United States of Europe or free trade zone? No thanks! Slavoj Žižek on the future of Europe

Vighi, Fabio ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4245-0144 and Feldner, Heiko Michael ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6752-6563 2006. United States of Europe or free trade zone? No thanks! Slavoj Žižek on the future of Europe. European Journal for Social Theory 9 (3) , pp. 337-355. 10.1177/1368431006065716

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Abstract

This article seeks to unravel the theoretical implications of Slavoj Žižek’s plea for a leftist Eurocentrism, focusing specifically on his defence of the ‘No’ vote in the French and Dutch referenda on the European Constitution (29 May and 1 June 2005, respectively). While most liberal commentators have read these results as a blow to the hopes of a United Europe against the overwhelming geopolitical power of the United States, Žižek argues that the French and Dutch ‘No’ votes express a deep-seated desire for a radically changed idea of Europe - a desire disclosing the need to move beyond the very notion of liberal democracy in order to ‘reinvent that which is to be defended’: democracy itself. While exploring the theoretical background to Žižek’s argument on Europe through an in-depth analysis of its psychoanalytic foundations (Lacan), the article also contextualizes it within the Marxist tradition, looking particularly at Lenin’s 1915 pamphlet, ‘On the Slogan for a United States of Europe’.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Modern Languages
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) H Social Sciences > HX Socialism. Communism. Anarchism J Political Science > JC Political theory
Publisher:	Sage
ISSN:	1368-4310
Last Modified:	27 Oct 2022 09:38
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/66877

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