Irak: Posuđeni čajnik

Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle is a book by Slavoj Žižek dedicated to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and the political, ideological, and cultural contradictions that accompanied the war. Originally published as Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle (2004), the book goes beyond analyzing a specific conflict, using the war in Iraq as a starting point for a critique of the contemporary global order.

The title draws on a famous example used by Sigmund Freud: a man accused of returning a borrowed kettle in a broken state defends himself with a series of mutually contradictory claims—that he never borrowed it, that he returned it undamaged, and that it was already broken. Žižek sees in this logic a parallel to the succession of justifications offered for the intervention in Iraq.

The author examines issues such as weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, democracy, human rights, and American global power, analyzing the gap between publicly proclaimed goals and political interests. As in his other works, he connects philosophical and political theory with psychoanalysis, popular culture, and provocative examples.

Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle is not a conventional chronicle of the war, but rather a philosophical-political essay on ideology and the mechanisms used to justify power. It is intended for readers interested in contemporary philosophy, geopolitics, ideology, and critical theory.