Against Passion

James Meek: Passionate Politics, 30 November 2017

The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics 
by Mark Lilla.
Harper, 160 pp., £19, August 2017, 978 0 06 269743 1
Show More
The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction 
by Mark Lilla.
NYRB, 166 pp., £9.99, September 2016, 978 1 59017 902 4
Show More
Show More
... same reasons, Schmitt has also been useful to certain thinkers on the left – Derrida, Kojève, Alain Badiou, Jacob Taubes and, more recently, Slavoj Žižek. Schmitt’s appeal at this end of the spectrum is his evocation of a force that smashes the liberal façade of the dominant class, his endorsement of the virtue of antagonism when there is a ...

The Pope of Course

Adam Mars-Jones: Michel Houellebecq’s ‘Annihilation’, 5 December 2024

Annihilation 
by Michel Houellebecq, translated by Shaun Whiteside.
Picador, 527 pp., £22, September 2024, 978 1 0350 2639 5
Show More
Show More
... a lot of familiar figures crop up in the narrative. After coaching, Sarfati is ‘perfect’ with Alain Badiou, ‘impeccable with Greta Thunberg and frankly majestic with Zemmour’. There are sly side-swipes for the benefit of insiders, as when someone asks innocently – about the former editor of Libération – ‘Isn’t Laurent Joffrin ...

Hate is the new love

Malcolm Bull: Slavoj Žižek, 25 January 2001

The Fragile Absolute or why is the christian legacy worth fighting for? 
by Slavoj Žižek.
Verso, 182 pp., £16, June 2000, 1 85984 770 6
Show More
Show More
... the ‘mysterious emergence of transcendental spontaneity’ from the negative gesture with Alain Badiou’s Truth-Event – an unpredictable happening that reveals the repressed truth of the existing situation. Events like Adam’s Fall, Christ’s death, and the French and Russian Revolutions are negative gestures which undermine the prevailing ...