Abstract

This article deals with two different but related attempts to reinvent politics as a radical revolutionary act, made by two intellectuals from the former Soviet Bloc, the philosopher Slavoj Žižek and the East German playwright Heiner Müller. I propose to read these reinventions against the foil of Hannah Arendt's passionate plea to rethink politics by breaking with the catastrophic imaginary born in the ruined landscapes of post-fascist Europe.² Second, I will argue that we need to keep in mind the specific conditions of (post)totalitarian rule in the former Soviet Bloc. Third, and most importantly, these reinventions are haunted by the…