Cabacungan, June Phillip S.

4PHL1

This reflection is about Doc Pao’s topic populism of Slavoj Zizek. He was a Marxist

philosopher at the University of Ljubljana. In his populism, he criticizes the appeal of political

correctness and he also questions the ability of markets to survive without state intervention and

he excoriates things that he sees as ulterior motives behind fair-trade coffee. For Zizek, the crisis

in itself is an instigation for a new beginning; every downfall of short-term strategic and

pragmatic measures is a blessing in disguise, it is an opportunity to rethink the very foundations

of the country. For Zizek, populism is a class struggle where it provides a neutral and

transcendental matrix of struggle wherein its content and the stakes are defined by the continuous

struggle for hegemoy.