One might want to argue that the illegal imigrant provides yet another imaginary identity. The very use of the term illegal, however, draws our attention to the way that neoliberalism relies on the image of the criminal as a strange attractor for combining those disadvantaged through and by neoliberal globalization.
5 3 See Zizek, "Class Struggle o r Postmodernism?;' 116.
54 Schor, The Overspent American.
55 Brown "Quality of Life;' and Taylor, "The Personal Level"j Frank, Luxury Fever.
ss Munck, "Neoliberalism and Politics;' 6s.
57 Miller, A Theory of Shopping.
58 Kane, "The Bankruptcy Bill and Debt Obesity:'
59 Louie," 'Black Friday' Shopping Frenzy:'
60 Garland, The Culture of Control, 10.
6 1 Passavant, "The Strong Neoliberal State:'
62 Garland, The Culture of Control, 15. (Subsequent page references are given parenthetically in the text.)
63 Simon, " 'Entitlement to Cruelty; " 127.
The most influential theorization of the centrality of political identity is in the work (together and separately) of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Moufe. In his recent writing, for example, Laclau writes, "The construction of a 'people' is the sine qua non of democratic functioning;' On Populist Reason, 169.
Zizek writes, "What prevents the radical questioning o f capitalism itself is precisely belief in the democratic form of the strugle against capitalism;' The Parallax View, 320j original emphasis.
THBEE Democracy
1 For a thorough discussion of Zizek's critique of democracy] see Dean, ZizekJs Politics.
I am drawing here from Ernesto Laclau's discussion of universalization under conditions of uneven power relationsj see Laclau, "Stucture, History, and the Political:' Laclau argues that when power relations are uneven, universality depends on particularity, on the possibility of a particular element coming to stand for so�thing other than itsel£ The supposition of democracy disavows the incommensurabilty necessary for universality as it presumes itself to be the solution to its problems-the answer to any problem with democracy is more democracy. For elaboration of this point, see Dean, "Secrecy since September nth:'
3 Buchstein and Jorke, "Redescribing Democracy:
4 Habermas, "Discourse Ethics," 66.
5 See, for example, Chambers, Reasonable Democracy.
s This point applies to theories of radical democracy such as Laclau's and Moufe's as wel.
7 See Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democtacy, especially chapter 2.
186
64
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NOTES TO CHAPTER THREE
2