First as Tragedy, Then as Farce by Slavoj Zizek Search Amazon for other books by or about Slavoj Zizek. Rating: Reviewed by: John Walsh

The bad boy of philosophy, Slavoj Zizek arouses strong emotions wherever he goes, relentlessly talkative and so full of provocative opinions they appear to burst out of him as if by some sort of mechanistic device beyond his control. When, as is often the case, he talks or writes about the psychoanalysis of Lacan or the philosophy of Hegel and Marx, his impact is somewhat limited to the now limited circle of people able and willing enough to understand what he is saying to be outraged or inspired. However, in First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, Zizek expounds his views on modern politics and, being as uncompromising as ever, he is likely to cause more of a stink than usual.

The book is divided into two principal sections, although there are the usual excursions and sidebars along the way. The first section is called "It's Ideology, Stupid!" and outlines the thesis proposed by the title: observing that Marx corrected Hegel's claim that history repeats itself to include the tragedy-farce couplet, Zizek argues that the two defining events of the young century are the terrorist attacks in the USA of September 11th, 2001, and the economic crisis that first became evident in 2008. He observes that "[t]he only truly surprising thing about the 2008 financial meltdown is how easily the idea was accepted that its happening was an unpredictable surprise which hit the markets out of the blue" (p.9). According to Zizek's approach, these two events were not only avoidable but inevitable given the economic and societal systems in place in the western world. That the farcical element (of the economic collapse--farcical because it was predicted so many times, like in a pantomime where the crowd is calling out to the actors "Behind you! He's behind you!") the tragic element is liable to raise a more emotional response. As far as I can tell, the critical passage in this respect appears on pp.76-7, where Zizek describes liberalism (which is demanded by capitalism in one form or another) and fundamentalism as a "totality" and that:

"The paradox is that liberalism itself is not strong enough to save its own core values from the fundamentalist onslaught. Its problem is that it cannot stand on its own: there is something missing in the liberal edifice. Liberalism is, in its very notion, "parasitic," relying as it does on a presupposed network of communal values that it undermines in the course of its own development.* Fundamentalism is a reaction - a false, mystificatory reaction of course - against a real flaw inherent within liberalism, and this is why fundamentalism is, over and again, generated by liberalism."