the official reports from the show trials, the attacks on enemies, the official panegyrics to Stalin and other leaders
To put it in Habermasian terms, they are involved in a pragmatic contradiction, since they violate the ethical norms which sustain their own speech community.
these figures were not personifications of sublime Byronesque demonic evil: the gap between their intimate experience and the horror of their acts was immense
[...] Another subject (and, ultimately, the subject as such) is for Lacan not something directly given, but a ‘presupposition’, something presumed, an object of belief – how can I ever be sure that what I see in front of me is another subject, not a flat biological machine lacking depth?
'bio-politics' designates the regulation of the security and welfare of human lives as its primary goal
