Looks at the question of human agency in a postmodern world. This book explores the ideological fantasies of wholeness and exclusion which make up human society.
'These [How to Read] books let you encounter thinkers eyeball to eyeball by analysing passages from their work' Terry Eagleton, New Statesman
If we want to be true atheists, do we have to begin with a religious edifice and undermine it from within?Slavoj Zizek has long been a commentator on, and critic of, Christian theology. His preoccupation with Badiou's concept of 'the event' alongside the Pauline thought of the New Testament has led to a decidedly theological turn in his thinking. Drawing on traditions and subjects as broad as Buddhist thought, dialectical materialism, political subjectivity, quantum physics, AI and chatbots, this book articulates Zizek's idea of a religious life for the first time. Christian Atheism is a unique insight into Zizek's theological project and the first book-length exploration of his religious thinking. In his own words, "to become a true dialectical materialist, one should go through the Christian experience." Crucial to his whole conception of 'experience' is not some kind of spiritual revelation but rather the logic of materialistic thought. This affirmation of Christian theology whilst simultaneously deconstructing it is a familiar Zizekian move, but one that holds deep-seated political, philosophical and, in the end, personal import for him.Here is Zizek's most extensive treatment of theology and religion to date.
Argues that the physical violence we see is often generated by the systemic violence that sustains our political and economic systems. With the help of eminent philosophers and frequent references to popular culture, this title examines the causes of violent outbreaks like those seen in Israel and Palestine and in terrorist acts around the world.
In a characteristically explosive barrage, Ljubljana's most famous philosopher takes a passionate stance on the war in Ukraine, surveys the latest Hollywood blockbusters, and delivers detonations into a range of contemporary issues, from sexual politics in India to the prospects for a new Cold War. Ever attentive to moments where the bizarre and the epic join forces, among the questions iek considers here are: Is the giant orgy, planned to take place in Ukraine in the event of a Russian nuclear attack, really all that morbid? And what should society do, whether on the big screen or the battlefield, in preparation for the end of the world?Agree with him or not, iek rarely fails to provoke in a productive fashion. By examining matters through a lens that is bold and original, and often joyfully outlandish, iek helps us to better grasp a world in which, increasingly, the dominant motif is one of madness.
We hear all the time that we're moments from doomsday. Around us, crises interlock and escalate, threatening our collective survival: Russia's invasion of Ukraine, with its rising risk of nuclear warfare, is taking place against a backdrop of global warming, ecological breakdown, and widespread social and economic unrest. Protestors and politicians repeatedly call for action, but still we continue to drift towards disaster. We need to do something. But what if the only way for us to prevent catastrophe is to assume that it has already happened-to accept that we're already five minutes past zero hour?Too Late to Awaken sees Slavoj iek forge a vital new space for a radical emancipatory politics that could avert our course to self-destruction. He illuminates why the liberal Left has so far failed to offer this alternative, and exposes the insidious propagandism of the fascist Right, which has appropriated and manipulated once-progressive ideas. Pithy, urgent, gutting and witty, iek's diagnosis reveals our current geopolitical nightmare in a startling new light, and shows how, in order to change our future, we must first focus on changing the past.
One hundred years after the Russian Revolution, Zizek shows why Lenin's thought is still important today
The "formidably brilliant" Zizek considers sexuality, ontology, subjectivity, and Marxian critiques of political economy by way of Lacanian psychoanalysis.
One of our best-known living philosophers Guardian How do we respond to the refugee crisis - by opening our doors, or pulling up the drawbridge? Both solutions, argues Slavoj Zizek, offer ideological blackmail, and both are wrong. He proposes that instead we see the crisis as an opportunity: a unique chance for Europe to redefine itself and its future. Zizek identifies the refugee crisis as one of the major global challenges of our time ...he argues for a politics of solidarity The Times Literary Supplement
The most provocative philosopher of our times returns with a rousing and counterintuitive analysis of our global predicamentWe hear all the time that it's five minutes to global doomsday, so now is our last chance to avert disaster. But what if the only way to prevent a catastrophe is to assume that it has already happened - that we're already five minutes past zero hour?Why do we seem unable to avert our course to self-destruction? Too Late to Awaken sees Slavoj iek deliver his most forceful, hopeful account of our discontents yet. Surveying the interlocking crises we currently face - global warming, war, famine, disease - he points us towards the radical, emancipatory politics that we need in order to halt our drift towards disaster.Pithy, urgent and witty, iek's diagnosis reveals our current geopolitical nightmare in a startling new light, and shows why, in order to change our future, we must reimagine our past.
This book opens with a provocation by Slavoj ¿i¿ek to cut ourselves off from the decaying corpse of the old Europe in order to keep the European legacy alive . Which is not an attempt to merely cherry-pick good features over bad ones, but an argument that the main reason to stay with the name Europe , to keep a certain faith in Europe , is the fact the that European legacy provides the best critical instruments to analyze what went wrong, has been going awry, in Europe. It is nothing other than a challenge for us to imagine, perhaps even conceive - give birth to in the precise sense of manifest - the possibility of a Europe that acts in a global way that is not focused on Europe. It is followed by a reading of his manifesto by Jeremy Fernando - who performs a reading which tries never to forget that what is being read is a manifesto, has been called, entitled, is named, A European Manifesto . For, names name possibilities. And a manifesto is a text, and like every text, comes with its particularities, its inherent specificities: and, in its case, foregrounds the fact that it manifests itself, shows itself, stages (theoria) itself. Puts itself on a stage whilst fully aware of the fact that it is staging itself. Thus, always also brings with it the question, what is the effect of a manifesto?, alongside its compendium, how does one read a manifesto? Which is not to say that reading is passive, and that the one who reads has nothing to do with what is being read. For, as Paul de Man continues to teach us, not that the act of reading is innocent: far from it. It is the starting point of all evil ; where, reading not only resounds with echoes of the primordial question, rings with potentially unanswerable questions, but might well be a quest that continually writes itself into us. Nor devoid of risk. For in attempting to attend to a text, in opening oneself to the possibilities of a text, one risks the possibility of falling, along with all the potential disasters this entails, in love; that is, of seeing, of being in, the world no longer from the perspective of the One but from the perspective of Two (Alain Badiou). That in reading, not only is one bringing forth certain potentials of and in a text, but that one opens oneself to the text writing itself onto oneself, manifesting itself in one's very self. And where there is the possibility that an attempt to read Europe , even as one might be trying to be as critical of it as possible, even if one is maintaining a distance from it, keeping a gap from what one has named Europe , in reading one has opened oneself to being called by Europe - summoned by spectres of a Europe that we might not even think, realise, imagine, we are reading - being shaped by Europe into becoming European , whatever that may even begin to mean...
Argues that the liberal idea of the end of history, declared by Francis Fukuyama during the 1990s, has had to die twice.
A iA ek analyses the end of the world at the hands of the 'four riders of the apocalypse'.
In this combative major new work, philosophical sharpshooter Slavoj iek looks for the kernel of truth in the totalitarian politics of the past.Examining Heidegger's seduction by fascism and Foucault's flirtation with the Iranian Revolution, he suggests that these were the ';right steps in the wrong direction.' On the revolutionary terror of Robespierre, Mao and the bolsheviks, iek argues that while these struggles ended in historic failure and horror, there was a valuable core of idealism lost beneath the bloodshed.A redemptive vision has been obscured by the soft, decentralized politics of the liberal-democratic consensus. Faced with the coming ecological crisis, iekk argues the case for revolutionary terror and the dictatorship of the proletariat. A return to past ideals is needed despite the risks. In the words of Samuel Beckett: ';Try again. Fail again. Fail better.'
Setting out to diagnose the condition of global capitalism, the ideological constraints we are faced with in our lives, and the bleak future promised by this system, this book explores the possibilities - and the traps - of new emancipatory struggles.
Shows how the problem of neighbor love opens questions that are fundamental to ethical inquiry and suggest a new theological configuration of political theory. This title explores today's central historical problem: the persistence of the theological in the political.
A brilliant dissection and reconstruction of the three major faith-based systems of belief in the world today, from one of the world's most articulate intellectuals, Slavoj Zizek, in conversation with Croatian philosopher Boris Gunjevic. In six chapters that describe Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in fresh ways using the tools of Hegelian and Lacanian analysis, God in Pain: Inversions of Apocalypse shows how each faith understands humanity and divinity--and how the differences between the faiths may be far stranger than they may at first seem. Chapters include (by Zizek) (1) "Christianity Against Sacred," (2) "Glance into the Archives of Islam," (3) "Only Suffering God Can Save Us," (4) "Animal Gaze," (5) "For the Theologico-Political Suspension of the Ethical," (by Gunjevic) (1) "Mistagogy of Revolution," (2) "Virtues of Empire," (3) "Every Book Is Like Fortress," (4) "Radical Orthodoxy," (5) "Prayer and Wake."
An Event can be an occurrence that shatters ordinary life, a radical political rupture, a transformation of reality, a religious belief, the rise of a new art form, or an intense experience such as falling in love. This book examines the new and highly-contested concept of Event.
Explores the relations between fantasy and ideology and the antagonism between the ever greater abstraction of our lives - whether through digitalization or the market - and the deluge of pseudo-concrete images which surround us.
This work explores the relationship between opera and psychoanalysis. Ziezek and Dolar consider, for example, death in opera and orgasm (the little death for which opera may be imagined to be a substitution), as well as the heralded "death of opera" and its cultural function.
In this new book, Slavoj i ek and Glyn Daly engage in a series of entertaining conversations which illustrate the originality of i ek's thinking on psychoanalysis, philosophy, multiculturalism, popular/cyber culture, totalitarianism, ethics and politics.
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