Tragedy, Then Farce: Slavoj Žižek’s Theory of Populism

Sammanfattning

Artikeln diskuterar Slavoj Žižeks populismteori i ljuset av kritiken från Ernesto Laclau.

Slavoj Žižek is frequently portrayed as the paradigmatic anti
populist thinker. Yet he is also routinely criticized for endorsing populist
causes in contemporary politics, not least after his infamous remarks
concerning Donald Trump during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. This
article aims to approach this supposed contradiction by examining Žižek’s
theory of populism. Rather than reading his debate with Ernesto Laclau as
primarily a confrontation between reformist populism and revolutionary
communism, the article approaches it as a fundamental disagreement
over the relationship between theory and political practice. Through a
close reading of Žižek’s engagement with Laclau, the analysis reveals
how Žižek critiques what he perceives as a fetishistic tendency in Laclau’s
thought which ultimately produces a deficient account of universalization
and results in the domestication of the constitutive negativity marked by
the Lacanian objet a.

Citera

APA

Stagnell, A. (2025). Tragedy, then Farce: Slavoj Žižek’s Theory of Populism. Crisis and Critique, 12(1), 324–341.

@article{stagnell2025,
  author  = {Stagnell, Alexander},
  title   = {Tragedy, then Farce: Slavoj Žižek’s Theory of Populism},
  journal = {Crisis and Critique},
  volume  = {12},
  number  = {1},
  pages   = {324--341},
  year    = {2025},
  doi     = {}
}