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

This book deals with Zizek’s communism: revolutionary terror or Utopian jouissance. Slavoj Zizek is one of the most well-known psychoanalysts and philosophers working today, publishing in newspapers like the Guardian and the New Statesman and speaking at conferences, festivals and events worldwide. His work attracts a loyal following and at the same time a lot of labels, most of them pejorative: communist, conservative, anti-semantic. Chris McMillan identifies Zizek’s unique and productive contribution to social and political theory, constructing his work as a response to the deadlock imposed by global capitalism. He takes issue with the critical positioning of Zizek’s output as ‘good theory, bad politics’ and argues instead that Zizek’s politics provide a reading of global capitalism that reinvents political subversion. Highlighting the political consequences of Zizek’s fundamental concepts – the Lacanian real, universality and the communist hypothesis – McMillan suggests that Zizek’s turn to communism represents the ultimate significance of his work for the 21st century. It summarises key applications of psychoanalytic theory to politics and shared social life.It produces a sustained reading of Zizek’s understanding of the economy and capitalism. It contextualises Zizek’s work in relation to the difficulties of contemporary social theory and the political deadlock of global capitalism. It responds to Zizek’s recent reference to the communist hypothesis and ‘egalitarian justice’.