There is a lot to say about Žižek’s clunkily titled Refugees, Terror and Other Troubles with the Neighbors: Against the Double Blackmail, so I will break the review up into several parts. This is a very good sign because, at least, there is something to say about the book, meaning that it offers more than the usual string of platitudes on the subject. The platitudes are still there, of course. They are like an incantation everybody has to repeat before approaching the matter but there are useful insights, as well. Bauman’s book on refugees, for instance, contains nothing but completely correct, reasonable, painfully obvious things that it makes no sense to discuss since they are so obvious.
I will start with the worst that the book has to offer. And if you aren’t scared away by this part, then go ahead and read the following parts of the review. Like everybody else, Žižek is terrified of his subject. Every insight he offers is followed by some pedestrian PC mantra that is supposed to remind everybody that Žižek is a hardcore Leftist. This strategy didn’t work. Even the very modest departure from Liberal Orthodoxy that Žižek timidly undertook in this book merited him veritable howls of anger and pain from the good girls and boys of the Liberal camp (here is just one example but there are dozens. Notice the truly pathetic exhortation of “don’t read it!” It is as if simply seeing Žižek’s words will pollute the Liberal innocence too much.)
Žižek clearly knew that he was going to be torn into shreds for saying things like
Are those who advocate a radical opening of the borders aware that, since our democracies are nation-state democracies, their demand equals a suspension of democracy—a gigantic and fundamental transformation should be allowed to affect a country without the democratic consultation of its population?
and
The next taboo that we must discard is the all too fast equation of the European emancipatory legacy to cultural imperialism and racism: many on the Left tend to dismiss any mention of ‘European values’ as the ideological form of Eurocentric colonialism. . . The time has come to drop the Leftist mantra according to which our main task is the critique of Eurocentrism.
and especially
Another taboo to be jettisoned is the notion that the protection of one’s specific way of life is in itself a protoFascist or racist category.
Oh, goodness! Fast, give me some pearls to clutch! To compensate for these scandalous statements that make him a pariah among his political community, Žižek comes out with insane – and seriously offensive – statements like
The greatest victims of the Paris terror attacks will be refugees themselves.
I’m completely against blaming refugees for Paris attacks but you’ve got to be totally off your rocker if you truly believe that there can be greater victims than the ones who are dead as a result of the attacks.
If you manage to stay patient throughout a regular sprinkling of this kind of hyper-compensatory madness, though, you will be rewarded with valuable insights. And that’s more than can be said about any other book I have seen on the subject.
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