This book examines the emergence of nationalist, racist and antifeminist ideologies in post-socialist Eastern Europe. In a political context that includes ethnic wars, post-socialist totalitarianism, capitalist moral majority ideologies, and a virulent new patriarchy, this provocative study asks what has become of the notions of democracy and human rights since the collapse of socialism and challenges the 'political correctness' movement and Western theoretical responses to the events which have occurred in former communist countries.

Renata Salecl is a philosopher and sociologist. She works as a researcher in the Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law, Ljubljana, Slovenia and as a visiting scholar at the New School for Social Research, New York. Apart from publishing widely in the areas of feminism, psychoanalysis and political theory, she also participated in the struggle against communism as well as against the post-communist nationalism and anti-feminism.

Series preface, Acknowledgements, Introduction, Part I: The fall of socialism ..., 1. The fantasy structure of war: the case of Bosnia, 2. The post-socialist moral majority, 3. 'Normalization' in the socialist regime, 4. The struggle for hegemony in the former Yugoslavia, Part II: ... and its implications for the theory of ideology, 5. Fantasy as the limit of distributive justice, 6. Legitimizing violence, 7. Crime as a mode of subjectivization, 8. Why is a woman a symptom of rights?, Conclusion, Notes, Select bibliography, Index