Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism

Source

Žižek, S. (2001) Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? Five Essays in the (Mis)Use of a Notion, London and New York: Verso.

Review by Tony Myers

This timely and combative book argues that totalitarianism is an ideological notion which has been used by the liberal democratic consensus to impugn the political left's critique of that consensus with the atrocities of the political right, thereby disabling effective political thought. Žižek examines five aspects of totalitarianism here and concludes that the problem with the notion is the very thing that makes such a designation possible in the first place - the liberal democratic consensus (among whose members he includes just about everybody, damning them as a bunch of 'conformist scoundrels'). Like many of his recent books, this monograph is more explicitly political in its content, ending as it does with the refrain for increased socialization in some form or another'.