The question of democracy is not directly at the center of Slavoj Žižek's political thought. While Žižek never elaborates an affirmative theory of democracy, his work contains critical analyses of different ideas of democracy that aim at keeping open the possibility of a conception of Marxist-Leninist politics that cannot be reduced to notions of political agonism organized in a formal, liberal democratic, radical democratic or popular mode. Although Žižek's respective critiques of different notions of democracy can unearth some of their problematic alliances with the logic of capital and with certain forms of (multiculturalist) racism, this paper also points to some of the shortcomings of Žižek's engagement with Ernesto Laclau's conception of populism as a model of antagonistic politics.

Vogt, Erik. "Zur Funktion des Demokratiebegriffs im Werk von Slavoj Žižek." Genealogy+Critique 9, no. 1 (2023): 1–23. DOI: 10.16995/gc.9220