Radical Philosophy Review

Volume 19, Issue 3, 2016

Dan Wood
Pages 653-677

Political Philosophy and the Vestiges of Colonialism
A Critical Analysis of Žižek’s Leftist Plea for Eurocentrism

In this essay I argue that Slavoj Žižek’s “A Leftist Plea for ‘Eurocentrism’” betrays, in an exceptionally telling way, the existence and persistence of dimensions of modern colonialism within contemporary continental philosophy. After offering a general characterization of the way in which the idea of the “West” is used to justify (neo)colonialist patterns of thinking, I provide a thorough criticism of each of Žižek’s central premises.