ABSTRACT
Slavoj Zizek appears to advocate a form of radical democracy, close to the positions of Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe and Yannis Stavrakakis. Since the mid-1990s, Zizek has become increasingly critical of democracy as a political regime and the democracy as a signifier around which any radical politics worthy of the name might be organized. Zizek's defence of a radical democratic position in his early works is qualified by deep criticisms of really existing Western liberal democracies. In particular, from early works like sublime object of ideology, looking awry and tarrying with the negative onwards, Zizek argues 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. This criticism of the really existing capitalist democracies has implications for how Zizek has come to understand what might truly oppose today's hegemonic neo-liberal regimes.
