Žižek's Most Profound Contribution

Nothing is easier than to find these little inconsistencies, or passages where Žižek seems to conflate two closely-related terms. But this kind of exercise is for grade-grubbing graduate students and boring, "deadwood" academics. Žižek has already said that his heart is not really in the political writing, because leftists expect answers which he cannot give (answers no one can give).

Žižek has also already said that he is most proud of those passages in his writing in which he gives a good interpretation of Hegel. And Žižek has said that his Lacan is Miller's Lacan. He has already told anyone who was paying attention that his true focus is not on political theory but on self-reflexive negativity, on the death drive, on subjectivity as the negative universality that unites all speaking animals. Only if we focus on this negative a priori will we grasp the misguided nature of all "identity politics".

Žižek writes so much and he is always provocative. But take him at his word: "Theory matters." His philosophical anthropology might make him seem to be the new Marx, but he is definitely not the new Lenin. His most profound theoretical contribution is ontology and metapsychology, not politics.