The Past, Present, and Future of the Communist Idea in Eastern Europe

Background

An oxymoronic logic seemingly haunts contemporary European communism. While the profound failures of actually existing communism in Eastern Europe are denounced, the idea of communism is in some corners paradoxically revived as the solution to the crises that liberal-democratic capitalism seems ill-equipped to address, from authoritarian populism to pandemics, wars, economic crises and global warming.

This post-communist communism is most vividly expressed by thinkers associated with the Ljubljana School of Psychoanalysis, and in particular by its intellectual leader, Slavoj Žižek.

Aims

To understand the return to communism in a post-communist space, the project investigates the intellectual history of the Ljubljana School of Psychoanalysis and the role of political utopias after the collapse of East European communism. It aims to:

1. analyse the School’s critique of twentieth-century communism;
2. trace the conceptual development of communism within its work;
3. synthesise its revival of communism as a response to contemporary political crises.

Contribution

Communism is a neglected theme in existing work on the Ljubljana School and on Žižek. It is frequently dismissed as another of Žižek’s provocations, or as a secret call for totalitarianism. The project instead shows how Žižek’s turn from the critical analysis of existing communist ideology to an endorsement of the communist idea came at a crucial point in recent global politics, and brings together the School’s critique of communist ideology with its endorsement of “the communist idea”.

Theory and method

The project employs a problem-focused methodology blending rhetorical criticism and rhetorical history. Political concepts take their meaning from the problems they are connected to. To capture how communism is articulated, the project follows tropological shifts along three axes:

• the catachrestic axis, capturing moments of conceptual innovation, when communism is welded to a new problem;
• the metaphorical axis, capturing how different elements are condensed under one signifier and transformed;
• the metonymic axis, capturing how the sliding of meaning constantly adjusts the network of meanings around a core political concept.

Read more about rhetorical criticism

Material

The material consists of works on communism by scholars associated with the Ljubljana School with special attention to Slavoj Žižek’s work in English from 1989 to the present. Contemporary writing on communism from Western Marxism and critical theory serves as a point of comparison.

Work packages

1. Communist ideology and its failures. The School’s critique of actually existing communism in Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe.
2. Communism, populism and the ills of contemporary democracy. Communism as an answer to populism, the pandemic, climate change and economic instability.
3. The utopia of the communist idea. The idea of communism as a political utopia, and the current lack of a political project for a better future.
4. From communist ideology to the idea of communism. A synthesis of the findings.

Outputs

Publications, conference papers and media contributions will be published here.