=====·=
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· the dissolution of the traditional set of values and / or authorities - there
Carl Schmitt in the
Age of Post-Politics
Slavoj Zizek
I accordance with established customs and to hate and disobey them, tha t
The basic paradox of Carl Schmitt's political decisionism - the rule of
law ultimately hinges on an abyssal act of violence (violent imposition)
which is grounded in itself; that is, every positive order to which this act
refers, to legitimize itself, is self-referentially posited by this _act itsE;lfl_.- is
that his very polemics against liberal-democratic formalism inexorably gets
caught in the formalist trap. Schmitt targets the utilitarian-enlightened
grounding of the political in some pres upposed set of neutral-universal
norms or strategic rules which (should) regulate the interplay of individ-
ual interests (either in the guise of legal normativism il Ia Kelsen, or in
the guise of economic utilitarianism).
According to Schmitt, it is not possible to pass directly from a pure
normative order to the actuality of social life - the necessary mediator
between the two is an act of Will, a decision, grounded onl y in itself,
which imposes a certain order or legal herm eneutics (reading of abstract
rules). An y normative order, taken in itself, remains stuck in abstract
formalism, that is to say, it cannot bridge the gap that separates it from
,.- actual life. However - and this is the core of Schmitt's argumentation -
the decision which bridges this gap is not a decision for some concrete
order, but primarily the d ecision for the formal principle of order as
such. The concrete content of the imposed order is arbitrary, dependent
on the Sovereign's will, left to histo rical contingency - the principle of
order, the Dass-Sein of Order, h as prio rity over its con crete content,
\. over its Was-Sein. This is the main feature of modem con servatism
which sharpl y disting uishes it from every kind of traditionalism:
modern conservatism, even more than liberalism, assumes the lesson of
is no longer any positive content which could be presupposed as the
universally accepted frame of reference. (Hobbes was the first explicitl y
to posit this distinction betw een the principle of order and any con-
crete order.) The paradox thus lies in the fact that the onlv way to
oppose legal normative formalism is to ;~ve'rt' to d ecisionist formalism
- there is no way of escaping formalism within the horizon of
modernity.
For that reason, Schmitt's notion of exception is necessarily ambigu-
ous: it stands simultaneously for the intrusion of the Rea l (of the pure
contingency which perturbs the universe of symbolic automaton ) and for
the gesture of the Sovereign who (violently, w ithout foundation in the
symbolic norm) imposes a symbolic norma tive order - in Lacanese, it
stands for objet petit a as well as for 5 1, the Master-Signifier. This d ouble
nature of the founda tional act is also clearly discernible in religion -
Christ enjoins his follow ers to obey and respect their s uperiors in
is, to cut all human links with them: 'If anyon e comes to me and does
not hate his father and his mother, his wife and children, his brothers
and sisters - yes even his own life - he cannot be m y disciple' (Luke
14: 26).
Do we not encounter here Ch rist's own 'religious s uspension of the
ethical'? The universe of established ethical norms ('mores', the substance
of social life) is reasserted, but only in so far as it is 'mediated ' by
Christ's authority: first, we have to accomplish the gesture of radical
negativity and reject everythin g that is most p recious to us; la ter, we get
it back, but as an expression of Christ's will, mediated by it (the way a
Sovereign relates to positi ve laws involves the sa me paradox: a Sover-
eign compels us to respect laws precisely in so far as he is the point of
the suspension of laws). When Christ claims that he did not come to
undermine the Old Law, but merely to fulfil it, one has to read into this
'fulfilment' the full ambiguity of the Derridean supplement: the very act
of fulfilling it undermines its direct au thority. ln this precise sense, ' Love
is the Fulfilling of the Law' (Romans 13: 10): love acco'rnplishes what th e
Law (Commandments) aims a t, but this very accomplishment simul-
taneously involves the suspension of the Law. The notion of belief which
fits this paradox of authority w as elaborated by Kierkegaard; that is
why, for him, religion is eminently modern: the traditional universe is
ethical, while the Religious involves a radical disruption of the Old Ways
- true religion is a crazy wager on the Impossible which we have to
make once we lose support in tradition.
What is properly modern in Schmitt's noti on of exception is thus the
violent gesture of asserting the independence of the abyssal act of free
decision twrn its positivl' c •.mtcnt. W hat is 'm odern' is tht! gap between
the act of tkcisio n and its content - the perception that wh<lt really
m ntter.s i:; the <~ct as SUl~h, independently of itt' contl'nt (or ' ortkring · -..
indeptmdently of the p ositive determinate order). TI1c paradox (which
grmmds so-caJ.led 'conservative moderni~m') is thus that the intH.'rmost
po::;sibi li ty nf lnlXiernism is as~erted in the gui8e of ib ap p arent opposite,
the re turn to an uncond.i tional authority which cannot be grounded in
pos itive renson~. That is why th~ properly modern God is the God o f
predestination, a kind uf Schmittian politician who d raws the l i n~~ o f
separa tion behvt~~.~n U;:; and Th0m, frit>rH.is and Enemies, tlw SavE~d a nd
the Dam.n~~d , by nt1~11t1~ of a purely formal. abyssal eel ~~r dt~ci:; hm, witlrou t any
grounds in the actual properties mt.l ads of ilw::>e co n cCrrlt~d (:;in c( ~ they are
not y('t ~~ vcn b(lm ). ln traditional Catholicism, sillvation d e pe nds em
earthly gooJ deeds; in the logic of Protest<1.n t prcd(•s ti na tion, l~a rthly
dE:'~'ds nnd forhmcs (lvealth ) a re dt best an ambiguo us sig11 o f th e fact
that the s u bject is a lread y rcdecnwd by the in::;c.rutab le Divine cH.:t - th a t
is to sa y, he is no t s aw•d /1N.tlU.~' he is rich or does good deeds, he
a(:complislK>s gU<.'d du~d s or is rich l•e<1111SC he is s a ved . ... The shift from
a ct to s ibn is cruci.ll here: from the perspective of predL~ li noti<.m, n d eed
becom e:; a ,;i,~n of the p redestined Divine decision.
Schmitt's decis io nism hc1s its philosophic,1l wots in Dun::. Scotus's
reaction against the AristLlleliiln '~'ssentialism ' of Aqu.i nas: beyond Divine
H.eason therE:' is the obyss of Cod's Wi!!, of His contingent Decision which
su sta i.ns eve.n the Etema.l Truths. And it is this gap in God Jhmself
which opens up tlw sp ace for modern tn1hedy. Jn pohtical h:~ rms, the
d i fkrencc be tween classical tragedy and modern trng~~d y is the differ-
011Cl' between (traditi.on<~J) tyrmmy and (m<'U\~rn) terror. 2 Th~· trad itio nal
hero ::oncrifkt"S himst>lf for tlw Cause, he t(•::;bh the pressurt> of the 'J'yran t
a nd ac.:.~(.lmp li :-hes his Duty, cost what it may; as such, h<.> is «pprecicl ted,
h is sacrifice confers on him the :;ublinw aura, his act i!S insc rib~~d in the
rcgi~tt::r of 'f'n1d·ition as an example to be followed . We enter the domain
of mode rn tr.<lgt>d y vvlwn Lhe very logic of the sacrific<:· fo r the Thing
compels us t1.l :;acrifice this Thing itsdf; that is the predica me nt of Paul
Claudt:>l's Sygn~· (from his Co ufontaine tri.logy), who is co mpell~~d to
bt>tray her fa ith in o rder to prove her absolute fkit>lit y to Cod. Sygn<>
does no t sa-:rifke her empirical life for wh ,l t ma tters t(l her mor(: than
that life itself, she sacr ifi c~s precisely thCJt which i::; 'in her more than
her~lf', a nd thus survives ilS a me re ::;hel l of her flmner sdf, d eprived of
her a~nlmn - d1~reby Wt~ e nkr the domain of the monstro:;ity (~{ ht•rvi~m,
when l.lUr fidelit y lo the Cause com pels u s t1) transgress the th n:?shold of
our ' humr~nity ' . Is it n~> t proof of the h ighest, absolute faith th at, fo r the
Jovf:' of God, I am ready to lost>, to expose to eternal d<mm.ati.on, my
eternal St)u} itself? It is 0.1sy to sacrifin.' my life .in tht~ c~~rta inty thM I am
thereby redeeming m y eternal Soul - hoi"' much w orse it is to sacrifi<:t~
one's very soul for God!
Perhaps the ultim,1 te historical illustration of this predicamt>nt- of the
gap -.vhich separates thl: h e ro (his resistance to tyranny) from the \'ictim
of terror- i5 provided by the Stalin is t victinx this victim .is not someone
whn finally learns that C(lmmunis m W<l S nn ideological mirage, and
,....,: becomes aware of the positivity of simple e thict~l llfe outside the id<:~<~­
logical Cau5ei the Stalinist victim c:annf>t rdreat into simple ethical life,
since he has already forsaken it for h is Com.munist Cause. This pt'l~dica­
ment accounts for the impression tha t a ltho ug h the fate of the victims of
the great Stalinist show trial::; {front Bukharin to Slansky) was ht)rrible
beyond description, the properly tr agic dimension is missing: they \\'ere
not tragic heroes, but something more horrible and simultaneously more
comical - they were deprived of the very dignity w hich would confer on
their fate tlw p rupt'rly tragic d imension.
For tha t n~ason, w~~ carUlot U SE' An tigone as the model for the resist-
ance to Stalinist pmver: if W(' d <.> this, we reduce th e Stalinist terro r to
just another version of tyrann y . Antigone maintains the reference to the
big Other 's de sir e (to accomplish the symbolic ritual and bury her
deceased brother properly), as opposed to the ty rant's (p:;eudo-)La"'' -
prE~cisely the rdcrenc~ which is lacking i1.1 the Stalinist show trie~ls. ln
humiliating the vktim, the Sta linii:il te rror deprives him of tbe very
dimension which could wnfcr ::;ublinH! beauty on h im: the victitn gt't'S
beyond a certain thresho ld , he ' loses his dignity', i~ simultmwously
reduced to a pure subject bereft of agalma, a nd rendered 'dcstitutf.>',
une1bJe to recompose the narrativE:' of h is life. To put it in yet another
\vay: k~rror is not the power. oi corruption which undermines the ethical
attitude from outsidei rather, it und ermine~ iL from within, by mobilizing
and exploiting to its utJnost the in heren t gap of tht' ethical project ibelf,
the gap that separates the ethical Cause quu real from the Caus<' in its
symbolic dimension (values, etc.); o r - to put it in a Schmittian \vay -
the gap that :-;eparate1> the God of the pur.e Act of Decision fron1 the God
of positive Prohibitions and Ctlmmandme.n ts.
This, again, opens up th e p(lssibility of a Kierkegaardi<m connt>ctio11:
does not the Kierkegaardian suspens ion of the (symbolic) ~ thica l no t
also involve a move beyond tr aged y? The ethical hero is tragic, whcrt.>as
the Knigh t of Faith d w ells in th e horrible domain bey ond o r between the
two deaths, since he (is ready to) sacrifice(s) what is most p re.:ious to
hlm, his objet petit a (in the case of Abraham, h is s on). In other words,
Kierkega ard's p oint is th a t Abraham is forced to chOllst> not be tween h is
duty to God mid his duty to humanity (such a choice r emains simply
tragic), but between the two facets of the dt1ty LP Cod, ilnd thereby the
two facets of God Himself: God as universal (the system of symbolic
norms) and God as the point of a bsolute s ingularity \\'hich s uspends the
universal.
For that prcdse reason, Der rida's read in g of (Kierkegaard's reading
of) Abraham's gesture in Domwr fa mort/ '"'here he interpre ts .Abraha m's
sacrifice nnt as ·a hyperbolic exc~ptinn but as sl)m e thing which all of us
perfortll again and again , every day, in our m ost common ethical
experience, seen1s inadequatt::. According to Derrida, ~~ve ry tinw we
choos<~ to fulfil a duty to one individual, we neglect - forget- our duty
to all the others (since tout autre e$f tout autre, every other per8on is
w ho.lly other)- i fl look <J ftcr my ow11 ch ildren, I sacrifice the chi ldren of
other men; i.f I help to feed and clothe this p erson, I aba nd<.m other
pt'Ople, and so on. Wh<1t gets lost in this reduction of Abrah am's
predicamen t to a kind o f Heideggerian constitutive guilt of Dasein which
can never u sc/actuali 7.~: all its possibilities is the self-referen tial nature of
this predicament Abrilham's d eudlock lies not in the fact tha t, <'~n be half
of the ul timate follt autre (God), he has to sacrifice another tout autre, his
most bdoved earth ly companion, h is son, but, rather, in the fact that, on
behalf of his Love for God, he ha:; to sacrifice that w hich thl!. very rdigion
grounded in f1is fa ith order::; l1im l"o love. The split is thus inherent to faith
itself; it is the split between the Symbolic and the Real, between the
symbolic edifice of f<l ith and the p ure, unconditional aci" of faith -the only
zvay to prove yo11r faith is lo betray that which this very fait1I orders you to
IO!}(~.
II
How does psyd uxmalysis interpret this theological background of the
Schmitti.an politician, the figure of 'irra tiona!' authority, th e bear~r of an
uncond itional injunction which can never be tran s lated into a set of
detE:"' rminate demunds? ll1e pn,pcr way to add ress this ques tion is to
t<lckle the en.i.gma of why Freud supplem(;~nted the Oedipal myth w ith
unother mythical narrativt', that of the 'primordial father' in Totem and
Taboo (T&7), whose lesson is the exact obverse of Oedipus: far from
having to deal with the father w ho inte rvenes as tht' Third preventing
direct contact with tht~ incestuous object (and thereby sustains the
illusion that his annihila tion Wtlll )d give us free <Kcess to th is object), it
is the killing of the father - in ~hort: the realization of th e Oedipal wish
-which gives rise to the symbo lic prohibition (the dead f<~thcr returns <~s
his Name). And what occurs in today's much-decried 'd~:cline of Oedi-
pus' (dedirw of paternal symbolic <lutht,.rity) is precisdy the retu.rn of
figures which function according to the logic of the 'prim.ordial father',
from ' totalitarian' po litical Lead(;•ts tn the p<mmta l sexual h arasser -
why? When the 'pacifying' symbolic a uthority is f;uspended, the only
way to avo)d the d ebilitating deadlock nf desire, its inherent impossibil-
ity, is to locate the cause of its inacce~sibiJity in a despotic figure w hich
stands for the primordial jouisswr: we cannot e njoy becmASt:~ l1e arrogates
all the enjoyment. . ..
We can now see the p recise nature of the crucial shift fmm Oedipus
to Tc7-T: in the 'Oedipus compkx', the parri<:ide (and incest witl1 the
mother) h as the sta tus of an unconscious desire - we, ordinary (ma le)
subjects, all dream about it, since the pclh:'rnal figure pn~dudes our access
to the maternal object, disturbs our symbiosis with it; while o~: d ipus
himself is the cxception<ll figure, the One who actually did it. In r~sT. on
the contrary, the parricide i ~ not the object of om dreams! the goal of
our unconscious ~·.rish, someth ing we d ream about_. entertain ing its fu ture
prosp ect, but something which never n:ally happens and thus, vi<l its
p ostponeml.'nt, sustai:ns the.> s ta te of Culture (since the rt:>alizat.ion of this
wish, th e constunmation of the inct:!;tuous link w ith the mother, would
abolish the symbol ic Jistance/p rohi bition \Vhich Jefines the universe of
Cul ture); the trauma tic event, r<Jther, is that which always-already has to
happen the moment we 1U"t: <.uilhin the order of Culture. So how M e we to
explain th e fact that alth01.1gh we really did kill the fat her, the ou tCl'>me
is not the longed-for incestuous un ion? There, in this pan1dox, lies the
central thesis of TE-tT: the actual bearer of Prohibition, that w hich
prevent" our access to the incestuous object, is not the living but the dead
father - the father who, after h is death, returns as his Name, that is, c1S
the embodi.ment of the symbolic Law / Prohibition. Thus tht~ matr ix of
T&T account:; for the structural necessity of the parricide: the passage
from direct brute force to the rule of symbolic authm;ty, of the prohibi-
tory Law, is always grotmded in a (disavowed) act of primordial c.rime.
Therein lies the dialectic of 'You GUl prove that you love me t)nJy l:>y
betraying me': t11e father is elevated into th~: venerated symbol of l..a\v
only after hi:-; betra yal and murder. 1n.is prob.lemaHc al~n opens up the
vagaries of ignorance - not the subject's, but the b.ig O ther's: 'the fa ther
is dead , but he is no t aware of it' - that is to say, he does not know that
his lovin g followers have (always-a lready) betrayed him. On the other
hand, this n1eans that the fathe r ' really think::-; tha t he is a fCl lhcr', that hi1'
authority emanates directly from his pe rson , not rnere.ly from the empty
symbolic place that he occupies and/or f ills in . What the faithfu l follower
should conceal from. the patcmd! figurt• of the Leader i~ precisely this
gap between the Leader in the immed iacy o f his personality ;1 nd the
symbolic place he occupies, the gap on account of ·wh ich father qua
effecti\'e p erson is u ttt~rly impohmt and rid ic uJuus (the g reat exnmple
here, of course, is the figure of King Lear, who was viole ntly confronted.
with this betrayal and th e (:> nsuing unmasking of h is impotence -
d~pri ved of his symbolic title, he is rt:'duced to an impotent ragin g old
fool) . The: heretical legend acwrding to which Clu:ist himself ordered
Judas l l) betrav h im (or at l eil~l, let him know his \1\rish betwct:n the Jines)
is thus well-f(~unded : there, in this necessity 0f the Betra yal of the Gre<~ t
Man which alone cnn assun:~ h is Fame, lles the ultimate m yster y of
Po wer.
How evl!.r, how is lhi!:> n::versat possibk•? According to fre ud, in the
Tt/1' mntrix, there is still something missing: it i~ not t~nough to h<Jve the
munkred father returning <~s the <1gency ~:)f symbolic Prohibition - in
order ior this prohibition to h· ('ffective, actually to exert its power- it
mus t b1~ s ustained by a posit.iw <1ct of Willing. . . . AJI the~t~ intricacies
pa v t~ tht' Wc1y fo r the last Frt.~ ud i ;:tn variation on the Oed ipal topography,
the ont' in M( •~es and MoiiOiili'ism (,-\1{•/v1) . .Hm·c also Wt.> art~ dL•aling vvith
tw,1 paternal figures; this duil lity, however, is not the samt~ a::, the orH:' in
n~T: the Lw o figures a n~ n o t the pr~-symbolk obSC(:'nt~/non-cas troted
Fnther-l<mi~ ...;,.mcc and the {dead) fat!wr q11.a bearer o f symbolic authmity
·- that is, the ~ame-of-thc-father - but the Ancient Egyptian ~i<1ses, the
ont' who in trodun~d monotheis m- who d i spen~ed with the old po lythe-
is tic <;uperstitions and introduced the notion of the u nin~r:-:e as deter-
mined an.d rul1~d by a un ique rational O rder, and the Semitic !'v1oses who
is in t'ffcrt non~ \)tber th m1 .IL•hovah ('t'ahweh), tlw j<'<llous God who
shows Vlmgdul rage when He feels betra ~ed by Hi~ people.
In shmt, tvk:..-M reverses the topography o f Tt.;-T yet <lgain: t he fa ther
wh o is betray€'() and kilk'd by h is followers/sons is 11 01. tlw obscene
primNd ial Fathcr-}ouisS;mcc, bu t the very '.rillional' fa the r who e m bod ies
s ymbolic cluthority, tlw fi~ure which }Jl~rson i fies tJw llllified rational
$truc t uT\~ of the uni n:~ rse (lvgo~). lnstead of the obsccnL' primordial prc-
8ymbolit.: fa ther r~:-~turning a ft~~ r hi~ murder in the guise of his Name, of
syrnbolic au tlwrity, we now h;wc the syrnbo lk authority (logo:;) betrayed:
killed by his folilYwers/son.s, and then returning in the guise of the
jenl ous, vengeful and unforgiving superL·go fig ure of Ccxl full ot rn urd er-
ous ragl~ .~ It is only he re, after this ~~ond reve.rsol of the Oedipal ma trix,
that we reach lht~ wcll-knl)WJ1 Pascalian distinct.ion between the God of
Phil osopht:~ r~ (Cod l)lla the uni vt-rsal stru c.t.tH(~ of logos, .iden tifil~d to the
mtiuna l s tructure of the universe) and lh(·~ (;(1d of Th('ologis ts {the God
of love and hatred, the inscruta ble 'dMk <..;od' of capricious 'irrntionaJ'
1-'redes tin;J tinn}.
In contl'ast to th(:' p r imo l'dial {a thN e nd owed w ith a knowledge about
Jouis•.uncl!, the (undum(·ntt'l l featu re of this unwmprornis ing God i ~ tha t
H~, say:.< 'No'' to joll i%1111((' - this i:-.: a God who, as L1can puts it, is
po~sessed by a femciou::; igrwra nce l'ia fhoce isnomnce de Yahv(1'" ], by an
ilttitudt' t)f ' I rduse to know, I don't want lD hear, anything about your
dirty ;md secret way:; pt jnui~~n 11 cc'; a C od who banislws the univer:;e of
traditional sexua lized wisdom, th(' universe in which a sembla.nce of the
ultimate harmony between the big Other (the symbolic order) and
jouissana, the notion of macrocosm as regulated by some unde rlying
sexual tension o f male and tcmale 'principl(;.'8' (Yin and Yang, Ligh t a nd
Darkne::;::;, Earth and Heaven .. .) s till persists. This God is the proto-
existentialis t GLld vvhose existence - to apply to him, arwchronistically,
Sartrc's definition o f man - does not s imply coincide with His essl:'ncc
(ns with the med ie val God of Aqu inas), but precE?des His essence. For
that reason He speaks in tautologies, not only about His own quidditas
('I am \Vhat J am') but also, an d abov e all, about \.vhat concerns h1gos, the
reasons for what He is d oing- or, more precisely, for His injunctions, fo r
what He is ilSking us o r p rohibiting us to do: His inexorable orders a re
u ltimately grounded. in an ' It i!:' so BECAUSE TSAY 1T IS SO!'. In short,
this God is the God of pure Will, of its capricious abyss which sta nds
beyond any global rational orde r of logos, il God who does not h ave to
account for anything He does; it is to F W .J. Schelling tha t \V e owe the
most piercing descrip tions of this horrifying abyss o f WilL Schelliog
opposed the Will to the 'principle o f 1-iUfficien t tec1son': pure Will ing is
al\vays self-identical, it reties only on its ow n act - ' l \\'an t it b ecau::>e I
want it!'. O rdinary p~~opl~ are horrified when they encounter a person
whose behaviour displ<Jys such an unconditional Will: there is something
fascinating, properly hypnotic, about it; it is as if one is b ewitched by the
sight of it. . . . Schelling's emphasis (m the abyss of pure Willing, of
cou rse, targets H egd 's alleged ' panlogidsm': wh at Schelling v.:an ts to
prove is that the Hegelian universal logical sysh·m is in itself, strido
sensu, impotent - it is <1 sys tem of pure pokntialities and, as s uch, in need
of the supplement.:1ry 'irrational' act o f pure Will if it is to actualize itself."
This God is tlw Cod who ~peaks to His follm·vers/sOllS, to His 'people'
- the intervention of "<JOice is crucial here. As l...ilcan put it in his
unpublished Seminar on Anxicty (1960-61), the voice (the actual 'spe~:·ch
act') brings about the passagt! ,1 /'acte of the signify ing network, its
'symbo lic eftkiency'. This voice is inherently meaningless, even nonsen-
sical; it is a m er(~ negative gesture \vhich gives expression to God's
malicious and vengeful anger (all meaning is already there in the
symbolic order ,.., hich structure~ our universe), but it is precisely as s uch
that it actualizes purely structural meaning, transforming it into iln
exper ienct' of Sense."~ n1 is, of course, L-> anoth er way of saying that Cod,
through this uttering o f the Voi.::e w hich manifes t ~ His Will! subjectivizcs
Him self. The Ancient Egyp tian Moses belTayc d and kilJed by h i::> people
was the all-inclusive O ne of logo:?, the rational s u bstantia) structure of the
universe, the 'writing' accessible to those who know how to read the
'great book of Na ture', not yet the all-exclusive O ne o f ~ubjectivity who
imposes H is unconditional Will on His creation. And again, the cruc i.1!
 pt>in t not to be mjs~ed i~ that this God, although alogical, 'capricio us',
vengeful, 'irrational', is not the pre-symbolic 'primordial' f athec-jouiss-
ance but, on the con tJ·ary, the agent o f prohibition borne <t long by a
'ferocious ignorcmct:' of the ways of jouis<:rmce.
The purad ox one has to bear in mind here is that this Cod of
groundks!:' Willing and ferocious 'irrational' rage is tht> God who, by
means of His Prohibition, accomplishes the destruction of tlw old sexu-
CJ iized Wisdom, a nd thus ()pcnf:. up the space for the desexualized
'absh·act' knowledgt! of modern science. Tht> pa r<:~dox thus lies in the fact
that there is 'objec tive' scientific knowled.ge (in the m()dem, post-Carte-
sian sense of the t(!rm) only if the universe of scientific knowledge is
itself supplementl:'d and sustained 'by this exce&>ive 'ir rational' figure of
the 'real fa ther'. ln short, Descartes's 'voluntarism' (remember his inf<~ ­
mous statem ~m t tha t two plus nvo woLll d be fi ve if s uch \vere God's Will
- there ilrc no eternal truths directly cosubs tantial with the Divine
NClture) is the necessary obver~e of modern scientific knowledge. Pre-
modern Aristotelian a nd medieval knowledge was not yd 'l)bjective'
.rational scientific knowledge precisely because it lacked this excessive
element of God qua the s ubjectivity of pure 'irrational' Willing: in
Aristotle, 'God' directly equals His O\Vn eternal rational Nature; He 'is'
nothing but the logical Order of Things.
The further p aradox is th at this 'irrational' God qu11 the prohibitory
paternal figu re also opens up the space for the en t.in~ development of
modernity, up to the decons truc tionist notion th at ou r sexual identity is
a conti.ngent sociosymbolic formation: the m oment this prohibitory fig-
ure recedes, we are back w.ith Jungian nco-obscurantist notkmt; of
masculine and feminine eternal archetypes which thrive today. This
point is absolutely crucial if we are not to misunderstond complt:'tely the
gap which separates the 'proper' authority of the symbolic Law /Prohi-
bition from mere 'regulation by rules': p aradoxically, the doma.in of
t>ymbolic rules, if it is to count as such, has to be grounded in some
tautological a uthority beyond rules, w hich says: 'Tt is so be<:<:~use I sa y it is
so!'.
We can m>w see w hy, on the level of individual libidinal econo m y,
Lacan calls this p rohibiting God the 'reol father' as the 'agent of Cc1strC1-
tion': symbolic cas trath.m is another namt~ fo.r the gap between the big
Oth~r and fortissmJCt', for thl.' fact that the two can never be 'synchro-
nized'. We can also ~ee in what precise sense pe rversion emKts the
diswowal of c<Jstration: the perverfs fundamen tal illusion i~ that he
possesses il (symbolic) knowledge \·Vhich enilbh:~s him to regulate his
access to foui ..;..:.ance - to put it in mor.e contemporary terms, the pervert's
dream is to transform his sexual activity into an instrumental purpose-
orientated activit y \ovhich can b~· projected and executed according to a
well-defined plan. W hen one speak.<. of l<1day's decline of paternal
authority, it is this fa ther, the father of the uncompro1ni:>ing 'No!', who
actually seems to be in retreat; in h is ab~cnce, i.n the absence of his
prohibitory 'No!' , new forms of the ph;mtasmic harmony between the
symbolic order and jouissaun~ can thrive again - this i:-; what tlw so-called
New Age 'holistic' a ttltud<' is ultimately about, this renew<1l of Reason
and Life Substance (Ear.th or macrocosm itself ns a living entity) at the
t>xpense of the prohibitory 'real father'. A sign tJf how en'n the Church
is not resistant to this shift in the fundar.n ental attitude is the ren~nt
graf>s-roots pressurt> on the Pope tl) elevilte Ma ry to Ow status of co-
redemptrix: nne expe(tS the Pope to render the Catholic Church vjabl~
for the po!5t-pa ternal third millennium by proclaiming a dogma \.Vh ich
asserts that the only way for us sin ful morta ls to g<lin divine mercy is
via our plea to :'vl<1ry- Mary serves as mec:hn tM; if '"'t> convince her, s he
will speak on our b(~ ha l f to Christ, her son .
III
This, then, is the tiJC<)Logiazl background to Sd1rnitt's <1ss~~rtit1n of politic,ll
antagonif>m. H owever, the que:-;tion remains: does Schmitt actuaHy pro-
vide the adequntc theoretica l articu lation o f the lt1gic of tJCilit ical antag-
onbm? The a n~wer is Itt>: his ossertion of the politica l involves a specific
d isavowa l o f the proper d imensio n of p<)litica l antagon ism, a nd it is
precisely this disavowa l which d<:'termines Schmitt's ri.ghtist politicill
orientCltion.
Let us begin ~vith a question: what is politics proper?' Schrnitt's well-
known answer ( e~ social s ituation which involves the opposition between
friend and enemy), radical as it may i1ppear, is not radical enough, in so
far as it already displaces the inherent antagonism constitutive of the
political on to the extemal rela tionship betwe(~n Us and Them. That i!:' t(l
say: politics propc1· is a phenom(~non \Vhich appeared for th~ first time,
in Andent Grec'\:e w hen the members of dl'mtl~ (those with no firm
determined place in the hi t~rarch ical social "'d ifice) demanded <1 voice:
against those in power, in ~ocial control, they pn1 tc~ted the \<~.Tong they
suffered, and w a nted thei r voice to be heard, to be re(ognized a~
included in the public sphere - tht'y, the excludf:d, thost> ~vith no fixed
place within the soc.ial ed ifice, thus paradox ical'ly p resenh:·d themselve:;
as the representatives, the stand-in, for the Who le of Society, for the true
Universality ('We- the "nothing", not included in the sc.>dal order - are
the people;. vve nrc A ll ~gainst others who stand only for their partictllar
privileged interest'). So poliLical conflic t involves tension between the
structured social body, where each part has its ph1cc, and 'the part of no-
 p<~rt' which unsettles thi ~ (.lrder on account of the empty principle of
universaJHy, of what Etienne Balibar caHs Jgnliberfii, of the principled
equality (Jf uti men q11n spe.lking being:-..
Politics p rop er thus a lways involves a kind of sh ort circuit between
the Universal and the PartiCldar: it involves tlw paradox of a singular
wh.ich appears as a st<-.nd-in for the Universal, destabilizing tht~ ' natural'
functional order of relations in the social body. The political s truggle
proper is therefl)Te never si mply a rational deba te between multiple
inten~sts but, simultaneously, the struggk for one's V<lice to be heard
and recognized as the voice of a legitimate partner: when the 'excluded',
from the Greek demos to Polish workcn::, protested against the ruling
elite (mistocracy or H&menklatura), the t1·uc stakes wen: n ot on ly their
explicit demands (for higher wages, better worki.ng wnditions, ~:~tc.), but
their very right to be heard and recognized as an equal partner in tht:~
debate - in Po!,mct the 11omellklatum lost the moment it h ad to aco:.~pt
Solidarity a:; an equal partner.... The entire history of political thought
is u ltimately nothing but a :-;cries of d isavowals of th is political moment,
of the proper logic of political antagon ism; there are three main versions
of this d i.SilVO>.-Val:
'if.l·( t..-. ~~y. . ~· . . .J
• ardw~politics: the 'communitarian' attempt to defin~ a traditionc1l, dose,
organ ically structured homogeneous social span~ '"vhich allows for no
void in which the political moment-event can emerge;
• ptua-pol i tit"S: the attempt to depoliticiz-e politics - one accepts political
conflict, bu t reformulates it into a competition, within the representa-
tional ~pace, between acknowledged parties/ agents, for ( tem porilry)
occupation of the place of executi ve power. 111is para-politics, of
course, has a series of successive different versions: the main rupture
is th<tt between its classical and nwdcm Hobbesian formulation, which
focuses on the pwblematic of social contract, the <~lienation of i.ndivid-
U<l l rights in the emergenCE' o f sovereign po•ver. Habermasian or
Rawlsian ethics are perha ps the las t philosoph ical vestiges of th is
attitude: the attt>mpt to de-ant.1gonize politics by fo rmulating the cle<~r
rules to be obeyed so that the agonistic procedurf~ of litiga tion docs
not exp lode into politics proper;
• t\1arxist (or Utopi<~n Socialist) meta-politics: the po.litical conflict is fully
asserted, but as a shadow·-theatre in which events w hose proper place
is on Another Scent! (of econornic pmcesses) a;e played out; the
u ltima te goal of ' true' pt>litics is th us its self-cancella tion, the trans-
formatic.m of ' administra tion of people' into 'ad.m.inis tration of
things' withi n a fully s«::>lf-transparent rationul order of collective \.Vill.
(More precisely, Marxism is ambiguo us here, since tlw very term
·politicnl econt)my' also opens up the spnce for the oppos itt:~ gesture
~
of introducing politics into tht:' very heart of economy: of denouncing
the 'apolitical' character of the economic proc~.:sscs a!> the supreme
ideological illusion. Class stru~gl.e do~~s not '~.:xprcss' St)me objective
economic con tradict ion; it is the very form of existence of this
contrad iction .)
How does Schmitt stand with re~ard to these three s t<Jndard versions t)f
the disilvowa·l of the political? F~u from simply ilS::;crting the proper
dimension n f the political, he adds the m<.1st cunning and radical version
of the disavowal, \vhat we are tempted to c-<Jil ultra-politics: the attempt
to dep<>liticiz~ the conflict by bringing it to its extreme, via the direct
mili t<Jrization of politics. In ultra-politics, the ' rcp r t~sscd ' politica l returns
in the guise of the attempt to res~>lv.::• the dead.loc:k. of political conflict by
its f<Jls~~ radicalization -by reformulating it as a wa r between 'Us' and
'Thenl.', our enemy, when' there is no common g ro und for symbolic
conflict: it is de~ply symptomatic that, instead of cla~s stmggle, the
radical .Right speak~ of class (or s~xua l ) <Oalfarr. The dearest indication
of th is Schmittian disavowal o f the political is the primacy of cxtem al
politics (rda ti ons between sov(•reign states) over internal politics (irmer
social antagonisms) on which ht' insists: is not the re.latitmship to an
external Otlwr as the enemy a way of disavowing the i11ternal struggle
which tnlverses the social body? In contrast to Schrni.tt, a ldtist position
should insist on tl1e unconditiona l p.rimacy of the inherent antagonism
as constitutive oi tbe political.
What we h<'l ve in all these four cas<.'s is thus .1n attempt to gentrify th~
properly trauma tic dim ension of tlw political: something emerged in
Ancient Greec«::> under the nillll (~ pf dcm(lS d emanding its rights, and
from the very beginning (i.e. from Plato's Republic) to the recent r€'vival
of liberal 'political philosophy', 'political philosophy' was an attempt to
suspend the destab.il.izing poten tic1l of the political. to disavow and / o r
regulate it in ooe \•v ay or another: bringing about a return to th e pte-
political social body, fixing the rules (\f political competition, and so
forth. 'Political philosophy' is thw;, in <~ll its different forms, a kind. of
'defence-formation', and perhaps its typology could be establisht-d via
the reference to the different m.()dali ti(•s of defcnct~ against some trau-
matic experience in psychoa.n.alys.is. Ardw-, para-, meta- and ultra-
politics thus form a kind of Gre.imasi.an logic<~l square in which arche-
and u ltra- are the hvo fa ces of the traditionalist t~ ttitu de (self-cnd ost'<.i
community versus its war with external enemies), and para - and meta-
the two vers ions of mockrn politics (democratic formal rules versus th<.'
notion that this fil'kl of democratic game simply expresses and/or
distorts another h:~v(;~l of prt'-po li tic.a.l socioeconomic processes on which
'things retJJiy happen'); whik on the other axis, both meta- and ultra-
~I U
politics involve the notion of ine luct<lh.le struggle, contlid, antagonism,
against the Assertion of a harmonious collaboration in arche- .m~i para-
politics.
Todny, however, w e are dealin g wi th a nothe r fo rm of the denegation
of the poli tical: postmodern po!if-~Jo/itics, vvhich no longer merely
'rEo~presses' the political, trying to cont<~in it and to pacify 'returns of the
repressed', but much more effectivdy 'forecloses' it, s<.1 that postmodern
forms of e thnic vioknc.;~, with their 'irrational' excessive charach:~r, are
no longer ~imple 'returns of tht~ repressed' but, r<~ther, embody the case
of th e foreclosed (from the Syn1bolic ) which, ClS we kno w from Lacan,
returns in the Real. h1 post-politics, the conflict o f global ideological
visions embodied in different parti~~s who compete for power i:-> replaced
by the col1,1bora tion of enlightem~d technocra ts (economists, public opin-
ion ~peci,llists ...) and liberal multiculturalists; through a process of
negotiatio n of interests, a comp romi~e i~ renc:hed in th~ guise of a more
o r h:ss univ~rsal consensus. The political (the space of li tigiltion in \·Vhich
the excluded can protest th e wrong/in justice done to them) foreclosed
from the Symbolic then returns in the R(~al, as new forms of mcibnt. Jt is
crucial to pe rceive how 'postnwdern racism' emerges as the ultimate
consequence o f the post-political suspension of the politicGl l, o f tht~
rt!dttction of the state to a m e re police-agent servicing the ((onscn s ually
e!:>tablished) needs of marke t forces and multiculttm1list tolerant h u.ma.n-
ih1rianism: the ' foreigner ' w h1)Se status is never properly 'regulari:ted' is
the indivisi/Jie rcm11i11der of the transformation of democratic political
struggle int<:l the post-political procedun~ of neg<1tiation and mu lticultur-
alist policing. lnst~~ad of the p,1/itical subject, the 'working class' dcm<md-
in~ its un.ivcrs<ll rights, w e get, o n the one h and, the multiplici ty of par-
ticu1<~r social s tmta or group~;, t>ach with its own problems (th~ d windling
net-'d for manual workers, e tc.), and, on the otht'r, the im1nigrant who is
increasi ngly p revented from ~'(llitici::ins his predicament of exclus ion."
Here one should oppose globalization to unit:asalizntion: globalization
(not only in th~~ sense of global capitalism, the establishment of a global
market, h.ut abo in the senst~ o·f the assertion of ' h\l tnanity' as the global
point ot reference l'f human rights, kgitimizi ng viol.ation of stat~ sover-
eignty, and interventions - fro m trade res trictions to direct military
action -in parts of the world where global h umnn right.; are violated) is
precisely the name for the emerging post-poli tical Logic which progres-
s ively precludes the dimcnsi0n of universality at work in politiciz.a tion
proper. ThE~ p<~ radox is that there is n o universal p roper without the
process <.)f political litigation, of the 'pC~rt of no-part', of an o u t-of-joint
entity pre:'enting/ manifesting itself as the stand-in for tlw uni,rer~al. The
Othemess excluded from the consensual d omain of tok·rant/ rational
p ost-political n~:~gotiati.on and adrninistriltion retu rns in the guise of
int.!xplicable pure Evil whose emblematic image is thnl of the H olocaust.
What defines postm.odern post-p t)!ibcs, therefore, is the secn>t soli.darity
between its two op posed Janus faces: o n the OJW hand the replacement
of politics prop(.>r by depoliticizcd 'hu m,ln itarian ' operations (humanitar-
ian protection of human and civ il rights and aid to Bosnia, Somulia,
lZwanda. North Korecl ... ); on the o thf.~r, the violent erncrgcnn• of d epo-
liticized 'pure Evil' in the gui.se of 'excessiv(•' ethnic <.lr religious funda-
mentalist violence. ln short, wh.:Jt Rnnciere propos6 here is a new
version of the old H egelian motto 'Evil resid es in tbe gaze itself \vhich
perceives th(' object as Evil': the contl!mporary figure of Evil too 'strong'
to be accessible to po litic<~ l analysis (.Holocaut>t) appears as such only to
the gaze which constitutes it as such (as depoliticizcd) . Cruci.al is their
speculative identity, that iB, the infinite judgenwnt: 'H umanitarian dPpO·
l.iticized com.passi(1n i.:; the excess of Evil over its p olitical forms.'
IV
One should li.n k this problematic to the notion of cxc.essive, non -fun ~ ­
tional cruelty a ~ <1 feature of cnnternporary life, p roposE'd l~y Balibar: !•! ,,
cruelty ·whose figures range from 'fundamentalist' r adst and / or religinu:;
slaughter to the 'senseless' outhll.rsts of violence by adolescents and the
homeless in our megal(.lpol ises, the violence one is tempted to cc1ll id-,~;•i/,
a violence not grounded in any u tilitar ian o r idcnlogie<ll couses. Tha t is
to sdy : wh.:1 t .is s triking in these case~ is the 'pr.i rni t.ivc' level of the
underl ying libidinal economy -'primi tive' n1.lt in the scn:>c of a ;regres-
sion' to some Mchaic stratum, bu t in the ~ense of the u tmost elementary
nature of the relatio nship between pleasure and fouissrmc,•, bctwe(•n th~
circle of the pleasure principle that s trives for balance, for the reproduc-
tion of its closed ci rcuit, and the ex-tima te foreign body. The libidjnal
economy tha t s ustains the infamous ba ttle-c ry 'Auslii11da mus ~ fn reigners
out!' may be exemplified by Lacan's schema of the .r~ latio nship between
the lclt and l.u!'t,n where tlw U11 fust is ddined in te rms of (non-)
assimHation, as 'whdt rt~m<~ins utu1.'isimilahle, irreducil'lc h) the pleasure
principle'. 12 The terms used by Fr.eud a nd Lacan to describe the reliltion-
ship behvt~en Jch and f<•uissancc p crr\•cHy fit the mctaphorks o f tht~ raci ~t
attitude towards fo reigners: assimilation and resistance tu assim ilation,
expulsion of <1 foreig n body, disturbed ba!anc~~... .
ln order to loca te this type of evil in the context t'f the usual types oi
eviL o.ne is tempted t(' use as the classificatory principle the Freudian
triad of ego, superegL) and id:
~-) ,.! J n r. '- I f .."'') J .a.. L.o ~ 'V '- f I,, \.," I
• the most n)mm.on kind of evil is ego-e vil: behaviour prompted by
selfish C'<1kulati.on and greed, that is, by disrega rd for un iversal e thical
prindplt:>s;
• the ev il a ttribut..:d to so-called ' fu ndam.entahst fcmatics', on tJw con-
trary, is supereglJ-evil: e vil accomplished in the name of fa natical
d e votion to some id eological ide<~l;
• in th t~ s kinht~ad beating up foreigne rs, h m...,·ever, one can d iscern
neither a ch,•ar selfish calculation nor a clear id«!.ologi.::al identification.
All the talk about foreign ers stealing w o rk from us, or the thn::at th ey
re pres ent to our Wes te rn values, s}l()uld not d ecei ve us: o n d ost·r
examin a tion, it soon bt~comes dear th a t this talk pro vides a rather
s uperficial secondary ra tionali7.a tilm. The answer we u ltimately obtain
from a skinhe,ld is tha t it makes him feel good to bea t up fnreigners,
thcll their presenn·· disturbs him .. . What v.;e e ncounter here is id-evil,
tha t i:;, evil structured a nd m o tiva ted by the mos t elementa ry imbal-
ance in tlw relationship bt'tween the lch and j(luissann.•, by tht:! tensio-n
between pleasure and the foreign bod y of jvu i.~::.rmce a t its very heart.
ld-evil thu~ stag~?s the m ost elementary 'short circuit' in th e subject's
rehltionship to the primordially missi ng obj ec t-caust~ of hjs desire:
what 'bothers ' us in the 'othe r' (Jew, Japanese, African , Turk . .. ) i.s
that h e ap pea rs to ente rt,1in a privileged rela tions h ip to the object -
the othe r either possesses thE· ob ject-treasure, hav ing sn<1tched it uw·ay
from u s (which is why we do n't ha ve it), or poses c1 threclt to our
p osses:-;ion o f the obj<:'ct.t:1
Wha t one should p ropose here, again, i.s the f l.egelian ' infinite _judge-
men t' asserting th e s pecula ti ve identi ty o f this 'u~eless ' and --~xn:ssive'
outburst (..l f vil)lenn·, which displa.yt; nothing but a pure an d naked ('non -
subli mated') hatred of Otherness, with the post-political mu!tic ulturalb t
universe of t()lerance for di fference in which nobody i~ exd ud ed. Of
co u r~c, we have ju~t us.;xl the ttTm 'non-sublimated ' in its common
meaning which, in this ca~e, stands for the exact oppo~itc of its strict
psycho<m alytic me,m ing - in ~hort, what ta kes place -.....- h ~~n we focus o ur
ha t red on Stlme represe nta tive of the (o fficially tolerated) Oth e r is tht:>
very m echan i ~m of ~ublima tion a t its most dementary: the all-encompass-
ing nature of the post-political Concrete U n iversali ty wh ich accoun ts for
e ve rybod y at the level of symbolk inclusion, this multicul turalis t vision-
;md-prac tke of 'tmi ty in difference' ('aU equa l, all d ifferent'), leaves
open.. as the only w a y to mark the Diffe rence, the pro to-su bJimatory
ges ture: of elevating a contingent O ther (of ran~, sex, rel igion .. .) into the
'ab sL1lt1te Otherness' of the impossible Thing, the ultimate thrc;•a t to our
identity - this Thing which m us t be ann ihilated if we a rc to su rvive . . . .
That is th(' properly Hegelian par~dox : the final arrival of the truly
' - • • •.,. .,,,. - · •-· • • • • • • •
•
raticmnl 'concrete universali ty' - tht~ aboli tion of antagonisms, the
'mature' universe of the negotia ted coexbtence of d iffe rent groups -·
coincides w ith ib radical opp osite, with thorough ly contingen t outbursts
of violence.
There ar~ two further HegeJi,,n aspects of this excessivl~ violenct!. First,
H egel's fund amental ru le is that the 'objecti, ·e' excess (the direc t reign of
abstract universe1lity which imposes its la >v 'mechanically', with utter
di~n~gard fo r the concerned subjl~C t caught in its web) is ah·va ys supple-
mented by the 'subjective' exces...:; (the irregular, a rb itrary exercise of
\·v hims). i\n CX(~m p l<~ry C<l Se of th is intcrdep~ndence between the objec-
tive and subjectivt:~ excess b p rovided by Balibnr, 14 who distinguishes
two opp osite bu t compleme ntary modes of the t~~~essive Yiolence: the
' ultra-objective' ('strw:'tu.ral') \'iolc nce which is inherent to the social
conditions o f globa l Copitalism (the 'automatic' cn •at.ion o f exclu ded and
dispensa ble jndiv iduab, from the hom eless to t he une mp.loyed) and th e
'ultra-subjedive' violence of new ly emerg ing ethnic and / o r rel.igio us (in
shor.t: .rad s t) 'fundamenta lism ~' .
The second aspect is that thi!'i 'exce~ive' <1 nd 'groundless' violcnc:c
involves its own mode of know ledge, that of the impotent cynical
reflection -· back to our t'X<:1 mple o f 'id-evil', of " skin.h end beating up
foreigners: if he is really pressed for the n~asons for his viole,nce, and if
he is capt~ble of minimal theoretical reAection, the skin h<~ad vvilJ sud-
de nly start to talk like social wNkers, socio logis ts and social psycholo-
gists, ci tin g d iminis hed soc ial mobility, n s mg insecurity, th~·
dis in tegration of pa ternal nuthority, the lack of ma ternal love in his early
childhood . . . in short , h e will pmv idc th~ more o r less precise psycho-
sociological accolln t- tlf his acts so dear to en lightened libN 81s eager to
'u n.d erstand' violen t you lh as the tragic victim o f ;o;ociol and fa milial
condi tions.
The standnrd enli~htened fo m 11lln of tlw efficie ncy of the 'critique of
ideo logy', from Ploto on wards ('They' re doing it because they don't
know what they're doing', that is to say, knowledge is liberating in itself
- when the e rring s ubject r~?flects upon ~vhat he is d oi ng, he w ill no
Jo.nger do it) is turned around hNe: the violent skinhead 'knows \'ery
well what he's d o ing, but he's d oing it all the same' 1 ~ This cynically
im potent rt~tlective knm•.rledge i~ tlw obvt:>rse of 'sen s e k'ss' 'excf.'ssive'
viole-nn~; w~~ are d<:-aling here \vith some thing akin to the wdl-kntlwn
unp leasnnt scene from Terry Gill iam's film Brazil: in a high-class res-
taura n t, the w aiter recommends to his cus t(1mers the best of tlw d ail y
men u ('Tod<.~y, om tournedos is really special!', etc.), yet wha t the
customers get \)11 making their choice is a dazzling colour photo of the
meal on a s tand above th.;! plate, a nd on the pl a tt~ it~eli, c1 loathsome
excrcment·aJ paste-like lump. In the s<1me w<1y, the symbo lically e:>.fficient
;~4 ' l ' l:• .._' ' ' ~ '-'·' •. ~ .. ... ...... -· .
km)\,v[edge embedded in the subject's effective socinl praxis disint~:gwted
into, on the one hand, excessive 'irrationcll' violence '.Nith no ideologico-
politic,ll foundation and, on the other, impotent external reflection which
lpaves the Sllbjcct's acts in tact. So, in the guLsc of this cyn ically impotent
reflecting skinhead who, with <~n ironic smile, explains to the perplexed
journalist tht:' roots of his $ensdessly violent behavi.~>ur, the enlightened
tl)lerant mul ticulturulist bent on 'wKierstanding' forms of excessive
violence get~ h is own message in its inverted, true form. Jn shol't - as
Lacan would have put it- at this point, the communicution behveen him
a.nd the 'ob,iect' of hi.s study, the intolerilnt skinhead, is perft.-ctly
successful.
The distinction betvveen tb i!> excessive/'irrt~honal' / 'dysfunctional'
cruel viol~~nce and the outbursts of obscene viol~'nce which serve as the
implicit support of tht~ stand<1rd ideological universal notion is c.rud<tl
here: when, ~ay, 'the rights of man' are 'not real ly universal' but 'in fuct
the right~ of w'hi tc male property-owners', any attempt to disregard this
implidt underlying set of unwritten rules w h ich effectively con~truins
the universality of rights is met 1.vith outbursts of violence. Nowhere is
this contrMt s tronger tha.n in tlw ca~c of dealing •.vith African-Americans
in the USA: the old par<:1-pol itical democra tic racism excluded Blacks
from participating effectively in universal pl)litical Jjfe by silently C>ntorc-
ing their exdusion (vin verbal and physical tl1reats, etc.). The adequate
answer to this standard cxcluf;ion-from-thc-Unive.rsal was the great Civil
Rights movement associated w ith the n ame of Martin Luther King:
suspending lhe implicit obscene supplement whicb enBcts the actual
exclusion of 13J.,,cks from formal universal ~qunlity -· of course, it was
easy for guch a gesture to g<1in the support of the larg~~ mt~jority of the
white liberal upper-dass establishment, dismissing their oppone nts as
dumb lower-class Sollthern rednecks ....
Tod(ly, hmvever, the very terrain of the struggle has ch<mg"~d: the
post-political liberal establishment not only fu lly (lcknowledges the gap
between mere formal equ~lity and its actuali'Lation/ implementation, it
not only acknmvkdges the exclusionary logi c of 'false' ideological uni-
versality, 'it ~~ven active\ y figh ts this logiL by applying to it a vast legal-
psychological-sociological network of meilsures, from identifying the
specific proble ms of each group and subgroup (not only homosexut~ls
but African-American Jcsbinns, African-American Jcsbi,1n 1.110thers, Afri-
can-American single unemployed lesbian mothers ...) to proposing a set
of measurt:os ('affirmative actio11, e tc.) to recti fy the wrong. Wha t such a
tolerant procedure prevents, hmvever, is the gesture of politicization
proper: although the difficulties of being an Afrk<~n-American s ingle
unemployed lesbian mothe r are adequately ca talogued down to their
most specific features, the concerned subject none thl~ less S(.lmehow
'feels' that then! is something 'wrong' and 'frustrating' i.n this very effort
to do justice to her specific predicument - 'vhat ~he is dt:~prived of i&thQ
possibility of a 'metaphorical' c lt'vation of her specific 'wrong' in to a
s ta nd-in for the universal ''vvmng '. The only V•'ay openly to ariiculate this
universality - the fact that L preci~dy, a rn ·n ot merely th<Jt specific
individual exposed to a set of specific inj1..1stices - consif.b, tlwn, .in its
appan'nt opposite. in the thoroughly 'irrationill ' excegsivt' outburs t of
violence. He.re the old Hegelian rule is confirml."d once more: the on l.y
way for the universality to <'Ome into existence, to 'posH' itself 'as such',
is in the guise of its ve ry oppt)Site, of \\'hat cannot but appear as ;m
excessive 'irrationa.l' whim.
Does all this mct~ n that, in tod <1y'.~ post-political cond itions, Schmitt is no
longer pertinent? Quite the contrary: the rckrence to Schntilt is crucial in
detecting tile (k,uflock:' tl/ post-political liberal 1'0/aance: Schmitti.an u ltra-
politics- the radicalization of politics into the open w arfare of Us again st
Them d i ~crnib l e in different ' fundamentalisms' - is tlte fimn ill w!tidt the
foreclosed politia1/ rei ums i11 fhi' post -pulitiwt unil•er.~t: (Jf plura/i~t negotiath1n
and consensual regulation. For th t~t reason, the way to counteract this rC'-
emerging ultra-politics is not more tolerance, more compassion and
multicultural understand.i.ng, but the return t'f lht~ political rwoper, thM is,
the reasserti.on of the dimension nf antagonism which, far from denying
univers ali ty. is cosub~tanti aJ wi th it. That b the key componen t o f the
proper le,fti~t st<Ulce as opposed to the ·righ6st asst:rtion of one's particula r
identity: in the equation of Unh•crsalism with the n•ilitant, diuisive
position of one engaged in <l struggle- true univ t:-rst~l ists <lre not those
who preach global tolenmce of d iffe rences and all-em\lll1p<1::;,;ing unity,
but those who engage in a passionate struggle for the assertion of the
Truth which compels them. Th<:~ocetical, religiou~ and political examples
abmmd here: from St Paul, whose u nconditional Christian univer~alism
(everyone can be red eemed, s ince in the eyes of Chtist there is neither
Jev-.' nor Creek, neither man nor wom<Jn ...) m.ade him into ;:"~ proto-
Leninist militant fighting different 'deviations·, through l\.1arx ('-'\'hose
notion of class s truggle is the necessary obwr~;e of the universalism. o.f
his theory which uhns at th.:.~ 'rt:!d.emption' of th~:· whole of human ity)
and Freud up to grea t political f.igu res. \'\'hen De Caul.le, for instanc!:!,
almost alone in Englund in 194(), 1,1unched his call for resistance to the
G£'ml <m occupa tion, he was at th<'! sam.e time prt.•suming to speak tm
behalf of the universali ty of Fmnce, t~nd,fiv that very rea~lm. introducing
a radical spl.it, a fissure between those who .followed. h.im ,md those who
preferred tlw collaborationist ' Egyptian flc~hpots'.
To put it in A lain Badiou's v.'ords, '<• it is cruci<ll here not to translate
 the terms of this struggle, set in motion by th(~ violent and contingent
assertion (lf the new universal Tn1th, into the t('rms of the order of Notes
positive Being, with its groups and s ubgroups, conceiving of it as the
struggle between lwo soci.li entitiE$ defined by a series of positive 1. StX! Cad Schmin, Polit ical 'fllcofo.-;y: f!l!ir Chuptr•r9 on the Concep: tJf So~~'r:.>ig11ty, twns.
Ceorgt~ St:h wab, C~ombridgl' ~1A: \flT Prt-ss, I ~X5 .
characteristics; that was the 1 mistake' of Stalinism, which :reduced class
2. See Jacque~ L<K<W, Lc~ St'miHflire. lh,·e VJJ/: Lt! trrmsfcr!, PMis: f:Jiti<ln,; du St~uil1 99l.
struggle to a struggle between 'classes' defined as social groups with d 3. S~l' Jacqut>~ Dcrrid,1, Douncr Ia mo~t. P;Jri>;;: Ga lil~l', 1~9.5.
set of positive feature~-; (p lace in the mode of production, Nc.). From a 4. }'or a nm(:i~t:' d(,~(Tiption of tht'st· shifts, ~t'Q Mil:hd l.a p,~yn·, A.u-Jfft) .-1:1 c,>mplcxc1
truly radical Marxist p<.~rspective, although there is a link behveen d'CEd;.pc. Paris: i\!\thropn:;- h ·onomka. 1u9·7.
5. Tbl' titlt:' ,,f Chap ler IX of jacqui·,; L~<:<m, Lt· ~t"111i11air.'. livre Xi·'ll: L'ci!Z·<'rs cte Ia
'\·vorking c.!ass' as a socia.l g roup and 'proletariat' as the pt)Sition of the psvrh,rrlullN(. Pari ~: f;\fitilli1S ctu Seuil. 1'1~1.
m ilitant fighting for universa l Truth, this link b n o t a determining callsal i:>. Se~ Sla\·oj Zitek, ·n li! ludiv i.,i/J/,: Rl'm,limlcr . Ltmd,, n: Ve rso, '!~%.
connection, and the two Ievell; art> to be strictly dis ting uished: to b€ a 7. For a more detailt>d account ,,f
thi~ di~tindil>n, :;t:'i.' Chapter 2 t.l f Zi7.ek, ·r:re lr::Jir<i,,il;/,•
l<<'lllilind,.,·.
' proletarian' involves assuming a certain s ubjc!cfh~t.• stance (of class 8. J rely here 011 )ilcqu(•:l Rancii.m~.. L;; mr.;cult'nlc. P.:1ris: CaliiN!, 1995.
struggle des tined to achieve the Red~mption through Revolution) which , 9. ~ ibid., p . 162.
in principle, can be taken by any individual - to pu t it in religiou-; terms, 10. S\..'(• Elit!lllll' s ,,libar. 'L l v inl!'l':L'(': id Galit(' d .:ruauiEL in L! <'l'tliH!t" de; ma.c;,..e,:, Paris:
Galilee, 1997.
any individua.l, irrespective of his (good) works, can be ' touched by 11. .L lcqut•s L:~can, J'lit: hmr rundam,·p;-,11 Cmc<pt; of P;.l(rlw-A n.:ijsis, N,,w Yt.>rk: NorWn,
C rilce' and interpcllnted as a proletarian subject. 1979, p. 240.
The limit which separates the two opposing sides in the clc1ss struggle 12. Ibid., p. 241.
]:'\. For. a furllw r d cvelopnwnt nf thb the111<:', 1'1:'1:' Cht~p l~·r :; l >f :::.l,woj Li1.d;, Tiu· :'vle!;.~~/a~,-~
is therefore not 'objective', n o t the limit separating two positive social r..l{ L:niot,mtent, I..(.H1d (.Wl: V(!f!--(), 1995.
groups, but ultimately radically subjective -- it involves the position ·· J4.' See Balib::lr, L<J crai11h' de~ '':.r.';c·,;, pp. 4:!-3.
individuals as~ume towards th e Event of uni v~:~rsn l Tru th. Again, the 15. F(>r a ITI<'Tll dl't,lil<.<d ;~c.:mmt <>f thi;, r!•fl~·ckd cynical a tt itudt>, ·><!" Ch.1pter.) r>f l.:iJiek,
'/'he lnJiz:i.<i/!1,, l<<'flli!il ldc•J·.
cruci.al point here is that s ubjectiv ity and universa.lis rn <~re not only not l t:>. Se(' Ala in B"diou, L'i'!r,· .:1 r,:;h,.:mt"ll. Pori~<: t'dil i l'n ~ du St? uil, l<liili.
exclusive, but two sides of the same coin: it is p recisc.:ly because 'clas~
s truggle' interp ellates individuals to adopt th e subjediV(' stance of a
'p roletarian,' that its ap peal is universal, aiming at everyone w ithout
exception. The division it mobilizes is not the division between two well-
defined social groups (' Us' and 'D1em'), but the division, which runs
'diagonally' to the soci <~l div isio n in the Order of Being, between thol'e
who recognize them~-;cl v es in the call of t.h~;> Truth-Event, becoming its
follower~, and those who d(•ny or ignore it. In Hegelese, the exi.-:;tcnce of'
llze tmc Uni'Ciersal (<lS opposed t(l the false 'concrd~!' Universa lity of the
all-encompas:;ing global Order of Being) is that of an endlr.ss ami ince;o;sanlly
dh•isive ~truggle; it is ultima tely the division between the two notinns
(and matetia1 p ractict-s) of Univer<>a lity: those who ad voca te the p ositiv-
ity ~,,f the existing global Order of Being as th e u ltimate horizon of
knowlt:dge and <lction, and. tho~e who accept t he efficiency of the
dimension nf Truth-Event irreducibl.e to ~and unaccountable in terms of)
the O rder t'f Being. This inherent split c<m.stitutive ot the true Universal
is vvhat even such a radical thinker as Carl Schmitt was unable to
endorse.