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Product Description
Slavoj Zizek, the maverick philosopher, author of over 30 books, acclaimed as the "Elvis of cultural theory," and today's most controversial public intellectual. His work traverses the fields of philosophy, psychoanalysis, theology, history and political theory, taking in film, popular culture, literature and jokes all to provide acute analyses of the complexities of contemporary ideology as well as a serious and sophisticated philosophy. His recent films The Pervert's Guide to the Cinema and Zizek! reveal a theorist at the peak of his powers and a skilled communicator. Now Verso is making his classic titles, each of which stand as a core of his ever-expanding life's work, available as new editions. Each is beautifully re-packaged, including new introductions from Zizek himself. Simply put, they are the essential texts for understanding Zizek's thought and thus cornerstones of contemporary philosophy.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Zizek's first book is a journey into the vacuum at the heart of ideology and 'the subject' himself. He reaches Hegel via a long journey exploring the thinking of Lacan - the Hegel that opposed Kant's idea of a more concrete, transcendant 'thing in itself' lying behind mere appearance. Hegel, rather, saw that behind appearance lies nothing other than our own subjectivity, a subjectivity which is based on an illusory, formal construct. Ideology itself is presented as another construct of this type, at the heart of which is the empty space of 'the real'. Zizek also presents Lacan's themes of 'che vuoi?', in which the limitations of ideology are seen in relation to human nature, and the psychoanalytic perpective on the 'symptom'. According to Lacan it was Marx who invented the symptom and, in the context of this book, can be seen as a motivation for ideological thought. Zizek is however more than just a barrow-boy for these 2 influential thinkers, and offers his own insights and a welcome entertainment value in the form of many references to works of art and cultural icons.
7 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
this is one of the best books. I bought this book, and I also intend to translate it into arabic so that other people who do not spak english can read it.
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5 reviews
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful
The Sublime Object Of Ideology
13 Oct 2009
Format:Paperback
This is where it all began for Zizek, and I would say that this really remains his best book. It is certainly the most useful of all of his texts, alongside The Ticklish Subject, as well as being the most organized of them all. It is here that Zizek provides his fullest exposition of his method, demystifying in the process a series of misconceptions regarding Marx and Freud. Central to this text is his reclamation of Freud from the devastating critique of Deleuze & Guattari (Capitalism & Schizophrenia). If you remember, Deleuze & Guattari's objection to Freud lay in his fetishization of the dream's `latent (Oedipal) content' over its formal, machinic assemblage- what results is an occlusion of the dream's subversive socio-political content, foreclosing the productive power of the unconscious by quarantining it in the familial triangle. Hence the persistent opposition of asignifying `desiring-production' to mythological `expression'. Zizek, in his reading of The Interpretation Of Dreams, reveals the structural homology of Freud and Marx- Marx, in his conception of `commodity fetish', is close to the Freudian problematic of the dream. In both, the question is a strictly formalist one: why does the dream/commodity assume this determinate form and not another? This is the guiding question of Zizek's materialist critique- how do specific ideologies `quilt' and constitute themselves? How does a symbolic field mask its Real (the immanent gap that prevents it from closing in on itself) through fantasmatic (Imaginary) displacements? Why are such displacements necessary, if an ideology is to hide the irrepressible antagonism that lies at its core? Is the postmodern annunciation of the `end of ideology' the consummate expression of ideology, its ultimate historical realization? Take it from me, this is worth your time.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
An early masterpiece of Zizek's
30 Mar 2011
Format:Paperback
In typical Zizekian fashion, this book (his first published in English) is all over the place, from Shakespeare to Kafka, from Hitchcock to strange sexual practices. But don't get caught up in the distractions; Zizek works through some major theoretical points.
This was a major point in the book for me, and gives you an idea of where you're heading:
"But the case of so-called 'totalitarianism' demonstrates what applies to every ideology, to ideology as such: the last support of the ideological effect (of the way an ideological network of signifiers 'holds' us) is the non-sensical, pre-ideological kernel of enjoyment. In ideology 'all is not ideology (that is, ideological meaning)', but it is this very surplus which is the last support of ideology. That is why we could say that there are also two complementary procedures of the 'criticism of ideology':
- one is discursive, the 'symptomal reading' of the ideological text bringing about the 'deconstruction' of the spontaneous experience of its meaning - that is, demonstrating how a given ideological field is a result of a montage of heterogeneous 'floating signifiers', of their totalization through the intervention of certain 'nodal points';
- the other aims at extracting the kernel of enjoyment, at articulating the way in which - beyond the field of meaning but at the same time internal to it - an ideology implies, manipulates, produces a pre-ideological enjoyment structured in fantasy." (140)
The first procedure operates at the level of the imaginary and symbolic, while the second operates in the real. It is at this second level that we find the sublime object of ideology.
This book is for philosophers and others inaugurated into critical theory. As someone said in a recent review: just as you wouldn't buy a race car and complain that it goes too fast, don't get this book if you're going to complain that it's too 'dense.' If you have any grounding in Lacan, though, you should be able to get through it. Might take a reread.
This was a major point in the book for me, and gives you an idea of where you're heading:
"But the case of so-called 'totalitarianism' demonstrates what applies to every ideology, to ideology as such: the last support of the ideological effect (of the way an ideological network of signifiers 'holds' us) is the non-sensical, pre-ideological kernel of enjoyment. In ideology 'all is not ideology (that is, ideological meaning)', but it is this very surplus which is the last support of ideology. That is why we could say that there are also two complementary procedures of the 'criticism of ideology':
- one is discursive, the 'symptomal reading' of the ideological text bringing about the 'deconstruction' of the spontaneous experience of its meaning - that is, demonstrating how a given ideological field is a result of a montage of heterogeneous 'floating signifiers', of their totalization through the intervention of certain 'nodal points';
- the other aims at extracting the kernel of enjoyment, at articulating the way in which - beyond the field of meaning but at the same time internal to it - an ideology implies, manipulates, produces a pre-ideological enjoyment structured in fantasy." (140)
The first procedure operates at the level of the imaginary and symbolic, while the second operates in the real. It is at this second level that we find the sublime object of ideology.
This book is for philosophers and others inaugurated into critical theory. As someone said in a recent review: just as you wouldn't buy a race car and complain that it goes too fast, don't get this book if you're going to complain that it's too 'dense.' If you have any grounding in Lacan, though, you should be able to get through it. Might take a reread.
5 of 8 people found the following review helpful
The Real Deal
17 Jun 2010
Format:Paperback
This was his breakthrough book that led to him becoming an internationally recognised thinker who consistently brings complex philosophical/psychoanalytical concepts into the spotlight.
Anyone with any pretensions to being philosphically inclined should welcome the legions of new readers Zizek has attracted to such difficult writers such as Kant, Hegel, Schelling etc.
I think knee-jerk reactions that use phrases such as "charlatan" reveal more about the accuser than the accused. It's also rather surprising that such an allegedly "obfuscatory" writer should sell books in such large quantities to non-specialists who somehow manage to engage with his ideas with gusto.
There are plenty of reasons to disagree with Zizek, but to claim there is nothing behind his work can perhaps best be explained by the concept of negative transference???
Anyone with any pretensions to being philosphically inclined should welcome the legions of new readers Zizek has attracted to such difficult writers such as Kant, Hegel, Schelling etc.
I think knee-jerk reactions that use phrases such as "charlatan" reveal more about the accuser than the accused. It's also rather surprising that such an allegedly "obfuscatory" writer should sell books in such large quantities to non-specialists who somehow manage to engage with his ideas with gusto.
There are plenty of reasons to disagree with Zizek, but to claim there is nothing behind his work can perhaps best be explained by the concept of negative transference???
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