Europe's Malignant Supplements, I Know. But Nevertheless…

Abstract

This discussion review appeals to a minimal militant comradeship across struggles. Theory is also a struggle, and solidarity is always key. It agrees with Slavoj Žižek’s main argument: the critique of Eurocentrism cannot sustain itself without acknowledging the positive influence of the Enlightenment radical tradition. It also underlines that particular emancipatory projects set against universalism fail to properly problematise political subjectivity. This is not to coalesce with certain Western/European metropolitan intellectual and political inclinations, not least in the Left, particularly prone to lay down the correct and rightful terms of anybody else’s struggles. Various examples from different historic and contemporary contexts illustrate and clarify this point. In the process, some hints are also given on possible theoretical and political reconciliations between Decolonial Theory and the Idea of Communism or between Žižek’s “possibilism” and Alain Badiou’s politics of the impossible.