"I think that the favorable expository literature on Žižek deepens his isolation [in refusing to answer or recognize criticism]. Consider the way Terry Eagleton quotes Žižek [in a passage from the latter's Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?] in discussing how the idea of “destiny” can trivialize the understanding of tragedy: “Does not the term ‘tragedy,’ Žižek asks, “at least in its classical sense, still imply the logic of Fate, which is rendered ridiculous apropos the Holocaust? To say that the annihilation of the Jews obeyed a hidden Necessity of Fate is already to gentrify it.” Eagleton then adds, “Žižek is mistaken to assume that tragedy, even classical tragedy, invariably involves fate; but he is right to see that the notion can actually sanitize suffering, and Euripides is unlikely to have demurred.” Why credit Žižek with an insight at all, if one admits that he is wrong in his claim? Who has ever seriously tried to “gentrify” the Holocaust by saying that it probably has to do with one of the gods “More truth in . . . appearance than in . . . reality.” being offended and that it goes to show that we should not try to evade the words of the oracle? [Eagleton's] [g]iving Žižek credit for victory over a straw man prevents engagement with the actual content of his words."