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Yanis Iqbal’s Slavoj Žižek and the Politics of Abstract Negativity is a polemic that repeatedly stages Žižek as an easy, strawman target for a kind of moralistic left-correctivism [*]. This move is not only intellectually dishonest but structurally necessary for Iqbal’s whole argumentative framework: to mobilize a more “properly” materialist, Marxist critique, Žižek must be reduced to the role of an “abstract” idealist, a Eurocentric liberal, and ultimately a kind of convenient bogeyman. Let’s look at how this strawman operation works, with reference to specific quotes from the article.

Žižek as “Shameful Liberal” and Eurocentric Scapegoat

Iqbal begins with Žižek’s controversial stances on Ukraine and Palestine. He writes:

“Žižek’s recent political interventions regarding Palestine are similarly shameful. He has denounced the ‘barbarism’ of Hamas by writing that the choice is not between Palestinian anti-colonial violence and Zionist settler-colonial violence, but ‘between fundamentalists and all those who still believe in the possibility of peaceful coexistence.’ … Like a true liberal, he says that ‘it is all too easy to dismiss the state of Israel as a result of the colonization of the Palestinian territory … both Palestinians and Jews have a right to live there, and … are condemned to live there together.’”

Already, Iqbal frames Žižek’s position as shameful, “true liberal,” and—without irony—“patronizing, Eurocentric liberal who hitches the fate of Palestine to the exceptional moral conscience of imperialist states.” But what does Žižek actually do? He refuses the Manichaean logic (“anti-colonial violence vs. settler-colonial violence”) and insists the core choice is between “fundamentalists and those who still believe in the possibility of peaceful coexistence.” This is not a liberal equivalence of victim and oppressor, but the staging of the deadlock—the “impossible” impasse that defines the real of the situation, one that both sides are trapped in. Žižek’s assertion that “both Palestinians and Jews have a right to live there” is not a liberal platitude, but a tragic recognition of the deadlock and the necessity to inhabit it without recourse to fantasies of simple moral purity.

The strawman here is not just Žižek as liberal, but Žižek as a mouthpiece for Eurocentric “exceptional moral conscience.” Yet Žižek’s constant point—most of all regarding Europe—is not to defend Europe’s moral specialness, but to draw attention to its obscene underside, the contradictions it cannot integrate, the constitutive violence that underpins all its universalist claims. His call for “Europe to find its own voice” is never naïve advocacy of the West as savior, but the provocation for Europe to confront its own failure, its own obscene supplement.

Žižek as Abstract Negativist

Iqbal writes,

“How to make sense of Žižek’s awful political position? … the ideological blindness of Žižek can be traced to an invariant philosophical system of abstract negativity that imposes prescriptions upon political processes instead of learning from them.”

Here Iqbal simply presupposes Žižek is “blind” because of his philosophy—a philosophy which, we are told, only imposes from above, never learns “from below.” But this is the precise opposite of the Žižekian wager: to interrogate how the unconscious, the real, and the constitutive lack shape the horizon of what is thinkable and doable within the situation. Žižek doesn’t “prescribe from above”—he stages the deadlock, the contradiction that no simple positive project can resolve, and then asks: what does it mean to act in and through this contradiction, rather than flee from it with cheap solutions?

Iqbal insists that for Žižek, “the impossibility/lack that defines human capacity is taken as the sole ground for politics.” But this “sole ground” is not a positive political program but an injunction to think the impasses—the moments when politics breaks down, when the very coordinates of meaning and action collapse. Žižek is not offering a new metaphysical guarantee (as Iqbal straw-mans), but precisely the withdrawal of guarantees. It is not a prescriptive “abstract negativity” but a staging of how every political act is haunted by the possibility of its own catastrophe, betrayal, or reversal.

Hamas, Religion, and Political Suicide

Žižek’s stance on Hamas is also straw-manned:

“He advises all those who are enthusiastic about liberation to think about what will happen if Hamas wins the fight: ‘what if the reality is that after the revolution there is nothing to eat?’ The implication of this is that both Palestine and Israel should come together to appreciate the long-term ‘democratic’ perspective…”

Here, Iqbal wants to present Žižek as hand-wringing, almost reactionary, in his worry about the aftermath of revolutionary violence, as if Žižek were merely counseling moderation. But this is Žižek’s very point: the fantasy of “revolutionary liberation” is always haunted by the horror of what comes after—by the constitutive lack at the heart of every revolution. Žižek’s question (“what if after the revolution there is nothing to eat?”) is not “what if we upset the status quo too much?” but “what if the revolutionary act only brings a new, more devastating deadlock?” His worry is not about moderation but about the persistence of the deadlock beneath any surface victory.

This is vital when it comes to Hamas: Hamas’s religious framing (“this is a religious war, not a national one”) is itself self-defeating for the Palestinian cause. Why? Because it substitutes the concrete struggle for sovereignty and self-determination with a metaphysical war of absolutes—a struggle in which compromise, coexistence, or dialectical movement becomes impossible. This is the Žižekian point: the elevation of the antagonism to a metaphysical absolute closes off the very space of politics, rendering every possible solution either treason or total defeat. By staging the conflict in absolute, theological terms, Hamas sabotages the very possibility of a political dialectic—and so participates, ironically, in the same metaphysics as Zionist messianism.

Iqbal refuses to see this. Instead, he straw-mans Žižek as simply equating “both sides,” thus providing cover for imperialism.

Žižek as “Idealist” vs. “True” Marxist Materialism

Iqbal’s core rhetorical move is to present Žižek as the great philosophical idealist, who “restores the homogeneity and uniqueness of the discourse of the Philosophy of History in terms of Absolute Knowledge.” He quotes Natalia Romé approvingly:

“Žižek’s theory is ‘on the side of philosophical idealism: first, because it makes psychic causality a metaphysics of historical life, and second, because in doing so, it restores the homogeneity and uniqueness of the discourse of the Philosophy of History in terms of Absolute Knowledge.’”

But Žižek’s entire project is an anti-philosophy of history: a dialectics without guarantees, without any “absolute knowledge” save the absolute negativity that prevents any closure, any final unity, any teleology. The “void” in Žižek is not a positive metaphysical principle but a name for the non-All, the internal incoherence and impasse at the core of every historical situation. Žižek is closer to Marx than his critics think, but at the point where Marx is at his most Hegelian: “the tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living”—the impossibility of the present to master its own situation, to posit itself as a pure beginning.

The Dishonest Function of the Strawman

To sum up, Iqbal’s critique only works by flattening Žižek’s dialectical nuance into a series of moral or epistemological failings. Žižek becomes:

• The Eurocentric liberal, because he stages the tragic deadlock of Palestine and Israel as a mutual problem, refusing to let either side escape into metaphysical purity;
• The abstract negativist, because he refuses guarantees and insists on the constitutive failure of every historical project;
• The idealist, because he foregrounds the psychic and symbolic deadlocks structuring political life, refusing the crude reduction of politics to “positive projects” that always already know their own meaning.

But Žižek’s point is the opposite: the only way out is through the deadlock, not by pretending it isn’t there. It is dishonest, then, to present Žižek as an easy target for “correction”—as if the only thing missing from his theory is more materiality, more positivity, more “proper” Marxist substance. What is missing, for Iqbal, is the courage to face the abyss, the negativity, the lack that structures every situation.

Selected Strawman Quotes from Iqbal

• “Like a true liberal, he says that ‘it is all too easy to dismiss the state of Israel as a result of the colonization of the Palestinian territory … both Palestinians and Jews have a right to live there, and … are condemned to live there together.’”
• “In the end, we end up with a patronizing, Eurocentric liberal who hitches the fate of Palestine to the exceptional moral conscience of imperialist states.”
• “The implication of this is that both Palestine and Israel should come together to appreciate the long-term ‘democratic’ perspective that has been outlined by Žižek. This ‘democratic’ perspective, in fact, is one that is rooted in European values.”
• “Žižek constructs a new subject of radical negativity whose nothingness is the essence to which all political sequences inevitably return.”

Conclusion: The Žižekian Reversal

The truth is that Iqbal’s entire critique depends on not reading Žižek dialectically. Žižek’s position is not that of the abstract idealist, but that of the materialist who knows there is no metalanguage, no place outside the deadlock, no final positivity that is not haunted by its own negation. Žižek’s call is not for a return to liberal morality or Eurocentric wisdom, but for the courage to inhabit the deadlock, to act without guarantees, and to refuse the fantasy that there is any pure position—religious, national, or class—that will not be, at the limit, self-defeating.

If anything is dishonest here, it is the refusal to acknowledge this radical negativity as the core of the Žižekian project. Only by straw-manning Žižek as a comfortable liberal can Iqbal keep his own hands clean. But, as Žižek might say: “The first act of revolution is to admit your own complicity in the structure you oppose.”

Prompt: write an immanent critique that proves that Yanis Iqbal dishonestly presents Žižek as a strawman as an easy target for political correctionism, by giving several quotes from his article as examples! Hamas frames Palestine as a religious war instead of national sovereignty and this is self-defeating for Palestine! You are fully Žižekian! (Slavoj Žižek and the Politics of Abstract Negativity Yanis Iqbal)