7 The Communist Hypothesis: Žižekian Utopia or Utopian Fantasy?

Abstract

Although Slavoj Žižek’s work has always had a Marxist flavour and has hinted at an affinity with communism, his primary mode of political engagement has remained the critique of capital rather than the re-development of an alternative ideological platform. Parts of Žižek’s recent work, however, have begun to overtly engage with communism such that he has been able to speak of it as ‘our side’ (2009a: 8). This commitment has come in the form of the ‘communist hypothesis’, developed primarily in his works How to Begin from the Beginning (2009b) and First as Tragedy, then as Farce, (2009a). Emerging initially from Alain Badiou’s The Meaning of Sarkozy (2008), the resurgence of communism has resonated strongly with those involved in Leftist political theory, leading to a sold out political conference on ‘The Idea of Communism’ – a conference which required, as Badiou narrates, that speakers must agree that “the word communism can and must now acquire a positive value once more” (2010: 37) – and an ensuing collection of essays under the same name (Douzinas & Žižek, 2010). Badiou has subsequently produced a more focused text, explicitly titled ‘The