First As Tragedy, Then As Farce [Paperback]

There was once a time that the release of a new book from the 'Giant of Ljubliana' would be awaited with baited breath. It is perhaps a sign of Zizek's entry into the intellectual mainstream that his work is now regarded more as a literary window dressing than a genuine 'event'. I am pleased to say that this work is (or at least should be) a return to his provocative and relevant best.

For those who are unfamiliar with Zizek's thought, this is perhaps as good a place to enter his oeuvre as anywhere else. It gives a strong and readable introduction to his rhizomatic style of writing (and thought) and gives ample (although perhaps less sustained than in some of his other works) example of the inter-textuality he employs. It is also consistent with the central theses of his thought. In this, he is still as much of an heir to Hegel and Kant as he is Lacan and takes care to situate ideology as the central problem of 21st Century politics. As ever, Zizek writes about this in a way which assumes no prior knowledge, although encouraging and helping the reader to delve deeper into the folds of Lacanian and Marxian thought.

Those seasoned readers of Zizek who expect a rehash of his previous ideas, augmented with little more than new cultural data may be somewhat surprised. Where Zizek's recent works tended towards writing about new cultural phenomena in the context of his political project, this book is a fairly radical step in his political project, provoked by the best stimulant of philosophical creativity; events. Of particular interest will be the second part of the book, which acts as something of a manifesto for post-Fukuyaman communism, exaggerating the break with liberal universalism that he makes with his earlier work.

A political scientist by training, I was particularly struck by the articulate and provocative manner in which he argues for communism as the universality in which radical political action must participate. This forms a neat summary of a key area of discussion in contemporary critical theory and poststructuralist approaches to politics, productively intersecting recent debates about the nature of freedom, non-representational theories of politics and the relationship between molecular and molar structures of political potential (to name but three).

Some readers may be disappointed by the lack of substantive hypotheses contained within this book. It is however, much better to think of this book as an act of practical philosophy, acting in the liminal space between writing and production. If the purpose of this book is to provoke the reader, to provoke and produce a new revolutionary subject, then the book has a potential of success.

For some, 5 stars may be a little too much praise. The book itself is maybe a little too patchy to justify this score; it is certainly not 5-star material throughout. However, I have decided to give the book a score on the basis of its glorious highs, at the expense ignore some of its mediocre lows. After all, it is these crescendos of ideas that the reader will remember long after they have put down the book. I would recommend it to anyone interested in Zizek or investigating political responses to the recent financial crises, in an academic context or otherwise. This is a timely return to form, provoked largely by the philosophical urgency of events. As Zizek himself has said, when asked the key to radical politics during a financial crisis; it's the political economy stupid!

The intellectual composting of the entire world continues with another Zizek release: First as Tragedy, Then as Farce. This is what would probably be termed a "political intervention." Zizek has never shied away from politics, be it at home in Slovenia, or in the EU and America; indeed, embarrassingly to many of the commentariat, he often manages to churn out prescient journalism and reflections about subjects which local writers can only flail at. So it was with Thatcherism, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and most recently Italian politics and the Iranian elections.

Like his other recent political "pamphlet," Violence, this latest book is a concise distillation of the various re-occurring themes in Zizek's work, but, unlike that book, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce is less bricolage, and may well be as close to a Zizekian manifesto as we will ever come -replete with self-references, cut-and-paste passages and even a footnote pointing us to Wikipedia. The book is broken into two sections, the first ostensibly re-asserts ideology as the pre-eminent problematic with which we are dealing, even though depression appears "economically determined". The second section picks up the theme Zizek has been debating over the last year: communist possibilities and revolutionary potential.

This books marks the end of any apologism for Zizek about communism, indeed, after several years of noting that the Left must embrace it's troubled past, Stalinist warts and all, we are here enjoined to end Leftist guilt once and for all. Zizek is sick of ruminating on purges and gulags. Instead it is the capitalists and their apologists who need to begin explaining themselves. He suggests the field of politics does not revolve around how communism appears to us here, at the end of history, but how our circumstances appear to the eternal idea of communism. This point, maintained similarly byAlain Badiou and Kojin Karatani among others, points us in the direction of once again asserting communism as the currently missing dynamic in global politics. Various thinkers have offered their input into quite what form this assertion takes: David Harvey wants us to join new social movements;Badiou advocates the self-organisation and the Jacobinism of French migrant groups; Karatani wants us to join local exchange trading schemes.

Zizek has been notably silent on his fellow's advocacies, and did bring upon himself Simon Critchley's riposte that he is a magician with a hat, but no rabbit. Here Zizek is clearly trying to give us what rabbit he can, but it is a diffuse one: we are told to drop historical determinations of communism, and do it afresh for our times, but we are also told the present needs a swift dose of Jacobin-Leninism. The part-of-no part is upheld as a site of communist solidarity, but note this is not the proletariat, it seems to be the "no-papers" as they call them in France: illegal migrants (plus slum dwellers and the dispossessed at large); however we can no longer afford to be "subversive" from the stance of the part-of-no-part because as has been well established, capital is its own subversion, and thrives thereon.

The question is thus a territorial one: quite literally where is the space from which to re-assert the communist ideal? As Zizek asks rather than answers, how to "subtract" ourselves from the situation in a way which at once gives space to think and act, which violently disturbs the existing order, and which shows the complicity of perceived opposites in that order?

Zizek drops the idea of socialism itself. He posits the future as a battle not between capitalism and socialism, but as one between socialism (or social-democracy, or China's social-authoritarian capitalism) and communism.

As a manifesto, Zizek's falls a little short. We have no list of demands; we have no advocacy of one thing or another, other than communism, which is apparently not actually an answer, but the name of the problem which must confront capitalism. Having said this, Zizek does tell us in part what to do:

He approvingly cites Ghandi's mantra: "be the change you wish to see in the world" (which coincidentally Oxfam has written on a fridge magnet). Zizek also promotes a mentalité which is argued to be key to action and thought: we must assume that the worst is our fate. We must think from the future as if the worst has come to pass, and consider what interventions we would make in order to change this fate; in this way, ironically, our free act to intervene in history must, argues Zizek, be premised precisely on our future circumscribed free will. This may sound a little strange, but its targets are clear: hopeful Fabian solutions (like Al Gore's to environmental disaster) and wild, impotent flails such as the anti-Iraq War protests back in 2002-2003 (which were then cited by Bush and Blair as examples of the freedom and democracy they were trying to spread).

Critchley will be unhappy to have no rabbit from Zizek's hat, but compared to his earlier writings we can at least glimpse a pair of ears. Whether defensible or not, Zizek has said for a long time that it is not up to philosophers to come up with answers; conveniently he is a politician when posing questions and a philosopher when asked for answers. But what could on the one hand be read, as it is by Critchley, as ultimately empty posturing, could be read on the other hand as a very trusting injunction: do as you please, but do it carefully and with thought. Zizek appears not to particularly be galvanising us into action, but to be galvanising us into thought. Zizek would probably not care if we joined a new social movement, began a LETS group, organised a protest or turned our house into a commune; what he would care about is that we thought it all through: that we looked at it from the future of a terrible fate and decided, yes, that is the intervention I must make.

As other reviewers have pointed out, First As Tragedy, Then As Farce differs from the majority of Zizek's other work primarily for the fact it's extremely readable. As such, it's not a bad entry-point into the world of one of Slovenia's finest cultural critics. It's short and punchy, and the author's use of the cartoon film Kung Fu Panda to explain both the complexities of contemporary ideology and the continuing popularity of Silvio Berlusconi is a nice touch. But in terms of the actual argument, the book leaves a lot to be desired. Zizek is, as ever, excellent at diagnosing the symptoms of modern malaise, but the remedy he proposes seems, at best, highly optimistic. Still good fun, though; Uncle Slavoj is as provocative and entertaining as ever.