Zizek and Communist Strategy: On the Disavowed Foundations of Global Capitalism

by Chris McMillan

Zizek's revolutionary terror or Utopian jouissance? Good theory; bad this is how Zizek's works have been described. Now Chris McMillan argues that Zizek's reading of global capitalism could reinvent political subversion. He highlights the political consequences of Zizek's fundamental concepts, such as the Lacanian Real, universality and the communist hypothesis. He argues that Zizek's turn to Communism represents the ultimate significance of Zizek's work for the 21st century and a marked new direction for Zizekian theory.

Genres: Philosophy, Economics

216 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Karlo Mikhail]

This is an academic treatise rather than a real guide to communist strategy in the era of imperialist globalization. Useful as a systematization of Žižek's uncomfortable style of writing and fragmented thoughts on the configuration of present-day capitalism and revolutionary struggle. But still quite difficult for those unfamiliar with Lacan. If anything, this book is another testament to the futility of Žižek's analysis of the contemporary situation and his recommendations for radical action. It shows how rather than basing on concrete material conditions, Žižek simply takes categories from Lacanian psychoanalysis and idiosyncratically transports its conclusions from the realm of the psyche to the realm of political economy. Obviously such an operations makes for particularly strange conclusions, like positing the lumpenproletariat as the new revolutionary class that stands in for the Marxist proletariat position. But since it starts from wishful thinking than a genuine social investigation we end up with nebulous nonesense. It is, for example, simply a stretch to include all unemployed workers, semiproles in the informal economy, and urban poor slum dwellers of various classes into the category of the lumpen proletariat! Or that the class struggle is not about antagonistic contradictions between definite classes but is some sort of reflection of the Lacanian Real or as a rupture within the Symbolic Order. Interesting, really.