First As Tragedy, Then As Farce

By Slavoj Žižek

The leading philosopher of our time tracks the demise of liberalism through landmark events of the 21st century—from 9/11 to the farce of the financial meltdown

Billions of dollars were hastily poured into the global banking system in a frantic attempt at financial stabilization. So why has it not been possible to bring the same forces to bear in addressing world poverty and environmental crisis?

In this take-no-prisoners analysis, Slavoj Zizek frames the moral failures of the modern world in terms of the epoch-making events of the first decade of this century. What he finds is the old one-two punch of history: the jab of tragedy, the right hook of farce. In the attacks of 9/11 and the global credit crunch, liberalism dies twice: as a political doctrine and as an economic theory. The election of Donald Trump only confirms the bankruptcy of a liberal order on its last legs.

First as Tragedy, Then as Farce is a call for the Left to reinvent itself in the light of our desperate historical situation. The time for liberal, moralistic blackmail is over.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 5, 2009
• ISBN: 9781844674893

Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek (Liubliana, 1949) estudió Filosofía en la Universidad de Liubliana y Psicoanálisis en la Universidad de París, y es filósofo, sociólogo, psicoanalista lacaniano, teórico cultural y activista político.  Es director internacional del Instituto Birkbeck para las Humanidades de la Universidad de Londres, investigador en el Instituto de Sociología de la Universidad de Liubliana y profesor en la European Graduate School. Es uno de los ensayistas más prestigiosos y leídos de la actualidad, autor de más de cuarenta libros de filosofía, cine, psicoanálisis, materialismo dialéctico y crítica de la ideología. En Anagrama ha publicado Mis chistes, mi filosofía, La nueva lucha de clases, Problemas en el paraíso, El coraje de la desesperanza, La vigencia de «El manifiesto comunista», Pandemia; Como un ladrón en pleno día y Incontinencia del vacío.

Reviews for First As Tragedy, Then As Farce

[meditationesmartini · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Slavoj, you will be unsurprised to learn, is against the citizen's wage because it degrades us and makes us dependent on capitalist-creative wealth producers and their charity, enervating a genuine socialist politics and giving them a new way to parasite on us (viz. the recent/current financial crisis). But this is just the reform/revolution argument redux, right? And call me a dirty ameliorist, but I'm pretty comfortable calling Zizek's argument reprehensible here. Because we work to imagine/envision a society in which poverty can't exist, we shouldn't work to keep "the poor" alive? the two are mutually exclusive? If that's the case we should quit with the protests, dismantle our social services, and elect, like, rapacious space lizards to brutalize us until we REALLY want change.The IS line was always "talk about socialism; work for socialism; struggle toward an understanding of what it might in practice mean/be; but in the meantime, vote NDP", right? Still strikes me as reasonable.I'll quit in the interests of pre-empting a rant, although there's of course plenty more to say here--I haaate the way he conflates the welfare state with "charity", e.g., and I think the thing about European guilt/need culture and "third-world" aspiration/pride culture, while absuuuurdly reductive of course, does get to a grain of truth, and the privileging of citizens in relation to non-citizens is a big topic. But yeah, "rent enabling dignified survival to all citizens" sounds like something worth supporting. I'm for a citizen's wage covering needs, I'm for a maximum wage, I'm for taxes conceived as an active tool of redistribution, I'm for the collective ownership of property-in-the-marxist sense, I see the central questions as "how to implement these policies in a capitalist regime without causing the flight of wealth" and "how to achieve a social consensus around them" (the flip side of the envy and pride issues Zhizh raises--to me, thinking that we can work through all those bad human impulses that he knows all about "as a psychoanalyst" just amounts to saying "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need"). And I'm comfortable with the idea that the reduction in human misery that I hope all of this would effect may complicate the development of a sustainable post-wage economy. And a citizen's wage lets us all create, if we want to, artistically, without worrying about getting paid--and the alpha dawg shitbag that wants to be a big man in a big house still can, and earn more than his neighbours--just less than now.

[mandarinate · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

The start of this book has promise as a social critique but quickly drifts into seemingly pointless erudition and abstraction. The only message I extracted from it was "there's a recession, so you see now that capitalism sucks, onward to revolution."

[markhurn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book renewed my interest in political philosophy, although saying that, it is probably better appreciated by someone with a renewed interest than with a new interest. The reason I say this is that there are a lot of references to writers and use of terminology which many will not know, I found myself turning to dictionaries of philosophy more than once.The book attacks contemporary capitalist society from a communist perspective, but not the communism of Marxism-Leninism but a contemporary communist thought rooted in the classics of Kant and Hegel, but strongly influenced by psychoanalysis and phenomenology.'all the features we today identify with freedom and liberal democracy (trade unions, the universal vote, free universal education, freedom of the press, etc.) were won through a long and difficult struggle on the part of the lower classes throughout the ninetenth and twentieth centuries - in other words they were anything but the "natural" consequences of capitalist relations' (p.38). He points out that many of the demands of The Communist Manifesto have been won and are widely accepted.Some of his comments on contemporary oppositions are frighteningly perceptive: 'such a Left fears for its own comfortable position as a critical voice fully integrated into the system, ready to risk nothing' (p.75) how many in the Labour Party and trades unions must feel this at the moment? And if you do feel it can you afford to take the risks?And you think you've heard all the criticisms of capitalism? Well no, I was amazed to read that 'help' from the International Monetary Fund makes people ill, and this is no wild claim, it is based on research by a respected University, showing how IMF inspired cuts in public health budgets of many countries has led to increased ill-health in those countries (p.81).Some might be surprised that Zizek states that the future conflicts will between socialism and communism, that is a 'corporate' socialism of state and big-business that actually rules/owns most everything at the moment, the individual entrepreneur (so beloved of the neo-liberals) is extremely rare and ineffectual. There is so much more I could say about Zizek's arguments, often they are excellent, but not always convincing, he is like a boxer that wins on points and not on knock-out blows. Also, however good criticism of the existing order might be, the question will always arise 'how would you do otherwise?' and Zizek is rather short on advice in this department.

[librarianbryan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Gah. This was enjoyable but it is hardly igniting a new Left (or something). Zizek's psychoanalytic arsenal makes for fun perversions of right-wing writers to make is his case for the communist idea. That being said, it is way too theoretical for a general reader (a zombie?). I'm just happy he mentioned Linux when discussing the privatization of intellectual space. This little book is all over the place but it will make you think.

[jonfaith · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

We are forced to live as if we were free. -- John Gray

First as Tragedy, Then as Farce is my favorite work yet by Žižek. Despite its many passages being recycled in later works, there is a clarity here which moved me. The specific grasp was Žižek's viewing the newly inaugurated President Obama. Certainly the philosopher fears a hegemon with a human face, he rightly critiques the vaunted 2009 speech in Cairo. The philosopher then betrays himself as a sentimentalist by comparing the 2008 Obama victory with the 1791-1804 Haitian Revolution. Hegel and the rest of the Enlightenment were all about the concept of liberation from slavery, except where actual slaves were involved. That simply didn't enter the equation. Thus when French peacekeepers arrived to find natives singing La Marseillaise , there was a historic realization: these black people might be more French than we are. Such is the drenched weight of ideology.

[edh_39 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Like any good book title “First as Tragedy, Then as Farce” misdirects the reader then guides him back to a new and better understanding of the author’s intent. Zizek’s writing is dense and not easy to read. I picked this book for its leftist critique of democracy and capitalism; that it was and more. There are enough insightful comments along these lines to make the read worthwhile. But Zizek’s shotgun approach to writing makes it difficult to see what he is aiming at. While reading if you keep in mind this central theme, the enemy of communism is not democracy or even socialism but capitalism, then the thrust of the book becomes clear. The front page blurb from the New Republic calls Zizek “The most dangerous philosopher in the West”. If he was more comprehensible we would be more dangerous.

[logocentric_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is Žižek at his polemical best. If you want to know what Žižek is about this is the book. It sets out in a clear and concise way his take on current politics. Get ready for his Communist Hypothesis, which does not take any prisoners and does not blink in the face of 'political correctness', "the point is simply that the British colonization of India created the conditions for the double liberation of India: from the constraints of its own tradition as well as from colonization itself" (116).This book is informative and philosophically rewarding. I highly highly recommend it. Oh, if you just received your MBA from Stanford, you might want to pour yourself a stiff drink first, because the truth will hit you hard.

[jcook818 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This tract by Žižek is another solid addition to his continuing work on ideology in contemporary society. While the book tends to flow with the efficiency of a falling brick, due to Žižek's unique style, the point of the book is clear -- the ideology of 'utopia' is no longer isolated to modern conceptions of communism, but in fact it is a vital part of liberal-democratic capitalism. It starts with a critique on modern political and capitalist rhetoric, then flows into a rather disjointed (but typically Žižek) analysis of everything from Starbucks to classical Marxism. Žižek's proposed response to this "ideology in the age of post-ideology" to continue a call to "get back to work" at establishing a new communist "Idea" for the twenty-first century, one that can escape the failings of twentieth-century experimentation, and one that works in modern-day social relations and structures of labour -- a continuation of Badiou's work on a new "communist hypothesis." I found the book to be a great read, with tons of compelling points made, and would recommend it to anyone who has more than a passing interest in these ideas. At only 157 pages, it is easy enough to finish in a few days, great for a light introduction to the "new school" of modern communist philosophers.For those who are not familiar with Žižek's work, he draws a lot from the concepts of Jacques Lacan and Alain Badiou, so it would be helpful to at least have a familiar knowledge of their core concepts before jumping in to this book.

[stephenbarkley · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The write-up on the back cover sounded compelling. The tragedy referred to in the title was the events of 9/11. The farce was the economic collapse of 2008. Taken together, these events signal the political and economic death of Western-style liberalism.I was expecting an analysis of these events (with liberal doses of Hegel and Lacan, as always). I quickly learned that the writer of the back cover must have only read the introduction! Žižek quickly left these events behind to mount his defense of Socialism in the face of failed Capitalism.Capitalism with a warm and fuzzy face is still capitalism, and no amount of charity from the capitalists will change that. In fact, just as kind slave-owners exacerbated the problem by masking the evil, charitable capitalists cloud the real issue: what is needed is the sort of deep socioeconomic reordering of society that would render charity superfluous.I evidently don't have enough of a background in political theory to follow all the details of his argument (that, or I didn't read slowly enough). Much of the book seemed disjointed and needlessly dense.Žižek is incredibly intelligent and funny. I just wish he could write a little more intelligibly for the masses.