Fabio Vighi, PhD, and Heiko Feldner, PhD, are Directors of the Žižek Centre for Ideology Critique at Cardiff University in Wales.
Žižek’s notion of subtraction, or “Bartleby politics,” is modeled on Hermann Melville’s character ‘Bartleby the Scrivener,’ who to every request enigmatically repeats ‘I would prefer not to’. Far from inviting inaction or cynicism, in Žižek’s view, this refusal translates into a politics demanding that we actively assume as our own the inconsistency of the socio-symbolic order we inhabit. More precisely, it implies attempting to suspend the vicious circle whereby regimes o....