Thinking Aslant: Žižek and Pragmatism

For around ten years or so now, the work of the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek has become almost mandatory reading for anyone hoping to keep abreast of developments in the humanities in general. The breadth of his topics—ranging from an apparently straightforward explication of basic psychoanalytic concepts, to the nature of political oppression, to the relationship between Marxism and Christianity—is sure to address the concerns of various, even differing, intellectual constituencies. And it should not be surprising that the group of scholars who identify their own work as “theoretical” should be quickly drawn to such interdisciplinary work. But the immediate appeal Žižek has had among Americanists seems particularly anomalous. Aside from the fact that some of his books are originally written in English, and that he unquestionably has a major investment in American popular culture, there is nothing in his works that should be particularly appealing to an American critical or philosophic mentality. Tom Cohen, for instance, has logically argued that given the pragmatist bent that has reigned in the American philosophic tradition, Žižek's thought may be hard put to appeal to the interest of those operating within that frame of mind. Drenched as it is in Hegelian, Lacanian, and post-foundational Marxist philosophy, the Žižekian discourse is precisely what pragmatist thinkers strive to avoid, if not plainly ignore. Similarly, Denise Gigante characterizes Žižek's work as an attempt to reconstruct the concept of “ideology” from a Kantian perspective.1 In placing Žižek within a Kantian reflective framework, Gigante removes Žižek even further from any apparent relationship to American philosophy. Thus it is even harder to address my initial curiosity about why Žižek has become so popular within the Americanist discourse; but it is still harder, in fact, to address why one should even care in the first place. Why not simply yield to the temptation of dismissing his work