Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?: Five Interventions in the (Mis)Use of a Notion

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Slavoj Zizek

Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?

Five Interventions in the (Mis)Use of a Notion

Slavoj Zizek

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English

Verso
09 July 2011

Philosophy; Social & political philosophy; Political structures: totalitarianism & dictatorship

Series: The Essential Zizek

In some circles, a nod towards totalitarianism is enough to dismiss any critique of the status quo. Such is the insidiousness of the neo-liberal ideology, argues Slavoj Zizek.

Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? turns a specious rhetorical strategy on its head to identify a network of family resemblances between totalitarianism and modern liberal democracy.

Zizek argues that totalitarianism is invariably defined in terms of four things: the Holocaust as the ultimate, diabolical evil; the Stalinist gulag as the alleged truth of the socialist revolutionary project; ethnic and religious fundamentalisms, which are to be fought through multiculturalist tolerance; and the deconstructionist idea that the ultimate root of totalitarianism is the ontological closure of thought.

Zizek concludes that the devil lies not so much in the detail but in what enables the very designation totalitarian: the liberal-democratic consensus itself.

By: Slavoj Zizek
Imprint: Verso
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Edition: 2nd Revised edition
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 132mm, Spine: 20mm
Weight: 328g
ISBN: 9781844677139
ISBN 10: 1844677133
Series: The Essential Zizek
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 09 July 2011
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Slavoj A izek is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Studies in Ljubljana. His books include The Sublime Object of Ideology, Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lacan (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock), The Plague of Fantasies and The Ticklish Subject.

Reviews for Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?: Five Interventions in the (Mis)Use of a Notion

The ferociously productive Slovenian philosopher now takes up one of those heavy, predictable, unpromising topics-totalitarianism-and manages to produce a whirling carnival of political critique, cultural interpretations, and ornery bombast. -New Political Science As an alternative to the current post-modernist cult of cynicism and retreat into islands of privacy and nihilism ... the five essays making up Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? insist on the social link and offer the visionary strength for resistance against all forms of totalized explanations. -World Literature Today This attempt to rethink the conditions of radical political action is one of a number of signs that, after the doldrums of the 1980s and 1990s, left-wing thought is beginning to revive. It will be fascinating to follow where the flood of eloquence and imagination next sweeps Slavoj i ek. -Times Literary Supplement i ek is an entertaining writer who would command attention if he were just describing how to mix cement. He wastes no time in tilting at the taken-for-granted ... i ek wants to find the cracks in the notion of totalitarianism and fill them with dynamite. -Times Higher Education Supplement