Sharpe, Matthew. Slavoj Žižek: a little piece of the real. Burlington Vt: Ashgate, 2004.
🙂 Žižek argues against Arendt that the Nazis were merely boring bureaucrats, doing their duty as an rational boring administrator would, simply as a procedure to be followed. What this misses out on is what Žižek’s calls surplus enjoyment.
… the Nazis experienced their deeds as perversely enjoyable (73). … the processes of ‘rationalisation’ pointed to by Weber et al. themselves generate an excess of obscene jouissance which they can neither control, nor cease politically to depend upon.