US Ideology and the War in Iraq

Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek has always been concerned with the meaning of ideology and its role in the constitution of political subjects (Žižek 1989, 1994). Yet, apart from a few incursions in matters of national identity, postcommunism, and postdemocratic transition (Žižek 1993), Žižek's philosophical reflections were never directly about international relations. To say that Žižek reverses this trend in Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle would be an overstatement given that this book starts with current geopolitical issues (the war in Iraq and US imperialism since September 11), but it quickly moves on to more traditional Žižekian problematiques—such as the conceptualization of the subject in Lacan's psychoanalysis and the place of ideology in twentieth-century political practice. Still, in this collection of discontinuous but often spontaneous thoughts prompted by the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003 (p. 7), Žižek covers many issues of central

Aesthetics · Conceptualization · Constitution · Epistemology · Geopolitics · Identity (music · Ideology · International relations · Iraq war · Meaning (existential · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Subject (documents · Law · Philosophy · Populism, Right-Wing Movements · Psychoanalysis and Social Critique · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics · Psychology