Product Description

Is global emancipation a lost cause? Are universal values outdated relics of an earlier age? In this combative major new work, philosophical sharpshooter Slavoj iek takes on the reigning ideology with a plea that we should reappropriate several lost causes, and looks for the kernel of truth in the totalitarian politics of the past. Examining Heideggers seduction by fascism and Foucaults flirtation with the Iranian Revolution, he suggests that these were the right steps in the wrong direction. Highlighting the revolutionary terror of Robespierre, Mao and the Bolsheviks, iek argues that while these struggles ended in historic failure and monstrosity, this is not the entire story. There was, in fact, a redemptive moment that gets lost in the outright liberal-democratic rejection of revolutionary authoritarianism and the valorization of soft, consensual, decentralized politics. iek claims that, particularly in the light of the forthcoming ecological crisis, we should reinvent revolutionary terror and the dictatorship of the proletariat in the struggle for universal emancipation. We need to courageously accept the return to this causeeven if we court the risk of a catastrophic disaster. In the words of Samuel Beckett: Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #33810 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-19
• Released on: 2009-10-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 504 pages

Review
Zizek leaves no social or cultural phenomenon untheorized, and is master of the counterintuitive observation. --New Yorker

The Elvis of cultural theory. --Chronicle of Higher Education

One of the most innovative and exciting contemporary thinkers of the left. --Times Literary Supplement

About the Author
SLAVOJ ZIZEK is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Customer Reviews

Zizek perhaps not at his best
This book started extremely well: the promise of a sustained argument drawing in the usual references from film, popular culture and the history of philosophy. I looked forward to his engaging Hegelian inversions - how true he is to Hegel I cannot say much in the same way I am not convinced Badiou is faithful to Plato. Anyway, it started well, some nice touches on Michael Crichton films but then suddenly something quite odd happened: the book seemed to fall apart in my hands. It began with a mediocre reading of the abysmal film of `300', using a Zizekian cliché to invert mainstream reading but adding nothing new. And then Zizek seemed to go off topic and began meandering - in the way Derrida does, the drift and focus of argument shifted and suddenly the worst features of Zizekian thought came into play: alluding to Badiou to give philosophical weight to what is a pretty weak position, arguing against some feature or trend in Hollywood films - the truth is he covered many of the same points in the DVD `The Pervert's Guide To Cinema' and added nothing new here - moving between one topic and another, making comments along the way which don't seem to accumulate any force, nor through sheer juxtaposition open up new avenues of thought. It became so boring - something I would never think of Zizek. But it has to be said: once you enter the syntax of Zizek's thought and can negotiate his grammar and language you then look for something substantial being argued for. I couldn't find it. So my overall conclusion is not so good: early Zizek: excellent, genuinely fresh and challenging and occasionally innovative. Recent Zizek: repetitive, re-working old ideas without adding anything, self-referring in a way that is irritating - he often gives you the impression that his position, in parts, has been well established through some earlier discussion - but it hasn't. There is something lazy in this book - something of the obsessional turning out books but not really developing his thought.