are
"really" as are.
they
KEY WORDS: capitalism, depolitization, ideology, Marxism, political

philosophy, realism as ideology, repolitization, universality
INTRODUCTION
- not
Slavoj Zizek is, no doubt, a provocative thinker in the
least when it comes to politics. How to consider, for example,
his proposal to 'retrieve Lenin' as a signpost for intervening in
the political situation of our times? The fundamental problem
of today's philosophical-political field, as Zizek has repeatedly
stated, is best expressed by Lenin's old question "What is to be
done?" His own translation of this question: "How do we
reassert on the political terrain, the proper dimension of the
act?" (CHU: 127) Or, how to 'reinvent the political space' in
?* Studies in East European Thought 56: 259-297, 2004.

r* ? 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
260 R. MOOLENAAR
today's conditions of globalization? (TTS: 222) At stake in

these questions are the (im)possibilities of radical political
thought and practice today; the (im)possibilities of radical
politics in today's world, where the collapse of Marxism gives
free reign to the only surviving proponent: neo-liberal thought
(CHU: 91).
When reading Zizek one cannot miss that he takes in his
work, as Ernesto Laclau has said, 'a patently anti-capitalist
stance' (CHU: 205). Time and again he argues against the
acceptance of capitalism as 'the only game in town', and the
renunciation by 'post-modern post-politics' of any real attempt
to overcome the existing liberal-capitalist regime (CHU: 95).
But as Laclau argues in his noteworthy discussion with Zizek, it
remains very unclear what 'overcoming liberal capitalist
democracy' would actually amount to and what alternative
model of society Zizek has inmind. What does itmean to really
change the existing capitalist liberal order? Does this mean, for
example, that Zizek wants to socialize the means of production
and abolish market mechanisms? And what would then be
Zizek's political strategy to achieve this, in Laclau's eyes,
'peculiar aim'? (CHU: 206) This 'peculiar aim', however, seems
for Zizek precisely the point when he repeatedly pleads for 4a
kind of direct socialization of the productive process' as the
only solution' in the present global situation, 'in which private
corporations outside public political control are making deci
sions which can affect us all, even up to our chances of survival'
(TTS: 350-357).
The growing insight that the unrestrained rule of the market
presents a real danger and thus has to be constrained through
-
some socio-political measures in general, a more effective
- seems
democratic control of the economy in itself encourag
ing, but this is for Zizek by far not radical enough. For under
the present circumstances these kind of 'palliative measures'
would only serve as a kind of 'damage control', by which the
worst effects of unbridled globalization might be avoided, but
without in any way posing a real threat to the 'reign of Capital'
(TTS: 395, n. 34). For even if today there can be found a
growing awareness for the need to counteract the reign of the
'depoliticized' global market with a move towards politization,
THE REAL SUBJECT OF POLITICS 261
so that crucial decisions are taken away from experts and state
planners and put the into the hands of the individuals and
groups concerned, this need is mostly conceived in terms of a
revitalization of civil society: active citizenship, broad public
debate and so on. Although these kinds of proposals are to be
welcomed, they usually stop short of putting into question the
very basics of the anonymous logic of market relations and global
capitalism, which imposes itself today more and more as the
neutral framework accepted by all parties and which becomes,
as such, more and more depoliticized (TTS: 351).
The main result of our 'post-political age', which preaches
'the end of ideology', is the radical depolitization of the sphere
of the economy, so that the way the economy functions is ac
cepted as a simple insight into the objective state of things. As
long as this fundamental depolitization of the economic sphere
is accepted, Zizek warns us, all the talk about active citizenship,
about public discussion leading to responsible collective deci
sions, and so on, will remain mostly limited to the 'cultural'
sphere of religious, sexual, ethnic and other way-of-life issues,
without actually encroaching upon the level at which the long
term decisions that affect us all are made (TTS: 353).
The burning philosophical-political question Zizek is
struggling with in most of his recent work is how to reformulate
a leftist, anti-capitalist political project in our era of global
capitalism and of, what he considers as its inherent product, the
violent rise of all kinds of 'irrational fundamentalisms' (TTS:
4). Although Francis Fukuyama's thesis on 'the end of history'
has been somewhat discredited, we on the whole still silently
assume that the liberal-democratic capitalist global order is
somehow the finally found 'natural' social regime. The threats
posed to it by outbursts of irrational violent passions are
mainly considered as anachronistic 'left-overs' from the past
(TFA: 10; WDR: 132). In contrast to this, Zizek maintains that
today's rise of 'irrational violence' should be conceived as
strictly correlative to the 'depolitization' of our post-modern
societies, that is, to the disappearance of the proper political
dimension, its translation into different levels of rational expert
social administration (WDR: 132). In post-modern, post-poli
tics the clash of global ideological visions is replaced by the
262 R. MOOLENAAR
collaboration of expert managerial bodies, negociating the

interests of a multiplicity of particular social strata and groups,
reaching a compromise in the guise of a more or less universal
consensus. But, paradoxically, the final arrival of this truly
-
rational 'concrete universality' the abolition of old ideological
divides, the 'mature' universe of the negociated coexistence of
-
different groups and interests coincides with its radical
opposite, with thoroughly contingent outbursts of (pseudo
naturalized ethnic-religious) violence (TTS: 202). What looks at
first like a multitude of irrational 'remainders of the past', that
should be gradually overcome with the ongoing spread of a
tolerant multiculturalist liberal-democratic order, is to be per
ceived, however, as this liberal order's very mode of existence
(WDR: 133). In this regard there is for Zizek ultimately only
one question which confronts political philosophy today: is
liberal-capitalist democracy the ultimate horizon of our politi
cal practice, or is it possible effectively to comprise its inherent
limitation and thereby to open up the space for another polit
ical articulation? (TWN: 221).
The sad thing about our situation today, however, is that,
after the breakdown of the Marxist alternative, none of the
critics of capitalism, none of those who describe so convincingly
the 'deadly vortex' into which the so-called process of global
ization is drawing us, has any well-defined notion of how 'to get
rid of capitalism' and radically change things. What we see
today are unprecedented changes in production, caused by
groundbreaking technological innovations, which have a radi
cal transformational impact on our societies, but the ultimate
outcome of this still remains very obscure. At the same time, all
this obscure and frenetic change is accompanied by a kind of
- some radical
lethargy in the domain of politics which leads
thinkers to argue that the epoch of groundbreaking political
acts is, at least for the time being, over (DST: 137). Zizek
himself is even prepared to admit that perhaps a fundamental
economico-political change is not really possible, at least not in
the foreseeable future (TTS: 352). So in this sense Laclau is
-
definitely right: Zizek does not have a clear alternative other
than, somehow (but how?) 'socializing the means of produc
-
tion' and he does not provide a clear-cut strategy that would
put us on
the right track to achieve this. But it is precisely with
regard this deadlock that Zizek evokes the name of Lenin:
to
not as nostalgic name for old dogmatic certainty, but Lenin
the
as the one
who found himself, in his time, also 'lost' in a 'cat
astrophic new constellation' in which old coordinates proved
useless, and who was thus compelled to reinvent the entire
socialist project anew.
Without any doubt 'Lenin is dead', and we have to recognize
that his particular solution failed, even failed monstrously, says
Zizek. So the idea is not to 'return' to Lenin, but to 'repeat' him
in a Kierkegaardian sense, that is, to retrieve the same impulse
in today's constellation. To 'repeat Lenin' in a Kierkegaardian
sense is not to repeat what Lenin did, but rather what he failed
to do, his missed opportunities: the Lenin Zizek wants to re
trieve is, to put it in Kierkegaard's terms, the 'Lenin-in
becoming', the 'Lenin-thrown-in-an-open situation', and not
'Lenin-the-Soviet-institution' (RAG: 15).1
Are we, asks Zizek, within our 'late capitalist closure' of the
'end of history', still able to experience the 'shattering impact'
of such an 'authentic historical openness'? If not ... the only
option for the left would, in Zizek's view, indeed be a kind of
-
damage control that is to say, palliative measures which,
while becoming resiged to the dominant course of events, re
strict themselves to limiting the worst effects of the inevitable. If
that would really be the case, Zizek argues, one should at least
fully acknowledge this and thus admit that the much applauded
'proliferation of new political subjectivities', the emergence of
new social movements, and the demise of the 'essentialist' fix
ation of social-political struggles (the proverbial 'disappearance
of the working class'), manifest themselves against the back
ground of a certain silent renunciation and acceptance: the
renunciation of the idea of a global change in the fundamental
relations in our societies and consequently, the acceptance of
the liberal capitalist framework which remains the same, the
unquestioned background, in all the dynamic prolifera
tion of new political subjectivities and socio-political issues
(CHU: 321; TTS: 354).
In Zizek's eyes, today's rise of multiple political subjectivi
ties is simply not political enough, in so far as they silently
264 R. MOOLENAAR
presuppose a non-thematized, 'naturalized' framework of eco

nomic relations (CHU: 108). It should be clear by now, that
Zizek himself does not want to accept this existing capitalist
framework. He does not want to accept the New World Order
as an inexorable process which allows only for moderate pal
liative measures: he continues to think, 'in the old Marxist
vein', that today's capitalism, in its very triumph, is breeding
new 'contradictions' which are potentially even more 'explo
sive' than those of standard industrial capitalism.
As Zizek explains, the moment of victory of a political force
is the very moment of its splitting. The triumphant liberal
democratic 'new world order' is more and more marked by a
frontier separating its 'inside' from its 'outside' - a frontier
between those who manage to remain 'within', the 'developed',
to whom the rules of human rights, social security, etc. apply-,
and the others, the excluded, who are condemned to lead a
spectral life outside the domain of the global order, blurred in
the background, submerged in the formless mass of 'popula
tion'. The main concern of the 'developed' with regard to
'them', the excluded, is to contain their explosive potential,
even if the price to be paid for such containment is the
neglect of elementary democratic principles (TWN: 222; CHU:
313, 322-323).
Most of what he has written about this 'explosive potential'
dates before the devastating impact of the 9-11 WTC-attacks,
but in his philosophico-political essay The Desert of the Real,
that appeared in reaction to this event, Zizek argues for the
thesis that the only way to conceive of what happened then is to
locate it in the context of the antagonisms of global capitalism.
(WDR: 49). If militant 'fundamentalist' Islam is widely per
ceived as the main threat today, one should recognize at least
are not 'true' fundamentalists -
that Muslim fundamentalists
they are already 'modernists', a product and a phenomenon of
modern global capitalism (WDR: 132, 52). Jihad and McWorld
are two sides of the same coin: Jihad is already McJihad. In this
regard the notorious 'clash of civilizations' thesis is to be totally
rejected. Probing into different cultural traditions is precisely
not the way to grasp the political dynamics of these conflicts
(WDR: 34). What we are witnessing today are rather clashes
within each civilization that is to say conflicting ways of dif

ferent groups to cope with or to accommodate oneself to global
capitalism. The Muslim fundamentalist target is not only global
capitalism's corrosive impact on social life, but also the corrupt
'traditionalist' regimes in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, which are
fully integrated into Western capitalism (WDR: 41). So instead
of endless analyses of how Islamic 'fundamentalism' is intol
erant towards our liberal societies, and other clash of civiliza
tion topics, we should rather focus on the interplay of socio
economic and geo-political interests at the background (WDR:
42, 43, 34). In this regard the 'perverted' position of the truly
'fundamentalist' conservative regimes provides the key to the
often-embarrassed conundrums of American politics in the
Middle East: they stand for the point at which the USA is
forced explicitly to acknowledge the primacy of economy over
democracy (WDR: 42). It is simply of vital interest to the USA
that these countries remain undemocratic, so that they can be
counted on for their oil reserves. And if one still wants to hold
on to the 'clash of civilizations' topic, one should recognize how
pseudo-naturalized ethnic-religious conflicts are precisely the
form of struggle which fits the frame of global capitalism. In
our age of'post-polities', when 'politics proper' is progressively
replaced by the decisions of powerful expert managerial bodies,

politicizing one's predicament is prevented and the only
remaining legitimate form of struggle is cultural, ethnic, reli
gious tension. These kinds of tension, however, are to be
regarded as a displacement of the real antagonism.
Are not all real-life 'clashes' today somehow related to global
capitalism? The most horrifying slaughters in Africa take place
within the same 'civilization', but are also clearly related to the
interplay of global economic interests. In all so-called 'ethnic'
conflicts the shadow of other interests is easily discernible. So
with regard to all this Zizek pleads indeed for a proper dose of
'economic reductionism' (WDR: 42).
Repeatedly Zizek argues for a radical repolitization of the
economy (TTS: 353). In this respect, he speaks about the direct
multinational functioning of Capital as a form of 'auto-colo
nization', whereby global corporations, as it were, cut the
umbilical cord with their 'mother-nation' and treat their
266 R. MOOLENAAR
country of origin as simply another territory to be colonized.

What we encounter here is a paradox of colonization in which
-
there are only colonies, no colonizing countries the colonizing
power is no longer a nation-state but the global company itself.

to WTO -
So, according sponsered investment agreements
-
which are elaborated and discussed behind closed doors
corporations will be able to sue sovereign states if they impose
'overstringent' ecological or health and labor standards. In the
long term, Zizek warns us, we shall all not only wear Banana
Republic shirts but also live in banana republics (TTS: 215-216;
TFA: 55).
We need to counter this process and move urgently towards
a society in which global decisions about the fundamental
orientation of how to develop and use the productive capacities
would somehow be made by the 'entire collective of people'
affected by these decisions. And the only way effectively to
bring about a society in which all kinds of risky long-term
decisions would ensue from a public debate involving all con
cerned, says Zizek, is some kind of radical limitation of Capi
tal's freedom and the subordination of the process of
production to social control. Correcting Clinton's dictum 'It's
the economy, stupid', Zizek states emphatically, 'It's the polit
-
ical economy, stupid' and, of course, this means at the same
time an obvious reminder of Marx (among others) (TTS: 347
vv.).2
EXPLOSIVE CONTRADICTIONS.... OR LIVING

ON BORROWED TIME
As I have said, Zizek continues to think, 'in the old Marxist

vein', that today's capitalism, in its very triumph, is breeding
new 'contradictions' which are potentially even more 'explo
sive' than those of standard industrial capitalism.
Although he acknowledges the 'breakdown' of the Marxist
notion that capitalism itself generates the force that will destroy
it in the guise of the proletariat, Zizek is still fond of repeating
Marx's old formula that the 'limit of capitalism is capital itself,
-
i.e., the capitalist mode of production but in repeating this
formula, he gives it a somewhat different twist. For this

notion of 'capital as its own limit' can be read in two different
ways, says Zizek. The first would be that of a simplistic his
toricist reading, according to which the incessant growth of the
'productive forces' (pushed along by new technologies) is fol
-
lowed by its appropriate 'social framing' the 'relations of
production'. From this point of view, Marx's formula indicates
that the capitalist 'relations of production', which first allowed
for the fast development of the productive forces, become at a
certain point an obstacle to their further development. The
productive forces have outgrown their frame of social relations
and this demand a 'social revolution' by which a new balance
would be found. The problem with this reading, however, be
comes clear when asking the question at what point, precisely,
the capitalist relations of production becomes an obstacle to the
further development of the productive forces? Or at what point,
precisely, one could speak of a 'balance' between productive
forces and the relations of production, in regard to the capi
talist mode of production? The answer to both questions is that
neither the moment of becoming an obstacle nor the moment of
a new balance can be indicated or defined in itself The reason
for this is that the 'contradiction' or discord between forces and
relations of production is to be recognized as an internal
antagonism of capitalism, which precisely causes its permanent
development. Thus, contrary to the above-mentioned 'simplis
tic evolutionary idea', it is rather capitalism's very imbalance, its
fundamentally distorted frame of social relations, which drives
forth the development of its productive forces. In other words,
incessant development is the only way for it to 'resolve' or come
to terms with its own constitutive imbalance or 'contradiction'.
This means, however, that capitalism has no 'normal', balanced
state: its normal state is the permanent production of excess;
the only way for capitalism to survive is to expand (as Hegel
knew already...). The elementary feature of capitalism consists
of its inherent structural imbalance, its innermost antagonistic
character: that is to say, the constant crisis, the constant rev
olutionizing of its conditions of existence, whereby the system

can only survive as its own excess. Herein lies the ultimate
paradox proper to capitalism, and its 'last resort': capitalism is
268 R. MOOLENAAR
capable of transforming its limit in the source of its power, so

that its limit, far from constricting is the very impetus of its
development (TWN: 209; RL: 20). This spiral of productivity,
however, is ultimately nothing but a kind of desperate flight
-
forward to escape its own inherent contradictions until itwill
no longer have any 'substantial content' outside itself to feed on
(TFA: 17;TTS: 358).
As Zizek states, in a way Francis Fukuyama was right -
capitalism is the end of history, not just a historical epoch
among others. A certain excess which was as itwere kept under
check in previous history, perceived as a local outgrowth, as an
excess, a deviation, is in capitalism elevated into the very
principle of social life, in the speculative movement of money
begetting more money, of a system which can survive only by
constantly revolutionizing its own conditions (RL: 20). Marx
already, perceived clearly how capitalism unleashed the
breathtaking dynamics of self-enhancing productivity, and he
also perceived clearly how this capitalist dynamics is propelled
by its own inner obstacle or antagonism (TFA: 17). Marx lo
cated the elementary capitalist antagonism in the opposition
-
between use and exchange-value: in capitalism the potentials
of this opposition are fully realized, the domain of exchange
value acquires autonomy and is transformed into the specter of
self-propelling speculative capital, which needs the productive

capacities and the needs of actual people only as its dispensable
temporal embodiment (RL: 20). The very notion of crisis is
derived from this gap: a crisis occurs when reality catches up
with the illusory self-generating mirage of money begetting
-
more money this 'speculative madness' cannot go on indefi
nitely, it has to explode in ever more severe crises.

Is this analysis not more than apt today? On the one hand,
we have crazy solipsistic speculations about futures, mergers
etc., following their inherent logic; on the other hand, reality is
catching up in the guise of ecological catastrophes, poverty, the
Third World collapse of social life. The problem with capital
ism, however, is not just this 'solipsistic mad dance', but that it
continues to disavow its gap with reality and that it presents
itself as serving 'real needs of real people' (RL: 21). So in
this sense it is far too simplistic to say that the specter of this
'self-engendering monster', which pursues its path regardless of

any human or environmental concern, is only an ideological
abstraction, and that one should not forget that behind this
abstraction there are real people and natural objects on whose
productive capacities and resources Capital's circulation is
based. The trouble is that this 'abstraction' is real in the precise
sense of determining the very structure of material processes:
the fate of whole strata of populations, sometimes of whole
countries, can be decided by 'the solipsistic speculative dance of
Capital', which pursues its goal of profitability with a blessed
indifference to the way itsmovement will affect social reality, so
that a country can be 'financially sane' even ifmillions in it are
starving (TFA: 15-16; WDR: 36).
The fundamental divide we should consider, is the one be
tween those included into the sphere of (relative) economic
prosperity and those excluded from it. The result of global
ization and the rise of the global village is the ghettoization of
whole strata of the world population; the result of decoloni
zation is that multinationals treat even their own country of
origin as just another colony; the result of the much praised
'disappearance of the working class' is the emergence of mil
lions of manual workers in the Third World sweatshops, out of
our western delicate sight (CHU: 322). And instead of the
political subject 'working-class' demanding its universal rights,
we find in our western societies on the one hand the multiplicity
of social strata and groups, each with its own particular rights,
problems, needs and interests, and on the other the uncon
trolled flux of illegal immigrants, ever more prevented from
politicizing their predicament of exclusion (TTS: 199).
In regard to all this, the state - far from 'withering away'
under influence of the much praised liberal 'deregulation' -
plays a crucial role in the 'obverse side' of globalization: all
kinds of protective measures, trade barriers, border police.
What lies beneath these protective measures is the simple
awareness that the present model of late capitalist prosperity
cannot be universalized (WDR: 149-150). And the very sad
thing is that (whatever remains of) the traditional working class
ismore aware of this and therefore even more sensitive to the
270 R. MOOLENAAR
protection of their relative privileges than the big corporations

(WDR: 150).
The sad irony is thus that today, because of its populism, the
Right ismuch closer to articulating the actual ideological stance
of this traditional working class (CHU: 129, n. 9).When the
populist right accuses big multinational corporations to
betray the 'ordinary decent working people of our nation', it is
moving to occupy the terrain that is left vacant by the Left.
While post-modern 'radical' politics accepts the thesis of the
'disappearance of the working class' and its corollary, the
growing irrelevance of class antagonism, it is the Right which
pretends to speak now on behalf of this proverbial 'disap
pearing working class' (DST: 237-238). The new Rightist pol
iticians are the only 'serious' political force today which
addresses the people with an anti-capitalist rhetoric, albeit in a
repulsive nationalist / racist / cultural / religious clothing (DST:
242). Deplorable as it is, the new populist Right is the only
serious political force which is today 'alive': it takes the ini
tiative, sets the pace, determines the problematic of the political
struggle, while the liberal center is reduced to a 'reactive force'.
It mostly limits itself to reacting to the populist Right's initia
tives, by either posing them vehemently from an impotent
Leftist posturing, or by translating them into acceptable liberal
centrist wordings: 'while we reject the populist hatred of the
immigrants, we have to admit that they are addressing issues
which really worry people, so we should take care of the
problem, and introduce tougher immigration and anti-crime
laws' (WDR: 151-152).
By serving as the negative common denominator of the
entire center-left liberal spectrum, the new populist right actu
ally plays a key structural role in the legitimacy of the
-
liberal-democratic hegemony. They are the excluded ones
unacceptable as the party of government - who through this
very exclusion provide the negative legitimacy of the liberal
hegemony, the proof of their 'democratic' attitude. In this way
-
their existence displaces the true focus of the political struggle
which is, for Zizek, the stifling of any Leftist radical alternative
- on to
the solidarity of the entire 'democratic' bloc against the
Rightist threat (DST: 242). This 'solidarity', however, succeeds
at the same time in excluding the last reference to
anti-capitalism and class struggle. Here the liberal-democratic
'New Center' plays a double game: it suggests that Rightist
populists are our true common enemy because of their intol
erance, the spreading of hatred etc., while it actually manipu
lates this Rightist scare in order to hegemonize the 'democratic'
field, to define its terrain and win over or discipline its true
adversary, the radical Left (DST: 243).
The question of how, from a radical 'Leftist' perspective, it
would be possible to really undermine the global capitalist
system is for Zizek not just a rhetorical one. He doesn't want to
engage in a ritualistic incantation of old formulas, be it those of
'revolutionary Communism' or those of the 'Welfare State
reformist Social Democracy'. He is not preaching a simple re
turn to the old notions of class struggle and socialist revolution,
but he also does not want to accept the New Left 'radical
center' attitude of 'stripping naked' by getting rid of the last
vestiges of the 'proper leftist discourse' (TTS: 353). How then,
to contest today's predominant consensus according to which
- some 'fundamentalist'
the age of ideologies notwithstanding
- we have entered the
and/or 'populist' backlashes is over, since
post-ideological era of rational negotiation, planning and
decision-making, based upon neutral expert-knowledge about
economic, social, demographic, ecological etc. processes?
(CHU: 323).3
The first thing to note is that the supposedly neutral refer
ence to the necessities of the market (usually invoked in order
to categorize grand ideological projects as unrealistic utopias) is
itself to be regarded as one among the great modern Utopian
projects of our times. In this sense one cannot simply speak
about the withering away of the Utopian impetus in our soci
eties, for this impetus is alive and well, especially among the
advocates of the market economy, who still sincerely believe
that the global mechanism of the market, if properly applied,
will automatically bring about the optimal state of progress and
happiness for the whole of society (or the whole of the world,
for that matter). The second thing to note is that ideology is not
just utopia: for no less ideological is the anti-utopian stance of
the 'realists' who devalue every global project of radical social
272 R. MOOLENAAR
change as 'utopian', that is, as unrealistic dreaming or as
harboring a dangerous totalitarian potential. This 'realist'

stance is precisely today's predominant form of ideology, which
prevents us from imagining a fundamental social change
(CHU: 324).
The ultimate answer, however, to the reproach that leftist
proposals for a radical transformation are Utopian and unreal
istic should be that the 'true utopia' is the belief that the present
liberal-democratic capitalist consensus could go on indefinitely,
without major disasters and/or radical change. So in order to be
truly a 'realist', one must consider breaking out of the con
straints of what appears 'possible' or 'feasible' today, that is by
opting for the impossible, that is for that what seems impossible
or 'utopian' today (RL: 24). According to Zizek the old '68
motto, Soyons r?alistes, demandons l'impossible!, still holds
(CHU: 321, 326). The only 'realistic' prospect is to hold on to
this impossible Utopian place of the global alternative, holding
- even
this place open if it remains empty, living on borrowed
time, awaiting the content to fill in (CHU: 326; TTS: 199).
BEYOND THE REALITY PRINCIPLE
What should be, in regard to this, the task of philosophy? Zizek

takes recourse to the traditional sense of 'amazement' that
marks the origin of philosophy. Philosophy begins the moment
we do not simply accept what exists as given (TWN: 2). The
original philosophical sense of amazement was precisely a
rupture from being submerged in the accepted 'reality' of the
mythical universe (OBN: 118). The specificity of 'Western his
tory' can be understood as a history of ruptures as to what
counts as 'reality' and how 'we' are related to it. In this way
historicity itself is nothing else than a series of ruptures through
which, time and again, our sense of 'reality' is being defined or
symbolized anew. The proper philosophical stance would pre
cisely be to hold on to this moment of rupture, of a gap,
maintaining it's distance toward any given Master-Signifier, or
key signifying element, by which the symbolic structuring of
'reality' is 'closed of, and thereby established as a certain
'Order of Being'.4 Philosophy requires the suspension of any
reigning Master-Signifier (TWN: 2).
With Lacan, Zizek distinguishes between the 'discourse of
the Master' and the 'discourse of the Analyst'. The discourse of
the Master establishes a new symbolic universe, whereas the
discourse of the Analyst affirms the rupture, the gap that
momentarily suspends the Order of Being. Although this is a
moment of 'radical negativity', it should at the same be re
-
garded as something 'positive' or productive as a generating
core to be encircled repeatedly by the subject's symbolic activity
(TTS: 162-165). Psychoanalysis enables us to grasp this plu
rality of symbolizations itself as a multitude of responses to the
same impossible Real kernel: an original trauma, an impossible
kernel that resists symbolization. In this sense one has to rec
ognize that there is no ultimate 'big Other' to guarantee the
consistency of the symbolic space we dwell in: there are only
contingent, local, inconsistent and fragile points of stability
(TFA: 117).
To understand this we have to realize how Zizek makes use
of the Lacanian distinction between 'reality' and the Real,
whereby reality is the external domain that is ordered en
delineated by the socio-symbolic order, while the Real is pre
cisely that which resists any symbolization, the point of inher
ent failure of symbolization. The Real is not something
external, but internal to the symbolic: it is the impossibility of
the symbolic fully to become itself, an inherent limitation
(CHU: 120). The paradox of the Lacanian Real is that it is an
- in the sense of really
entity which in itself does not exist
-
existing but which is present only as failed, missed, in
a shadow, and dissolves itself as soon as we try to grasp it in
its positive nature. In a way 'the Real' is nothing but
- an
the impossibility of its inscription impossibility which
persists and which is only to be grasped by its distorting effects
(SOI: 163).
Here, the gap that forever separates the domain of (symbol
ically mediated, i.e., ontologically constituted) reality from the
elusive and spectral Real that precedes it is crucial: what psy
choanalysis calls 'fantasy' is the endeavor to close this gap by
(mis)perceiving the 'pre-ontological Real' as simply another,
274 R. MOOLENAAR
'more fundamental', level of reality. This means that 'fantasy'

projects on to the pre-ontological Real the form of constituted
reality (as in the notion of another, suprasensible reality, or in
the Kantian notion of das-Ding-an-sich). This pre-ontological
dimension, however, is best discerned, says Zizek, through the
Hegelian gesture of transposing epistemological limitation into
an ontological so our -
fault, that the limitation of knowledge
that is, its failure to grasp the Whole of Being, the way our
knowledge gets inexorably entangled in contradictions and
-
inconsistencies is simultaneously the limitation of the very
object of our knowledge, so that the gaps and voids in our
knowledge of reality are simultaneously the gaps and voids in
the 'real' ontological edifice itself. The very innermost 'motor' of
the Hegelian dialectical process, as Zizek sees it, is precisely the
interplay between epistemological obstacle and ontological
deadlock. This brings us to what Zizek calls the fundamental
feature of his 'dialectical-materialist' ontology: the minimal gap,
the delay, which forever separates an event 'in itself from its
symbolic registration / inscription. Of crucial importance here is
the difference between this dialectical-materialist notion of
'symbolic inscription' which, 'after the fact', confers (f)actuality
on the fact in question, constituting it as such, and the idealist
esse = act
equation percipi. For the of symbolic registration
always comes after a minimal delay and remains forever
incomplete, cursory, a gap separating it from the Ansich of the

-
registered process yet, precisely as such, this gap is part of the
'thing itself, as if the 'thing' in question can fully realize its
ontological status only by means of a minimal delay with regard
to itself. So the very distance towards the 'thing itself has to be
conceived as part of the 'thing itself (cf. TTS: 55-59).
This is not the place to retrace all the intricacies of Zizek's
often dazzling discourse on the Real. The difference between
symbolically constituted reality and the Real that resists it, can
perhaps better be made clear by way of an example. To this
end, I want to take a closer look at what Zizek indicates as 'the
antinomy of postmodern reason', which is of paramount
importance for rethinking the possibility of a philosophical
critique of ideology. So, let's see how Zizek points out a paradox
inherent in the two apparently opposed ideologico-political
positions that predominate today, and what ideologico-critical

lesson he wants us to draw from it (DST: 165-166; MI: passim).
STEPPING OUT OF IDEOLOGY?
On the one hand we have the ideology of realism with its appeal
to 'reality' against false illusions: we live in the era of the end of
great ideological projects, so let's be realists and give up
- one
immature Utopian illusions should come to terms with the
global market (DST: 165). Such reference to 'reality' functions
as a direct dogmatic appeal, which dispenses with the need for
any further argumentation. Is not one of the fundamental
stratagems of ideology, however, the reference to self-evidence?
'Let the facts speak for themselves', Zizek says, is perhaps the
-
arch-statement of ideology the point being that facts never
'speak for themselves', but are always made to speak (MI: 11).
While these 'facts' are supposed to show us the 'truth', plain
and simple, they actually are always part of discursive gestures,
which are in the service of particular interests, for example,
legitimizing existing power relations.
As the inherent counterpoint to this 'realism' we have, on the
other hand, the 'post-modern' notion that there is no 'true'
reality, that what we perceive as 'reality' is simply the result of a

certain historically specific set of discursive practices and power
mechanisms. According to this kind of 'discourse analysis' the
very notion of an access to reality unbiased by any discursive
devices or conjunctions with power is ideological. So para
doxically, here, the ideological criticism of illusions on behalf of
reality is universalized and inverted into it's opposite: reality
itself is the ultimate illusion (DST: 155). Would the final out
come then be the inherent impossibility of isolating a 'reality'
whose consistency is not maintained by ideological mecha
nisms?
The 'realist' pretence of stepping out of ideology is de
nounced by Zizek as 'ideology par excellence'. (MI: 10) But at
the same stroke he is warning us that when some procedure is
denounced as 'ideological par excellence' one can be sure that
its counterpoint is no less ideological.5 We should thus be
276 R. MOOLENAAR
careful to avoid the trap that makes us slide into ideology under
the guise of stepping out of it. If we denounce as ideological the
very attempt to draw a clear line of demarcation between ide
ology and actual reality, this seems to impose the conclusion
that the only non-ideological position would be to renounce the
very notion of extra-ideological reality and accept that all we
are dealing with are indeed 'symbolic fictions', regulating a
plurality of discursive universes, never 'reality' as such. But as
Zizek emphatically states: such a 'quick, slick postmodern
solution' is also to be denounced as 'ideology par excellence'
(MI: 17). So where now to turn? In Zizek's view it all hinges on
our persisting in the following 'impossible' position: although
no clear line of demarcation separates ideology from reality,
although ideology is already at work in everything we experi
ence as 'reality', we must none the less maintain the tension that
keeps the critique of ideology alive.

What we experience as reality is, indeed, not the 'thing itself,
but always already symbolized, constituted, structured or
schematized by symbolic mechanisms. The stumbling block
Zizek wants to highlight then, is that these symbolizations
ultimately always fail, that they never succeed in fully 'covering'
the Real of reality (MI: 21). There is some 'hard kernel' which
resists, which cannot be integrated in our symbolic universe.
That is to say that 'reality' is never 'whole'. If what we expe
rience as 'reality' is to emerge, something has to be foreclosed
from it, excluded: an irrepresentable X, which is 'primordially
repressed', but on whose 'repression' reality itself is founded.
This irrepresentable X-the part of reality that escapes us, that
remains non-symbolized, 'repressed' but on whose repression
our symbolic reality is founded -
nevertheless 'returns' to haunt
it. It persists somehow, it insists and it takes on 'body' in the
form of 'spectral apparitions' or insubstantial 'illusions'.
To clarify this a bit more, let's go back to our example and
try to take the ideologico-critical lesson Zizek wants us to draw
from it.We encountered the paradox that the ideological crit
icism of illusions on behalf of reality (as performed by the
'realists') is universalized and inverted (by the 'discourse
analysts'), so that finally reality itself becomes the ultimate
illusion. But, as Zizek says, when reality itself is deprived of the
'hard kernel' of some Real, of that which resists simple inte

gration into our common reality (symbolization, integration in
our universe), it turns into a malleable, indefinitely plastic
texture which then, precisely, loses the character of 'reality',
and turns into a fantasmatic effect of discursive practices (DST:
166). By this the discerning cognitive value inherent to the term
'ideology' is diluted. Therein resides precisely one of the main
reasons for the progressive abandonment of the notion of
ideology: this notion somehow grows 'too strong' when it be
-
gins to embrace everything including the very neutral, extra
ideological ground originally supposed to provide the standard
by means of which one should be able to measure ideological
distortion. Although Zizek certainly does not hold on to some
sort of neutral extra-ideological ground, he definitely wants to
keep the possibility of a critique of ideology open. The condi
tion for this is the difference between reality and the Real,
which provides the necessary 'tension' to keep the critique of
ideology alive. This means, however, that the concept of ide
ology should be disengaged from the representationalist prob
lematic: the true representation of reality against illusions.
Ideology, Zizek argues, has nothing to do with illusion, in
the sense of a mistaken, distorted representation of reality (MI:
7). For the obverse of the above mentioned paradox is that,
with regard to the 'realist' position, the ultimate experience of
the Real that persists somehow without being integrated is not
that of 'reality which shatters illusions', but rather that of an
'illusion' which 'irrationally' persists against the pressure of
reality, which does not give way to 'reality' (DST: 166). There is
a kind of persistence of the Real located in the illusion itself, so
that we could, ironically, speak of 'the hard rock of illusion' on
which reality stumbles. And although they can never be fully
integrated in reality, these 'illusions' (about, for example, jus
tice, solidarity, community) which persist are not only a
stumbling block but at the same time a starting point for the
impetus to change things.
To illustrate this and establish the link with concrete social
struggles, Zizek evokes the example of the role of Neues Forum
and other dissident groups in ex-Communist Eastern Europe.
While they seem to display all the features of ideology, Zizek
278 R. MOOLENAAR
maintains, these groups actually provide an example of non
ideology (MI: 6).
THE FUTURE OF AN ILLUSION
The collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe was experi

enced by many of its participants as the moment of sublime
enthusiasm, as the promise of global panacea, as an event that
would realize freedom and social solidarity (CHU: 316; TWN).
There is no need to insist that a big gap between what they
wanted, expected, hoped for and what they actually got with
the passage from real existing socialism to real existing capi
talism. It is clear that the protesting crowds at the time 'wanted
something else', a Utopian object of impossible fullness desig
nated by a multiplicity of names ('solidarity', 'human rights'
etc.), not what they actually got: capitalist democracy, with all
its impasses (CHU: 316). But should the 'third way' project of
Neues Forum therefore retroactively be dismissed as nothing
but an illusion, a hopelessly outdated utopianism, in the face of
the merciless market reality, that 'cracked down' on it and
pulverized it? (TTS: 206).
Indeed, one could say that Neues Forum's proposal of an
Utopian 'third-way' beyond capitalism and real existing
socialism, the sincere belief and insistence of these passionate
intellectuals that they were not just contributing to a restora
tion of western capitalism, proved to be an insubstantial illu
-
sion. But, says Zizek, precisely as such as a thorough illusion
-
without any substance it was strictu sensu non-ideological,
because it did not 'reflect', in an inverted-ideological form, any
actual relations of power (MI: 7). According to Zizek, the no
tion of non-ideology is absolutely indispensable. There is a non
ideological longing for authentic community life, which is to be
fully asserted (TTS: 185). It is wrong to condemn or denounce
this longing as proto-totalitarian. There is nothing 'wrong' with
it as such. This 'authentic longing' becomes ideological only
when it is distorted, displaced or manipulated by a specific
'articulation' through which it functions as the legitimization
of a definite set of social relations. So, according to Zizek, the
non-ideological Utopian character of an 'authentic popular

longing for a true community and social solidarity against fierce
competition and exploitation' is to be fully asserted (TTS: 185).
What makes it 'ideological' is its specific articulation.
We find a very precise illustration of this with the East
German crowds demonstrating against the Communist regime,
when the authentic longing for true community and solidarity
against oppression turned into its ideological distortion with
seemingly only a slight change in the slogan they put forward.
First they shouted 'Wir sind das Volk', which turned within a
couple of days into Wir sind ein Volk. As Zizek points out, with
-
the first version of the slogan the crowds claimed that they the
excluded counter-revolutionary 'scum' of the official 'Whole of
the People', who had no proper place in the official space other
than as 'counter-revolutionaries', hooligans', or 'victims of
- were
bourgeois propaganda' the people, that they stood for
'all'.When the slogan changed however, this signaled the clo
sure of the momentary authentic political opening, and the
reappropriation of the democratic impetus by the thrust to
wards the reunification of Germany, which meant rejoining
-
Western Germany's liberal-capitalist system at the time
probably the most 'realistic' option (TTS: 189).

A 'realistic' political standpoint, however, can be quite
accurate as to its objective content, yet thoroughly ideological.
All along there had been forces opposing Neues Forum who
thought that, realistically, the best move would indeed be the
quickest possible annexation to West Germany, and who re
garded the people around Neues Forum as nothing but day
dreamers. Although this position proved quite 'true' as to its
content, it was, according to Zizek, none the less ideological.
The reason for this is that the conformist adoption of theWest
German model, and thus the integration of the former GDR in
the world-capitalist-system, implied an ideological belief in the
unproblematic, non-antagonistic functioning of the late capi
talist 'social state'. By now, of course, this belief has turned
sour, as it is caught up in the confusing turmoil of ruthless
commercialization and economic colonization, the continuing
split between Ossies and Wessies, the emergence of neo-Nazi
skinhead violence, and the strange phenomenon -
of Ostalgie
280 R. MOOLENAAR
the nostalgia for the communist past among intellectuals as well

as ordinary people in the now defunct German Democratic
Republic.
For this Ostalgie there could, no doubt, be given several
explanations. Probably it mostly consists in a conservative
nostalgia for the security of the constrained, self-satisfied way
of life going on in a benevolent boredom (RAG: 20). People
could appreciate their luck: while social life went on in a
predictable way, without great efforts or shocks, one was al
lowed to withdraw into one's private world. Although life was
'poor and drab', there was no need to worry about the future,
for the Party took care of everything (TTS: 339). Particularly
in its late 'stagnant phase', Real socialism was conceived as a
society one could live in peacefully, avoiding the capitalist
competitive stress. This was even 'the last line of defense'
when, after the fall of Khrushchev, it became clear that Real
socialism was losing the competitive edge in its war with
capitalism. And yes, one should say, actually people in a way
were happy then. For, as Zizek points out, three fundamental
conditions of happiness were fulfilled. First, material needs
were basically satisfied: brief shortages of some goods re
minded people that they should be glad that these goods were
generally available. Secondly, there was always the Other (the
Party) to be blamed for everything that went wrong. There
was actually a perverse kind of liberation in this possibility of
shifting the burden of responsibility on to the Other: reality
was not really 'ours' (the ordinary people's), it belonged to
Them; its grayness bore witness to 'Their' oppressive rule and,
paradoxically, this made it much easier to endure. And
thirdly, at the right distance, not too far away, not too near,
there was an Other place, the consumerist West one could
secretly dream about. This fragile balance was disturbed with
the developments resulting in the collapse of communism, the
people finding itself in a system now, in which the vast
majority is definitely less happy. Even the 'drab grayness' of
the socialist environment in a way seems more desolate and
depressing now than before, since its reality is no longer

'Theirs', but has to be conceived as 'ours'. This is a difficult
thing to cope with, as the strange twists of this phenomenon

of Ostalgie is bearing witness to.
But then, says Zizek, couldn't one maintain that the ultimate
cause of Ostalgie is perhaps a longing, not so much for the
communist past, for what actually went on under Communism,
but, rather, for what might have happened there, for the missed
opportunities of another Germany (WDR: 24). In this sense,
ultimately, even the post-Communist outbursts of neo-Nazi
violence are, in Zizek's view, a negative proof of the presence of
emancipatory chances, symptomatic outbursts of rage dis
playing an awareness of missed opportunities. The 'void of the
missed revolutionary chance', says Zizek, can explode in 'irra
tional' fits of destructive rage, as kind of 'defense-formation',
covering up 'the void of the failure' to intervene effectively in

the social crisis (WDR: 23-24).
So, coming back to Neues Forum, one can say that in regard
to the 'factual truth' , their position - taking the disintegration
Communism as the opening-up of a new form of social space,
somehow reaching beyond the confines of capitalism - was
doubtless 'illusory'. But in a sense this illusion 'insists' or 'per
sists', even if it is in the form of a displaced rage and resentment
or as an 'ostalgie' longing. Shouldn't one say therefore that
precisely by the 'scandalous' and exorbitant nature of the pro
posals of Neues Forum, it attested to an acute awareness of the
social antagonisms that pertain to late capitalism? In this regard
Zizek maintains that during the confused months of transition
from 'real existing socialism' into capitalism, the 'illusionary'
idea of a 'third way' was the only point at which antagonism was
not obliterated. The 'negative' gesture implied in the (impos
sible project of a 'third way' - saying 'no' to both (existing)
communism and (existing) capitalism - counted more than its
later failed positivization. Herein lies one of the tasks of a 'post
modern' critique of ideology, Zizek argues: to designate the
elements within an existing social order which -be it in the guise
of insubstantial illusions-point towards the system's antago
nistic character, and thus 'estrange' us to the self-evidence of its
established identity (MI: 7).
282 R. MOOLENAAR
(THE IRREDUCIBILITY OF) SOCIAL ANTAGONISM
The crucial point Zizek is concerned with each time is the

awareness of the antagonism that is always involved in society.
Ideological is the articulation in which this antagonistics is
obliterated, denied or, as is often the case, displaced to some
- for
thing 'outside' the social whole example to put the blame
for every social wrong to the 'Jews', the 'immigrants' , the
'foreigners', the 'evil-doers'. According to an old Marxist topos,
the evocation of an 'external enemy' always serves to displace
the focus from the true origin of tensions: the inherent antag
onism of the system.
To elaborate this, Zizek often evokes the case of anti
Semitism, which is not just a 'special case' of ideology, but
perhaps the purest incarnation of ideology as such (SOI: 125).
The 'basic trick' of anti-Semitism is to displace the inherent
social antagonism into the antagonism between the sound
social body, and the Jew as the force corroding it. Thus it is
not society itself which is 'impossible', based on antagonism,
but the source of corruption is located in a particular entity,
the Jew, conceived as an external intruder. This displacement,
says Zizek, is facilitated by the standard association of Jews
with financial dealings. According to this association, the
source of exploitation and of class antagonism is located, not
in the basic relation between the working and the ruling
classes, but in the relation between the productive forces and
the merchants who exploit the productive classes, thereby
replacing organic co-production with class struggle. What
gives 'energy' to this displacement, however, is the way the
figure of the Jew condenses a series of heterogeneous antag
onisms: economic, political, moral-religious, sexual. So 'the
Jew' is portrayed as a profiteer, a schemer, morally corrupt, a
seducer of the sexually innocent, etc. In this way the figure of
the Jew is a symptomatic knot, a fantasy construction by
which the inherent antagonistic split, the antagonistic fissure
that traverses society, is simultaneously disavowed and dis
placed-externalizing or 'projecting' it into an outward positive
cause, whose elimination would finally allow for a restoration
of order, stability and identity (SOI: 124-128). But this
disavowal/displacement of the fundamental social antagonism,

this externalization/projection of the cause of social antago
nism into the figure of the Jew, clearly avoids confrontation
with social antagonism.6
In this way the so-called 'Nazi-revolution' is at the same time
an exemplary case of pseudo-change, a
of frenetic activity in the
course of which many things did change, but precisely so that
- that which -
something really mattered would not change
(CHU: 125). As Zizek argues, Nazi anti-Semitism drew its en
ergy from anti-capitalist resistance. The Nazi ideology was the
dream of having 'capitalism without capitalism', that is, capi
talism without its excess of social imbalance and disintegration
(WDR: 130-131). The reason for this disintegration was pre
cisely attributed to the figure of the Jew, whose 'excessive'
accumulation and greed were presented as the cause of social
antagonism. The dream was that, since the excess was intro
duced from outside, as the work of an alien intruder, its elim
ination would make it possible to obtain again a stable social
organism: the reassertion of the corporatist ideology of society
as an organic Whole, a society in which the relation between its
parts is complementary, harmonious and balanced (TWN:
210).
This corporatist temptation, says Zizek, is the necessary
reverse of capitalism: it is the dream to have capitalism
without capitalism, that is to say capitalism without its excess,
without the antagonism that causes its structural imbalance
(TWN: 210). Doesn't this also account for the disturbing
reality which emerged in Eastern Europe after the transition
period with its democratic enthusiasm, when one saw the
weakening of liberal-democratic tendencies in the face of the
growth of corporate national populism, with all its usual
elements, from xenophobia to anti-Semitism? (TWN: 200).
Why these chauvinist nationalist obsessions instead of an
openness toward ethnic diversity? Why did authoritarian
nationalism overshadow democratic pluralism? Shouldnot one
account for the reemergence of nationalist chauvinism in
Eastern Europe as a kind of protective 'shock absorber'
against the sudden exposure to capitalist openness and
imbalance?
284 R. MOOLENAAR
"ALL THAT IS SOLID....''
Marx already was fascinated by the 'deterritorializing' impact

of capitalism, the dissolution of all traditional links: the well
known theme of 'all that is solid melts into air', from the
Communist Manifesto. As Marx describes it, capitalism's
constant revolutionizing of production goes together with the
uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, resulting in
everlasting uncertainty and agitation. All fixed, fast-frozen
relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices
and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become
antiquated before they can ossify... (TFA: 12 vv, and 40). The
whole point of Marx' analysis is that this unheard-of dissolu
tion of all traditional forms, does not bring about a society in
which individuals run their lives collectively and freely, but
engenders a form of anonymous Destiny, in the guise of market
relations (TTS: 339).
The traditional ideological mechanism to deal with this
uncertainty has been to acknowledge the fundamental unpre
dictability of the outcome of our acts on the individual level, but
that ultimately these acts are regulated or coordinated by the
Invisible Hand of the Market. We find here the liberal-capital
istic version of the Hegelian 'cunning of reason', as the myste
rious agency that somehow re-establishes the balance: each of us
pursues his/her particular interests, but the ultimate result of
this clash and interaction of the multiplicity of individual acts
and conflicting intentions should be global welfare. Today
however, in our post-modern 'risk-society', there is no Invisible
Hand whose mechanism, blind as itmay be, somehow reestab
lishes the balance, says Zizek. Not only do we not know what
our acts will in fact amount to, there even is no global mecha
nism regulating our interactions; no fictional Other Place in
which the accounts are properly kept and are finally given their
right perspective (TTS: 339-340). At the same time, however,
when the abstraction of market relations that run our lives is
brought to an extreme, the book market is overflowing with
psychological manuals advising us how to succeed, thus making
our success dependent on our proper attitude: another kind of
mystification What we have here is the false 'psychologization'
or 'personalization' of what are in fact objective social pro
cesses. With a somewhat twisted reference to Marx, one could
say that in contemporary capitalism the 'relations between
things' (the objective market relations) assume the phantasma

goric form of pseudo-personalized 'relations between people'.
The proper question should thus not be 'how did the rich and
- and
powerful do it', but how is the capitalist system structured
-
what is wrong with it that some acquire disproportionate
wealth and power and others are reduced to near nothingness.
For this we have to question the very basics of the anonymous
logic of market relations (TTS: 349-351).
Marx' fundamental idea was that the anonymous market as
the modern form of Fate, could be superseded by establishing a
self-transparent society in which social life was controlled and
regulated by the 'collective intellect'. At the same time, however,
-
this was Marx' fundamental mistake and in a way it is not
surprising that this project found its 'perverted' realization in
'actually [real] existing socialism'. For despite the extreme
uncertainty of the individual's fate caused by periodic paranoiac
political purges, it was perhaps the most radical attempt to
suspend the uncertainties and disintegration that pertain to
capitalist modernization (TTS: 339). In this regard Zizek re
minds is of the election slogan of Slobodan Milosevic's Socialist
Party in the first 'free' elections in Serbia: 'With us, there is no
uncertainty'. This slogan exemplifies in a way the logic of what
Lacan calls 'the discourse of the Master': its role is precisely to
introduce balance, to regulate the excess. With capitalism this
function of the Master becomes suspended. This helps perhaps
to grasp the corporatist temptation and the reemergence of
nationalist sentiments in Eastern Europe. It is as if, in the very
moment when the Communist chain preventing the free devel
opment of capitalism, that is, deregulated production of ex
a
cess, was broken, it was countered by a demand for a new
Master who will rein it in.What one demands is the establish
ment of a stable and clearly defined social body which will re
strain capitalism destructive potential by cutting off the
excessive element; and since this social body is experienced as
that of a nation, the cause of any imbalance 'spontaneously'
assumes the form of a national enemy (TWN: 211).
286 R. MOOLENAAR
Capitalism can no longer be conceived as the domain of the

discourse of the Master. Lacan takes over the Marxian theme
from the Manifesto, of how capitalism dissolves all stable links
and traditions; how, at its onslaught, 'all that is solid melts into
air'. This does not concern only and primarily material prod
ucts- i.e., capitalism's breathtaking dynamics of obsolescence
that, instead of stable products lasting for generations, inces

santly produces new and newer objects, resulting in growing
-
piles of discarded waste but even more so the stability of the
'symbolic order' that provides a definitive identification for
subjects (TFA: 40-^1). In this regard all contemporary forms of
'paranoiac over-identification' should be conceived, says Zizek,
as the inherent reverse of capitalism, as an inherent reaction to
it (TWN: 220). All the different forms of a passionate 'return' to
ethnic, cultural, religious or nationalist 'roots', the violent
emotional moment of'recognition', of becoming aware of one's
'true' belonging, are an answer to the experience of social life as
fleeting and non-substantial, of being 'adrift in the world'.

These returns to 'substance', however, are impotent in the face
of the global march of capital; they are its inherent supplement,
the 'limit/condition' of its functioning (TTS: 209). The more the
logic of capital becomes universal, the more its opposite will
assume features of 'irrational fundamentalism': not as remain
ders from the past, but as capitalism's inherent product. There
is no way out of this deadlock as long as the universal
dimension of our social formation remains defined in terms of
Capital (TWN: 220).
With a reference to Deleuze, Zizek points out that the cap
italist 'deterritorialization' is always accompanied by reemerg
ing 'reterritorializations'. In this regard we should notice the
inherent split in the field of particular identities themselves: on
the one hand, so-called 'fundamentalisms', which are preoc
cupied with the Identity of one's own group, implying the
practice of excluding the threatening others; on the other hand,
there is post-modern multiculturalist 'identity polities', aiming
at the tolerant coexistence of ever-shifting, hybrid lifestyle
groups and their incessant diversification into subgroups, each
insisting on the right to assert its specific way of life. This
incessant multiplication of groups and subgroups with their
fluid, shifting identities, is possible only against the background

of capitalist globalization, which is always ready to satisfy their
particular demands. Far from containing any kind of subver
sive potential, the dispersed, plural, constructed subject -hailed
as 'subversive', by postmodern theorists- simply designates the
'
form of subjectivity that corresponds to late capitalism' and its
commodification of everyday life: the formulas for marking
'difference', 'resistance' or 'authenticity' are eagerly provided
by it's ever-expanding life style industry (TWN: 216). Ulti
mately, says Zizek. the split between fundamentalism and post
modern pluralist identity politics should be regarded as a 'fake',
concealing a deeper correspondence: both remain stuck in
particularism, leaving the global process of Capital intact. The
only way to break out of the self-perpetuating circle of glob
alization-with-particularization is by (re)asserting a dimension
of Universality against capitalist globalization (TTS: 210-211;
TWN: 220).
TRUE UNIVERSALITY: THE EMANCIPATORY

LEGACY OF EUROPE
The key component of the leftist position Zizek wants to

elaborate is an equation of the assertion of Universalism with a
militant, divisive position of one engaged in a struggle. So 'true'
universalists are not those who preach global tolerance of dif
ferences and all-encompassing unity, but those who engage in a
passionate fight for the assertion of the truth they are com
mitted to: a truth that demands for a radical subjective stance
and, precisely as such, is addressed to all and everybody. The
division it mobilizes is not the division between different cul
tures, groups and subgroups, but a division which runs 'diag
onally' or 'vertically' to the social and cultural divisions,
between those who recognize themselves in this truth, and those
who deny or ignore it (TTS: 226). This means acknowledging
the radically antagonistic, that is political character, of social
life and accepting the necessity of taking sides as the only way
to be truly universal (TTS: 222). True universality is not the
never-won neutral space of 'horizontal' translation from one
288 R. MOOLENAAR
particular culture to another, but, rather, the violent experience

of how, across the cultural divide, we share the same 'vertical'
antagonism. (WDR: 66).

By reasserting the notion of Universalism, Zizek proposes a
return to the fundamental European emancipatory legacy.
Disregarding facile accusations of 'Eurocentrist cultural impe
rialism', he asks if one can imagine a leftist appropriation of the
European political tradition.7 With Ranci?re he identifies as the
core of this tradition the unique gesture of democratic political
subjectivation: the moment in which a particular demand is not
simply part of the negotiation of interests within the existing
social space, but aims at something more, so that this demand
starts to function as a 'metaphoric condensation', signaling the
need for the global restructuring of the entire social space (TTS:
-
208). This is the intrusion of 'politics proper' in clear contrast
to post-modern post-politics, which is the pursuit of particular
issues whose resolution must be negotiated within the 'rational'
global order that is allocating each particular part its proper
place.
It was precisely this 'politization proper' which reemerged
violently in the disintegration of East European Socialism: the
explosion of what Zizek (referring to Etienne Balibar) calls
?galibert?: the unconditional demand for freedom-equality
solidarity-democracy, which unsettles or 'explodes' any positive
order (TTS: 207). According to Zizek, itwas a misperception of
western commentators to see this demand as the confirmation
that the people of the east also wanted what the people in the
west already had - automatically translating this demand into
the western liberal-democratic notion of freedom (multiparty
representational political space and global market economy).
For this meant to reinscribe this demand within the confines of
a given order. Despite the later disappointments, however,
something did take place at this moment of 'sublime democratic
enthusiasm', which was a moment of authentic politization,
that was obfuscated by its later renormalization.
The 'true' universality Zizek speaks about in regard to this
politization, ultimately concerns the division between two no
tions of universality: the division between those who accept the
positivity of the given social order as the ultimate horizon of
knowledge and action, and those who acknowledge the effi

ciency of the dimension of a truth, which is irreducible to and
unaccountable in the terms of the existing order (TTS: 227). To
comprehend this, one has to recognize how antagonism is
inherent to universality itself - that is, how universality itself is
always split into a 'false', concrete universality, that legitimizes
the existing division of the Whole into its functional parts and
the real/impossible demand of 'abstract' universality: the uni
versality of an Ideal, of a revolutionary demand, which remains
an irreducible excess that repeatedly destabilizes the given so
cial order (TTS: 223-224). So, the question seems to be here: is
the universal 'abstract', that is potentially opposed to any
concrete order, setting in motion a permanent insurrection
against it, or concrete, in the sense that one experiences one's
very particular mode of social life as the specific way of par

ticipating in the universal social order? The point Zizek wants
to make is that the tension between the two is irreducible: the
excess of 'abstract-negative-ideal' universality, its unsettling
destabilizing force, can never be fully integrated into the har

monious whole of a 'concrete universality' (TTS: 213). 'True'
political conflict concerns precisely the tension between the
structured social body, in which each part has its allocated
place, and 'the part of no part' which unsettles this order on
account of the 'empty' or 'abstract' principle of universality
(TTS: 188). This means that the 'true Universal' as opposed to
the false, concrete Universality of the all-encompassing global
Whole is that of an endless and incessantly divisive struggle
(TTS: 227). Here one should oppose globalization and univer
salization, globalization being the name for the post-political
logic which progressively precludes the dimension of univer
sality that appears or 'shines through' in politicization proper
(TTS: 201).
Following up on this, Zizek argues that the Leftist political
gesture par excellence is to contest the concrete existing uni
versal order on behalf of its 'symptom', that is to say, on behalf
of the part which, although inherent to the existing universal
order, has no proper place within it. By this procedure of
'identifying with the symptom', one pathetically asserts and
identifies with the 'abject', that is, the point of inherent
290 R. MOOLENAAR
exception/exclusion of the concrete positive order, as the only

point of 'true universality' (TTS: 224). In this sense he invokes
the shadowy existence of those who are condemned to lead a
-
'spectral life' outside the domain of the global order blurred
in the background, without even a proper particular place of
their own (in our Western societies one can think of illegal
or - as
immigrants the homeless) the very site of political uni
versality (CHU: 313). This points again to the way the
dimension of the Universal is opposed to globalism: the uni
versal dimension appears or 'shines through' the symptomatic
displaced element, which belongs to theWhole, without being
properly its part (TTS: 225). The paradox is thus that there is
no Universal proper without the process of political litigation,
of'the part of no part', of an 'out of joint entity', presenting or
manifesting itself as the stand-in for the Universal (TTS: 201).
This is the paradox of a universal singular, a singular that ap
pears as the stand-in for the Universal, destabilizing the 'nat
ural' functional order of relations in the social body (TTS: 188).
So, within a given social whole it is precisely the element
which is prevented from actualizing its full particular identity,
that stands for its universal dimension (TTS: 224). In reference
to Ranci?re, Zizek claims that in politics, universality is as
serted when such an 'agent', with no proper place, 'out of joint',
posits itself as the direct embodiment of universality, against all

those who do have a place within the global order (CHU: 313).
The Greek demos, which is Ranci?re's privileged example,
stood for universality, not because it covered the majority of
the population, nor because it occupied the lowest place within
the social hierarchy, but because it had no proper place within
this hierarchy, and was a side of conflicting, self-canceling
determinations. Something similar goes for Marx' 'proletariat',
which stands for universal humanity, says Zizek, not because it
is the lowest, most exploited class, but because its very existence
-
is a 'living contradiction' that is, it gives body to the funda
mental imbalance and inconsistency of the capitalist social
no -
whole (TTS: 225). This identification of the 'part of part'
the part of society with no properly defined place within it (or
-
resisting the allocated subordinated place within it) with the
Universal, is the elementary gesture of politization which is
discernable in all great democratic events. One can think of the

French Revolution, in which le troisi?me ?tat proclaimed itself
identical to the Nation as such, against the aristocracy and the
clergy; or of the collapse East European Socialism, when dis
sident 'forums' proclaimed themselves representative of the
- -
entire society das Volk against the Party nomenklatura (TTS:
188).
The universality Zizek is defending is thus not a positive
universality with a determinate content, but an 'empty' uni
versality, a universality without a positive notion that would
specify its contours, a universality that 'exists' only in the guise
of the experience of the wrong or injustice done to the partic
ular subject who politicizes it's predicament (TTS: 244, n. 51).
In this regard, however, one has to distinguish between two
different 'subjects of enunciation': the assertion of a singular
universal, that is the measure of politicization proper can either
be the direct statement of the excluded victim itself (of the
demos in ancient Athens, of the troisi?me ?tat in the French
Revolution, of das Volk in the crumbling GDR, or of Jews,
Palestinians, detained asylum seekers, Blacks, women, gays,
anywhere else today), which proposes its particular plight as
representative of the universality of 'humanity', or it can be the
statement of solidarity that ismade by others, for example, the
concerned 'enlightened public'? (TTS: 230-231). It is the dif
ference between the universal Public claiming: 'We are all them
(the excluded non-part)! and the excluded non-part claiming:

'We are the true Universal (the People, Society, Nation,
Humanity...). The 'identification with the symptom' by others
than the symptomatic victims, however, can work in an ex
tremely ambiguous way: it can also induce a hasty claim that

our own predicament is in fact the same as that of he true
victims, which is a false metaphoric universalization of the fate
of the excluded (TTS: 229). The measure of the authenticity of
the pathetic identification, says Zizek, lies in its 'sociopolitical
efficiency' (TTS: 230). But this is of cause very difficult to
measure. Still, Zizek maintains that, in a hierarchically struc
tured society, the measure of true universality lies in the way
parts within the hierarchically ordered whole relate to those 'at
292 R. MOOLENAAR
the bottom', excluded by and from all others (TTS:

224).
THE AUTHENTIC POLITICAL SPACE:

'KEEPING UP APPEARENCES'
It is important to notice that this procedure of 'identifying with

the symptom' is the exact obverse of the standard ideologico
critical move of recognizing a particular content behind some
abstract universal notion. The standard move is to denounce
neutral universality as false, so that, for example, the 'man' of
human rights has to be actually identified as the white male
property owner (TTS: 224). What we have here is the old
Marxist point of the gap between the ideological appearance of
the universal legal form and the particular interests that actu
ally sustain it (DST: 245). According to Zizek, however, we
should acknowledge with Ranci?re the radical ambiguity of this
Marxist notion of the gap between formal universal rights and
the economic reality of exploitation and domination. There are
two radically different ways to read it.On the one hand, there is
the standard symptomatic way, whereby the form of universal
rights, equality, freedom and democracy, is regarded as simply

a necessary but illusory form of appearance (or expression) of
its concrete social content: the universe of exploitation and class
domination (TTS: 185). On the other hand, we have a much
more subversive way to consider this gap, according to which it
is conceived as a tension whereby the 'appearance' of equality
freedom (?galibert?), precisely, is not a mere appearance but
evinces an effectiveness of its own, which would allow to push
on a process of rearticulating the actual socio-economic rela
tions, by way of their progressive 'politicization' (DST: 245).8

In this connection, Zizek evokes the old L?vi-Straussian term
'symbolic efficiency': the appearance of equality-freedom is a
symbolic fiction which, as such, possesses an actual efficiency of
its own. So one should resist, what Zizek calls, 'the properly
cynical temptation' of reducing this appearance to a mere
illusion that conceals a very different actuality. For the politi
cal, argues Zizek, is precisely the domain of appearance,
opposed to the social reality of class and other distinctions, the

reality of society as the articulated social body (TTS: 195). And
there only is 'appearance' in so far as a part not included in the
Whole of the Social Body (or included/excluded in a way
against which it protests) symbolizes its position as that of a
wrong, claiming, against other parts, that it stands for the
universality of equality-freedom (?galibert?) as such. This is
precisely how we encounter 'appearance' in contrast to the
'reality' of the structured social whole.9

Today, the effort 'to keep up appearances', says Zizek,
stands for the effort to maintain the properly political space of
appearance, against the onslaught of the post-modern all
embracing social body, whereby every universal form is al

ready regarded as a kind of 'regulatory compromise' between
the many particular interests (DST: 246). In this way the
argument of the classic Marxist critique of ideology is already
'cynically' included and instrumentalized, resulting in a false
transparency. With Peter Sloterdijk, Zizek recognizes that
ideology's dominant mode today is cynical, which renders
impossible or vain the classic critical ideological procedure.
The cynical subject is quite aware of the distance between the
ideological mask and social reality, but he none the less still
insists upon the mask. Cynical reason is no longer naive: one
knows the falsehood very well, one is well aware of a par
ticular interest hidden behind an ideological universality, but
still one does not renounce it. The most elementary form of
ideology is probably Marx' phrase from Das Kapital: 'Sie
wissen das nicht aber sie tun es\ The formula would then
change into: 'they know very well what they are doing, yet
they are doing it' (SOI: 29-30; MI: 8). It is the paradox of an
enlightened false consciousness. With a disarming frankness,
Zizek says, one 'admits everything', yet this full acknowl
edgement of our economic and power interests does not in
any way prevent us from pursuing them. It is as if in late
capitalism 'words do not count'; whatever one says is
drowned in the general indifference; "the emperor is naked
and the media trumpet forth this fact, yet nobody seems really
to mind - that is, people continue to act as if the emperor is
not naked" (MI: 18).
294 R. MOOLENAAR
The main political problem today is precisely how to break

this cynical consensus. What evaporates, says Zizek, in today's
post-ideological is not so much reality occluded by

universe
ideological phantasmagoria's, but appearance itself, that is the
appearance of some binding norm or ideal, its performative
-
strength. For as Zizek maintains, 'realism' taking things as
they 'really are'- is the worst ideology (DST: 246).
NOTES
1
The signifier 'Lenin' stands for "the compelling FREEDOM to suspend
the stale existing (post) ideological coordinates, the debilitating Denkverbot
-
in which we live it simply means that we are allowed to think again" (RL:
15). In this regard, compare what Zizek has to say about how our 'freedoms'
(freedom of thought etc. etc.) themselves serve "to mask and sustain our
deeper unfreedom", in the introduction, of his dazzling philosophico
political pamphlet Welcome to the Desert of the Real (WDR: 2). This title, of
course, cites the welcoming words of Morphius, the resistance leader, spo
ken to Neo, when he has freed himself from the 'debilitating' computer
- as
generated virtual world, where 'freedom' really means enslavement put
forward in the first sequal of the movie triology called The Matrix.
2
Elsewhere, Zizek reminds us that according to the Marxian 'critique of
political economy', the structure of the universe of commodities and capital
is not just that of a limited empirical sphere, but 'a kind of socio-tran
scendental a priori', as the matrix (compare also note 1)which generates the
'totality of social political relations' (RL: 18). In Zizek's view, the rela
tionship between economy and politics is ultimately that of the well-known
visual paradox of the 'two faces or a vase': one either sees the two faces or a
vase, never both of them. In general one either focuses on 'the political', and
the economy is reduced to the empirical - Arendt
'servicing of goods' of
course, but also the French (or French oriented) political theorists like
and Laclau - or one focuses on the
Badiou, Balibar, Ranci?re economy,
whereby politics is reduced to a 'theatre of appearances' , that is, a passing
phenomenon which will disappear with the arrival of a 'post-political'
technocratic society, in which, according to the well known phrase, the
'administration of people' will vanish in the 'administration of things'. But,
asks Zizek, does one really have to make this choice? Shouldn't one rec
ognize, precisely, that we have no 'meta-language' which would enable us to
grasp, from one and the same neutral standpoint, both levels, for the rather
obvious reason that they are inextricably intertwined? But how then to
proceed? First, Zizek says, we have to progress from the 'political spectacle'
to its 'economic infrastructure', but then, in the second step, we have to
confront the irreducible dimension of the 'political struggle' in the very heart
of the economy (RL: 18-19).
3
As I have already indicated, in 'post-polities', the conflict of global
ideological visions embodied in different parties that compete for power is
replaced by the collaboration of enlightened technocrats (economists, public
opinion specialists, multiculturalist policymakers) (TTS: 198). The formula
that best expresses the paradox of this post-ideological politics, says Zizek,
is Tony Blair's characterization of New Labour as the Radical Center.
While in the old days of political division, the center was by definition
moderate, that which makes New Labour 'radical' today is precisely the
radical abandonment of old ideological divides. According to this view, one
should take 'good ideas' without any prejudice and apply them whatever
their ideological origins. The answer to the question what these 'good ideas'
are seems obvious: 'good ideas are ideas that work'. But precisely here do we
encounter the gap that separates 'politics proper' from the mere adminis
tration of social matters. Authentic politics is not simply applying some
thing that works well within the framework of the existing relations, but it
intervenes in the very framework that determines how things work . In this
sense politics should not be conceived as 'the art of the possible', but rather
as 'the art of the impossible' - that is, the art of changing the very parameters
of what is considered 'possible' in the existing constellation (TTS: 199).
4
A Master-signifier is the key signifying element that brings about a certain
closure of a socio-symbolic field, by way of designating the supreme Good:
God, Truth, Nation, Democracy, the Cause etc (TWN: 217).
5
Ideology, Zizek says, is by definition always 'ideology of ideology'. For,
doesn't ideology always assert itself by means of delimiting itself from an
other 'mere ideology'? According to Zizek this feature is universal.
Explaining this by way of an exampel he evokes the d?sint?gration of 'real
Socialism': "Socialism was perceived as the rule of 'ideological' oppression
and indoctrination, whereas the passage into democracy-capitalism was
as -
experienced deliverance from the constraints of ideology however, was
not this very experience of 'deliverance' in the course of which political
parties and the market economy where percieved as non-ideolocal, as the
'natural state of things', ideological par excellence?" (MI: 19).
6
In this regard, Zizek argues, one should say that Nazi anti-Semitic vio
lence is not only 'factually wrong' (Jews are 'not really like that', exploiting
us, deceiving us, organizing a universal plot) and 'morally wrong' (unac
ceptable in terms of elementary ethical standards), but it is 'untrue' or 'false'
in the sense of an inauthenticity which is both epistemological and ethical.
For even if rich Jews 'really' exploited German workers, or seduced their
daughters, and so on, anti-Semitism, Zizek tells us, is still an emphatically
'untrue', pathological ideological condition. What makes it pathological is
the way social antagonism is displaced-obliterated by being projected into
the figure of the Jew (CHU: 127).
296 R. MOOLENAAR
So, again, an ideology is not necessarily 'false' as to its positive content;

what really matters therefore is not the asserted content as such, Zizek ar
gues, but "the way this content is related to the subjective position implied by
its own process of enunciation" (MI: 8). This means that we are in 'ideo
logical space proper' the moment this content - 'true' or 'false', it doesn't
- is functional with
really matter regard to some relation of social domina
tion, legitimizing it in an inherently non-transparent way. In this regard one
should recognize how it is always possible to lie in the guise of truth. To fully
acknowledge this is the starting point of the critique of ideology. Let's take
another example. When a Western power intervenes in a Third World
country on account of vilolations of human rights, itmay well be 'true' that
in this country the most elementary human rights were not respected, and
that the Western intervention will indeed improve the human rights situa
tion. Yet such a legitimization none the less remains 'ideological', Zizek
maintains, in so far as it fails to take into account the true motives of the
intervention, the usual suspects: economic and geopolitical interests (MI: 8).
(And how to take them into account without becoming cynical about it: 'Of
course these interests are also at play on the background, what would you
expect otherwise?')
Coming back to the ideological question of anti-Semitisme, one schould
recognize, according to Zizek, how todays widespread Arab anti-Semitism
articulates a resistence against capitalism in a displaced mode. This recog
nition does not in any way justifiy it. On the contrary, one should radically
condemn it.What this recognition does involve, however, is that the way to
fight this anti-Semitism is not to preach the virtues of liberal tolerance, but
designate it as a fundamental gesture of ideological mystification and then to
try an express the underlying anti-capitalist motive in a direct, non-displaced
way. According to the same line of argumentation Zizek maintains that the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict is, in the most radical sense of the term, a false
conflict, a lure, an ideological displacement of the 'true' antagonism, which
has ultimately to do with the 'neocolonist terror of Capital'. The Arab
Palestinian call for 'unfreedom', in the form of reactionary 'fundamental
ism', should then be regarded as a form of resistance to this colonialistic
terror. The difficult task for the Palestinians, however, is to accept that
"their true ennemies are not the Jews but Arab regimes which ideologically
manipulate their plight in order, precisely, to prevent this shift - that is, the
political radicalization in their own states" (WDR: 130-131).
7
When Third World countries appeal to freedom and democracy they are
endorsing the European premise of universalism. In a sense the true
opposition today is not one between the 'First world' and the 'Third world',
but the one between the whole of the First and the Third world, the
American Global Empire and its colonies, and what remains of the 'Second
World,' that is Europe (WDR: 146-147). It is relatively easy for the
American multiculturalist global Empire to integrate premodern local tra
ditions: the foreign body which it effectively cannot assimilate is the
European modernity. In this regard Zizek speaks about the 'weird pact'
between postmodern global capitalism and premodern societies at the ex
pense of modernity proper (WDR: 146).
8
Examples: why shouldn't women vote too? why shouldn't conditions in
the workplace also be of a public political concern? As much as Zizek
venerates the efforts of the 'French oriented'theoreticians of the 'political
Universal' (Ranci?re, Balibar, Badiou, Laclau), there is at least one problem
that needs to be signalled: their relative disregard for the sphere of economy
, the sphere of 'material production' as the main site of political struggle and
intervention (RAG: 18-19). But despite the importance Zizek ascribes to this
matter, his own remarks concerning it remain very sketchy and scattered
and quite difficult to get a hold on. Cf. TTS: 396-397, n. 41, n. 45; DST:
133-140; RL: 22-23.
9
This 'appearance' does not simply belong to the domain of phenomena,
but has to do with those 'magic moments' in which another, noumenal
dimension momentarily 'shines through' some empirical/contingent phe
nomenon. It comes into existence in the guise of an appearance of Another
dimension, which interupts the standard normal order of appearances qua
phenomena (TTS: 197). One should introduce here a distinction within the
order of appearance between phenomenal reality and the 'magic' appear
ances of Another Dimension within it (TTS: 197). The kind of'appearance'
Zizek wants us to recognize is that of a 'sublime' or 'suprasensible'
dimension, that shines through the sensible image and as it were 'transub
stantiates' some aspect of reality into something that for a brief moment
radiates something behind it, an impossible Beyond (Eternity, God, Free
dom, Justice). In a sublime appearance, the positive imaginery content is a
'stand in' for this impossible Beyond (The Thing, God, Freedom, Justice).
The moment we enter this dimension of symbolic appearance, however, the
imaginary content is always inscribed or caught in a dialectic of void and
negativity (TFA: 105). To elaborate on this one should take into account
Zizek's discourse on the Real.
3e Hugo de Grootstraat 48-hs,

1052 LM Amsterdam
The Netherlands
E-mail: rob.moolenaar@freeler.nl.

Zizek 6

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Slavoj Žižek and the Real Subject of Politics

SLAVOJ ZIZEK AND THE REAL SUBJECT OF POLITICS

ABSTRACT. Slavoj Zizek's refusal to sketch an alternative to the global

KEY WORDS: capitalism, depolitization, ideology, Marxism, political

?* Studies in East European Thought 56: 259-297, 2004.

today's conditions of globalization? (TTS: 222) At stake in

collaboration of expert managerial bodies, negociating the

presuppose a non-thematized, 'naturalized' framework of eco

within each civilization that is to say conflicting ways of dif

replaced by the decisions of powerful expert managerial bodies,

country of origin as simply another territory to be colonized.

power is no longer a nation-state but the global company itself.

EXPLOSIVE CONTRADICTIONS.... OR LIVING

As I have said, Zizek continues to think, 'in the old Marxist

formula, he gives it a somewhat different twist. For this

olutionizing of its conditions of existence, whereby the system

capable of transforming its limit in the source of its power, so

self-propelling speculative capital, which needs the productive

nitely, it has to explode in ever more severe crises.

'self-engendering monster', which pursues its path regardless of

protection of their relative privileges than the big corporations

change as 'utopian', that is, as unrealistic dreaming or as

harboring a dangerous totalitarian potential. This 'realist'

BEYOND THE REALITY PRINCIPLE

What should be, in regard to this, the task of philosophy? Zizek

'more fundamental', level of reality. This means that 'fantasy'

incomplete, cursory, a gap separating it from the Ansich of the

positions that predominate today, and what ideologico-critical

STEPPING OUT OF IDEOLOGY?

reality, that what we perceive as 'reality' is simply the result of a

keeps the critique of ideology alive.

'hard kernel' of some Real, of that which resists simple inte

maintains, these groups actually provide an example of non

ideology (MI: 6).

THE FUTURE OF AN ILLUSION

The collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe was experi

non-ideological Utopian character of an 'authentic popular

probably the most 'realistic' option (TTS: 189).

the nostalgia for the communist past among intellectuals as well

depressing now than before, since its reality is no longer

thing to cope with, as the strange twists of this phenomenon

covering up 'the void of the failure' to intervene effectively in

(THE IRREDUCIBILITY OF) SOCIAL ANTAGONISM

The crucial point Zizek is concerned with each time is the

disavowal/displacement of the fundamental social antagonism,

"ALL THAT IS SOLID....''

Marx already was fascinated by the 'deterritorializing' impact

say that in contemporary capitalism the 'relations between

things' (the objective market relations) assume the phantasma

Capitalism can no longer be conceived as the domain of the

that, instead of stable products lasting for generations, inces

fleeting and non-substantial, of being 'adrift in the world'.

fluid, shifting identities, is possible only against the background

TRUE UNIVERSALITY: THE EMANCIPATORY

The key component of the leftist position Zizek wants to

particular culture to another, but, rather, the violent experience

antagonism. (WDR: 66).

knowledge and action, and those who acknowledge the effi

against it, or concrete, in the sense that one experiences one's

very particular mode of social life as the specific way of par

destabilizing force, can never be fully integrated into the har

exception/exclusion of the concrete positive order, as the only

posits itself as the direct embodiment of universality, against all