Are liberals and populists just searching for a new master?

The rise of populism, nativism and nationalism in recent years has challenged perceptions of what ordinary people want from politicians. Some see the anti-establishment trend as a rejection of centralised power. Others suggest the real hunger is for a moral authority that appears to be lacking in today’s capitalism. Among the latter group is Slavoj… Continue reading Are liberals and populists just searching for a new master?

Is Lacan An Anti-Philosopher? (2/3 – Slavoj Žižek) + transcript

[Transcript by Thomas Matthews below video.] Difficult to follow, I hope you hear me, glad to be here, glad to be with Alain. Of course in this 20 minute form it’s just a little bit too little time to really develop a line of thought- all one can do is more trace, define positions, oppositions,… Continue reading Is Lacan An Anti-Philosopher? (2/3 – Slavoj Žižek) + transcript

Complete Zizek bibliography

Books and co-authored books 2017. Slavoj Žižek. Like A Thief In Broad Daylight: Power in the Era of Post-Human Capitalism. Allen Lane. In recent years, techno-scientific progress has started to utterly transform our world – changing it almost beyond recognition. In this extraordinary new book, renowned philosopher Slavoj Zizek turns to look at the brave… Continue reading Complete Zizek bibliography

Zizek! (transcript/subtitles)

Zizek! (transcript/subtitles)

What would be my… how should I call it, spontaneous attitude towards the universe? It’s a very dark one. The first thesis would have been a kind of total vanity: there is nothing, basically. I mean it quite literally, like… ultimately…there are just some fragments, some vanishing things. If you look at the universe, it’s… Continue reading Zizek! (transcript/subtitles)

Reply to My Critics, Part Two (re: The Sexual is Political)

Reply to My Critics, Part Two (re: The Sexual is Political)

Two general observations about my numerous critics seem pertinent to me. First, the large majority of attacks on my text follow the rules of the tweet culture with short snaps, retorts, sarcastic or outraged remarks, and with no space for the multiple steps of a line of argumentation. One passage (a sentence, or even a… Continue reading Reply to My Critics, Part Two (re: The Sexual is Political)

Sexuality in the Posthuman Age

[Appeared in Stasis 2016, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 54-69 – pdf] It is the profound distrust of sexual love that is the main feature of Platonov’s work throughout the 1920s. His great novels from this period—Chevengur and especially The Foundation Pit—are usually interpreted as a critical depiction of Stalinist utopia and its disastrous consequences.… Continue reading Sexuality in the Posthuman Age

Slavoj Zizek: Am I a Philosopher?

International Zizek Studies Conference

[Delivered at International Žižek Studies Conference on May 27th 2016. Download .pdf] In his perspicuous review of the volume [amazon asin=0822358913&text=Repeating Žižek], dedicated to my work, Jamil Khader notes how some contributors interrogate “Žižek’s credentials as a philosopher, especially in relation to Badiou’s critique of Lacan’s anti-philosophical position. Hamza points out, in fact, that philosophers who… Continue reading Slavoj Zizek: Am I a Philosopher?

The Universal Exception (Preface)

The Universal Exception

The big Other between violence and civility Slavoj Zizek   The ‘universal exception’, according to Lacan, is the fundamental feature of the symbolic order (the ‘big Other’) as the order of universality: each universality is grounded in its constitutive exception. This feature is to be supplemented with its no less paradoxical obverse, the so-called ‘not-All… Continue reading The Universal Exception (Preface)

The Fright of Real Tears (Introduction)

The Fright of Real Tears: Krzystof Kieslowski between Theory and Post-Theory

The Strange Case of the Missing Lacanians If this book had been published twenty-five years ago, in the heyday of ‘structuralist Marxism’, its subtitle, undoubtedly, would have been ‘On Class Struggle in Cinema’. Let me begin by stating the obvious, with what in France they call une vérité de la Police’. to put it in… Continue reading The Fright of Real Tears (Introduction)

The Need to Traverse the Fantasy

The Need to Traverse the Fantasy

Adam Kotsko, a professor of humanities at Shimer College in Chicago, in an email to me, provided the best characterization of the reactions to my latest text on the refugees and Paris attacks: I notice that the responses always seem to be a referendum on you, almost a Rorschach test for what people think of… Continue reading The Need to Traverse the Fantasy