Law

Žižek’s account of law is built upon the reiteration of the idea that law is split or that there is a parallax gap between the public letter and its obscene superego supplement. ¹ This chapter focuses on the split in law, drawing out its repercussions for thinking about law more generally. As Paul A. Passavant observes, among postmodernists there is a recurring emphasis on moving beyond law because of law’s perceived rigidity and determinacy, as if law were a domain safe from the shifts, remainders, and instabilities necessarily part of any text. ² Some contemporary thinkers, such as Giorgio Agamben, suggest the possibility of a form of life beyond law. Others, inspired politically by anarchism and philosophically by Deleuze and Guattari, want to sever the relation between radical politics and law, to escape sovereignty’s capture. For these contemporary thinkers, law’s failures prevent law from serving social justice.