Universalism

Universalism, as deployed in this passage, is not a liberal-humanist appeal to a pre-given human essence shared by all, nor a naïve erasure of cultural difference. Instead, it names a politically constructed solidarity forged precisely through — and not despite — the acknowledgment of constitutive self-division. Threading Derrida's concept of autoimmunity through Žižek's analysis of the refugee crisis, the passage argues that the self (whether individual, communal, or civilizational) is never immune to what it excludes: it is structured by a non-coincidence with itself that simultaneously undermines pure identity and opens the possibility of genuine cross-cultural political alliance. Universalism here is the name for that opening — the political work that follows from accepting the impossibility of any closed, self-identical community or culture.

This means Universalism is doubly negative in its structure: it rejects both the right-wing fantasy of nativist purity (which disavows autoimmunity by projecting inner contradiction onto the foreigner) and the left-liberal fetishization of the Other (which displaces political antagonism into cultural celebration and humanitarian sentiment). What remains after these two disavowals are stripped away is a universalism grounded in class solidarity — a solidarity capable of insisting that certain historical achievements (egalitarianism, human rights, the welfare state) are worth defending not because they are "European" in an essentialist sense, but because they represent partial, imperfect, and contestable gains against exploitation that have universal stakes. Universalism is therefore a dialectical political concept: it is the affirmative remainder produced by the critique of both identity and its liberal mirror-image.

This concept appears in todd-mcgowan-dominik-finkelde-eds-zizek-responds-bloomsbury-2022 (p.203), situating it within the secondary literature's engagement with Žižek's political theory rather than in Lacan's own seminars. Its eight cross-referenced concepts map a dense theoretical neighborhood. The most structurally central anchor is Ideology: Universalism is precisely the counter-move to ideology's libidinal operation, which — as detailed in the cross-ref — binds subjects to identity-fantasies and surplus-enjoyment rather than to collective political analysis. The appeal to "European values" in the quote risks becoming ideological in this sense (a fetishization of Western modernity), but the passage explicitly pre-empts this by demanding critical rather than sentimental engagement. Fantasy and Fetish are the two concepts most directly targeted by the argument: the left-liberal "fetishization of the (non-European) other" is named as such in the quote, and it corresponds precisely to the Lacanian fetish's function of veiling a lack (here: the lack of genuine political program) through an idealized object. Similarly, Dialectics is operative throughout — Universalism emerges from a negative-dialectical movement that refuses both poles of the nativist/humanitarian antinomy and insists on a third, antagonistic position grounded in class.

The concept is also in implicit dialogue with Jouissance, the Real, and the Neighbour. The refugee, in Žižek's framework, is a figure of the Real — an irruption that ideological management (humanitarian or nativist) seeks to domesticate. The Neighbour concept (Lacan's prochain as figure of unbearable proximity and enjoyment) frames why the call not to fetishize the Other is ethically and analytically serious: genuine political engagement with the neighbour requires confronting the Real of antagonism rather than sublimating it into either charity or hostility. Universalism is thus positioned as an extension of the dialectical and anti-fetishistic imperatives already operative in the canonical corpus, applied specifically to the terrain of migration, class, and global Left politics.

Žižek Responds!Todd McGowan & Dominik Finkelde (eds.) · 2022 (p.203)

the Left must also engage critically and honestly with the refugees and other oppressed groups. Don't fetishize the (non-European) other!… The Left must insist… that some European values and ideas—egalitarianism, human rights, the welfare state—are worth saving.

The imperative "Don't fetishize the (non-European) other!" directly invokes the Lacanian-Marxist concept of the fetish — the object that veils a constitutive lack — applying it to progressive political affect, which is diagnosed as a displacement of genuine solidarity into idealized cultural difference. The pivot to "European values… worth saving" then forces a distinction between ideological fetishization of identity and a dialectically defended universalism grounded in specific, historically produced political achievements, making the entire formulation a miniature critique of both nativist and liberal-humanitarian ideology simultaneously.