Violence: Six Sideways Reflections

by Slavoj Žižek

Alain Badiou develops the notion of ‘atonal’ worlds – monde atone– which lack the intervention of a Master-Signifier to impose meaningful order onto the confused multiplicity of reality.20 What is a Master-Signifier?21 In the very last pages of his monumental Second World War, Winston Churchill ponders on the enigma of a political decision: after the specialists – economic and military analysts, psychologists, meteorologists – propose their multiple, elaborated and refined analyses, somebody must assume the simple and for that very reason most difficult act of transposing this complex multitude of views, where for every reason for, there are two reasons against and vice versa, into a simple, decisive Yes or No. We shall attack or we continue to wait. None other than John F. Kennedy provided a concise description of this point: ‘the essence of ultimate decision remains impenetrable to the observer – often, indeed, to the decider himself.’ This decisive gesture which can never be fully grounded in reasons is that of a Master.