ABSTRACT
The best way to reach Slavoj Zizek's politics, as is usually done, by way of an earnest discussion of his explicitly political propositions or by a laborious tracing of his affiliations with other established authorities, but by aiming at something completely different. This chapter shows that Zizek seems to ignore stylistic questions, in a position to see that the true situation is precisely the opposite. Zizek's very brilliance in discussing, "metaphorising," certain political situations is a consequence of an extraordinary attentiveness to their poetic subtleties. Zizek has induced large numbers of people to reread Lacan, and, to rediscover the validity and power of psychoanalysis as a clinical—and not just an academic—practice. The chapter examines Zizek's style, a style which at once throws up a notorious wealth of anecdotes, but which refuses, integrally, aggressively, to read them—often even according to the most minimal requirements of journalistic accuracy.
