1. Slavoj Źižek, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce (London, 2009), 86.

2. Ibid., 157.

3. Ibid., 7.

4. Ibid., 87.

5. Slavoj Źižek, “Repeating Lenin” (26 April 2001), 20, at http://www.lacan.con/replenin.htm (last accessed 19 luly 2013). Emphasis in the original.

6. Parker, Ian, Slavoj Źižek: A Critical Introduction (London, 2004)Google Scholar, is the exception here and I have outlined the differences in our arguments elsewhere; see Sean Homer, “The Sublime Object of Źižek, Slavoj, ” Gramma: Journal of Theory and Criticism 14 (2006): 273–75Google Scholar.

7. Dean, Jodi, Źižek's Politics (New York, 2006)Google Scholar, xxi.

8. Ibid., 197.

9. Źižek, Slavoj, The Parallax View (Cambridge, Mass., 2006), 384 Google Scholar.

10. Johnston, Adrian, Badiou, iizek, and Political Transformations: The Cadence ofChange (Evanston, 2009)Google Scholar, xxii.

11. In response to a highly critical essay from Geoffrey Hartman, Źižek writes, “I fully assume his central thesis that my work presents a threat to the Western way of life. More precisely, I hope this thesis is true, because I am not playing intellectual games and my ultimate aims are ruthlessly radical.” Źižek, Slavoj, “Critical Response: A Symptom—of What?,” Critical Inquiry 29, no. 3 (Spring 2003): 503 Google Scholar.

12. Źižek, Slavoj, Living in the End Times (London, 2010)Google Scholar, xii.

13. Parker, Slavoj Źižek, 33-34; Geert Lovink, “Civil Society, Fanaticism, and Digital Reality: A Conversation with Slavoj Źižek” (21 February 1996), at http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=79 (last accessed 19 July 2013).

14. Źižek, Slavoj and Salecl, Renata, “Lacan in Slovenia” in Osbourne, Peter, ed., A CriticalSense: Interviews with Intellectuals (London, 1996), 32 Google Scholar.

15. Badiou, Alain and Źižek, Slavoj, Philosophy in the Present, ed. Engelmann, Peter (Cambridge, Mass., 2009), 65 Google Scholar.

16. Źižek and Salecl, “Lacan in Slovenia,” 28.

17. Gordy, Eric, The Culture of Power in Serbia: Nationalism and the Destruction of Alternatives (University Park, 1999)Google Scholar; Woodward, Susan L., The Balkan Tragedy: Chaos andDissolution after the Cold War (Washington, D.C., 1995)Google Scholar, chap. 3.

18. Źižek, First as Tragedy, 118-19.

19. Slavoj Źižek, “Slavoi Źižek and Costas Douzinas Calling for Support of the Hunger Strikers in Athens,” Greek Left Review, 18 February 2011, at greekleftreview.wordpress. com/2011/02/18/no-human-is-illegal/ (last accessed 19 luly 2013). After 44 days and with 100 of the hunger strikers hospitalized, the strike was called off on 9 March 2011. The “Socialist“ government of Greece had authorized state-employed doctors to force feed anyone in imminent danger of death and reached a compromise granting the strikers temporary residence.

20. Slavoj Źižek, “Liberal Multiculturalism Masks an Old Barbarism with a Human Face,” Guardian, 3 October 2010, at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/oct/03/immigration-policy-roma-rightwing-europe (last accessed 20 August 2013).

21. Bjelic, Dusan I., “Immigrants as the Enemy: Psychoanalysis and the Balkans’ Self- Orientalism,” Slavonic and East European Review 87, no. 3 (July 2009): 503–7Google Scholar.

22. Lovink, “Civil Society, Fanaticism, and Digital Reality.” It was this refusal to take a stance on the issue of the Erased that created the rift between Źižek and the anticapitalist and antiracist movements in Slovenia at that time, rather than simply personal animosity or jealousy, as he has implied in interviews.

23. Močnik, Rastko, “On the Margins of Europe: An Interview,” Prelom 8 (2006): 39–56 Google Scholar. In Slovenia the issue of the Erased is also still very much alive. See Zorn, Jelka and Čebron, Ursula Lipovec, Once upon an Erasure: From Citizens to Illegal Residents in the Republic of Slovenia (Ljubjana, 2008)Google Scholar; Koğovšek, Neža, Zorn, Jelka, Pistotnik, Sara, Cebron, Uršula Lipovec, Bajt, Veronika, Petrović, Brankica, and Zdravković, Lana, The Scars of the Erasure:A Contribution to the Critical Understanding of the Erasure of People from the Register ofPermanent Residents of the Republic of Slovenia (Ljubjana, 2010)Google Scholar.

24. Źižek, First as Tragedy, 120.

25. Źižek, “Liberal Multiculturalism.“

26. Źižek, Living in the End Times, 45-46.

27. Sarkozy's expulsion of Roma from France was prompted by an incident on 16 July 2010, when a Roma man drove through a police checkpoint in Saint Aignan, Loire, knocked down a police officer, and was shot as he drove through a subsequent checkpoint. The following day approximately fifty Roma rioted, destroying a police station and attacking other government buildings. Sarkozy also justified his action on the basis that the Roma were in France illegally.

28. Zorn, Jelka, “Slovenia: Ethnic Exclusion in a Model Accession State,” in Rechel, Bernd, ed., Minority Rights in Central and Eastern Europe (London, 2009), 218 Google Scholar. As Zorn argues, since Slovenia's emergence as a sovereign state in 1991, it has developed discriminatory immigration policies targeting people from the former Yugoslavia, especially the Erased and the Roma (211). I would like to thank Nikolai Jeffs for alerting me to the details of this incident.

29. Źižek, Slavoj, The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology (London, 1999), 264 Google Scholar. One does see a pattern emerging, though, in which Źižek's interventions are often less radical at home than abroad. I have discussed Źižek's tendency to play to the audience in relation to the breakup of the former Yugoslavia in a previous paper: Sean Homer, “It's the Political Economy, Stupid! On Źižek's Marxism,” Radical Philosophy 108 (July/August, 2001): 11.

30. Butler, Rex, Slavoj Źižek: Live Theory (London, 2005), 118–19Google Scholar. Emphasis in the original.

31. Ibid., 26.

32. Ibid., 132.

33. Lacan, Jacques, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book 20: Encore 1972-1973; On FeminineSexuality: The Limits of Love and Sexuality, ed. Miller, lacques-Alain, trans. Fink, Bruce (New York, 1998), 71–77 Google Scholar.

34. lameson, Fredric, “Science versus Ideology,” Humanities in Society 6, nos. 2-3 (1983): 297 Google Scholar.

35. lameson, Fredric, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and OtherScience Fictions (London, 2005), 147 Google Scholar.

36. Eagleton, Terry, Why Marx Was Right (New Haven, 2011), 73 Google Scholar.

37. See Wright, Erik Olin, Envisioning Real Utopias (London, 2010)Google Scholar.

38. Butler, Slavoj Źižek, 123. Emphasis in the original.

39. Slavoj Źižek, “Some Politically Incorrect Reflections on Violence in France and Related Matters,” at www.lacan.com/zizfrance.htm (last accessed 19 July 2013). See also Jodi Dean, “A Limit Experience: On Źižek's Recent Remarks,” 22 November 2005, at http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/2005/ll/a_limit_experie.html (last accessed 19 July 2013) and “Źižek versus Who?,” 10 April 2006, at http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/2006/04/Źižek_versus_wh.html (last accessed 19 July 2013). Rex Butler and Scott Stephens, “Play Fuckin Loud: Źižek versus the Left,” The Symptom 7 (Spring 2006), at www.lacan.com/news paper7.htm (last accessed 19 July 2013).

40. Źižek, Slavoj, “Against the Double Blackmail,” New Left Review (I) 234 (March/ April 1999): 76–82 Google Scholar.

41. Źižek, First as Tragedy, 6; Źižek, Slavoj, In Defense of Lost Causes (London, 2009), 421 Google Scholar.

42. Homer, “It's the Political Economy, Stupid!,” 12. The initial version I have of this article is no longer accessible on the web. The Balkan Witness version, at balkanwitness. glypx.com (last accessed 19 July 2013), was posted 13 April 1999 and cites the New LeftReview as its source; however, it still contains the deleted sentence, the first sentence in paragraph 13.

43. Źižek, First as Tragedy, 73-74.

44. lordanova describes her brief passage through Sarajevo in the mid-1980s, where she found “an ordinary Balkan city, like any other in the region,” with its prevailing media image at the time as a “deeply provincial, sleepy oriental town.” It was the long siege of the city that replaced this with “the image of a dynamic cosmopolitan location that had now fallen pray [sic] to dark forces.” lordanova, Dina, Cinema of Flames: Balkan Film, Cultureand Media (London, 2001), 235 Google Scholar.

45. In an interview in 2001, Kusturica described Sarajevo as a provincial backwater, where “sad, drunken railway men and taxi drivers” met in pubs and drank. lordanova continues, “It was this provincialism and the traditionalism of the patriarchal and yet cozy isolation of Bosnia that Kusturica's early films reflected.” lordanova, Dina, Emir Kusturica (London, 2002), 50–60 Google Scholar.

46. We must distinguish between a multiethnic city, which Sarajevo surely was, and a multicultural city, which is how Źižek is discussing it here.

47. Źižek, In Defense of Lost Causes, 510n54. Emphasis in the original.

48. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, 148-49.

49. Ibid., 97,137,149.

50. Ibid., 139. In this respect, see also Peter Gowan, “The NATO Powers and the Balkan Strategy,” New Left Review (I) 234 (March/April 1999): 83-105, for a persuasive analysis of the role of Germany, Austria, Hungary, and the Vatican in the disintegration of Yugoslavia.

51. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, 93.

52. After a strike by Kosovan miners in 1989, Belgrade imposed a state of emergency on Kosovo. The Slovenes responded with the Ljubljana Declaration (1 March 1989) calling for greater democracy and the recognition of minority rights. The Declaration was rejected by Belgrade and in 1990 Slovenia held the first “free” democratic elections and withdrew from Yugoslavia later that year. Źižek is right that the issue of Kosovo and minority rights were central to the breakup of Yugoslavia, but I fail to see how Slovenia's succession from the Federal Republic was at all beneficial for those same minorities. On the issue of Kosovo, see Branka Magaš, “The Spectre of Balkanization,” New Left Review (I) 174 (March/April 1989): 3-31, and Magaš, , The Destruction of Yugoslavia:Tracking theBreak Up, 1980-92 (London, 1993)Google Scholar, chap. 1.

53. The New Primitivs spelled their name without the “e.” For an account of the group, see Levi, Pavle, Disintegration in Frames: Aesthetics and Ideology in the Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Cinema (Stanford, 2007)Google Scholar. The Top List of the Surrealists was originally a radio program and then a television show and not, as Źižek suggests, a rock group. Źižek, InDefense, 329.

54. Źižek, In Defense, 329-30.

55. As Źižek explains, he broke with NSK when they began to insist in the mid-1990s that their role in Slovenia's national revival had not been properly recognised; he refused to contribute to a volume of essays putting the record straight, which included contributions from the nationalist right. Źižek, Slavoj, “Afterword: With Defenders Like these, Who Needs Attackers,” in Bowman, Paul and Stamp, Richard, eds., The Truth of Źižek (London, 2007), 232)Google Scholar.

56. Kusturica fell out with his former associates in Sarajevo over the issue of nationalism and the No Smoking Orchestra split, with one group remaining in Sarajevo during the siege and another based in Belgrade. Kusturica was with the latter. Levi, Disintegrationin Frames, 62. For Źižek's reading of Kusturica's controversial film Underground: OnceUpon a Time There Was a Country (1995), see Źižek, Slavoj, The Plague of Fantasies (London, 1997), 60–64 Google Scholar, and “The Military-Poetic Complex,” London Review of Books 30, no. 16 (14 August 2008): 17.1 have argued against Źižek's reading of the film as an apology for ethnic cleansing elsewhere. See Homer, Sean, “Nationalism, Ideology and Balkan Cinema: Re-reading Kusturica's Underground,” in Vighi, Fabio and Feldner, Heiko, eds., Did Somebody Say Ideology: Slavoj Źižek and Consequences (Cambridge, Eng., 2007), 237–48Google Scholar; and Homer, , “Retrieving Emir Kusturica's Underground as a Critique of Ethnic Nationalism,“ Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media 51 (Spring 2009)Google Scholar.

57. See Lazić, Mladen, ed., Protest in Belgrade: Winter of Discontent (Budapest, 1999)Google Scholar; and Gordy, Culture of Power.

58. The papers from the Essen conference were subsequently published: Budgen, Sebastian, Kouvelakis, Stathis, and Źižek, Slavoj, eds., Lenin Reloaded: Towards a Politics of Truth (Durham, N.C., 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59. Butler, ludith, Laclau, Ernesto, and Źižek, Slavoj, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left (London, 2000), 1 Google Scholar.

60. Ibid., 290.

61. Pupovac, Ozren, “Springtime for Hegemony: Laclau and Mouffe with Janez Janša,“ Prelom 8 (2006): 118 Google Scholar.

62. Quoted in Pupovac, “Springtime for Hegemony,” 129. In June 2013 Janez Janša was sentenced to two years imprisonment for corruption.

63. Ibid., 130.

64. Źižek, “Repeating Lenin,” 20.

65. See Źižek, Slavoj, ed., Revolution at the Gates: Selected Writings of Lenin from 1917 (London, 2002)Google Scholar.

66. Insofar as the state is an “organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another,” the proletariat cannot take over the existing state and use it for its own ends, it cannot be ameliorated. Lenin, Vladimir, “The State and Revolution,” Selected Works (Moscow, 1968 [1917]), 266 Google Scholar. Emphasis in the original. The bourgeois state is a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonism. Therefore it must be completely smashed, and this cannot take place without a violent revolution (277).

67. Źižek, “Repeating Lenin,” 9. Emphasis in the original.

68. Ibid., 10. Emphasis in the original.

69. Ibid. Emphasis in the original.

70. Lenin, “The State and Revolution,” 279.

71. Źižek, In Defense, 346; Źižek, Living in the End Times, 282.

72. Źižek, “Repeating Lenin,” 4. Emphasis in the original.

73. Evan Calder Williams, review of Lenin Reloaded: Toward a Politics of Truth, by Bubgen, Sebastian, Kouvélakis, Eustache, and Źižek, Slavoj, Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory 19, no. 3 (2011): 159 Google Scholar. On Badiou and Źižek's differences, see Johnston, Badiou, lizek, and Political Transformations, 133-34.

74. Źižek's endorsement of a politics of the party is just one issue that separates him from his “comrade” Alain Badiou. See Badiou, “Politics Unbound,” Metapolitics, trans. Jason Barker (London, 2006), 68-77, for Badiou's critique of the party/state couple.

75. Williams, 162. Emphasis in the original.

76. Źižek, The Parallax View, 380.

77. Źižek, In Defense, 468.

78. There is not even an entry for violence in the indexes of either Dean's Źižek's Politics or Johnston's Badiou, lizek, and Political Transformations.

79. See Źižek, Slavoj, “Eastern Europe's Republics of Gilead,” New Left Review (I) 183 (September/October 1990): 50–62 Google Scholar; and Źižek, Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel and the Critique of Ideology (Durham, 1993), chap. 6.

80. Lovink, “Civil Society, Fanaticism, and Digital Reality.“

81. Źižek, Slavoj, Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out (London, 1992), 77 Google Scholar.

82. Źižek, First as Tragedy, 125. Emphasis in the original.

83. Ibid., 174.

84. Butler, Slavoj Źižek, 147.

85. The right-wing press is currently blaming the rise of racist violence from Golden Dawn on the Left, and, as Golden Dawn's very public displays of violence increase, so does their support. From my prospective, what we need is not reciprocal violence but rather mass protests against Golden Dawn, when and wherever they mobilize.

86. Benjamin, Walter, “Critique of Violence,” One Way Street and Other Writings, trans. Jephcott, Edmund and Shorter, Kingsley (1920-21; London, 1997), 132–54Google Scholar.

87. Źižek, First as Tragedy, 482. Źižek has not, to my knowledge, reconsidered this statement in the light of the deaths of three young bank workers who died when their bank was firebombed in the general strike of 6 May 2010. These deaths resulted in a lull in the mass demonstrations and the Black Bloc going to ground for the following year or so.

88. Źižek, First as Tragedy, 482.

89. In Living in the End Times, Źižek cites the violent demonstrations that followed the police shooting of Alexandros Grigoropolous in December 2008. These protests were more complex and contradictory than I can discuss here, but in Thessaloniki they involved at least three distinct groups: anarchists, students, and immigrants, each with very different agendas. The fact that the state restrained the police from any direct confrontation with the protestors also facilitated the continuation of violence beyond the usual one night. I can see little that distinguishes these protests from those in France in 2005.

90. Źižek, Slavoj, Violence: Six Sideways Reflections (London, 2008), 63 Google Scholar. Emphasis in the original.

91. Ibid., 69.

92. Ibid., 65.

93. Badiou and Źižek, Philosophy in the Present, 81. Interestingly, now that the antiausterity riots have extended to Slovenia, with mass protests on 17 November 2012 and violent demonstrations on 3 December 2012, Źižek has remained silent on the issue. To my knowledge, he has not, at this writing, written or spoken publicly in Slovenia in support of the protests.

94. Badiou, Alain, The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings (London, 2012), 22 Google Scholar.

95. Ibid., 21-27.

96. Źižek, Violence, 179. Emphasis in the original.

97. Ibid., 183.

98. Ibid.

99. Źižek, Living in the End Times, 390.

100. See Irving Wohlfarth's excellent three-part essay on the Red Army Faction's misuse of Benjamin's text: “Walter Benjamin and the Red Army Faction, Part 1,” Radical Philosophy 152 (November/December 2008): 7-19; “Walter Benjamin and the Red Army Faction, Part 2,” Radical Philosophy 153 (January/February 2009): 13-26; and “Walter Benjamin and the Red Army Faction Part 3,” Radical Philosophy 154 (March/April 2009): 9-24.

101. Eagleton, Why Marx Was Right, 179-95.

102. Ibid., 186.

103. Ibid.

104. See Źižek, Slavoj, “Some Concluding Notes on Violence, Ideology and Communist Culture,” Subjectivity 3, no. 1 (April 2010): 101 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Źižek, Living in the End Times, 398.

105. Źižek, “Some Concluding Notes on Violence,” 101.