Book Description
In a compelling and unusual experiment, three eminent theorists engage in a dialogue on central questions of contemporary philosophy and politics. Their essays, organized as separate contributions that respond to one another, range over the Hegelian legacy in contemporary critical theory, the theoretical dilemmas of multiculturalism, the universalism-versus-particularism debate, the strategies of the Left in a globalized economy, and the relative merits of post-structuralism and Lacanian psychoanalysis for a critical social theory.While the rigor and intelligence with which these writers approach their work is formidable, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality benefits additionally from their clear sense of energy and enjoyment in a revealing and often unpredictable exchange. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Weird
Very strange book--courageous, but disappointing in many ways.Butler tries throughout to get the others to think of gays/lesbians as something more than examples of minorities--they refuse.Laclau's second essay is positively bitchy and contemptuous.Zizek presses the other two to be more active activists and take a more positive political stance--they do not do so, instead noting that he also does not do so.Laclau says he assumed Zizek had a sophisticated political sense when he entered the collaboration but must conclude that he was wrong--Zizek is politically stupid, and Butler is a ranting, ravingdyke--or so Laclau implies by referring to her first essay as a "war machine" or something.(She of course does not lower herself by responding.)It's an intersting collaboration in many ways--what I got out of it mainly was a better understanding of hegemony, which seems to me an incredibly powerful concept.But it comes mainly, I gather, from Laclau's earlier work.Butler, I thought, asked some good questions about universality that are ignored throughout the rest of the volume, as are all her remarks about gender, which seem invisible to the others.She writes beautifully at times.Laclau's thinking is incisive and powerful.Zizek seems to flip-flop wantonly on Derrida, and they all bicker constantly about who is and who isn't interpreting Lacan's Real with adequate thoroughness.It's a strangely confused, confusing, and inconclusive book.(The attempt, at the end, to present the failure to conclude anything as a theoretical triumph is a bit hollow.)It shows the state of theory now, I guess--theory is seductive in its power and potential, but three theorists of the Left seem unable to talk to each other.My own view is that theory can underestimate the power of disciplinary barriers."Theory" seems to me to be nothing if not a way for a rhetorician, an economist, and a psychoanalyst/film critic to talk to each other, but the forces against such collaboration are not to be so easily thwarted, unfortunately.The book is interesting but naive.

worth the effort
Yes this is a difficult book, but it is an absolute must read for those who are follwing the theoretical developments of post-strucuralism on the progressive left.Of course there are no prescriptions for immediate action but read Butler's contributions in this book and she addresses that dilemma.Laclau is very good, and Zizek has nuggets, but his Hegelian/Lacanianism is showing signs of wear and doesn't offer the opportunities for further theoretical developments and even research projects that the projects of Butler and Laclau offer.

better than most...
This book represents an attempt by (the) three social thinkers of our time to bring their differing views of what is to done together by beginning with what it is that they have in common, namely: Marx (and Gramsci), Lacan, and Derrida.Although all three critique the above figures, they could not do what it is they do with them.This book provides a much needed companion to Laclau's (w/ Mouffe) "Hegemony and Socialist Strategy" and Zizek's "Ticklish Subject".It also helps towards Butler's "Gender Trouble" but I feel that her approach has matured a great deal from that mostly obscure book.Zizek and Laclau are on their game and their detailed responses back and forth really help in understanding what is at stake.I like Butler but it seems that she is out of her league and element.That being said, Ithink that there are nuggets of greatness in her writings, one just has to look extra hard to find them.My only criticism for Zizek is that sometimes his examples skew to the shallow side, but this negative is overcome with the remainder of his work.

Difficult
A difficult book to read.It is composed of interrelated essays and brings poststructuralist analysis of the current political situation to the fore.Very good for scholars dealing with the desection of the postmodern but offers little advice to those struggling for a better life.

Not my favorite book
I have many criticisms to make about this book, but I will limit myself to the following points. Although Zizek makes an effort to be understood, Laclau and Butler compete for showing who is more obscure and pedantic. In spite all the apparent erudition of the authors, or rather because of it, the issue of hegemony is not well-focused. Certainly Gramsci was quite concerned about providing a philosophical dimension to his social reflection, but Laclau, Butler and, to a lesser extend Zizek, bury the social reflection under tons of excessive philosophical references. The lack of sociological dimension is particularly noticeable regarding Laclau's discussion of contigency. The blending of Kant, Hegel, Lacan, Saussure, to mention the main characters, is simply theoretical over-killing. It will take an article to show how shaky the theoretical connetion between hegemony and universalism is. It is my impression that Gramsci would not recognize his work in this academic potpourri. I bought the book, read carefully from cover to cover, and I strongly dislike it. ... Read more

Book Description
Since the publication of his first book in English in 1989, Slavoj Zizek has quickly become one of the most widely read and contentious intellectuals alive today. With dazzling wit and tremendous creativity he has produced innovative and challenging explorations of Lacan, Hegel and Marx, and used his insights to exhilarating effect in analyses of popular culture.

While Zizek is always engaging, he is also elusive and even contradictory. It can be very hard to finally determine where he stands on a particular issue. Is Zizek Marxist or Post-Marxist? How seriously should we take his recent turn to Christianity?

Slavoj Zizek: A Critical Introduction shows the reader a clear path through the twists and turns of Zizek's writings. Ian Parker takes Zizek's treatment of Hegel, Lacan and Marx in turn and outlines and assesses Zizek's interpretation and extension of these thinkers' theories. While Parker is never hastily dismissive of Zizek's innovations, he remains critical throughout, aware that the energy of Zizek's writing can be bewitching and beguiling as well as engaging and profound. ... Read more

Book Description
Operas are about the meaning of love and life, and also very much about the meaning of death. Opera as a form, however, might even be dead itself. The last great operas are said to be those written around 1900.
But, the psychoanalytic critic and philosopher Slavoj Zizek is quick to point out, 1900 is also the year in which Freud 'invents' psychoanalysis. Can this be a coincidence? Opera's Second Death is a passionate exploration of opera---the genre, its masterpieces, and the nature of death. Using a dazzling array of tools, Slavoj Zizek and coauthor Mladen Dolar explore the strange compulsions that overpower characters in Mozart and Wagner, as well as our own desires to die and to go to the opera.
Mozart's understanding of psychoanalysis and Wagner's sense of humor are but two of the many surprises in Zizek and Dolar's operatic tour de force. Opera's Second Death is an extended aria on a subject that is far from dead. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

leads you backstage into places opera don't know
Opera is perhaps the most perfect subject for Zizek's gaze with Hegelian negations and Absolutes Lacan's "object petit a,"Four Discourses" in the Master Signifier, the divided self,desire, don't be scared away for the cloistered world of opera can use such insights to help clarify its own anxieties self-indulgences and excesses throughout its histories. In fact opera now cannot live without someone speaking about it deeply as Zizek does, especially the self-conscious dimensions in Wagner's dramas, the negations of the negations(from Hegel) as "Parsifal" a redeemer redeeming the redemption,or dealing with "Other" those aspects that we wish we could do without but are there anyways, like feminist extremism not wanting man to be around,as in Carmen, or Tosca, or Wotan not wanting to be responsible for his pacts carved on his staff. Zizek and Dolar both bring a formidable array of concepts to opera to make some illuminations clearer I think. If you simply want opera to go on as it is without comment, simply sit back and let it wash over your brain, well this is not a book for you.

Opera on the Couch
To those who love opera and know nothing about psychoanalysis or philosophy this book will be challenging and probably incomprehensible.Still, if anyone can get an Opera Queen to think, it might be Slavoj Zizek and Mladen Dolar.Dolar's is a more conventional and comprehensive treatment of the history of opera as a history of ideas.It is excellent and one can almost read the copious notes as a separate and equally enjoyable experience.Zizek uses particular operas to explain profound and fascinating ideas about love and death, narcissism and self-destruction, through the ideas (among others) of Lacan and Hegel.Ever since Zizek's seminal books explaining the complexities of Lacan and Hegel through popular entertainment he has accrued fame in intellectual circles without ever becoming pompous or complacent.He makes for enjoyable and provocative reading and chances are, after you've read him, you'll be keeping an eye out for his next book. ... Read more

Book Description
What happens to our supposedly atheistic, secular beliefs when they meet the internet, consumerism and New Age mysticism? Zizek, the renowned philosopher and cultural critic, shows in his controversial and witty new book that, despite postmodern warnings that belief is groundless, we are secretly believers. From "cyberspace reason" to the paradox of "Western Buddhism," On Belief traces the contours of the often unconscious beliefs that structure our daily experience. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

just don't expect rigour
I confess from the off that I have only read the first chapter of this book. And yet, even this brief encounter was enlightening - because it confirmed what many have always thought. Zizek is a great thinker - a great associator of ideas; but he doesn't know what he's talking about. I illustrate with a single example.

Hubert L. Dreyfus has spent his career arguing that the mind cannot be reductively explained in any terms that would make it analogous to a computer program. This is because understanding is skillful, not rationalistic, and because the mind is essentially embodied. In the first chapter of this book, Zizek contemplates the possibility of our minds becoming virtual - that is, disembodied, computer programs existing only online. He discusses Dreyfus' work- and yet he fails completely to acknowledge the challenge it presents to the claims that he is considering, eventually concluding that the mind is just "software", apt to be uploaded just as soon as technology advances. Since Dreyfus' arguments against this idea could not be more explicit, this is bizarre.

Why would Zizek gloss this issue? Perhaps he doesn't understand the problem (his reading of Dreyfus is scarcely recognisable, after all). Alternatively, he might have felt Dreyfus' work insufficinetly glamorous to be worthy of development. But this is more strange still, since Zizek is primarily a Lacanian theorist and Lacan's Nom du Pere would seem to present its own challenge to the possibility of a disembodied mind.

I suggest another reading: Zizek simply doesn't pay attention to what he's reading and talking about. Anyone who has seen him lecture will have witnessed this for themselves. His work is charismatic and exciting, for sure - but far from rigorous.

Perhaps a reading of the the rest of the book would answer my questions; and I concede that such a review of an incomplete reading is impertinent, to say the least. But by the end of the first chapter (and despite having made it through several of his other books), I had run out of patience with Zizek's undisciplined stream of consciousness.

bizarre: one of the best as well as the worst
Zizek argues in this book along with Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling) that there should be a "teleological suspension of the ethical category" in favor of the religious.In Kierkegaard's book he says that Abraham is asked by God to suspend the ethical in order to kill his son Isaac.Of course God stops the killing before it takes place, but first he wants to test whether Abraham is willing to suspend the ethical in order to give primacy of place to the religious.Zizek uses this paradigm to argue that Leninists had the right to suspend the ethical in order to put their religious fervor to the test by slaughtering liberal Mensheviks, and millions of others, after the October revolution.This is a strange book played out with fantastic verve and bizarre humor. One isn't sure how seriously Zizek takes his "belief" in Leninism.This is one of the worst books on an ethical basis I've ever read, but aesthetically it's one of the best efforts in contemporary theory -- fun to read, whacky "beyond belief," and filled with a real fun for sentence making.The sentencing of the Marxists, both their own in terms of Solzhenitsyn and others, as well as the sentence that the liberal west has laid on them in order to lay them down to rest, is replayed as if it was a trauma that needs to be relived.The result is a species of madness: a great book with a seemingly bizarre ethical message: kill all liberals to prove your religious fervor for a secular religion that is widely discredited for asking for such mass murder.God never asks Abraham to go through on his killing of his son.Zizek appears to condone the killing of millions by communists in the twentieth century through using Kierkegaard's paradigm for understanding Abraham and Isaac.Zizek has a lot of fun with this comparison. I suffered, and I think most Christians would suffer because the comparison seems so grotesque and so completely out of control, but Marxists will delight in this religious rationale for their peculiarly bloody heritage.

a small treasure
I have recently began reading Zizek after picking up this short essay that he wrote for Routledge's Thinking in Action Series.His idiosyncratic writing style has its quirks which I could imagine some people despising, but I enjoyed it myself.He has an incredible talent for looking abstruse concepts and philosophical debates in a fresh perspective that definitely could be described as 'thinking outside of the box'.He writes with a ad hoc mixture of pop culture, hitchcock, philosophy, theology, doxology, and Lacanian psychology.And his message is a powerful one--reaffirming the human and the real against what he terms 'the digital heresy'.By the end of his essay, he has you wanting to believe once again--or maybe just to admit to yourself that you've believed all along.

a small treasure
I have recently began reading Zizek after picking up this short essay that he wrote for Routledge's Thinking in Action Series.His idiosyncratic writing style has its quirks which I could imagine some people despising, but I enjoyed it myself.He has an incredible talent for looking abstruse concepts and philosophical debates in a fresh perspective that definitely could be described as 'thinking outside of the box'.He writes with a ad hoc mixture of pop culture, hitchcock, philosophy, theology, doxology, and Lacanian psychology.And his message is a powerful one--reaffirming the human and the real against what he terms 'the digital heresy'.By the end of his essay, he has you wanting to believe once again--or maybe just to admit to yourself that you've believed all along.

Never for any *Feint* of the Heart
I disagree with the reader from Montreal: Belief itself may fail on all accounts, but nevertheless persists and insists. If anything this book enacts -- in Zizek's Helegian fashion -- the very concept under discussion. For that reason Zizek's dialectic is joyous, tumultuous and, yes, RAMBLING. But the subtle reader will notice that the transition from one random topic to the next is always tied together later, when ex nihilo a Master-Signifier emerges to order the text in a consistant fashion.

Furthermore I reccomend any of Zizek's rambling, ill defined arguements or pedantry. Buyer beware, but not of this book! ... Read more

Book Description
Slavoj Zizek is no ordinary philosopher.Approaching critical theory and psychoanalysis in a recklessly entertaining fashion, Zizek's critical eye alights upon a bewildering and exhilarating range of subjects, from the political apathy of contemporary life, to a joke about the man who thinks he's a chicken, from the ethicial heroism of Keanu Reeves in speed, to what toilet designs reveal about the national psyche.Tony Myers provides a clear and engaging guide to Zizek's key ideas, explaining the main influences on Zizek's thought, most crucially his engagement with Lacanian psychoanalysis, using examples drawn from popular culture and everyday life.Myers outlines the key issues that Zizek's work has tackled, including:
* What is a Subject and why is it so important?
* The Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real
* What is so terrible about Postmodernity?
* How can we distinguish reality from ideology?
* What is the relationship between men and women?
* Why is Racism always a fantasy?
Slavoj Zizek is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the thought of the critic whom Terry Eagleton has described as "the most formidably brilliant exponent of psychoanalysis, indeed of cultural theory in general, to have emerged in Europe for some decades." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Outstanding accompaniment to the works of Zizek
Myers begins with quick reviews of the major influences on Zizek: Hegel, Marx, and Lacan. Thorough for those unfamiliar with these theorists but not insulting to those who know them well, these introductions set the stage for several chapters focusing on main themes, particularly on Zizek's exploration of Lacan's the Real and the Symbolic. Read with The Zizek Reader, it was very useful.Zizek's genuine contributions to Lacanian thought are powerful and politically practical. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A great first introduction
If you've never read Lacan, and you're reading Zizek for the first time, this introduction is for you.

Kay's text is a great foray into Lacanian aspects of Zizek's thought, and, in fact, makes a decent introduction to Lacan himself (although it purports not to be such).Compared to Ian Parker's introduction, I prefer how Kay begins: with the problems of conceptualizing the Lacanian real.This forms her first two chapters, and the subsequent ones make individual
passes at the real from the angles of sexual difference, ethics, and (finally) politics.Kay writes with progressively broader strokes and only concludes with the Lacan, Hegel, Marx triad.This progression is the easiest and best way to get a foothold on Zizek's thought (rather than begin with Marx, as Zizek himself frequently does in his writings).

Highly recommended as a first introduction (though why not read Zizek himself?--The Sublime Object of Ideology and, especially, Looking Awry are good places to start).

utterly useful, well worth a flatter Mate!
The buzz of Slavoj Zizek is eminently important, fascinating and politcally useful within today's cultural force fields at work. Zizek has found a combustible energy between philosophy and the omnipresence(largely Hegel) and psychoanalysis(Jacques Lacan forever)."We love you Jacques. . . " So whether he speaks/writes about "The Matrix"(Loaded or Not-Loaded), or Kieslowski's "Decalogue",Hitchcock, Lenin, Christianity, cyberspace, junkspace or other competitors,(quite recently) as the late Deleuze of currently Alain Badiou, Zizek locates his triggering points in how objects are pitted against the real and can delude us and seem important, like a prostitute's gaze/or flick of the eye toward her prospective john. So fantasy becomes one place for focus and popular culture abounds in the fetish of the Cult,what is marketable(another pathway into Marx),and one of Zizek's most fertile breeding grounds where his work has spawned and is chocked filled with objects to discuss as they are hardened against the death-drive, the end of time as we know it, the Buzz turned Off. So we,(our culture,our objects) become in a state of "acceleration" as Virilio(within another context) has referred to as the "dromos",the "running or race".

The Real, The Imaginary, and the Symbolic are three cyclical/ellipitical Lacanian icons of discourse that forever revolves within Zizek's thought,be it politics of culture,or cyberspace and consequently ours. For the Real, is Real(real) wherever it may interface with the human object.

This is an utterly useful book, a virtuosity of intellectual thought/,creating a capsule like profile of such a formidible thinker, explaining his vast philosophic Helegelian energies expanding over 20 years of Zizek's work.Kay knows how to break apart/and impeccibly analyze Zizek's vast edifice.She touches on all his primary texts,most of which are far from breeze-easy reading.In that there is always a synthesis, a coagulative process at work finding Hegel in cyberspace or Lacan in Hitchcock, or truth in Lenin. But she defends this endeavor as well worth a flatter, the exepnditure of time. Zizek is a livily impassioned speaker,often throwing wonderful jokes, quips,shibboleths, incidentals, and dirty humour into the texture of his thought written or spoken.Kay's remarkable job here is locating points of developmental alchemy and longevity within Zizek.

Zizek having experienced first-hand the break-up of the Soviet empire/ satellites, Zizek has been an important instigator/speaker toward committment into the ethics and the political, Desiring(as I understand here) a Marxism without Marx, and a Lenin without anyone. Lenin? Ethics? Now, What For?The fascination here is magnetized toward points of hardened committment,vision,cohesion,agenda something quite rare within After-postmodernity hopscoth ontology. In that we(our cognitive faculties,our cultural products)seem to move/mulitply/accrete (and die) at such great speeds. Lenin(in Zizek's eyes) had vision for success, The Revolution. This is given meaning further with his recent fascination with Paulist Christianity,Belief and the work of Alain Badiou, a philosopher who has been reconstructing the philosophic edifice,perceptive pieces from the French deconstructive,(In that Derrida can only summon the complaisance of Marxian "ghosts" as explaining reality Now)and virtuosic post- structuralists(Baudrillard,Lyotard)both representing a kind of escapism of the past three decades.Badiou has been useful for Zizek in the search for the truth "event", that truth never finds itself impacted within a system, but truth always is determined by its past, a point Zizek finds worth developing.

Kay quite clearly brings a forward looking narrative to this in Zizek's forever search at expansion from the kernel of Hegel/Lacan/Marx.There is also a useful Glossary of terms. ... Read more

Book Description
Slavoj Zizek, dubbed by the Village Voice "the giant of Ljubljana," is back with a new edition of his seriously entertaining book on film, psychoanalysis (and life).His inimitable blend of philosophical and social theory, Lacanian analysis, and outrageous humor are here made to show how Hollywood movies can explain psychoanalysis-and vice versa.Why does the phallus appear? Why is woman a symptom of man? Why are there always two fathers? These typical Zizek questions are explained by means of such films as Marnie and The Man Who Knew Too Much. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

the point?
"I cannot weigh in an estimation of the value of this book. Surely, it is not as profoundly useful or clear as Zizek's political and philosophical thriller, Ticklish Subject. Yet, the application of Zizek's critical arsenal to Hollywood without the baggage of Politics and History, makes room for exposition through, sad to say, a universal and more immediate medium." Here's a statement that completely misses not only the point but the importance of Zizek. Ofcourse, in an era of achedemics and 'intellectual'-types complacently spiteful to popular culture as the anti-shakespeare (christ?), this isn't surprising.

elevator music piped upwind
Clarity of language and argument one finds, some feel, rarely in current theoretical writing or in psychoanalytic writing. Here Zizek has structured his book so that nearly every idea gets two chances to impress the reader. I would agree with one of the reviews on this site of another of Zizek's books, that the author writes more clearly and persuasively about politics than about culture. However, this book presents a pleasing mixture (as most of Zizek's books do) of the cultural, political, philosophical, and Lacanian munch.

Each chapter sets out to answer a question posed by the chapter heading (e.g., Why is Reality Always Multiple?). First Zizek approaches a solution or description of the problem as it appears in Hollywood films. These Zizek treats as texts or case studies. Whatever your opinion of the merits of psychoanalytic description for general use, the discussion of the films makes marvellously amusing reading. As demanding for this reader as the steep range of theoretical vocabulary employed is the ample library of films from which Zizek draws his examples. Many of which films I'd never seen. The second section of each chapter recasts the first approach through film in the language, theory and realm of analysis, theory and philosophy.

I cannot weigh in an estimation of the value of this book. Surely, it is not as profoundly useful or clear as Zizek's political and philosophical thriller, Ticklish Subject. Yet, the application of Zizek's critical arsenal to Hollywood without the baggage of Politics and History, makes room for exposition through, sad to say, a universal and more immediate medium.

very clear stuff
If you know anything about Hegel and Lacan, Zizek is actually a quite clear expositor of Lacan. Looking awry is particularly clear, lucid to the point of simplification in his account of Lacan, but what can you expectwhen your proof-test is Hitchcock and HOllywood movies. Most academic booksconsist of (dead author) and (contemporary theorist), and if the text athand simply serves to validate the theory, why drag out heavy reading whenHitchcock will do? If the theory is correct, it encompasses bothShakespeare and anything oj simpson ever appeared in, so not to use bothwould only be a sign of stuffiness. Zizek has the virtue of being easy toread and not taking himself too seriously, and begins every chapter with aquote from Lenin or Stalin, as if Stalin was the last philosopher. It's nota parody, but if Kojeve (Lacan) is right, that every philosophy is just arepetition of one moment of the Hegelian spirit, then Zizek's jeu d'espritis an honest accomodation to what's happening now.

Lacanian theory and the movies
This book is impossible, complicated, and confusing. Good luck to anyone who tries to figure it out.Zizek careens through film history, haphazardly - and sometimes carefully - appropriating examples in order to make various 'post-modern' and Lacanian points. It almost seems like parody, but ... it's not. ... Read more

Book Description
Zizek returns to untangle a heady mix of fantasy and ideology. With his idiosyncratic blend of ideas from Lacan and Hegel, the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek has emerged as one of the most original thinkers of our time. Never missing an opportunity to recount a revealing anec-dote or joke his writing is as entertaining as it is informative. In his latest book, Zizek approaches another enormous subject with characteristic brio. The current epoch is, he claims, plagued by phantasms. There is an intensifying antagonism between the ever greater abstraction of our lives -- whether in the form of digitalization or market relations and the deluge of pseudo-concrete images which surround us. Traditional critical thought traces the connections between abstract notions and concrete social reality: but today, Zizek suggests, the correct procedure is the inverse -- to work from pseudo-concrete imagery towards the abstract. Ranging in his examples from national differences in toilet design to cybersex, and from intellectuals' responses to the Bosnian war to Robert Schumann's music, Zizek explores the relations between fantasy and ideology, the way in which fantasy animates enjoy-ment while protecting against its excesses, the associations of the notion of fetishism with fantasized seduction, and the ways in which digitalization and cyberspace affect the status of subjectivity. To the already initiated, The Plague of Fantasies will be a welcome reminder of why they enjoy Zizek's writing so much. For new readers, it will be the beginning of a long and meaningful relationship. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Lacanian pyschoanalysis applied to politics
Zizek's claim to fame is his rapacious wit, keen insights, and his profound, hilarious and shocking use of anecdotes.Here, Zizek focuses on the relation between fantasy and desire, and the latter he sees as rooted fully in the former.Fantasy, he argues, is the foundation for political and social action.As a Marxist, he makes an interesting some interesting arguments along a line that is seemingly contradictory to his ideological convictions employing Lacan heavily but also drawing upon and offering some interesting interpretations of Hegel.He ends the book with insights on how the digitization of our universe--overly fantasized--as alienated us from our corporeality.This he views negatively as a plague--finally suggesting that the task of critical theory is the inverse of the traditional one starting with concrete social reality and then moving to abstract notions.Rather, the pseudo-concrete and virtual which now structure our lives must be debunked.His writing is erratic but intrepid and certainly worth the effort.

joussance?
hard but joyfull studyng- my best boo

Reading Theory Isn't Supposed to Be This Fun, Is It?
For those who enjoy the challenge of reading high theory but are put off by the dry, abstract, pretentious ramblings that more often than not constitute theoretical writing, Zizek is the theorist for you.Is there another theorist alive who can on one page explicate the finer points of Lacan, Hegel and Kant, while on the next page tie it all in with the three most popular female pubic hair styles, homosexual ; and subtle distinctions among toilet designs in Germany, France, and the United States?Perhaps. But Zizek makes these seemingly awkward transitions and uncommon examples quite smoothly; the outrageous examples aren't forced, nor are they merely for "shock" value.In short, they work to clarify the difficult concepts he is discussing.Although Zizek is not what I'd call an easy read - not by a long shot - he certainly knows how to make a challenge a bit less stressful and - gasp! - fun.END ... Read more

Book Description
Film theory is in crisis. The dominant psychoanalytical paradigm is contested by cognitive models and post-theory. In the background is a wider crisis in cultural studies, particularly as regards the public role of the politically engaged intellectual.
In this major new study Slavoj Zizek challenges both cognitivist-historicist accounts of cinema and conventional film theory. Arguing that the reading of Lacan operative in the '70s and '80s was particularly reductive, Zizek asserts that there is "another Lacan," in reference to whom film theory, cultural studies, and critical thought as such can be transformed and revitalized. He supports and expands this argument with an extensive reading of the work of Kieslowski and, in a substantial appendix, with a discussion of the relationship between Christianity, Gothicism and the "progressive digitalisation of our life-world." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Zizek requires more than surface understandings
it's difficult to access Zizek's work especially if you have no points of reference,and refuse to delve deeply into the sources of his thought not only Lacan, but Hegel Marx,and Badiou.
Zizek yes many times drops shibboleths, quips and sarcasm but that's his style. What makes Zizek interesting to read however (no matter what he writes) is that he disrupts and tests the given symbolic order of things, What's That? that is what is usually shuved down our throats(via CNN,MTV,celebrated talk shows) as analysis or theoretical renderings that simply amount to the same "mantra" of views usually the liberal kind that is suspect of philosophic/cultural theory or "critique" especially when one so high powered a thinker as Zizek comes into the field of play, since you cannot understand him or say anything critically of him, He is deemed then"Dangerous".

In reality Zizek's sensibility is wholly suited to speak about Kieslowki's work, Lacan works quite well into getting behind what triggers desire,or wantings,fears and anxieties,where the "symbolic" order exists how it is continually nurtured through cultur as film. "The Decalogue" is one such film that tries to test the high symbolic order through the word of god or "g-d" and it inspires fear in all of us, we fear what we don't know, isn't that what religion (any of them) do they instill fear in us, because we don't know, or are told we don't know,"You want to know? follow us. . . " Kieslowski's language is,modern threadbare,very straightforward, we get wonderful views of Poland,Warsaw; yet he's able to instill a kind of "mystery" in the common shape of things;and this 'unknown' of the word of "g-d" or god; ten commandments,his own spirituality interfaces with our own which makes these ten short films quite powerful. Zizek I think is claiming a kind of "stasis" in Kieslowski,that we should view the "Decalogue" as one film not as ten little ones a distinction; an interesting view,very modern, and since his films have a kind of lean functionalism,things just simply move without gimmick unfolding the narrative logically.When viewed this way I think the ten shorts comes across in all its diverse richness;almost as if ten novellas all have inter-referenced schemes and threads that link them all in known and unknown way. Zizek explores various Lacanian topics without specifically mentioning them, as "sinthome", "object petit a" something you really don't need but needs to be there anyway,something we think of ourselves that needs to fit in someplace but cannot for it doesn't know what it is yet.Lacanian analysis claims to not expose what you don't know(as Freud) but merely affirms who and what you are right now in order to at least maintain some coherancy and stable moments within yourself.Like a young man's love for a mature woman he cannot have.The young boy has a series of unknowns he's working with,stalking her, watching her 'peeping-tom like'in this way the boy is not threatened and remains in the stable realm he knows best, his own bedroom where he masterbates;but soon this stability is brokened,with an actual meetings with the woman,like stepping on thin ice, you never know where you will fall in,,including your own suicide, Kieslowski I think often caps many of the "Decalogue"sequences too quickly,as the young boy simply stabbing himself for his oefish awkwardness and has no problem in utilizing gut-wrenching techniques in "Though shalt Not Kill" as the killing of the young boy who killed an innocent cabdriver.People simply die,or their lives robbed previously,as a concentration camp survivor, or fall into an abyss as the young boy not returning home with messages of his demise from an early computer.
If you keep with Zizek I think he delivers insights you will not find within the normal course of theoretical film critic discourse, all you get there is time and tested cliques,predictable "mantras" that really explain the complexity of films like a cooking show, "this was added to intensify. . . ", ". . . this moment will make shudder. . . ",like all you are looking for is what will I get for my money.

Fright of Mambo Jumbo
I'm reviewing this book as a fan of Kieslowski.I'm saying this because the Zizek's approach is literary or, more specifically, Marxist-Lacanian.(Don't ask me what that means.)For starters, it's far more entertaining and insightful than Insdorf book on Kieslowski.For instance, Zizek talks about Kieslowski's movies while mentioning David Lynch's.Also, I was particularly intrigued by Zizek's analysis of "The Dekalog."How each episode leads to the next by not engaging on the specific commandment it should be representing. What you get with this book is a grab bag of meditations on post-modern cynicism, Plato via Marx Brothers, and Hitchcock-Lacan connection.Oy vey!For those interested in the cinema of Kieslowski, this might be a book for you if you're either immersed or have a passing knowledge with (drum rolls, please) Post/Theory.Otherwise, this book is a drag! ... Read more

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A disturbing and radical examination of the status of women and the role of violence in contemporary culture and politics. ... Read more

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Impressive: intellectual fireworks
Zizek writes in the tradition of Adorno, because he takes the Continental philosophical tradition seriously, and, he understands it. I don't pretend to understand this book in full, but, reading it is not as anhedonic as my first encounter with Adorno in the 1980s, when I forced myself to attend to Adorno as a form of therapy-in-recovery.

That's because Zizek is much more chukka chukka hip about popular culture and uses it, along with the canon, to make his points, whereas Adorno would refer to far more obscure literary texts.

But both write in the shadow of what Arthur Koestler called a god that failed (Communism). Zizek writes as another Moloch, another god, fails, and that's globalized capitalism where the condition of entry is self-objectification narrated as freedom to choose.

Freedom to choose...what? Zizek writes from the standpoint of the idle fellow temporarily stranded in a small city on business back when there were movie theaters showing second-run films, and who wanders into the theater like Parsifal in the enchanted castle or at the puppet show, and masochistically gives himself over to an enjoyment which hasn't yet metastasised into its perverse reverse.

The chapter on the extreme, almost catatonically anti-feminist Otto Weininger is interesting because unlike traditional political movements, feminism doesn't get to see its opposite. The reaction towards feminism hastens, whether religious or not, for the most part, to agree with its adversary and to make all sorts of concessions which are often accepted with a great deal of suspicion...as if feminism sought more an adversary like the late Norman Mailer with a mind of his own, who believed feminism just wrong and who invited many feminists to fart in a bottle and paint it.

Marxism had in fact the American opposition to Marxism root and branch which started soon after the (American) civil war, and union busters, and finally the mad woman, Thatcher.

Of course, opposition doesn't always invigorate a cause. Thatcherism and Reagan dealt a death blow to a Marxism already weakened by the discovery that Leninism didn't end competition in the new society.

But, the second-wave feminism had only one man to talk back while the others, until Zizek, were T. S. Eliot's dried voices whispering together.

Don't get me wrong. Zizek, in my understanding, isn't opposed to feminism. But, he won't go along with a womyn-centered programme drained of humanism, either.

His invocation of the angry ghost of Weininger is as if to say, it still moves: culture *as we know it* is male, and is being destroyed by a metastasing American consumption barbarism which won't sign the Kyoto accords and is in hock to China...so, you better call it down and ring, you better pawn it babe: European culture is appreciating like the Euro itself.

Like writing in Adorno, it is a home for the homeless mind.

Perhaps "male" and "female" as adjectives are just too abstract to attach to anything but men and animals to describe their sex, and even this would require an interpretation of the pointy thing, and the receptive thing.

Zizek comes in fact close to celebrating the male "detachment" which looked upon calmly, Spinozistically, sub specie aeternitatis and all that is simply independence from a set of biological concerns which are the domain of the female, having to do with the reproduction of daily life so celebrated by Tolstoy.

Equally attractive is a feminine aporia, and this is the lack of the need to invade Russia.

Specific "tough broads" like Hilary Clinton repel because the matching aporias are vulnerabilities absent in her...the invulnerable has no need of us.

An "androgyne" male politician wouldn't be at all the mathematical opposite of Hilary; Zizek takes pains to remind us that in dialectics, the opposite isn't quantitatively the same as is ~p to p in traditional logic (which could without loss of signal represent p's negation as p, and its assertion as ~p).

No, if someone came along scoring high as female and male, exceeding 100%, they'd lock him up. In a sense Kennedy, to a lesser extent Clinton, were steps in this direction and the hatred they attracted PLUS their attractiveness also was "out of the box": Kennedy was murdered by a man in sexual rage (probably not by a conspiracy after all, but, if you like, a conspiracy fueled by high-class sexual rage against early detente), and by the Clinton era, the fulminations of the likes of Rep. Bob "B1 Bob" Dornan were frightening...he saw Clinton as the AntiChrist.

Zizek provides tools, if that's the word, which it probably isn't, to think about the whole where the whole is untrue.

Intense yet Palatable
This book is complied of 6 short essays by Zizek.Here we have postmod writing; however, not as difficult as Derrida.

Zizek goes through a genealogy of psychoanalysis & film featuring Freud, Deleuze, Lacan, Hegel, Habermas & Frankfurt School, Derrida, Weininger and Lynch.He proceeds to discuss courtly love and anti-feminisms of Weininger.

His marxist inclinations do not come out as strongly as I thought he would.

His logic and analysis are not too difficult to follow but definitely require several re-reads.

The essays are well structured one after the other.I think this is a cohesive compilation.I have yet to read The Ticklish Subject but I have high expectations for it.

I find his essay on courtly love well-written - not surprising in thoughts but the writing is pleasurable to read.He's a feminist to an extent. ... Read more

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Jesus replied...
To the question, "Which part of God's Law is the highest?" Jesus famously replies: "You shall love the Lord your God...and the second, which is like the first, you shall love your neighbor as yourself!" The first part of Jesus's reply is understandable: okay, we should love God, got it. But then he adds this second part: love your neighbor! Neighbor?! Who is that? Why should I love him? And why as myself? This basically summarizes Sigmund Freud's response to the Judeo-Christian ethic of neighborly love.
In this fabulous work three psychoanalytic commentators take as their basic point of departure this response of Freud's to develop the groundwork for a politics of the neighbor. The other point of reference here is Carl Schmitt's friend/enemy politics. The neighbor being a third overlooked category that is neither a friend nor an enemy.
If you are interested in political theology, then, you should pick up this book. But the real gem of this book is Kenneth Reinhard's contribution. I believe you can find Zizek's and Santner's contributions in other works, but Reinhard's is original. But it is original in the sense of novel: I think Reinhard provides the most comprehensive look at what a politics of the neighbor might look like. I get the feeling that Reinhard is providing here a short synopsis of a larger political theology of the neighbor, and if so, I cannot wait for it to come out! ... Read more

Book Description
Revolutions: Classic revolutionary writings set ablaze by today's radical writers. This essential new series features classic texts by key figures who took center-stage during a period of insurrection. Each book is introduced by a major contemporary radical writer who shows how these incendiary words still have the power to inspire, to provoke and maybe to ignite new revolutions...

Soon after the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky led the Red Army against the counter-revolutionary White armies. Written in the white heat of the Civil War, Terrorism and Communism is one of the most potent defenses of revolutionary dictatorship of the twentieth century. In his provocative commentary in this new edition the coruscating critic Slavoj Zizek argues that Trotsky's attack on the illusions of democracy has a vital relevance to today. ... Read more

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A compelling and confusing abyss
This book is an odd creature to say the least.A great but under-appreciated text of German idealism is re-published in a new translation, along with an interpretive essay that evaluates it from the standpoint of Lacanian psychoanalysis.Personally, I found Schelling's portrait of the world as moving continuously towards full consciousness of itself to be utterly fascinating.I'm still not sure what to make of Zizek's essay - I have always been utterly baffled by Lacan - but if you're into that kind of thing, you might enjoy it. ... Read more

Book Description

Maverick Slovenian cultural theorist, philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj iek has made his name elaborating the complexities of psychoanalytic and Marxist theory through the exotic use of examples from film and popular culture. But what if we were to take ieks pretensions to cinephilia and film criticism seriously? In this book, adopting ieks own tactic of counterintuitive observation, the author reads the corpus of Alfred Hitchcocks films (one of the great achievements of Western civilization) and ieks idiosyncratic citation of them in order to identify the core commitments that inform ieks own work. From the practice of Hitchcock the author arrives at a theory of iek. To achieve this goal each chapter looks at a specific film by Hitchcock and explores a specific key concept crucial to the elaboration and core of ieks ideas

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The maverick philosopher combines Schelling with popular film for a fascinating study of modern life. ... Read more

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Stuart Schneiderman introduces a hero who evidences a major mind-body problem: his mind, detaching from the body, is in turn split. This skirmish brings up the figures of the detective and the criminal, set against each other, thus making a moral quest; now the problem affects the social group, now it structures the body politic. Schneiderman's "mind containing the wisdom of ages" meets Slavoj Zizek's "casual chain of reasons provided by knowledge." ... Read more

Book Description
Introduction by John Caputo and Afterword by Slavoj Zizek

The triumph of American political conservatism in the last two decades has been paralleled by the ascendance of Christian evangelicalism. More importantly, the political Campaigns of 2000 and 2004 marked a convergence between these two political entities with an effectiveness never before seen in national elections. On the one side, conservatives have successfully set the terms of debate around so-called "family values" and the status of religion in the public sphere. On the other side, evangelicals have mobilized in a new self-awareness of their formidable political power and now demand representation at all levels of government.

Upon what fundamental ideas does this convergence rest? What potential dangers does it present for the concepts of "religion," "politics" and "America"? How secure is this alliance, and what does each side sacrifice in order to sustain it? Must all religion in America now become similarly engaged in the political sphere?

This volume is a collection of articles by a group of young scholars addressing the nexus between political conservatism, evangelical Christianity, and American consumerist culture. ... Read more