In the last couple of years, attacks on Slavoj Žižek multiply from different sources. Politically, he was condemned for his position on Donald Trump, for his critique of the humanitarian approach to refugees, for his more nuanced approach to LGBT+ movement, etc. In the space of psychoanalysis, Lacanians around Jacques-Alain Miller started a ferocious campaign against Žižek, denouncing him as a fraud. In the space of philosophy, new forms of realism ("object-oriented-ontology") reject Žižek's thought as still rooted in transcendental subjectivity. Attacks on Žižek are often characterized by an almost unheard-of personal brutality (Chomsky, the campaign to "erase" Žižek from public space), and they are also accompanied by Žižek's growing exclusion from public media - one can no longer read his comments and columns in LRB, Guardian, In These Times, etc.

    Instead of getting caught in petty personal exchanges, the question should be raised: which are the real stakes of this ongoing conflict? What does it imply philosophically and politically? This issue of IJZS attempts to render visible some of the main antagonisms that traverse today's philosophy and Leftist thought.  

This special issue, although small, seeks to respond to the dilemma of the Left and the challenges it faces, also to provide a way for the Left to be ontologically and practically re-appropriated and reinvigorated so that it can inform, critique and respond to current political, social and environmental crises. The contributors reveal tensions within universalism, in tandem with the problems of globalisation. They grapple with how the nation-state can be reinvigorated within a globalised context in spite of the chaos this might involve. Important ontological ideas the Left could employ are highlighted. By both critiquing the Left and challenging it to stand back and survey current political and social landscapes, contributors suggest that the Left still has much to offer.