Interview

Andrew Long: Your most recent book, The Indivisible Remainder: An Essay on Schelling and Related Matters, is the second in your series Wo es War, with Verso; it follows The Metastases of Enjoyment. Could you talk about the series Wo es War and about how the Schelling book fits into it?

Slavoj Žižek: The two main parameters of the series are, first, a strict limitation to works which somehow fit this crucial axis: Lacanian psychoanalysis and Marxist theory. The second parameter is to be very dogmatic in terms of Lacanian theory—no opening toward different approaches; for example, pluralist or interdisciplinary approaches were prohibited. The fact is that the strictly dogmatic Lacanian approach combined precisely with a not-post-Marxist approach is what is needed today. Incidentally, there is another book in the series in between the two of mine: The Panopticon Writings [edited by Miran Bozovic], which I think is crucial, because it throws a new light on Bentham's writings. I think that Foucault did not exploit deeply enough what we find in Bentham's panopticon writings. There are incredibly rich reference points for a new theory of power, for a theory of fantasmatic support of power, which are not exploited in Foucault. As the next volume we will have Alan Grosrichard's The Structure of Seraglio, which is important precisely in this moment of renewed anti-Arab, anti-Oriental hatred. The topic of that book is how in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the West, oriental despotism was a central notion, but with many ambiguities. What is so interesting is that it wasn't only a negative reference. On the one hand, for the king, the revolutionaries were oriental despots, and for the revolutionaries the king was an oriental despot. But what is more interesting is that he nicely perceived the ambiguity of ideology. It's interesting to see how oriental despotism didn't just work for upper, lower, or middle classes as a way to denigrate the opponent, but also served as