The Universal Exception

Slavoj Žižek Is One Of The World's Foremost Cultural Commentators: A Prolific Writer And Thinker, Whose Adventurous, Unorthodox And Wide-ranging Writings Have Won Him A Unique Place As One Of The Most High Profile Thinkers Of Our Time. The Universal Exception Brings Together Some Of Žižek's Most Vivid Writings On Politics. Bringing Together High Theory, Popular Culture And Passionate Engagement With Politics, Žižek Here Brings Us Startlingly New Perspectives On Such Topics As Multiculturalism, Capitalism And Bill Gates, The Revolutionary Potential Of Stalinism, The Terrorist Attacks Of 9/11 And The War In Iraq. Including A Glossary Of Key Terms, The Bloomsbury Revelations Edition Also Includes A New Preface By The Author. Cover 1 Half-Title 2 Series 3 Title 6 Copyright 7 Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Preface to the paperback edition 11 Editors’ introduction 38 Section One The absent ‘second way’ 50 Chapter 1 Eastern European liberalism and its discontents 52 Chapter 2 Why we all love to hate Haider 74 Memory traces of Labour 77 Perduring in the place 79 Chapter 3 Heiner Müller out of joint 84 Section two Really existing socialism 106 Chapter 4 Why are Laibach and the Neue Slowenische Kunst not Fascists? 108 Chapter 5 The fetish of the party 114 The totalitarian body 114 Phallus and fetish 117 Stalinist discourse 122 The Real of ‘class struggle’ 128 Stalinism versus Fascism 131 The totalitarian fantasy, the totalitarianism of the fantasy 137 Chapter 6 Georg Lukács as the philosopher of Leninism 144 I 145 II 149 III 153 IV 159 V 163 Chapter 7 Prolegomena to a theory of Kolkhoz musicals 176 Chapter 8 Attempts to escape the logic of capitalism 190 Note 204 Section three Really existing capitalism 206 Chapter 9 Multiculturalism, or, the cultural logic of multinational capitalism 208 Why is the single mother ‘typical’? 208 Desire and its articulation 210 Conservative basic instincts 212 Censorship, power and resistance 214 The logic of Capital 216 Ideological underground 219 The time machine 221 ‘Concrete’ versus ‘abstract’ universality 223 Modernism in reverse 226 Multiculturalism 228 The machine in the ghost 230 For a leftist suspension of the law 233 The universality to come 236 Chapter 10 A leftist plea for ‘Eurocentrism’ 242 Politics and its disavowals 242 From politics to post-politics 248 Excessive violence 253 From the sublime to the ridiculous 259 For a leftist appropriation of the European legacy 263 Chapter 11 A plea for ‘passive aggressivity’ 270 Chapter 12 The three faces of Bill Gates 290 Chapter 13 The prospects of radical politics today 302 From human to animal rights 305 The Möbius strip of politics and economy 312 Fetishism today 318 Section four What is (not) to be done 326 Chapter 14 Against the double blackmail 328 Note 336 Chapter 15 Welcome to the desert of the Real (reflections on 11 September 2001) 338 Seizing the Real 338 The symbolism of a catastrophe 344 A distilled version of our own essence 345 The falsity of ‘reality television’ 346 An impotent passage à l’acte 347 The ‘clash of civilizations’ 348 Bad omens 351 A new Berufsverbot 351 This very innocence is not innocent 352 What happened on 11 September? 353 Resisting the double blackmail 354 ‘Collateral damage’ 356 The stupidity of the Left 356 ‘Small nationalism’ 357 Evil resides in the innocent gaze 358 ‘Infinite justice’ 359 ‘Love thy neighbour’ 359 Chapter 16 The Iraq War – where is the true danger? 362 The borrowed kettle 362 Europe and globalization I 364 Europe and globalization II 366 The true danger . . . 368 The end of the ‘roaring 90s’ 368 ‘The decisive moment . . .’ 369 The ‘soft revolution’ 371 Right-populism with a human face 375 Chapter 17 Some politically incorrect reflections on violence in France and related matters 378 The Fundamentalist Impasse 382 The Terrorist Ressentiment 385 Escape from New Orleans 391 The Subject Supposed to Loot and Rape 395 Class Struggle in France, Again 399 Author’s afterword 404 Glossary 428 Index 456