- Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: Profile Books (10 Jan 2008)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1846680174
- ISBN-13: 978-1846680175
- Product Dimensions: 21.2 x 13.2 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 326,789 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Violence: Six sideways reflections (Big Ideas)
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"The Elvis of Cultural theory" The Chronicle of Higher Education "A one-person culture mulcher...a fast-forward philosopher of culture for the post-war period" The Village Voice "An Academic Rock Star" In these Times"
Product Description
The premise of Zizek's theory is that the subjective violence we see - violence with a clear identifiable agent - is only the tip of an iceberg made up of 'systemic' violence, which is essentially the catastrophic consequence of the smooth functioning of our economic and political systems. With the help of Marx, Engels, Sartre, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Lacan, Brecht and many more, Zizek examines the hidden causes of violence, delving into the supposed 'divine violence' which propels suicide bombers and the unseen 'systemic' violence which lies behind outbursts, from Parisian suburbia to New Orleans. For Zizek, the controversial truth is that sometimes doing nothing is the most violent thing you can do. He calls for a forceful confrontation with the vacuity of today's democracies - using an unconventional plethora of references: Hitchcock, Orwell, Fukuyama, Freud and more.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
In 1922 the Soviet government organised the forced expulsion of leading anti-communist intellectuals, from philosophers and theologians to economists and historians. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
In 1922 the Soviet government organised the forced expulsion of leading anti-communist intellectuals, from philosophers and theologians to economists and historians. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is coherent and lucid. It focusses on the conventionally, comprehensibly political. There is a sustained line of argument which is refreshing given the often scattered, repetitive nature of some of Zizek's recent stuff. His thesis is relatively simple: that while the media waxes hysterical about sporadic and incomprehensible outbursts of graphic violence, whose very immediacy and excessiveness short-circuit sustained rational analysis, there is a constitutive and structural violence - principally economic - that sustains the operation of the developed world, and is simply more important. The introduction, in which he sets out his stall, is outstanding. There is a helpful epilogue which summarises the book as a whole and its argument, which is nice. Zizek clarifies his position more often than usual too, and this added sense of nuance and position considerably enriches the usual mixture of brilliant provocation and irony. There is relatively little jargon in it (relatively) and it is pleasingly concrete too, for those among us who like concrete. One comes away from Violence with a clear sense of what Zizek thinks about the way things are, as opposed to a panoply of dazzling apercus and a hodgepodge of abstruse theoretical speculation. Recommended, especially as a way in to Zizek, with a greater than usual emphasis on the political. What a pity he made a tit of himself on Newsnight.
15 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
There is a lot of recycled material in this book and a lot that is off the point altogether. So a typical Zizek book. The one idea I found interesting is his explanation of street protests that turn violent, as well as the kind of thing that went on in Paris in 2005, as 'phatic' violence. That is to say, it serves the sole purpose of saying 'I'm here' and 'we're talking'. But Zizek doesn't take it far enough because in fact the phatic requires two interlocutors and its purpose is to keep open the lines of communication. So the obvious point he missed is that the police response is also phatic. By brutalising the protestors, they too are saying 'I'm here' and 'we're talking'. Moreover, if this in fact the case, then this type of protest action will not bring change because it is a routine exchange.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a fascinating and hugely thought-provoking book by the ever stimulating Slovenian writer. His premise is that violence sustains what we perceive today as the "normal", peaceful state of things. It's refreshing to read Marxist-based thinking and analysis helping to explain so much.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Meticulous and appropriate!
Some there are that opine that Slavoj Zizek is a twister. Others sincerely hold that he is in fact a typewriter. Read more
Published on 14 May 2009 by Professor Bjorn Hagforth
Violence & The Political
We regularily express our concerns on the preponderance of violence in the world, while (sub)consciously we filter out the essence of this violence, as we go on to live our own. Read more
Published on 9 Mar 2009 by Karl-Fredrik Lindegaard
Good, but not a stand-alone source on the subject.
I have never felt that Zizek is a particularly good writer, as good writers go: he doesn't have Lacan's gymnastics, Derrida's self-reflexive argument-as-content wizardry,... Read more
Published on 3 Mar 2009 by Robert Loughney
polemic, insightful but without the foundation
as ever Zizek twists and manipulates everything in his grasps....provactive, challenging and purposely against our common (mis)conceptions. Read more
Published on 10 Feb 2008 by Mr. R. Crich
sparky, as ever
Yes, it is flawed; yes, it is full of arguments that he has used at length elsewhere - but few can write prose that is as stimulating to read. Read more
Published on 12 Jan 2008 by 666
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
