Changes

Democracy is not merely the “power “[[power]] of, by, and for the [[people]].” It is not enough just to [[claim ]] that, in democracy, the will and the interests (the two in no way automatically coincide) of the large majority determine [[state ]] decisions. Democracy—in the way the term is used today—concerns, above all, ‘’’formal ‘’’[[formal]] legalism’’’. Its minimal definition is ‘’the unconditional adherence to a certain set of formal rules which [[guarantee ]] that [[antagonisms ]] are fully absorbed into the “rules of the [[game]].”’’’

“Democracy” means that, whatever electoral manipulation actually takes [[place]], every [[political ]] [[agent ]] will unconditionally respect the results. In this [[sense]], the U.S. presidential elections of 2000 were effectively “democratic.” Despite obvious and patent electoral manipulations in Florida, the Democratic candidate accepted his defeat. In the weeks of uncertainty after the elections, Bill [[Clinton ]] made an appropriately acerbic comment: “The American people have spoken. We just don’t [[know ]] what they said.” This comment should have been taken more seriously than it was meant, for it revealed how the [[present ]] machinery of democracy can be problematic, to say the least. ‘’’Why should the [[left ]] always and unconditionally respect the formal “rules of the game”? Why should it not, in some circumstances, put in question the legitimacy of the outcome of a formal democratic procedure?’’’<ref>[[How Much Democracy Is Too Much?]]</ref></blockquote>

Slavoj Žižek’s [[thinking ]] with [[regard ]] to political democracy is ambivalent, or nuanced, in several ways. It has gone through two broad phases. In his earliest works published in [[English]], principally ''[[The Sublime Object of Ideology]]'', Žižek appears to advocate a [[form ]] of [[radical democracy]], close to the positions of [[Ernesto Laclau]], [[Chantal Mouffe]] and [[Yannis Stavrakakis]]. Since the mid-1990s, however, Žižek has become increasingly critical of democracy as a political [[regime]], and “democracy” as a [[signifier]] around which any [[radical politics]] worthy of the [[name ]] might be organized.

Žižek’s early advocacy of radical democracy is rooted in his wider [[Lacanian ]] premises and theory of political power. According to this [[position]], subjects’ commitments to political regimes are never wholly [[symbolic]], or explicable in [[terms ]] of their [[complete ]] [[identification]] with the regimes’ symbolic ideals (like [[freedom]], the party, the [[nation ]] …). Th is identification is rooted in what he terms a “disidentification”, wherein [[Subject|the subject]] abides by [[the symbolic ]] regime on the basis of accepting a set of more or less [[unconscious ]] [[fantasies ]] [[about ]] political [[enjoyment]]. Centrally, such fantasies posit some [[Others ]] [[supposed to enjoy]], or threatening to thieve, “our” [[jouissance]] or “way of life” – like the Muslims who [[George W. Bush]] assured us after September 2001 “hate “[[hate]] our freedoms”, but one can [[think ]] also of single mothers, the unemployed, new immigrants, and so on. For Žižek, such fantasies are always internally inconsistent and often factually erroneous, since they are really there to cover over the [[lack ]] in our [[big Other]] or [[symbolic order]]: the fact that our regime, nation or [[community ]] does not [[exist ]] as a fully coherent, just, [[content ]] and solidary symbolic [[order]]. The task of a Lacanian critique of [[ideology]] then becomes to show how these fantasies are inconsistent, in order to attack the [[real]], motivating foundations of subjects’ identifications with [[them]], rather than simply unmasking their symbolic ideals. In this light, ''[[The Sublime Object of Ideology]]'' [[defends ]] a radical political democracy as, paradoxically, the only political regime that can institutionalize its own lack. Following [[Claude Lefort]], Žižek describes this in terms of democracy’s keeping empty of the [[place of power]], formerly occupied by [[theologically]] or absolutely sanctioned [[monarchs]]. Thus, Žižek writes:<blockquote>It is against this background of the emptying of the place of power that we can measure the break introduced by the “democratic invention” ([[Claude Lefort|Lefort]]) in the [[history ]] of [political] institutions: “democratic society” could be determined as a [[society ]] whose institutional [[structure ]] includes, as a part of its “normal”, “regular” reproduction, the [[moment ]] of [[dissolution ]] of the socio-symbolic bond, the moment of eruption of the [[Real, the (Lacan)|Real]]: elections. [[Lefort ]] interprets elections … as an act of symbolic dissolution of [the] [[social ]] edifice. (''SO'': 146–7)</blockquote>Yet Žižek’s [[defence ]] of a radical democratic position was, even in his early works, qualified by deep criticisms of really existing Western [[liberal democracies]]. In [[particular]], from early works like ''[[The Sublime Object of Ideology|Sublime Object of Ideology]]'', ''[[Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture|Looking Awry]]'' and ''[[Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel and the Critique of Ideology|Tarrying with the Negative]]'' onwards, Žižek argued that the growing consumerism of Western [[liberal ]] democracies after the [[Second World War]] – as against its political institutions – represents a fairly pure, and powerful, form of [[ideology]]. Far from allowing us to express our freedom, [[consumerism]] embodies a [[superego]] imperative to [[enjoy ]] without cease, which punishes us should we fail to meet its [[demands]]. In more [[recent ]] works, this critique is developed in terms of a wider critique of consumerist [[capitalism]] as a “[[post-Oedipal]]” regime, wherein the decline of subjects’ [[faith ]] in [[public]], symbolic [[authority ]] engenders a deeply [[Perversion|perverse]], [[cynical]] mode of [[subjectivity]]. Th e flipside of today’s “[[politically correct]]” commitment to [[multiculturalism]] and [[value ]] pluralism, Žižek argues, is [[anxiety]] about the over-proximity of Others formerly kept at bay by shared symbolic commitments. We are hence today more subjected than ever to a host of cloying, [[maternal prohibitions]] – one can drink coffee, so long as it is decaff einated; have open [[sexual ]] relationships, so long as one uses contraception; smoke only in designated areas, and so on. [[Frustration ]] at this “[[political correctness]]”, and its [[repression ]] of all [[social antagonism]], Žižek suggests, goes a long way to explaining the recent decades’ resurgence of [[right]]-wing “[[parapolitics]]”, aiming to reinstate by authoritarian means a sense of symbolic, [[cultural ]] boundaries.

Žižek’s more openly para-Marxist turn between 1997 and 1999 has seen a larger shift in his attitude, both towards really existing liberal democracies and towards radical democratic [[politics ]] as a proposed critical alternative to them. Broadly [[speaking]], Žižek has embraced a version of the old [[Marxist]] critique of [[liberal democracies]], for which the “[[superstructure]]” of liberal freedoms (of press, [[conscience]], [[association]]; from [[arbitrary ]] arrest) is to be considered an [[ideological]] [[veil]]. What it conceals is the way that [[economic ]] liberty, the freedom to trade in markets, together with the power of [[money ]] and “market “[[market]] forces” in shaping public [[life]], undermines the [[other ]] liberal freedoms or renders them eff ectively empty or “formal”, while itself [[being ]] far beyond the possibility of political contestation – if not itself an avatar of the [[Lacanian Real]] that always returns to the same place.

Th is criticism of the really existing [[capitalist ]] democracies has implications for how Žižek has come to [[understand ]] what might truly oppose today’s [[hegemonic]] [[neo-liberal]] regimes. His claim is that advocacy of “radical democracy” is bound to remain inefficacious – indeed, it will simply imitate [[liberalism]]’s own ideological obfuscation of the determinant [[role ]] of the [[economy ]] – unless it politicizes the economy. As Žižek has written:<blockquote>We do not vote concerning who owns what, or about the relations between [[workers ]] in a factory. Such things are left to [[processes ]] [[outside ]] the sphere of [[the political]], and it is an [[illusion]] that one can [[change ]] them by “extending” democracy: say, by setting up “democratic” banks under the people’s [[control]]. (“[[Democracy is the Enemy]]”)</blockquote>Yet, he complains, [[the cultural turn]] in much Western “[[postmodern]]” [[theory]] has insulated [[economics ]] from critical and political concern every bit as thoroughly as [[neo-liberalism]] itself: “The depoliticised economy is the disavowed ‘[[fundamental fantasy]]’ of postmodern politics – [hence] a properly [[political act]] would necessarily entail the repoliticisation of the economy” (TS: 355). It is this [[reason ]] that underlies Žižek’s increasingly polemical break with [[figures ]] advocating radical democracy like [[Ernesto Laclau|Laclau]], [[Simon Critchley]] and [[Stavrakakis]]. Indeed, in writings since 2006, particularly around the [[time ]] of the [[global financial crisis]], Žižek has increasingly drawn upon [[Alain Badiou]]’s much more hostile post-[[Maoist]] stance towards a form of nominally “democratic” radical politics, instead advocating for the “[[idea of communism]]”, or even a “[[dictatorship of the proletariat]]”, and claiming that “the name of the ultimate [[enemy ]] today is not [[capitalism]], [[empire]], exploitation or anything of the kind, but democracy” (“[[Democracy is the Enemy]]”).