Product 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

Product Description
Zizek analyzes the background of the attack on Iraq.

In order torender the strange logic of dreams, Freud quoted the old joke about theborrowed kettle: (1) I never borrowed a kettle from you, (2) I returnedit to you unbroken, (3) the kettle was already broken when I got itfrom you. Such an enumeration of inconsistent arguments, of course,confirms exactly what it attempts to deny—that I returned a brokenkettle to you ...

That same inconsistency, Zizekargues, characterized the justification of the attack on Iraq: A linkbetween Saddam’s regime and al-Qaeda was transformed into the threatposed by the regime to the region, which was then further transformedinto the threat posed to everyone (but the US and Britain especially)by weapons of mass destruction. When no significant weapons were found,we were treated to the same bizarre logic: OK, the two labs we founddon’t really prove anything, but even if there are no WMD in Iraq,there are other good reasons to topple a tyrant like Saddam ...

Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle – which can be considered as a sequel to Zizek's acclaimed post-9/11 Welcome to the Desert of the Real – analyzes the background that such inconsistent argumentation concealsand, simultaneously, cannot help but highlight: what were the actualideological and political stakes of the attack on Iraq? In classicZizekian style, it spares nothing and nobody, neither patheticallyimpotent pacifism nor hypocritical sympathy with the suffering of theIraqi people.

Customer Reviews (8)

Read This Before Claiming Any Intellectual Sympathy With Zizek
Contrary to previous reviewers who focus on the first part of the book and discard the two appendices as obscure and theoretical, I would urge the reader to skip the introductory essay and to move directly to the two following chapters, which may be harder to read but are also intellectually more rewarding.

The opening chapter, which gives the book its title, is a long and often tedious rant against the war in Iraq and other political developments. It applies to the decision to invade Iraq and to the search for weapons of mass destruction the logic of the joke on the borrowed kettle as recorded by Freud ("I never borrowed a kettle from you. In addition, I returned it to you unbroken. Furthermore, the kettle was already broken when I got it from you"). But apart from some slapstick humor ("We know they must have WMDs concealed somewhere: we sold them to them"), it offers little intellectual content, and doesn't fundamentally differ from what one can read on political blogs, or even in the mainstream, left-leaning press.

By contrast, the first appendix spells out the author's politics in a clear and coherent manner. It is a tough act to follow, and not meant for the faint of heart. But at least one must credit Slavoj Zizek with being coherent in his convictions, and with standing up to his beliefs. He is no standard radical, no wishy-washy do-gooder willing to embrace leftist causes in support of a lofty ideal. According to him, opponents to capitalist globalization who claim that "another world is possible" run the risk of serving the interests of the capitalists they condemn: they may well be "agitating a lure of a possible change which guarantees that nothing will actually change". So the best course of action is to "withdraw from the compulsion to act, to 'do nothing', thus opening the space for a different kind of activity."

Hints of what this alternative space could consist of is provided by those "self-organized collectives in zones outside the law", such as settlements controlled by the terrorist organization Sendero Luminoso in Peru in the 1990s, or utopian communities run by religious millenarists. "Everything is to be endorsed here", including (especially) religious fanaticism and (at least "in their basic intention") terror tactics such as the one used by the Vietcong insurgency who cut off the left arms of children vaccinated by US doctors. As Bertold Brecht and Jean-Paul Sartre have taught us, killing one's comrade in the course of a revolutionary enterprise can be considered as an act of brotherly love.

Communist dictatorships are also to be endorsed ("better the worst Stalinist terror than the most liberal capitalist democracy"): they are a kind of "liberated territory", and as such they provide "the space of utopian expectations which, among other things, enabled us to measure the failure of really existing socialism."

Meanwhile, radical intellectuals need to "rethink the leftist project beyond the alternative of 'accommodation to new circumstances' and sticking with the old slogans". This refoundation will need to shatter many fetishes, such as the consideration of economic imperatives ("who cares if growth stalls, or even become negative?") and references to democracy as it is commonly conceived (we need to "risk the step outside", and pursue the objective of radical democracy through non-democratic means).

'Radical democracy' is not "merely the political project which fits today's constellation of pluralized struggles". Against prophets of the multitude such as Hardt and Negri, who posit class-based anti-capitalist struggle as just one in a series of struggles ('class, sex and gender, ethnic identity'...), the author reaffirms the central value of the class antagonism, which "overdetermines all the others and which is, as such, the 'concrete universal' of the entire field". Readers are therefore invited to reread Marx, Lenin and Althusser, if only to spice them up with references to popular culture and word games borrowed from Jacques Lacan.

Just as the middle chapter helps the reader see clearly through Zizek's political project, the last chapter explains how he is able to produce so many books at such a frantic pace. It is the equivalent of Raymond Roussel's "How I Wrote Certain of my Books": it exposes the discursive matrix that can churn out volumes as if on demand, the textual mechanic that is capable of addressing virtually every topic in a distinctly Zizekian style.

It is a curious mix of structural linguistics ("a signifier is that which represents the subject for another signifier"), of the combination of Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud that was the hallmark of French post-structuralism in the seventies ("as hysterics, you demand a new master. You will get one"), with quotations from Lacan that even readers with no notion of French will be able to grasp ("la femme n'existe pas", "il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel").

Jacques Lacan also provides an algebra of expressions ("the big Other", "objet petit a", the Nom-du-Pere, the Master-Signifier, the split subject) that point toward nothing beyond their sonorous inanity and that can be put in just about every combination, with some symbols borrowed from algebraic topology to provide a scientific veneer.

The big advantage of Zizek over Lacan is that the former provides an easy access to what remains irretrievably obscure in the latter. Zizek is the "Lacan for Dummies", and he markets himself as such. Try for example to read the last pages of The Borrowed Kettle in parallel with Lacan's 'Kant avec Sade'. The original text was an undecipherable script, which nonetheless gained mythic status in some academic circles. Zizek's commentary is written in clear prose, which makes the radicality of its content no less frightening.

Allegories Ad Absurdum
...A long yarn consisting of provisional conclusions about the state of global politics from a critical theorist's perspective.The first part of the book directly relates to the war in Iraq, introduced by the very appropriate question "They Control Iraq, But Do They Control Themselves?"... A question that only a theorist schooled in psychoanalysis would ask, perhaps, but a very interesting question nonetheless.

In addressing this question, Zizek observes that "the problem... was that there were TOO MANY reasons for the war," and goes on to say "I should emphasize that Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle is not a book about Iraq - but the Iraqi crisis and war were not really about Iraq either" (but rather about the stakes of international politics).

The first third of the book (first 66 pages) is interesting and thought-provoking, although some of Zizek's analyses of the global context of war become superficial after a few pages.The second two parts ("appendices"), which comprise the majority of the book, don't really have anything to do with the war per se.Zizek takes the opportunity of the Iraq war to go off on a psycho-marxist rant about ethics and global affairs for 110 pages in these two appendices.A few thought-provoking ideas, here and there, but the profound conclusions that the reader expects never arrive.

Again, the conclusion of the book is quite interesting, but how and why the reader has arrived there is so osbscured by the morass of allegories that Zizek employs that it is not clear whether a such a path even exists.As a work of political theory, this book is testament to the vain, undisciplined character of much contemporary "critical" thought.Are there no rigorous taskmasters at Verso?Zizek needs one.

I wouldn't really bother with this book unless you are already interested in Zizek and/or you have a close familiarity with Marx (and Hegel), Freud, and Lacan (and maybe a little Foucault and Derrida).Otherwise, forget it.I already did.

If you are just interested in what Zizek has to say about the Iraq war, his articles are splayed all over the Internet.Just type "Zizek and Iraq" into a search engine.

Worth reading--at least the first part
Zizek seems incapable of fully developing an argument, and he frequently appears to contradict what he was claiming only a few pages earlier.His knowledge of Iraq and the Middle East is superficial, not just by the standards of scholarship about the region, but even by the standards of a social theorist trying to get up to speed about a topic that is not his speciality.Nevertheless, these faults (or idiosyncracies) are frequently redeemed by the audacity of his thinking, never more so than when he is demanding that those of us on the left rethink our stale slogans like 'its not antisemitic to criticize zionism' or 'fundamentalists don't reflect the genuine tenets of Islam'.He can be quite hilarious, and he continues to reach for a genuine radicalism that allows for the possibility of ending capitalism.Unfortunately, only the first third of the book is focused on the title topic--the latter two essays ('appendices') offer too high a portion of Lacanian mental gymnastics to insights about the contemporary world for my taste.But definitely read that first essay.And the latter two can be fruitfully skimmed, at least.

Its not about WMDs dummy.
I think its interesting to note that the irony of the two comments above, who claim that Zizek is actually wrong in the book since now they found those old shells with sarin residues, perfectly reinforces the logic of the book. The War was not about the weapons, and neither is book, as its focus was rather the pretexts under which modern war can be waged. The actual weapons here were irrelevant (plus finding a few artillerly shells with expired toxins surely dont qualify as the thousands of liters of deadly chemicals that were promiced to us before the invasion)- and yes Saddam did have WMDs at one point, we should know, we sold it to him - the focus of the book is on the status of "reality" and "truth" in the modern media culture, which are very disturbing.

Rather the book explores the implications and fallout of what might be considered a grand political experiment that was tried by the Bush administration on America and the world: make up a fake reason for war and handouts, break international law, put the media machine to reinforce your claims, see it be proven false, dont even bother covering ass but just change the topic (WMDs > Freeedom), refuse to talk about a blatant lie, get reelected, and then watch the world leaders come to make amends. This is what the Left is ignoring, and this is the challenge to "reality" that needs to be addressed.

So yes put down the New York Times, and read this book.

away from the main discourse,we have Zizek
The real value of Zizek is he stimulates a discussion in a certain direction that you will never find within the establishment media press,(Michael Moore included here) for they own and control the discourse. Zizek is independent enough (and he knows he's an intellectual supported by the system) where he need not simply fall like sheep into line with the various/nefarious propaganda machines as practiced by The Heritage Fnd.Wm.Kristol,Thom.Freidman, Wm.Safire. They all have easy jobs simply make some nice waverings from Right to Left,Neoliberal is the buzz these days(you needn't be consistent either)summoning the time honored icons of truth,justice,civilization,terror where is it? etc. or in Safire's case simply Right-Wing all the way, no swinging allowed!, there is simply evil out(The "Other" or today "Islam"(those who have oil) (it was communism) there to be extinguished or made docile, so the discourse is further made one-dimensional.

So let's turn to the real world and that's where Zizek begins. Zizek uses Lacan's conception of reality where what is real is never really really "real" because it is "tainted" or "diseased" with the imaginary and the symbolic. So the line of arguments and facts he follows are always placed within this Lacanian context and it makes for interesting reading.
It is fairly commonplace now that Bush and Company always knew that Saddam had no weapons(WMD) otherwise why would Washington send over 150,000 troops ready to be slaughtered by these weapons. (We are talking about, well they, Washington etc. talked about weapons of MASS destruction, what does that mean?) Well weapons that can be sent to New York,intercontinental?It really doesn't matter for the WMD symbolic has been and continues to be grist for the mill of the media and now the Presidential Election.So Zizek is telling us; it is all a distraction from the real issues.And he here clearly sees it's all propaganda, and summons the "borrowed kettle" story from Freud as a means of identifying the "missing" component here.
As the book progresses(For Iraq is onlythe first part) there is/are some nice dialogues between pure theory, Lacan,Hegel and real facts, here, and Zizek is simply doing the intellectuals job relating philosophy and culture, politics to the reality,or "reality" which is now, or was "now". ... Read more

Product Description
Drawing on the full range of his prolific output, the articles here cover psychoanalysis, philosophy and popular culture. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Zizek Dictionary on Hegel, Lacan, and Freud
This text is a GREAT dictionary on the Zizekian reading of Lacan, Hegel, and Freud. In general, the interpretation of difference and the theoretical understanding of racism, ethnocentrism, anti-semitism, etc. is necessary reading for any student of post-strucutralist thought as it applies to the social world.

A critically important acquisition
The first collection in a series of essays by Slavoj Zizek, who is a Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Ljubljana, Slovena and Visiting Professor at the New School for Social Research, New York and one of the leading contemporary cultural critics of the 20th century. A critically important acquisition for academic library Philosophy collections and student reading lists, this first volume of Professor Zizek's work is divided into three principle sections: 'Lacanian Orientations'; 'Philosophy Traversed by Psychoanalysis'; and 'The Fantasy of Ideology'. Enhanced with a glossary, an index, and an 'Author's Afterword: Why Hegel is a Lacanian', "Interrogating The Real" showcases impeccable scholarship and clearly documents Professor Zizek as an original and insightful philosopher in his own right.

Incredible
What sizzling insistencies are presented here, served up on a platter of salad encrusted banana littered plenitude succulently garnished with mouth watering 1001 Nights Supa Sauce plus ultra crispy fries smoothly layered on delicious South Pacific grillings lightly and pliantly tossed and toasted in a sensational semiological batter, a perfect feast for the egregious sorts that salt away in the mines of academe with nary a twist or tryst such a work is a marvel to behold as it nestles willy nilly on the shelves of Opportune, suppurating and gently roasting in a chested blemish of buffoons...

High theory's prankster at his best
I still have a few essays left in this little gem, but I would already highly recommend it because I have never had a better experience understanding Zizek.

First off, if you simply wish to gain a straight forward understanding of some of the possible theoretically usages of Lacan, Hegel, Kant, Foucault, Heidegger and a host of other heavy hitters then Zizek is your man. He loves a tangent, but he uses anecodotes, jokes and examples from popular culture to demonstrate difficult concepts in a clear way. (In my opion, that's what real genius is.)

Secondly, the essays are very witty, sometimes even hilarious. Whether Zizek is explaining that the Lacanian analyst is like Hannibal Lecter trying to eat Clarisse Starling's 'Dasein' or describing the perverse self-denials in Casablanca, he is always pretty snarky.

Lastly, I think Zizek, despite his penchant for silliness, does have a serious project. I think he wants people to use logic to transcend academic and psuedo-academic fads and to understand that human beings are miraculous and miraculously cracked. Zizek is miraculously cracked, that's for sure.
... Read more

Product Description
Not so long ago, the term ""ideology"" was in considerable disrepute. Its use had become associated with a claim to know a truth beyond ideology, a radically unfashionable position. What then explains the sudden revival of interest in grappling with the questions that 'ideology' poses to social and cultural theory, as well as to political practice? Mapping Ideology presents a comprehensive sampling of the most important contemporary writing on the subject. Slavoj Zizek's introductory essay surveys the development of the concept from Marx to the present. Terry Eagleton, Peter Dews and Seyla Benhabib assess the decisive contributions of Lukacs and the Frankfurt School. A different tradition is revealed in an essay by the French post-structuralist Michel Pecheux, while the study of ideology is exemplified in classic texts by Theodor Adorno, Jacques Lacan and Louis Althusser. An intersection of Gramscian and Althusserian motifs appears in a now famous debate over 'the dominant ideology thesis', reprinted here. Pierre Bourdieu succinctly formulates his departure from this tradition in an interview with Eagleton.Further readings of the ideological are explored by Richard Rorty and Michele Barrett. Finally Fredric Jameson supplies an authoritative statement of the nature and position of the ideological in late capitalist society. Mapping Ideology is an invaluable guide to what is now the most dynamic field of cultural theory. ... Read more

Product Description
Slavoj Zizek has been called an "academic rock star." As public visibility of the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst increases, so too does the depth of his engagement with Christian theology. Zizek's recent work includes extended treatments of key Christian thinkers from Paul, Pascal, and Kierkegaard to G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis, while Christology and other theological themes have provided crucial points of reference. Zizek has even said that "to become a true dialectical materialist, one should go through the Christian experience."

But Zizek's work on Christianity often overwhelms students of theology. To be sure, Zizek's style of argumentation is unusual and his concepts are complex. But the more basic problem is that his work on Christianity is a further development of a broader intellectual project established in many volumes produced in the course of the 1990s. This book will bring students of theology up to speed on this broader intellectual project, with an eye toward what brings Zizek to an explicit engagement with Christianity and how both his earlier and more recent works are relevant for theological reflection. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Provocative introduction
Kotsko takes the reader on a tour of Zizek's thought from his first work published in English up through The Parallax View, showing the progression of his thought towards a theological expression of his project. In the closing he briefly brings Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Thomas J. Alitzer into his exposition to give examples of contemporary theological expressions that provide a clearer path into theological inquiry and discussion.

This is a very accessible book, even for someone like me without any formal credentials in the humanities. I am no scholar but a curious onlooker trying to figure out and deal with some of Zizek's theological ideas; I like to read theory to escape the dreariness of studying physics and to broaden my mind. The point is, especially to any that wandered over here from Peter Rollins' blog, that this book is a challenging but very clear way in to Zizek's work.

I will definitely read this book again.

A Timely and Important Overview
This book is an important addition to anyone's Zizek library as well as a very solid "introductory" work for anyone wanting to get in on the conversation.Hat's off to Kotsko for writing this fine book!

Since the writing of The Parallax View it's now a good time to take stock of Zizek's project and how it has evolved.Kotsko's book is "given over to a general overview of Zizek's thought from The Sublime Object of Ideology [Zizek's inaugural English language work] to The Parallax View, with a special focus on understanding and contextualizing his turn to theology within the trajectory of his work" (p. 3).Zizek and Theology does an excellent job of providing exactly that.The book takes Zizek seriously as a philosopher of subjectivity, ethics and political theory in his own right, thus focusing less on Zizek's cultural analysis and ideology critique.At the same time, however, the book does not assume too much background knowledge in getting the reader up to speed on Zizek's most important ideas (Kotsko's breaking a "taboo" and periodizing Zizek's thought is very helpful).And for those already quite familiar with Zizek, the book gives a useful review and summarization of his main ideas; for example I found the chapter on Ideology Critique to be very helpful in illuminating some of Zizek's early ideas on ideology (if one were to "merely" take away from all this an understanding of how to think about ideology, e.g. what Zizek adds to Althusser, the idea of cynical reason, etc., that, in itself, would already be quite productive).

Of course the crux is: "what exactly Zizek's practice of a materialist theology entails, what brings him to theology, and what his work might mean for theologians" (p.2).The book, again, I believe, delivers on this, and helps the reader to get a grasp on Zizek's most developed notion of a materialist subjectivity, and what dialectical materialism means in its most rigorous formulation.For me, personally, the last part of the quote, "what his work might mean for theologians" is not a specific interest per se, but as a theory of materialist theology is central to Zizek's thinking, this book is certainly not only for theologians (or "theologists"), but for anyone interested in Zizek, ideology, subjectivity, and dialectical materialism.

Why is Zizek important today?Psychoanalysis (specifically the Slovenian Lacanians informed by German Idealism) with its materialist understanding of subjectivity and ideology is perhaps the most effective intervention in laying out the exact relation of the subject to power (i.e. the relation of the subject to authority, transference, the law, or, more specifically, global capital) via its theory of negativity and the real--something other branches of philosophy and nominalist-constructivist postmodern thought fail to do as thoroughly (and certainly fail to do on a materialist basis).Moreover, Zizek's conceptualization of materialist theology suggests a corresponding ethics and the hope of a non-ideological order (p. 125-126).In this way Zizek certainly is a continuation of Enlightenment thought and anyone who, like Kotsko, can provide a clear and concise approach to Zizek's work is doing a service to ethical thought and practice which is urgently needed in our present times.

I think the book also is a good companion to the works listed below:

The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics)

On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life: Reflections on Freud and Rosenzweig

Zizek's Ontology: A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity (SPEP)
... Read more

Product Description
Lenin's writings of 1917 are testament to a formidable political figure. They reveal his ability to grasp the significance of an extraordinary moment in history. Whatever the discussion—the forthcoming crisis of capitalism, the possibility of redeeming violence, the falsity of liberal tolerance—Slavoj Zizek believes that Lenin's time has come again. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Audacious Zizek re-publishes Lenin
Zizek audaciously republishes Lenin's works which were penned on the eve of the Russian Revolution. He points out that this leader was alone among the revolutionaries of his time in being able to clearly identify the emergence of a revolutionary situation and then lead a revolutionary movement to seize upon it. Zizek calls on people to see the genius of Lenin and study his works, especially in these times of great tumult. He challenges people who want to change the world to go beyond activism against oppression, or mere reflections or descriptions of what is. His book is a plea for the necessity of studying, and the importance of developing, revolutionary theory* in order to transform the world with an alert, dreaming eye toward what could be. A better world is possible....

*I noticed with pleased surprise (given that Zizek is no Maoist) that Professor Zizek has written the preface of an exciting new book by Bob Avakian and Bill Martin called Marxism and the Call of the Future. But then it makes sense in light of Zizek's thirst for elevating the discourse of radical politics and philosophy.

Why Lenin Why Now?
It's always fascinating why an intellectual might be drawn toward a persona, well here one of the greatest political strategists of the century, the last one. Lenin is not one one can warm up to with the vagaries of history for his succession the monstrous detour from Trotsky to Stalin.
Marx yes with his early philosophical searchings of humanism, creating a new science of historical man/woman, and then his work on capital exposing the whys and wherefors for greed, profit,work, distribution and circulation, even Wall Street Sharks find Marx interesting if detestable. But Lenin (so we are told) failed to ignite a revolution that sustained itself, and won, like it is a game of soccer!, the deep complexities of Mother Russia transforming itself after centuries of barbarism was more than formidable.

Lenin for Zizek represents a way out of the impasse of the present, the current digitalization and virtualization of reality of the consumer of the culture of un-change,(to have a revolution, you need a revolution)The neo-liberal order it is clear still requires escape valves the World Bank and the IMF, wars famines,death squads,corruption, massacres, poverty and environmental rape to sustain itself. For there is a man at the end still waiting for surplus value. Lenin's work represents a way out of the impasse of subjectivity of change. Now that deconstruction, and structuralisms, postmodernities vigours haven't produced tangible change we have returned to the Badiou-ian "truth-event" for which Lenin is a guide to action of sorts.

Lenin for Zizek was one who worked his way out of the impasse he always found himself in as best he could, where he bewildered many of this comrades adopting positions few could see the immediate results. Lenin as well had to fall backwards,while in power making compromises with the Western democracies who simply wanteda reversion to the Czar for starts,then as a pretext to steal Mother Russia for natural and strategic purposes, something a perennial pattern we find now within the Middle East. Also for the burgeoning years of the 20th Century how can we have a functioning communist state,that confiscated the property of the former ruling classes, this revolution stuff might spill over into other industrial powers as it almost did in Germany.
The tour de force here is Zizek's essay "Repeating Lenin", a turgid yet focused theoretical romp into Left iconic history, shibboleths with Hegel and Lacan by his side. Zizek for instance finds affinity with Adorno's "Negative Dialectics", as another impasse similar to Lenin's "Philosophical Notebooks" of 1915. Both found themselves working their way through a reality. With Lenin though he assumed completion, the seizure of power, whereas with Adorno he found no way out toward change; cultural political or otherwise.

Lenin's primary texts are here reproduced, ones Zizek found useful.

Theoretical shot in the arm for a stagnant Left
This review is in response to Žižek's latest call for a return to Lenin (specifically the material collected in the introduction and afterword to Revolution at the Gates).
Zizek's exhortation is explicitly aimed not at resurrecting a mythical "lost" revolutionary past, to continue, as if without interruption, the legacy of Lenin the Soviet institution. Rather, Žižek instructs us to repeat the "revolutionary spark" of Lenin circa 1917, when the Bolsheviks recognized the unique Augenblick of their contingent geopolitical situation and seized the moment, thus reinventing the Marxist project.Žižek claims that the left is today at a crossroads similar (indeed, homologous) to that of Lenin just before the October revolution: imperialist war rages on, colonialism (whether disguised as "post" or not) is rampant, global ecological catastrophe looms...and the current political coordinates offer no viable solution to these disastrous conditions.In this sense, returning to Lenin means reclaiming the freedom to engage in politics that extend beyond the borders of the liberal parliamentary-democratic consensus in order to authentically address today's most pressing social and political concerns.I can but only enthusiastically agree with such a rejection of the prohibitions on thought imposed by "post-ideological" liberal-democratic hegemony.
Now, this is obviously merely scratching the surface of Žižek's argument, and for all the theoretical nuancing involved in delimiting it as a call to repeat the revolutionary impulse of Lenin in today's political constellation, calling for a "return to Lenin" most certainly brings up a host of questions and problems.One concern I find particularly nagging: does a return to Lenin, even in the form of a revolutionary impulse translated and retrofitted to today's political coordinates, consequently mean a return to the vanguard Party?
Apparently, for Žižek it does.He justifies this conclusion via a rather convincing detour that begins with claiming the right to a politics of truth to establish a partisan universality. He then goes through a Hegelian reading of materialism in which it is demonstrated that an "external" position of knowledge cannot possibly exist.This leads to a discussion of the modalities of knowledge (the four discourses) accordint to Lacan in order to show that the Party should be identified with the subject-supposed-to-know (homologous to the Analyst) which represents the form of the activity of the masses. Importantly,here "form" is to be understood as the "traumatic kernel of the Real" that compels everything around it to become engaged with it.To me this implies that the Party is ostensibly merely an organizing principle that "quilts" the activity of the revolutionary masses: it "poses" as a knowledgably distilled interpretation of the collective will, but this organizing and interpretative knowledge is in actuality merely supposed knowledge to which the rank and file respond and develop their own knowledge which thus truly directs the revolutionary movement.
As can be expected, this text is punctuated with typical Zizekian commentary on film, literature and current events, constituting a performative analysis (analysis in the clinical sense, that is) of current leftist political theory.If the reader is familiar with the workings of Zizek's oblique approach to criticism, this text is very fruitful indeed.

Zizek's Disappointment
With 'Revolution at the Gates' Zizek affirms that he past his zenith nearly a decade ago.

Far from the rigour of 'Sublime Object,' this collation of half-ideas traces the impotent gestures of the proto-Left's most recent failures. ... Read more

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Did Somebody Say Ideology? explores the philosophical, political, and psychoanalytic foundations of Slavoji ek s work, almost two decades after his arrival on the international scene of contemporary philosophy with The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989). The book generally focuses on the understanding and applicability ofi ek s theory of ideology, arguably the distinguishing and most original feature in his oeuvre so far. The first part contains six essays that carry out specific investigations into key aspects of the Slovenian philosopher s work; the second part practicesi ek s own injunction about Lacan ( discover Lacanian themes everywhere! ) oni ek himself, employing his theories in different contexts and relating them to other thinkers. Each study in the present volume testifies to the extraordinary vitality ofi ek s writing, demonstrating how his psychoanalytic brand of ideology critique fosters innovative research in a variety of intellectual fields and academic disciplines.The book has a great deal to offer to undergraduate and postgraduates students ofi ek s extremely impressive oeuvre.But it will also be of great use to academics and everybody else interested in philosophy, cinema, feminism, psychoanalysis, radical politics and nationalism in the Balkans.The detailed exposition ofi ek is masterfully complemented by detailed discussions of Badiou, Bataille, Deleuze, Foucault and Lacan.Did Somebody Say Ideology?On Slavoji ek and Consequences is likely to be one of the most important books oni ek in recent years and an original contribution to contemporary social theory.Darrow SchecterUniversity of Sussex ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Absorbing
Yes, that is the first adjective that comes to mind when reading this excellent assessment of Badiou and Zizek- the fact that I read this in one feverish sitting should, I hope, be recommendation enough. If you have engaged with the work of either in a serious fashion, you will appreciate the sheer clarity and judiciousness of Johnston's exegesis- a lucidity that rivals Hallward's excellent 'Subject To Truth'- as well as the forthrightness of Johnston's own position. This is clearly not a work of hagiography, and it wastes little time in underlining the force and salience of Badiouan/Zizekian thought. For better or worse, it takes these for granted. In various respects, this is scarcely even a work of philosophy proper- Johnston is not so much concerned with exposing the latent aporias in both systems as he is in probing the possibilities/impasses that they present for political praxis. Like any good Marxist, Johnston's sole criterion in assessing a thought is its direct applicability to contemporary struggle, rather than its relation to its discursive field, the 'history of concepts'. Johnston is unequivocal on this point- what Badiou and Zizek share, beyond a fidelity to Lacan against his post-structuralist detractors, is an aspiration to transform the world. Conceived in this way, one can say that the qualitative value of their work is equivalent to the interventions and inquiries that they make possible.

That being said, this does not mean that Johnston forgoes the imperatives of rigorous reading and argument in lieu of revolutionary quixotism. In his section on Badiou, Johnston effectively extrapolates Badiou's logic of the event (particularly its relationship to time and the undecidability/indiscernibility that haunts its nomination) and rescues it from degenerating into a 'politics without politics' (Zizek). In essence, Johnston mobilizes several of Badiou's axiomatic claims to rescue a thought from terminating in the cul-de-sac of quietism. The argument can, at the risk of a vulgar bowdlerization, be expressed thus: if, as Badiou insists, a subject is always CONSEQUENT to the 'flash' of an event, issuing forth from this irruption as the material support ('body') of a truth, then this means that the subject is stricto sensu inconceivable prior to its advent. This is all very well, but what do we do in the meantime? Johnston's work on Badiou inheres in the ontical, interstitial space between the sterile homogeneity of statist time (which action must attempt to establish a distance from) and the sudden impact of evental time, which cannot be catalyzed through an act of will. Stuck in the 'in-between' of an exasperating emptiness and an incalulable fullness which we cannot forecast, let alone initiate, can we do nothing but hope? If so, what separates Badiou from Derrida and his epigones, with their tragical-eschatological defenses of messianic promise and 'weak thought'?

Through a close interrogation of the event's temporal and ontological status, Johnston effectively reveals all of its ambiguities, ambiguities that lend Johnston the means to construct a PRE-EVENTAL politics of 'forcing' and hypothesis that can initiate processes of experimentation before the event's unforeseen arrival. All of this hinges on Johnston's analysis of double inscription, which he borrows from Zizek's re-working of the Deleuzian 'minimal difference'- if reactive and obscure subjects, through the distorting medium of ideology, are capable of occulting the (often imperceptible) New that incarnates itself in the event, then it is possible that we live, unbeknownst to ourselves, IN THE MIDST of these sites. How so? First, Johnston takes up Badiou's claim that the nomination of an event's eventhood is itself an event- the first event is always evanescent and invisible, it vanishes shortly after its manifestation. Because an event is doubly illegal- it flouts the foundational axioms of being AND appearing- it is briskly covered and swallowed up by the order that it transcends in one incandescent instant. Since the event does not announce itself as such- there is nothing in the transcendental logic of a situation that permits us to discern its existence- it must be baptized as such by those who enter into an interpellative relationship with it, subjectivizing it through a process of fidelity.

Thus, if the eventhood of an event is not an objective, empirical predicate, the attributes of which can be established with reference to the existing regime of 'encyclopaedic' knowledge, but a 'cut' that can only be seen from the perspective of ENGAGED SUBJECTIVITY, then it would be counter-intuitive to simply 'await' the event, in the hope that one would be able to recognize it upon its arrival. Compounding matters is Johnston's suggestion, following Eagleton's reading of Badiou's 'Ethics', that an event could inaugurate such a radical shift in our epistemological categories that the very modalities of change that Badiou had proposed in his typologies would be invalidated altogether. In short, we can hypothesize about the prospect of a change so radical that it would alter our very conception of change itself. Keeping these two discussions in mind, we can offer a riposte to fashionable postmodern declamations of contemporary 'atonicity' and 'apoliticism', ideological apologias for political inaction. What if such lamentations are themselves sympotomatic of a consummate capitulation to ideological representation? Filtered through the lens of a world's transcendental logic, it is conceivable that many sites are, in fact, 'doubly-inscribed'- what appears to be counted-as-one as a situation, a docile constituent of a world's logic, could in fact harbor explosive, unfathomed potentials. It is my feeling that Badiou himself would not be altogether dismissive of such a proposition- in one of the most suggestive passages of 'Logics of Worlds', Badiou states that atonicity and complexity is often an optical effect, an ideological smokescreen that occludes sites and points.

Johnston, in a bid to rescue Badiou from lapsing into an eschatological religiosity that withdraws from politics altogether in anticipation of a miraculous happening, proposes that the irreducible Two of Badiou's thinking- the 'empty time' of the State and the radically heterogeneous temporality of Truth- be supplemented with a Third, a pre-Evental time that makes, through protracted theoretical and practical investigation, educated guesses about such doubly-inscribed sites. Johnston's appropriation of Badiou's concept of 'forcing' is not as controversial as it seems- if all 'forcing' happens in the future anterior, then militants can begin, at this very moment, to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the state-of-the-situation in which they are ensconced and hypothesize about prospective transformations.

Similarly, Johnston enframes and siphons his reading of Zizek through the Lacanian distinction of action and act. This difference, which I feel to be constitutive of Johnston's argument throughout, is of considerable help to those who are approaching these philosophers for the first time. In many ways, the section on Zizek can, and perhaps should, be read prior to the study of Badiou. Like the Badiouan event, the act is a rift in the transcendental fabric of the Symbolic that inaugurates, in its wake, the ontogenetic possibility of a subject. Whereas an action is, in the last analysis, always addressed to an imagined Other (the subject-who-knows), the act marks an irrevocable rupture from this 'closed' economy of sense, breaking free from the dialectics of meaning that it imposes. Because of this, the act is as inexplicable as it is indiscernible- it seems to assume an autonomy of its own, independent of the material 'agents' through which it is enacted. To become a subject is to assume the act as one's own, subjectivating it. Yet, just as there is no event without the situation from which it emerges, there is no act without action-if the cleavage between act and action can only be established AFTER something has come to pass, we will never be afforded the opportunity to legislate upon this line if we dismiss all existent modes of action as being so many variations of 'aggressive passivity'.

Also of interest:
Although the book makes no note of this, the text includes an INVALUABLE appendix by Zizek himself, which is perhaps the clearest exposition yet of his ontology. In characteristically attention-deficient style, Zizek presents the fundamentals of his theoretical edifice, articulating in the process his precise position in regard to Badiou, post-structuralism and 'correlationism'. Of especial interest is his reading of Meillasoux' 'After Finitude', which, to any reader familiar with Zizek's repeated emphasis on the Non-All, espouses a brand of absolute materialism that is very close to Zizek's own 'Parallax View'. Also, Zizek alerts us to the residual, disavowed idealism that remains at the heart of Badiou's project, a 'passion for the Real' that marks the post-'68 generation at large and inhibits Badiou from formulating a properly materialist system. Not to be missed.

initial indications point to 'oh yeah!'
I just got this so I'm still working through it.

But it definitely seems as though Johnston has done it again.If you know his first, "Time Driven" and his second, "Zizek's Ontology," and you found those as simply great as I, then you don't need this endorsement.

If you are new to this stuff, or on the fence, then here you go:

Johnston is definitely within the Zizek camp.He is serious though, and seriously bright.He is no cheerleader.He tackles Zizek's work at its heart and is very good at explaining the problems and context of Zizek's philosophy while also shedding new light and challenging the master in interesting ways.Here he is once again ahead of the scene in placing Badiou and Zizek together.The Badiou is very good and not what you might call a Badiouian Badiou - if you take my meaning.This in itself is interesting.They are treated in separate sections under the unifying vision of them comprising, basically, a set we can name the "Lacano-Lukacs" of our time.He coordinates them thusly: Badiou thinks (from) the political Event while Zizek thinks (from) the ethical Act.Their respective adaptations of Lacan are an interwoven, occasionally knotted, Ariadne's Thread of the book. Pretty snazzy in that regard.

Does a new orthodox Communism have a future?That is the question. If you are perturbed by the very question, then you'd be a fool not to read this book, wouldn't you?

So far, it's extremely engrossing.It's a tough read for a tough subject, but Johnston doesn't - except at places, brief moments where he gets carried away with post-modern verbosity, he must be fairly young - care to make it tougher than it need be for the sake of flash.It's a nice book.It's about time. ... Read more

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A critical introduction to Slavoj Zizek's key areas of interest in politics. ... Read more

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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

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Zizek has emerged as the pre-eminent European cultural theorist of the last decade and has been described as the ultimate Marxist/Lacanian cultural studies scholar. Sharpe undertakes the difficult task of drawing out an evolving argument from all of Zizek's texts from 1989 to 2001. Sharpe from the University of ... Read more

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Zizek is hailed as the most significant interdisciplinary thinker of modern times. His work is a powerful, often explosive combination of Lacanian psychoanalysis and philosophy which tests key psychoanalytical concepts against the ideas of major European thinkers, especially Hegel. It has ignited enthusiasm and stimulated new approaches across a vast range of disciplines, and seems to be attracting an ever-growing readership. In part, this is because Zizek himself has a panoramic range of interests encompassing film studies, literature, cyber culture, ethics, theology and, above all, politics. It is also because he is a highly entertaining writer, having a flair for anecdote, a smutty sense of humour and the knack of capturing complex ideas in concrete form.


Sarah Kay's book provides a lucid and comprehensive introduction to Zizek's work. His writings to date are presented and evaluated here for the first time, together with an outline of their development and explanations of his key premises, themes and terms. This book will be essential reading for students of cultural studies, literary studies, philosophy and social and political theory. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A slog ... but worth it.
Condensing Zizek's entire oeuvre into 176 pages is an admirable feat in and of itself, especially given the subject's notorious exuberance of style and disparity of subject matter. Professor Kay successfully reins his thought into six independent, well structured and bounded chapters. More than this, her comments on Zizek's style itself as an encounter with the Real were insightful and original. Her contention (in chapter 3) that the end of great art is to reveal the mechanism of sublimation without destroying the machine in the process is particularly useful to a writer.

My caveat is that professor Kay is an academic and like most in her profession, could profit greatly from a course in plain english. Many of her sentence constructions were unecessarily abstruse, one felt for the sole purpose of imbuing the work with an intellectual veneer. I found myself rewriting many sentences in the margin, so many in fact that I now count myself as a co-author of my particular copy of the book. In many instances, professor Kay puts up a shield of latinate abstractions where simple saxon concrete nouns would have got the point across a lot more sharply. In other instances, she condenses a complex thought into a barely decipherable clause. As an example, she says of symbolic castration, "It is only once it has been cut from within by the limit of death that the organism undergoes the internal differentiation which makes symbolization possible." I took this to mean that as a pre-verbal infant we have no inkling that we are mortal; just like the amoeba-esque lamella that continuously divides and that Lacan therefore describes as immortal, the infant has no reason to believe that it will not persist for evermore in its current state. It is only with the advent of language that it comes to realize that its parents were once tiny too and that her fate is to grow big then old just like them and finally perish. Language therefore brings with it a sense of oneself as bounded in time, a being toward death as Heidegger termed it. And here I differ with professor Kay; surely this realization doesn't make symbolization possible. The inverse must be true; symbolization makes this realization possible.

It may well be that I am misrepresenting professor Kay's line of thought in this instance; it is difficult to say since the original proposition was presented so obscurely. All in all the book was more of a slog than it needed to be.

However, for those of us who slog through, the effort is, I am happy to report, worth it. You will come out of the experience with a greater appreciation of Zizek's overall philosophical scheme as well as deeper clarity on the individual topics that populate the Slovene's work. Phew!

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

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Hoe kunnen we nog geloven en regels hebben in dit postmoderne tijdperk waarin naar verluidt niets is om in te geloven en geen regels zijn. De beroemde filosoof en onstuitbaar cultuurcriticus Slavoj Zizek daagt iedereen uit in dit overtuigende en adembenemende nieuwe boek.
In Geloof, dat van 'cyberspace-denken' tot de paradox van het 'westerse boeddhisme' gaat, legt Zizek de vooronderstellingen bloot achter de manier waarop we gewoonlijk over geloof denken, met name in judaïsme en christendom. Door de zogenaamde authenticiteit van het religieuze geloof tegen een kritisch lichtte houden en te putten uit psychoanalyse, film en filosofie, laat hij op schokkende wijze zien dat de basis van onze fundamenteelste overtuigingen minder rotsvast is dan wij denken. ... Read more

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'From now on, even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!' Saint Paul's militant declaration from Corinthians asserts for the first time in human history the revolutionary logic of a radical break with the past--with it, the age of Cosmic Balance and similar pagan babble is over. What does it mean to return to this stance today? One of the most deplorable aspects of our postmodern era is the re-emergence of the "sacred" in all its different guises, from New Age paganism to the emerging religious sensitivity within deconstructionism itself. How is a Marxist to counter this massive onslaught of obscurantism? The wager of Zizek's The Fragile Absolute is that Christianity and Marxism should fight together against the onslaught of new spiritualism. The subversive core of the Christian legacy is much too precious to be left to the fundamentalists. Here is a fitting contribution from a Marxist to the 2000th anniversary of one who was well aware that to practice love in our world is to bring in the sword and fire. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Zizek's clearest exposition yet.
Slovenia's most prolific theorist's newest offering may be the clearest statement of his radical blend of Lacanian psychoanalysis and Marxist social critique. Don't let the title scare you...Zizek has not become amilitant fundamentalist. The book argues a shared impetus for change withinChristianity (especially vis-a-vis St. Paul) and Marxism and proposes this"kernel" be used to bring these camps together for social good.Peppered with his trademark pop culture illustrations, this book isimmensely readable and cogently argued. A great introduction to Zizek'sthought. ... Read more

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From Dada to Fluxus through Sensation to today, humor is at the heart of much of the most-beloved--and least comfortable--art out there. Humorís ambivalence, its ability to shift between the utopian and the destructive, and its refusal of absolute values, distinguish many of those twentieth century movements that continue to exert an influence. This catalogue of work from more than 30 artists, including Bruce Nauman and Jake & Dinos Chapman, parses humorís mechanisms in works that seduce us with a laugh and then stop us in our tracks with more painful or uncomfortable themes. Deconstructions of the male artist persona by Vito Acconci and Jurgen Klauke use wit to confront taboos head-on, which connects them with the more recent work of John Bock and Klara Liden. Among classic pieces included are Joseph Beuys's Capri Batterie and George Maciunasís Flux Smile Machine. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

Time is on my side
I am loving this book. My head is swollen from so many parentheses, but it is convinced that they are worth the effort. Among the many rewards of reading this book is to see some of Badiou's ideas contrasted with Zizek's.

Ron Rice

The Best Book on Zizek's Philosophy
Adrian Johnston has bypassed most of the fireworks concerning Zizek's public image and penetrated right to the philosophical propositions and arguments that are being made.

The fundamental thesis of the book is none other than what Zizek says of his own work: to raise lacanian psychoanalysis to the rigor of German idealism.The book's structure reflects this thesis, starting with Zizek's reading of Kant (Kant, who in Zizek's eyes, started philosophy as such by creating the concept of the transcendental subject).Kant, according to Zizek, was the first philosopher to rigorously draw out the idea that we do not have absolute empirical access, not just to the world, but also to our own selves as a subjective consistency.This is the beginning of the concept of the barred subject - or that the subject as it understands itself is never completely coincident with what it understands.Contemporary psychoanalysis understands all antagonisms in terms of this fundamental antagonism, coming back from Descartes and Kant's view of subjectivity.

This then moves to Zizek's reading of Schelling whose main materialist point is this fundamental antagonism owes itself to the idea that substance itself is divided, and it is this internal division within being itself that generates appearance and subjectivity.This is Zizek's materialist reading of Schelling - which is to unite the grounded material and the ungrounded ideal subject in a primary division or antagonism immanent in being itself.Quoting him that: if the world was complete unto itself, it would not need to split into two (the ideal and the material).This leads us to Zizek's reading of Hegel: Substance as subject and subject as substance.

Zizek's reading of Hegel is the last philosophical step in this triad.Zizek uses Hegel to explain precisely how and why the subject emerges from being.The explanation he gives is that "subject is nothing but that name for this inner distance of substance towards itself."This genesis occurs from inconsistencies and failures of the way being interacts and comes to know itself through its failures.

[it is this section of the book that is most philosophically problematicJohnston actually recourses to evolutionary theory and complexity theory to explain how there would be evolutionary selection for consciousness given that as the complexity of a system increases, more loopholes and failures are possible - thus generating more gaps "in-themselves" which need to be dealt with.I feel Johnston & Zizek (& Deleuze and any nonbiological philosopher!)can't provide a real consistent explanation for how subject arises out of being."Failure" is hardly an explanation for the genesis of the subject... - failure with regard to what, an already existing proto-subject?]

The conclusion the book brings home is the precise nature of freedom as that which is absolutely contingent and absolutely autonomous.

Basic Strengths of the Book:

The consistencies and inconsistencies in Zizek's philosophy are dealt with in very rigorous ways.For example: the exact determination of the concept of "the real" fluctuates in both Zizek and Lacan as both that which is either "posed" as the negative OF the symbolic (the symbolic produces the real by its very failure), or the real as "presupposed" (the real is something anterior to the symbolic, not produced purely from it, but in from something else in relation to it).

Also, the breadth of knowledge Johnston exhibits is truly magnificent.Not only does he have an incredible mastery of philosophical and psychological concepts, but he also is able to express them in clear ways and relevant ways.He is able to sweep through most of Zizek's Oeuvre perceiving those aspects of his philosophical system that are crucial to the thesis and tying them all together very clearly.

Critique:

The writing style is somewhat like Zizek's (this probably comes from having read all of his books and not being able to shake some of the influence), and this becomes slightly annoying at times, leaving you feeling he is merely repeating Zizek rather than coming up with something new.But this feeling is momentary, and for the most part the work that Johnston has done is quite obvious and massively impressive.

Another issue I had is that Johnston doesn't notice the way other philosophers have tried to do the same thing as Zizek.Though the book is obviously about Zizek, many contemporary philosophers embark on the same project, not the least of which is Zizek's "enemy" Deleuze.Zizek himself says: I'm trying to do what Deleuze forgot to do, to take Hegel from behind.

For instance, it becomes clear that philosophically, Deleuze and Zizek drive home the same fundamental thesis: difference is metaphysically primary.By comparing alternate conceptions of the subject this would shed more light on Zizek's project and possible alternatives to it.

I also think the account of the genesis of the subject is inadequate, and so long as the "material" being of the world is considered isomorphic with the subject (i.e. it is inherently "split"), you cannot actually account for the concrete genesis of the subject as it actually occurred, but rather can only come up with a vague and general (and teleological) a priori argument about conditions of possibility for subjectivity (i.e. that being is inherently split!).

Also, it is questionable whether the explanations Zizek gives are actually due to the causes he ascribes them to (inherent tensions in being and the subject).Johnston also provides no alternative conceptions of this, which would shed light on the particular context Zizek uses for his own explanations.

Conclusion:

As it stands, the book is the best characterization of the project Zizek embarked on, while relating it to a historical background that Zizek merely assumes his readership is familiar with.Undoubtedly, the readings will be controversial, but Johnston provides a well crafted defense of Lacanian metapsychology, attempting to truly understand what Zizek is saying before running into a hasty critique.I consider it crucial to anyone interested in the philosophical edifice of Zizek's argumentation. ... Read more

Product Description
This book provides a comprehensive and accessible account of the new theories of discourse developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, while in particular drawing on central insights provided by Slavoj Zizek.The book accounts for intellectual development of the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe from a Gramsci-inspired critique of structural Marxism over a neo-Gramscian theory of discourse to a new type of postmodern theorizing of great relevance for social, cultural and political theory.The central concepts of discourse, hegemony and social antagonism are carefully explained and discussed and the theoretical framework is applied both on a variety of theoretical problems and in a sample of empirical studies.The book concludes with a discussion of the implications of discourse theory for our political understanding of democracy, citizenship and ethics.New Theories of Discourse is written out of the basic conviction that postmodernity provides a great challenge to social, cultural and political theory and makes thinkable a whole range of new political projects of which the development of a radical plural democracy is one of the most promising and exciting. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
Slavoj Zizek is one of the most provocative and important thinkers writing in contemporary philosophy. This book is an engaged debate with Zizek. It contains a series of specially commissioned critical essays from an impressive collection of contributors covering the full extent of his oeuvre. Essays examine Zizek on cultural theory, film studies, ethics, political theory, social theory, Kant and Lacanian psychoanalysis. In the spirit of Zizek's own interventions, these essays critically interrogate his ideas, challenging him to respond directly which he does in an extended polemical reply that concludes the collection. This volume represents an exciting and important contribution to contemporary theoretical debate and adds significantly to the growing literature on Zizek. ... Read more