<sup>Z</sup>izek attributes contemporary post-politics to "the depoliticization of economics, to the common acceptance of Capital and market mechanisms as neutral tools I procedures to be exploited:'31 Taken as a broad description of U.S. politics, this argument is unconvincing: jobs, deficits, surpluses, taxes, inflation, interest rates, out-sourcing, the strength of the dollar, trade imbalances, consumer spending, subprime mortgages, bubbles, and budgets are key terms in the contemporary political lexicon. The economy appears as the site of politics, its most fundamental concern. <sup>Z</sup>izek's point, then, is better read as a critique of the left-the real political problem today is that the left accepts capitalism. The left is caught in a post-political situation because it has conceded to the right on the terrain of the economy: it has surrendered the state to neoliberal interests. Present leftists rarely view capitalism and its efects as evil (and part of Reagan's genius as president, as I explore in chapter $^ { 4 , }$ is his redirection of the language of evil away from capitalism). Instead, most view the problem as the state. "Depoliticized" thus well describes the contemporary left's inability to raise particular claims to the level of the universal, to present issues or problems as standing for something beyond themselves. The academic and typing left prides itself on just this unwilingness, an unwillingness to say "we" out of a reluctance to speak for another as well as an unwilgness to signify or name a problem, to take it out of its immediate context and re-present it as uriiversal.
INTRODUCTION
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