ABSTRACT
In First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, Slavoj iek suggests that it is time to start over again. Iek has recently taken to lambasting armchair radicals with the sayings of Mao Zedong, in particular the quote there is great disorder under heaven, the situation is excellent. Butler argues that what is radical about iek's position is precisely his refusal to take sides and his insistence on maintaining a position of undecidability in politics that is to say, to refuse to accept the terms of the false choice. Here he cites the 1999 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bombing of Serbia and iek's position against the double blackmail of refusing NATO and supporting Miloevi, or refusing Miloevi and supporting NATO. By contrast, many on the Western European left and within the former Yugoslavia tried to maintain the difficult position of supporting neither the NATO bombing nor Miloevis nationalism.
