Over the course of three decades, vocabularies of radical democracy have pressed their stamp on democratic thought. Trading on the intuition that there is more to democracy than elections, they have generated critical insights into the important role that practices of pluralisation and critique play in bettering institutional politics. As a result, few would today deny the radical democratic contribution to democratic thought. What many might question, however, is its continuing traction. The article probes this question, focusing on the nuanced (...) place of democracy in contemporary radical work. It grapples with the difficulties that this poses for radical democrats, and it suggests that a way of overcoming these difficulties – that threaten to undermine the coherence of radical democracy – is to rethink and reconstruct the distinctiveness of its vocabulary. The article attempts such a reconstruction. It develops the idea of the promissory rule of the many, and it discusses the ways that this idea rejuvenates broader democratic thought. (shrink)

This article approaches a potential tension in the work of Slavoj Žižek between his critique of communist ideology and his endorsement of the communist idea. The aim is to show how this endorsement, in effect, emerged out of Žižek’s sustained engagement with communist ideology. The article captures this transformation by focusing on his understanding of the notion of the idea and the ways in which ideology can be transgressed. The conclusion drawn is that in moving from a Kantian to a (...) Hegelian notion of the idea, Žižek also leaves behind his initial Beckettian Leninism in favor of an understanding of revolution that no longer depends on the heroic act of a subject, but on the immanent logic of the communist idea. (shrink)

In this article, we are arguing for a possibility of a new elemental politics as based on breath and fire and gesturing beyond the modes and principles of ontology of violence, power struggles and war in philosophy and political philosophy. We first discuss the task of today’s political philosophy as a need to enkindle the humanity towards a new alliance in creativity and belonging. We propose a new, elemental approach, based on the revitalization of air/breath and fire and present Luce (...) Irigaray’s thought as a key intervention of this kind within the contemporary political thought. The second part brings an analysis of texts by Ernst Jünger and Alain Badiou on soldiers and war as examples of an unfortunate philosophical adventure. The third part is our proposal for another genealogy of human beings as breathers and igniters within the new peaceful and mindful culture of democracy, providing us with a possibility of a new ethico-political order, as based on the elemental constellations of silence, breath and fire. Finally, the idea of a quiet democracy is established, as a place of inner horizontal calm being gathered and cultivated in us by fire, and as a place for beings of this Earth to breathe and to share the air within a new elemental-spiritual conspiracy of love. Towards the conclusion, this essay also is a hommage to Luce Irigaray’s approaches to ancient Indian religious and philosophical thinking. (shrink)

This article pursues two distinct yet interrelated levels of analysis. Theoretically, the article seeks to destabilize Western narratives of a transition from humanism to anti- and post-humanism in radical scholarship by foregrounding two traditions from Eastern Europe and the Caribbean where the language of the human persisted long after its declared obsolescence in the West. The argument made here is that these divergent narratives of the human were neither wholly contingent nor just a matter of distinct intellectual traditions, but were (...) deeply interwoven with both the history of the Cold War and the legacies of colonialism. On a praxical-political level, the article also engages in a close reading of arguably the major tradition of Marxist humanism in Eastern Europe, that of the Praxis circle in former Yugoslavia. While examining the specific political and theoretical reasons for the persistence of humanism in the writings of Praxis, the article argues that, in the end, their radica.. (shrink)

This article argues that a transcendental materialist conception of subjectivity can move us beyond the orthodox idealist theories that dominate progressive thought in advanced consumer-capitalism. This position can shed new light on current forms of subjectivity that seem to prefer life in consumer culture's surrogate social world rather than active participation in cultural and political resistance and transformation, which requires far more than simply 'transcending the norm'. The rebirth of creative political subjectivity is impossible unless the subject is prepared to (...) risk a traumatic encounter with the Real, the fundamental indeterminacy that exists not in the ideal-symbolic but the material realm, and prepared to reject liberal-postmodernist identity politics to participate in the construction of a coherent alternative ideology. (shrink)

This article offers three reflections on the nature of the metaphysical ‘wall’ erected between the ‘Included’ and the ‘Excluded/Other’ by the concept of private property and its implementation in a state’s legal apparatus. The first reflection explores the reality of the concept of private property, using Louis Althusser’s conception of ideology, in order to demonstrate that the liberal conception of private property masks power operating on two levels: the formal, repressive state apparatus, and the deeper, the personal, the real, the (...) actual level, which allows the Included to act upon ego in ways that negatively affect the Excluded/Other found in the ideological state apparatus. The second argues that the masked power that is private property permits war to be waged by the Included as against the Excluded/Other at two levels: intra-state and inter-state. This reveals a paradox in the distinction between Included and Excluded/Other: while the distinction demonstrates the allocation of power over resources, the reality is that every individual on earth is both Included and Excluded/Other. The final reflection briefly considers what could replace private property as a means of allocating goods and resources within a society. (shrink)

"This economic system cannot do without the ultima ratio of the complete destruction of those existences which are irretrievably associated with the hopelessly unadapted." "Joseph Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development1"Slavoj Žižek poses more than a few heavy-gauge questions in his In Defense of Lost Causes . Foremost among them, at the beginning of chapter nine: “The only true question today is: do we endorse this ‘naturalization’ of capitalism, or does contemporary global capitalism contain antagonisms which are sufficiently strong to (...) prevent its indefinite reproduction?”2 This vast question—as well as its possible answers—develops in Žižek's…. (shrink)

U ovom radu razmatramo dvije različite kritike liberalne demokracije. Kroz analizu suvremene slovenske političke misli Slavoja Žižeka i nekih njegovih sljedbenika, koji u zadnje vrijeme revitaliziraju »ideju komunizma«, prvo ćemo kritički promisliti emancipacijski potencijal ove struje suvremene slovenske filozofije. Interludij se fokusira na uporabe i logiku nasilja te se zalaže za novu političko-etičku kulturu nenasilja. U drugome dijelu rada, uzimajući u obzir Levinasovu etičku kritiku liberalne demokracije i fokusirajući se na njegov pojam različite vremenitosti unutar političke etike, razmotrit ćemo neke (...) alternativne mogućnosti za budući napredak demokracije. (shrink)

In the paper we discuss the question of the future of democracy within some current projects of the emancipatory politics. We first critically approach Žižek’s and Badiou’s well-known revitalization of the idea of communism and link their projects to the burning issues of inequalities in the world system. Following this approach we elaborate on R.M. Unger’s recent book The Self Awakened and both defend his version of radicalized pragmatism and enlarge some of his uses of pragmatism to wider politico-ethical contexts.

Zizek's battle cry to 'do nothing', or what is termed Bartleby politics, has been met with much criticism. At best, it seems, his Bartleby politics simply enables us to see the limits of society, and at worst, it leaves us in a state of impotent passivity. This article takes a position of preferring Bartleby politics. This paper reflects on Žižek’s Bartleby politics. It starts with briefly outlining the basic tenets of Bartleby politic, including concepts of the superego, enjoyment and the (...) Act. Next the paper examines different reactions to Žižek’s Bartleby politics, and how these help us to further think about the concept. The paper concludes with some reflections on the practicalities of Zizek’s Bartleby politics. (shrink)

This article argues that an engagement with the powerful critical insights of Žižek’s theory of ideology and practice of cultural critique is a necessary step for any art historical methodology which aims to fully account for a work of art’s function within the society of its creation and reception, and to explain how it came to play such a role. However, any attempt to situate cultural artefacts within historically contingent networks of social relations requires an account of historical change incompatible (...) with any formalist or transcendentalist methodology. Moreover, if it is to be of any use as an academic discourse, art history must be able to account for the specifities of ‘art’ as a distinct—but not autonomous—sphere of human activity. It is precisely these two issues that a wholesale importation of Žižek’s writing into the domain of art history encounters. A solution must be found whereby the critical lessons of Žižek are not ‘lost in translation’. In this vein, the present article begins by outlining Žižek’s conception of ideology and elucidating the problematic consequences of any straightforward application of its parameters as an art historical methodology. It then reads the interventions of Jacques Rancière and Judith Butler as providing the necessary theoretical tools by which one can construct the possibility of a powerful Žižekian art historical methodology. (shrink)