Abstract
The accounts Žižek gives on the act, the revolution and the subject all stand and fall together. In a revolutionary act he distinguishes between the non-historical, symbolic, repeatable form of the act and the concrete, perishable content. Likewise, the subject is a non-historical break in the symbolic. If one criticises Žižek's account of revolution, one criticises his notion of the subject, and vice versa. This critique can have two aspects, a negative and a positive one.