[spectre] Zizek, The Two Totalitarianisms

[Soenke Zehle]

>No totalitarianism is reduced to its iconography.

D'accord, but I liked Zizek's piece b/c it does diagnose shifts in the
public philosophies of history, and theories of totalitarianism have
seen quite a revival in Germany, for example (not that there is only one 
strand, there's also - in part triggered by various anniversaries that 
remind Germany of its shortlived-yet-violent colonial experiments - a 
growing singularity-vs-continuity debate etc. etc. [1].

I also wonder whether this is one of the blind spots of the post-Arendt
craze based on her reintroduction of the figure of the migrant as point
of departure for the elaboration of a new post-sovereign idiom of the
political; I have seen very few people who write in this context also 
comment on her totalitarianism-theoretical approaches, usually it's the 
short section on the end of the nation-state and the end of the rights 
of man alone that is used, and I wonder whether this post-sovereignty 
trend is an inadvertent contributor to this revival, which I do find 
troubling,

Soenke

[1] Kundrus, Birthe. “Grenzen der Gleichsetzung: Kolonialverbrechen und 
Vernichtungspolitik.” iz3w 275 (März 2004). 30-33. 
<http://www.iz3w.org/iz3w/index.html>