Abstract

In this article I set out to investigate what I call the Nazi-card-card, which is the rhetorical gesture of dismissing as ridiculous any argument that draws parallels between contemporary nationalism and racism and the German regime of the 30’s and 40’s. I try to show that the Nazi-card-card forms a fundamental ideological structure; one that goes beyond mere rhetoric. In making this argument I draw upon Kantian moral philosophy and the Lacanian thought of Slavoj Žižek and Alenka Zupančič focusing especially on their respective readings of Kant and on the psycho-analytic notion of enjoyment. I argue that the immediate effectiveness of the Nazi-card-card tells us that Nazism has taken the position of Kantian demonic evil in our contemporary ideological environment. Then I carry out a theoretical discussion of the relation between enjoyment and law as it is at work in the ideology-critical thought of Žižek and Zupančič in order develop a theoretical frame in which the specific enjoyment of the Nazi-card-card can be investigated and understood. I conclude by arguing that a certain perverse enjoyment is what determines its ideological structure