ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses Slavoj Žižek's ambivalent relationship with Marxism. When Žižek began to formulate a more substantive critique of post-Marxism in 1990, however, this centered neither on Lacan nor Hegel but that enigmatic silence that surrounds Althusser. Thus, in Tarrying with the Negative, Žižek provides a defense of Hegelian dialectics against the Marxian materialist reversal and argues that it is not Hegelian philosophy that is a closed, self-contained system but Marxism itself. In Eastern Europe, the historic collapse of actually existing socialism and the break-up of the Soviet Union were gathering pace, while in Western Europe the final demise of Western Marxism seemed assured if not already complete. While Žižek suggests that the political agenda of the liberal opposition is still to promote openness against the closure of nationalism, the old post-Marxist rhetoric of hegemony, articulation and discursive struggle has gone.