Zizek's Ontology

Zizek's Ontology
Author :
Publisher : Northwestern University Press
Total Pages : 358
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780810124561
ISBN-13 : 0810124564
Rating : 4/5 (61 Downloads)

Synopsis Zizek's Ontology by : Adrian Johnston

By taking this avowal seriously, Adrian Johnston finally clarifies the philosophical project underlying Žižek’s efforts.

Sex and the Failed Absolute

Sex and the Failed Absolute
Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Academic
Total Pages : 497
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781350043787
ISBN-13 : 1350043788
Rating : 4/5 (87 Downloads)

Synopsis Sex and the Failed Absolute by : Slavoj Žižek

In the most rigorous articulation of his philosophical system to date, Slavoj Žižek provides nothing short of a new definition of dialectical materialism. In forging this new materialism, Žižek critiques and challenges not only the work of Alain Badiou, Robert Brandom, Joan Copjec, Quentin Meillassoux, and Julia Kristeva (to name but a few), but everything from popular science and quantum mechanics to sexual difference and analytic philosophy. Alongside striking images of the Möbius strip, the cross-cap, and the Klein bottle, Žižek brings alive the Hegelian triad of being-essence-notion. Radical new readings of Hegel, and Kant, sit side by side with characteristically lively commentaries on film, politics, and culture. Here is Žižek at his interrogative best.

The Ticklish Subject

The Ticklish Subject
Author :
Publisher : Verso
Total Pages : 420
Release :
ISBN-10 : 1859842917
ISBN-13 : 9781859842911
Rating : 4/5 (17 Downloads)

Synopsis The Ticklish Subject by : Slavoj Žižek

With his characteristic wit, Zizek addresses the burning question of how to reformulate a leftist project in an era of global capitalism and liberal-democratic multiculturalism. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

The Ticklish Subject

The Ticklish Subject
Author :
Publisher : Verso Books
Total Pages : 529
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781844673018
ISBN-13 : 1844673014
Rating : 4/5 (18 Downloads)

Synopsis The Ticklish Subject by : Slavoj Zizek

Slavoj Žižek, 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 Žižek! 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 Žižek himself. Simply put, they are the essential texts for understanding Žižek’s thought and thus cornerstones of contemporary philosophy. The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology: A specter is haunting Western thought, the specter of the Cartesian subject. In this book Slavoj Žižek unearths a subversive core to this elusive specter, and finds within it the indispensable philosophical point of reference for any genuinely emancipatory project.

Less Than Nothing

Less Than Nothing
Author :
Publisher : Verso Books
Total Pages : 1049
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781844678976
ISBN-13 : 1844678970
Rating : 4/5 (76 Downloads)

Synopsis Less Than Nothing by : Slavoj Zizek

A thousand-page resurrection of Hegel, from the bestselling philosopher and critic who has been hailed as “one of the world’s best-known public intellectuals” (New York Review of Books) For the last two centuries, Western philosophy has developed in the shadow of Hegel, an influence each new thinker struggles to escape. As a consequence, Hegel’s absolute idealism has become the bogeyman of philosophy, obscuring the fact that he is the defining philosopher of the historical transition to modernity, a period with which our own times share startling similarities. Today, as global capitalism comes apart at the seams, we are entering a new period of transition. In Less Than Nothing—the product of a career-long focus on the part of its author—Slavoj Žižek argues it is imperative we not simply return to Hegel but that we repeat and exceed his triumphs, overcoming his limitations by being even more Hegelian than the master himself. Such an approach not only enables Žižek to diagnose our present condition, but also to engage in a critical dialogue with key strands of contemporary thought—Heidegger, Badiou, speculative realism, quantum physics, and cognitive sciences. Modernity will begin and end with Hegel.

The Parallax View

The Parallax View
Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
Total Pages : 445
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780262265188
ISBN-13 : 0262265184
Rating : 4/5 (88 Downloads)

Synopsis The Parallax View by : Slavoj Zizek

In Žižek's long-awaited magnum opus, he theorizes the "parallax gap" in the ontological, the scientific, and the political—and rehabilitates dialectical materialism. The Parallax View is Slavoj Žižek's most substantial theoretical work to appear in many years; Žižek himself describes it as his magnum opus. Parallax can be defined as the apparent displacement of an object, caused by a change in observational position. Žižek is interested in the "parallax gap" separating two points between which no synthesis or mediation is possible, linked by an "impossible short circuit" of levels that can never meet. From this consideration of parallax, Žižek begins a rehabilitation of dialectical materialism. Modes of parallax can be seen in different domains of today's theory, from the wave-particle duality in quantum physics to the parallax of the unconscious in Freudian psychoanalysis between interpretations of the formation of the unconscious and theories of drives. In The Parallax View, Žižek, with his usual astonishing erudition, focuses on three main modes of parallax: the ontological difference, the ultimate parallax that conditions our very access to reality; the scientific parallax, the irreducible gap between the phenomenal experience of reality and its scientific explanation, which reaches its apogee in today's brain sciences (according to which "nobody is home" in the skull, just stacks of brain meat—a condition Žižek calls "the unbearable lightness of being no one"); and the political parallax, the social antagonism that allows for no common ground. Between his discussions of these three modes, Žižek offers interludes that deal with more specific topics—including an ethical act in a novel by Henry James and anti-anti-Semitism. The Parallax View not only expands Žižek's Lacanian-Hegelian approach to new domains (notably cognitive brain sciences) but also provides the systematic exposition of the conceptual framework that underlies his entire work. Philosophical and theological analysis, detailed readings of literature, cinema, and music coexist with lively anecdotes and obscene jokes.

The Democracy of Objects

The Democracy of Objects
Author :
Publisher : Good Press
Total Pages : 371
Release :
ISBN-10 : EAN:8596547680277
ISBN-13 :
Rating : 4/5 (77 Downloads)

Synopsis The Democracy of Objects by : Levi R. Bryant

Since Kant, philosophy has been obsessed with epistemological questions pertaining to the relationship between mind and world and human access to objects. In The Democracy of Objects, Bryant proposes that we break with this tradition and once again initiate the project of ontology as first philosophy. Drawing on the object-oriented ontology of Graham Harman, as well as the thought of Roy Bhaskar, Gilles Deleuze, Niklas Luhman, Aristotle, Jacques Lacan, Bruno Latour and the developmental systems theorists, Bryant develops a realist ontology that he calls "onticology". This ontology argues that being is composed entirely of objects, properties, and relations such that subjects themselves are a variant of objects. Drawing on the work of the systems theorists and cyberneticians, Bryant argues that objects are dynamic systems that relate to the world under conditions of operational closure. In this way, he is able to integrate the most vital discoveries of the anti-realists within a realist ontology that does justice to both the material and cultural. Onticology proposes a flat ontology where objects of all sorts and at different scales equally exist without being reducible to other objects and where there are no transcendent entities such as eternal essences outside of dynamic interactions among objects. Contents: Towards a Finally Subjectless Object Grounds For a Realist Ontology The Paradox of Substance Virtual Proper Being The Interior of Objects Regimes of Attraction, Parts, and Structure The Four Theses of Flat Ontology

Tarrying with the Negative

Tarrying with the Negative
Author :
Publisher : Duke University Press
Total Pages : 308
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0822313952
ISBN-13 : 9780822313953
Rating : 4/5 (52 Downloads)

Synopsis Tarrying with the Negative by : Slavoj Zizek

DIVA theoretical analysis of social conflict that uses examples from Kant, Hegel, Lacan, popular culture and contemporary politics to critique nationalism./div

The Year of Dreaming Dangerously

The Year of Dreaming Dangerously
Author :
Publisher : Verso Books
Total Pages : 143
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781781680438
ISBN-13 : 1781680434
Rating : 4/5 (38 Downloads)

Synopsis The Year of Dreaming Dangerously by : Slavoj Zizek

Call it the year of dreaming dangerously: 2011 caught the world off guard with a series of shattering events. While protesters in New York, Cairo, London, and Athens took to the streets in pursuit of emancipation, obscure destructive fantasies inspired the world’s racist populists in places as far apart as Hungary and Arizona, achieving a horrific consummation in the actions of mass murderer Anders Breivik. The subterranean work of dissatisfaction continues. Rage is building, and a new wave of revolts and disturbances will follow. Why? Because the events of 2011 augur a new political reality. These are limited, distorted—sometimes even perverted—fragments of a utopian future lying dormant in the present

Badiou, Zizek, and Political Transformations

Badiou, Zizek, and Political Transformations
Author :
Publisher : Northwestern University Press
Total Pages : 312
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780810125698
ISBN-13 : 0810125692
Rating : 4/5 (98 Downloads)

Synopsis Badiou, Zizek, and Political Transformations by : Adrian Johnston

Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek together have emerged as two of Europe’s most significant living philosophers. In a shared spirit of resistance to global capitalism, both are committed to bringing philosophical reflection to bear upon present-day political circumstances. These thinkers are especially interested in asking what consequences the supposed twentieth-century demise of communism entails for leftist political theory in the early twenty-first century. Badiou, Žižek, and Political Transformations examines Badiouian and Žižekian depictions of change, particularly as deployed at the intersection of philosophy and politics. The book details the origins of Badiou’s concept of the event and Žižek’s concept of the act as related theoretical visions of revolutionary happenings, delineating a number of difficulties arising from these similar concepts. Johnston finds that Badiou and Žižek tend to favor models of transformation that risk discouraging in advance precisely the efforts at changing the world of today that these uncompromising leftists so ardently desire. Badiou, Žižek, and Political Transformations will surely join Johnston’s Žižek’s Ontology as an instant classic in its field.