Perhaps the most dificult instance of the contemporary problem of left victory] though, is left enthusiasm for democracy, as I explore in chapter 3· The aggressive war waged in Iraq has been fought in the name of democracy, seemingly taking left desire for democratic governance at its word: You want democracy ? This is what democracy looks like!
Not Post-Political
"When one's opponent takes over one's position, one is confronted with its realization, with its repercussions. This is what niany of us don't like; this is what we want to avoid. So we say, "No! That's not it," but because our enemy has taken over our language, our ideals, we<sup>'</sup>ve lost a capacity to say what we want, even to know what we want. We can't even dream something else. Zizek writes: "In a radical revolution, people not only have to 'realize their old ( emancipatory, etc.) dreams'; rather, they have to reinvent their very modes of dreaming:'18
Such a reinvention is an enormous, perhaps impossible task. It's not furthered, though, by the diagnosis of "depoliticization;' a diagnosis offered by political theorists the increased currency of which calls out for critique. If depoliticization means ·anything, it is the retreat into co<sub>�</sub>ardice, the retroactive determination of victory as defeat because of the left's fundamental inability to accept responsibility for power and to undertake the dificult task of reinventing our modes of dreaming. Depoliticization is a fantaSYJ an excuse whereby the left says "We know colective action is possible theoretically] but we don't believe we exist:' The \_term marks the gap between the commitment to common approaches to systemic problems constitutive of left thought for over two centuries and the isolating individualism of consumption and entertainment-driven communicative capitalism. '}:he very diagnosis of depoliticization functions fetishistically to prevent the left from confronting the truth of its victory.
This view of depoliticization as an excuse or fetish covering over a failure of responsibility, however, is not widely shared. On the contrary, Q.epoliticization and the correlative notions of post-politics, dedemocratization, and postdemocracy are ofered as terms for designating what is specifically new in the current political,.economic condition. Over the past decades, a number of political theorists have attempted to analyze the contemporary conjuncture as post-political or postdemocratic.19 Reversing the terms of the "end of ideology" thesis ofered by neoconservative (Francis Fukuyama) and "third way" (Anthony Giddens) thinkers, these theorists critically redescribe the orientation toward consensus, administration, and technocracy lauded as benefits of the post- Cold War age. Several aspects of this redescription stand out, namely, the primacy of the economy, the individual, and the police.
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INTRODUCTION