A CLARIFICATION

With regard to the recent accusations about my plagiarism, here is what happened.

When I was writing the text on Derrida which contains the problematic passages, a

friend told me about Kevin Macdonald's theories, and I asked him to send me a brief

resume. The friend send it to me, assuring me that I can use it freely since it merely

resumes another's line of thought. Consequently, I did just that – and I sincerely

apologize for not knowing that my friend's resume was largely borrowed from Stanley

Hornbeck's review of Macdonald's book. (These passages are also taken over in Part

III, Chapter 1, of my book The Parallax View.) As any reader can quickly establish,

the problematic passages are purely informative, a report on another's theory for

which I have no affinity whatsoever; all I do after this brief resume is quickly dismiss

Macdonald's theory as a new chapter in the long process of the destruction of

Reason. In no way can I thus be accused of plagiarizing another's line of thought, of

»stealing ideas.« I nonetheless deeply regret the incident.

Slavoj Žižek, July 2014.