Review of Zizek’s Living in the End Times

And so we return to the bad boy of contemporary philosophy, the Elvis of cultural theory, the world’s most famous and controversial living Slovenian and a person who divides even those who broadly agree with his opinions. In this, his most recent book, Slavoj Zizek takes as his starting point (or possibly has been persuaded to do so by his publisher) the concept of the impending end of civilization as we know it and then invited to scrawl his dialectics all over the place.

Read the full review here: http://www.bookideas.com/reviews/index.cfm?fuseaction=displayReview&id=6424

Review of Douzinas and Zizek: The Idea of Communism

After the revelations of the outrages of the Cultural Revolution and the Gulag system, together with the 1989 collapse of the Soviet system, it seemed that Communism as a political force was ended. Even those who had proclaimed themselves Communists deserted what must surely be a sinking ship. The proclamation of the end of history was, fundamentally, the proclamation that Communism had finally been dispatched and the liberal or neoliberal consensus established around the world.

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Review of Zizek’s Enjoy Your Symptom!

Theodor Adorno and others of the Frankfurt School were among the most prominent thinkers to rail against the loss of authenticity in popular art and culture and Sartre, as also reviewed elsewhere on this site, argued that it is the role of the intellectual (in part) to maintain an implacable opposition to such works and their role in promoting the ideological state apparatus of the bourgeoisie elites. While this is all true and important stuff, it has contributed to a baleful side effect that inspires at least some people to treat all contemporary popular culture as being worthless and unsuitable for proper analysis.

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Review of Zizek Presents Trotsky: Terrorism and Communism

Written and published in 1920 in the midst of the threat of invasion by dozens of counter-revolutionary powers and with the dislocation and desperation of the October Revolution scarcely having settled, Trotsky’s Terrorism and Communism was a direct retort to the work of Karl Kautsky. Kautsky, though little known today, was then a figure of some power and authority who was the leading German social democrat of the day: Kautsky’s arguments were that a revolution could be effected within the existing parliamentary democracy, that there would be no need to pre-empt revolutionary action before it spontaneously erupted and that no violence or terror should be used against the counter-revolutionaries.

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Review of Zizek’s First as Tragedy, then as Farce

The bad boy of philosophy, Slavoj Zizek arouses strong emotions wherever he goes, relentlessly talkative and so full of provocative opinions they appear to burst out of him as if by some sort of mechanistic device beyond his control. When, as is often the case, he talks or writes about the psychoanalysis of Lacan or the philosophy of Hegel and Marx, his impact is somewhat limited to the now limited circle of people able and willing enough to understand what he is saying to be outraged or inspired.

Read the full review here.

Review of Slavoj Zizek’s Interrogating the Real

Salvoj Zizek is perhaps the most well-known philosopher-cultural critic in the world today: he seems to leave a flurry of ruffled feathers wherever he (intellectually and physically) goes and appalls some just as he inspires others. He is also extremely difficult to summarise in general terms because of the complexity of many of the issues about which he writes and because of his method and procedure for doing philosophy.

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Review of The Puppet and the Dwarf by Slavoj Zizek

Zizek’s purpose in introducing this series of books is explained at the beginning of his preface:

“A short circuit occurs when there is a faulty connection in the network – faulty, of course, from the standpoint of the network’s smooth functioning. Is not the shock of short-circuiting, therefore, one of the best metaphors for a critical reading? Is not one of the most effective critical procedures to cross wires that do not usually cross: to take a major classic & and read it in a short-circuiting way, through the lens of a “minor” author, text, or conceptual apparatus.”

So, in this case, Zizek will approach Christianity (and specifically the point at which the Judaic law became Christian love) through examining the “major text” through the “minor text” of his own readings of pop culture. 

Read the full review here.

Review of The Fragile Absolute: Or Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?

Slavoj Zizek is a figure whose works divide people: it is not surprising since, in this book (reprinted as part of The Essential Zizek series) he identifies four poles to his system of thought–Hegelian philosophy, Marxist political-economic thought, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and Christian theology. This allows him to draw upon wide ranges of schools of thought and fields of literature and to analyse them according to his particular methods–inevitably, therefore, drawing conclusions which satisfy, outrage, and amuse in various quantities.

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Review of Violence

Slavoj Zizek has developed a well-earned reputation as one of the most prominent and brilliant intellectuals of the day, especially in his areas of principal intellectual endeavour (e.g. philosophy and Lacanian psychology). He is not only profuse and prolific but his particular style, which combines extraordinary reversals of expectations with unexpected and broad use of popular culture to draw examples, is both challenging and rewarding in itself. Whether or not the reader is disposed to agree with any of his ideas or arguments, it is refreshing to be required to construct the intellectual reasoning to meet the challenge.

Read the full review here.