Slavoj Žižek, Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle

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One of Žižek’s sharpest and most pertinent interventions is

Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle

(2004). In this book (abbreviated

Iraq

below) the author further develops arguments from

Welcome to the Desert of the Real

(2002) concerning the so-called “war on terror”. Žižek begins the book by quoting Herman Goering, speaking at the Nuremberg trials in 1946: “Of course the people don’t want war [...] But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along” (

Iraq

, p. 1).

The text goes on to show that the truth of the justifications for the war in Iraq is revealed in the very inconsistency between them. For Žižek (as for both Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan), such inconsistency indicates unconscious efforts to

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Citation: Wood, Kelsey. "Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 February 2013 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=23495, accessed 19 March 2024.]

23495 Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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