Original scientific paper

The Shepherd Borat?

Zoran Kurelić ; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract

Author argues that it would be a mistake to treat Slavoj Žižek’s political philosophy
as if it were a performance act. Žižek is a neo-Leninist writer, a political-
philosophical shepherd, but he is not the Shepherd Borat. Kurelić criticizes
and rejects Žižek’s reinterpretation of Benjamins’s ‘divine violence’
as theoretically incorrect and politically useless. By comparing Žižek’s and
Arendt’s understanding of the French Revolution Kurelić wants to show why
the ‘divine violence’ recommended by Žižek would for Arendt be an ‘element
of totalitarianism’. He points out that the political success of socialist
and communist ideas was always derived from the vision of the better future,
not from the promises of unrestrained revenge and political violence. Žižek’s
attempt to reconcile the terror of the Jacobins with his modern revolutionary
neo-Leninism is a political nonstarter.

Keywords

Žižek; Arendt; Divine Violence; Terror; Totalitarianism

Hrčak ID:

115739

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/115739

Publication date:

27.12.2013.

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