Zizek: A Readers Guide

Slavoj i ek is widely regarded as the most significant and provocative thinker of our age. He integrates concepts from the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan with Hegel′s dialectical method in philosophy, for a radically new vision of human nature and human society. i ek has written–with humor, lucidity, and extraordinary erudition–on the philosophical problem of identity, ontology, globalization, postmodernism, political philosophy, literature, film, ecology, religion, the French Revolution, Lenin, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of mind. i ek: A Reader′s Guide situates i ek′s wide–ranging work in the broader context of continental philosophy, engages its precedents, and provides an overview of its main preoccupations, providing a backstory for both the philosopher and the general reader. Moving deftly through the work of G.W.F. Hegel, F.W.J. Schelling, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Louis Althusser, and Alain Badiou, in addition to Lacan, this reader′s guide offers a comprehensive overview of Slavoj i ek′s thought. Kelsey Wood has taught philosophy at the College of the Holy Cross, at Boston University, and at the Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of Troubling Play:  Meaning and Entity in Plato′s Parmenides (2005), and Plato′s Later Dialectic and Continental Philosophy (forthcoming).

Epigraphs ix Acknowledgments x 1 Introduction 1 2 The Sublime Object of Ideology 46 3 For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor 55 4 Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture 66 5 Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out 75 6 Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology 94 7 The Metastases of Enjoyment: On Women and Causality 108 8 The Indivisible Remainder: On Schelling and Related Matters 115 9 The Plague of Fantasies 125 10 The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology 136 11 The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch’s Lost Highway 146 12 The Fragile Absolute: or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For? 155 13 On Belief 163 14 The Fright of Real Tears: Krzysztof Kies´lowski between Theory and Post–Theory 171 15 Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? Five Interventions in the (Mis)use of a Notion 180 16 Welcome to the Desert of the Real 193 17 The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity 201 18 Organs without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences 212 19 Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle 220 20 How to Read Lacan 227 21 The Parallax View 237 22 In Defense of Lost Causes 249 23 Violence 257 24 First as Tragedy, then as Farce 267 25 Living in the End Times 278 26 Conclusion 295 Further Reading 315 Index 322

Kelsey Wood has taught philosophy at the College of the Holy Cross, at Boston University, and at the Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of T roubling Play:  Meaning and Entity in Plato′s Parmenides (2005), and Plato′s Later Dialectic and Continental Philosophy (forthcoming).