Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #287355 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

From the Back Cover
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.

Customer Reviews

Very good
This is a short, useful, well-written introduction to the thought of Slavoj Zizek, one of the most important contemporary philosophers. Without ever dumbing Zizek down, Myers offers a clear overview of his often challenging thinking. The book includes a useful survey of all Zizek's books and neatly sums up his views on some of the subjects most important to his philosophy, e.g. racism and the nature of "the Subject". It explores Zizek's indebtedness to Jacques Lacan without getting mired in bewildering jargon. There remains no substitute for reading Zizek's original books, but for a student wishing to know more about Zizek this is a valuable resource.

recommended for all newcomers to Zizek
Of all the books in the Routledge Critical Thinkers series this is certainly one of the best. An excellent introduction to Zizek, his interpretation of Lacan, Marx and Hegel, as well as a good guide to his thought in its own right. The only worry is, with Zizek churning out new books at a rate of knots, this introduction may some become dated!

Lacan For Morons
A lazy, trite and disingenuous volume that does little to illumine further the thinking of either Zizek or Lacan. Potential enthusiasts of Slavoj are strongly encouraged to go directly to the primary material - where the arguments are retailed with greater clarity, wit and verve.