Reviewing Slavoj Žižek's latest books in The New Republic, Adam Kirsch, is not amused.

And in his recent writings, as the actual--or, in his Heideggerian terminology, the "ontic"--possibility of revolution recedes, its "ontological" importance has increased. No, the Revolution will not bring the millennium. As a historical science, Marxism is false. Divine violence "strikes from out of nowhere, a means without an end." And yet "one should nevertheless insist that there is no 'bad courage.'" The courage displayed in the Revolution is its own justification, it is the image of the utopia it cannot achieve. "The urge of the moment is the true utopia."

Zizek is hardly the only leftist thinker who has believed in the renovating power of violence, but it is hard to think of another one for whom the revolution itself was the acte gratuite. For the revolutionary, Zizek instructs in In Defense of Violence, violence involves "the heroic assumption of the solitude of a sovereign decision." He becomes the "master" (Zizek's Hegelian term) because "he is not afraid to die, [he] is ready to risk everything." True, "democratic materialism furiously rejects" the "infinite universal Truth" that such a figure brings, but that is because "democracy as a rule cannot reach beyond pragmatic utilitarian inertia ... a leader is necessary to trigger the enthusiasm for a Cause." In sum, "without the Hero, there is no Event"--a formula from a video game that Zizek quotes with approval. He grants that "there is definitely something terrifying about this attitude--however, this terror is nothing less than the condition of freedom."

The front page calls Žižek "The Most Despicable Philosopher In The West". Žižek may be provocative and go for the cheap laugh, but at least he properly footnotes his texts. How are we to verify that the Žižek in this polemic is the real Žižek and not just something imagined by the New Republic? I know of no one else that has read this In Defense of Violence that Mr. Kirsch refers to.

  ¶ 8:25 AM