ABSTRACT
To the extent that it makes a systematized appearance in his work, Žižek considers law to be an institutional issue. The possibility of, for instance, both contract and convention are subsumed within this institutional framing, so that the humour we might associate with contract, and the satire of convention, disappears into a generalized irony of the institution. 2 This irony is apparent in two interlocking ways. First, the irony of the institution sets before us a choice to be made, but with the understanding that what will be chosen will not be selected through anything like free will; because there is, truly, only one option, inevitably and necessarily. Second, that what it is in any case impossible to do must be prohibited as such, precisely because it is impossible. These are the twin poles of the legal institution: a choice that is no choice, and the prohibition on what it is impossible to do. Through these devices, a legal subject is secreted by the institution in such a way that both can indulge themselves in the appearance of free will (seemingly holding the capacity of choice) 3 and of possessing a possible omnipotence or fusion with the real (since powers are only limited by prohibition). 4
