A Letter from Afar

In Slavoj Zizek 'A Letter from Afar' in Irwin: Retroprincip 1983-2003 (Frankfurter am Main: Revolver, 2003) he comes to the defense of Laibach/NSK. The appropriative use of Nazi symbolism in a proposed poster for Tito's relay race plays key example within his argument to differentiate the significance between its semiotic justification in design and its representational strength when replaced in a 'different social context'. The context of a semiotic-sign or what Zizek specifically notes as a 'semiotic-Marxism' approach in relation to either Laibach/NSK or true fascism/Nazism – the true ideological or essence from that symbolism is definitively grounded from being a 'product of concrete social circumstances'. Hence the rhetorical distinction is axiomatic. This so called 'semiotic path' by Laibach as he denotes holds transparency when used strategically but also more importantly is its contextual articulation being a (re)formulation into a new sign or symbol. The sign in this case the NSK poster possibly still retains its original symbolic power, its socio-historical fascist power and xenophobic signification, while diametrically opening out an opposing state or totally different virtuality and semantic. This strategy is emblematic of NSK aesthetic and ideological reification or (re)ideology, if there is ever such a term. In this sense their technique to delimit the socio-political history of central-eastern Europe by displacing its power apparatus, reflecting it back through those same mechanisms of power become quite profound and in Zizek's words 'something entirely different.'