What do you think?
Rate this book
In Defense of Lost Causes
Is global emancipation a lost cause? Are universal values outdated relics of an earlier age? In fear of the horrors of totalitarianism should we submit ourselves to a miserable third way of economic liberalism and government-as-administration?
In this major new work, philosophical sharpshooter Slavoj Žižek takes on the reigning ideology with a plea that we should re-appropriate several ‘lost causes,’ and look 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.’ He argues that while the revolutionary terror of Robespierre, Mao and the Bolsheviks ended in historic failure and monstrosity, this is not the whole story. There is, in fact, a redemptive moment that gets lost in the outright liberal-democratic rejection of revolutionary authoritarianism and the valorization of soft, consensual, decentralized politics.
Žižek claims that, particularly in light of the forthcoming ecological crisis, we should reinvent revolutionary terror and the dictatorship of the proletariat in the struggle for universal emancipation. We need to courageously accept the return to this Cause — even if we court the risk of a catastrophic disaster. In the words of Samuel Beckett: ‘Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’
In this major new work, philosophical sharpshooter Slavoj Žižek takes on the reigning ideology with a plea that we should re-appropriate several ‘lost causes,’ and look 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.’ He argues that while the revolutionary terror of Robespierre, Mao and the Bolsheviks ended in historic failure and monstrosity, this is not the whole story. There is, in fact, a redemptive moment that gets lost in the outright liberal-democratic rejection of revolutionary authoritarianism and the valorization of soft, consensual, decentralized politics.
Žižek claims that, particularly in light of the forthcoming ecological crisis, we should reinvent revolutionary terror and the dictatorship of the proletariat in the struggle for universal emancipation. We need to courageously accept the return to this Cause — even if we court the risk of a catastrophic disaster. In the words of Samuel Beckett: ‘Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’
504 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
185 people are currently reading
4095 people want to read
About the author
Slavoj Žižek
631 books7,649 followersSlavoj Žižek is a Slovene sociologist, philosopher, and cultural critic.
He was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia (then part of SFR Yugoslavia). He received a Doctor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Ljubljana and studied psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII with Jacques-Alain Miller and François Regnault. In 1990 he was a candidate with the party Liberal Democracy of Slovenia for Presidency of the Republic of Slovenia (an auxiliary institution, abolished in 1992).
Since 2005, Žižek has been a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Žižek is well known for his use of the works of 20th century French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in a new reading of popular culture. He writes on many topics including the Iraq War, fundamentalism, capitalism, tolerance, political correctness, globalization, subjectivity, human rights, Lenin, myth, cyberspace, postmodernism, multiculturalism, post-marxism, David Lynch, and Alfred Hitchcock.
In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País he jokingly described himself as an "orthodox Lacanian Stalinist". In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! he described himself as a "Marxist" and a "Communist."
He was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia (then part of SFR Yugoslavia). He received a Doctor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Ljubljana and studied psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII with Jacques-Alain Miller and François Regnault. In 1990 he was a candidate with the party Liberal Democracy of Slovenia for Presidency of the Republic of Slovenia (an auxiliary institution, abolished in 1992).
Since 2005, Žižek has been a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Žižek is well known for his use of the works of 20th century French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in a new reading of popular culture. He writes on many topics including the Iraq War, fundamentalism, capitalism, tolerance, political correctness, globalization, subjectivity, human rights, Lenin, myth, cyberspace, postmodernism, multiculturalism, post-marxism, David Lynch, and Alfred Hitchcock.
In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País he jokingly described himself as an "orthodox Lacanian Stalinist". In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! he described himself as a "Marxist" and a "Communist."
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 75 reviews
July 19, 2011
Žižek is a hyperkinetic, entertaining writer who seems to bounce off of the walls in his enthusiasm to make his points. This was my first exposure to the Slovene philosopher and I ran into somewhat of a brick wall when the Lacanian dialect became thick and heavy. I ran out of steam just after the chapters on Heidegger, when I realized that I was losing my grasp on where exactly this confusing-but-tantalizing thinker was heading. There were some interesting points being scored off of examinations of such curious fare as Michael Crichton's Prey, Kafka's Letter to His Father, and Shelley's Frankenstein; but before I return to his writing I will have to have come to a greater understanding of the Lacanian terms and ideas that the author relies upon and works into so many of his themes.
Some of the early digressions on postmodernism, and its linkage with fundamentalism, showed promise—Žižek staking the claim that both share in the victory of knowing-to-be over belief. Postmodernism tears down the Master-Signifier, making the world Atonal—that is, lacking a centre for reference. An Atonal society is one in which all points-of-view have validity; the only sure virtue being the pursuit of happiness, personal gratification. Fundamentalists, on the other hand, pretend their Real obscene desires are an illness, when it is actually taken from their core beliefs. Such a state of affairs is one in which this modern evolution of nihilism leads to Transgression becoming the moral, with Žižek's favorite example being the acceptance of torture in the War on Terror. So, when personal gratification is deemed the only sure virtue in a society, what will happen to the latter's politics? They will become one predominantly of fear. This is a reasonable conclusion, I suppose, but, as with his earlier take on postmodernism and fundamentalism, there follows a slew of film titles mated with the psychiatric trope they represent, and then an exegesis of the Crichton and Shelley books. It is all very plausible when presented to a reader, such as myself, unfamiliar with most of these psychoanalytic terms; but even accepting its plausibility, when you actually process the non-stop flow, what have you learned? Several interesting analogies and discoveries, some catchy phrases, but not much that seems tangible or relevant.
It was a similar case with his subsequent chapter on Heidegger: Žižek proclaims that Heidegger worked a variation upon Hegel's writings on the state: how monarchy is the best realization of the ontological (the State) with the ontic (the Individual), because the State's totality will be hidden from the Individual, necessitating a Monarch to act as the Thing, the will of the people. With Hitler fulfilling the role of this Monarch, Žižek can state that Heidegger is great because of his Nazi involvement, not in spite of it. This involvement gave him insights apart from those forced upon whoever receives the embrace of Liberal-Capitalism. However, such insights were wasted because Heidegger was not up to the task, not the man for it, ie, improving Nazism. Without this guidance, Germanic fascism wasted violence in the service of what it despised—Liberal-Capitalism. It's greatest flaw was that it did not go far enough in its violent nihilism. There then follows a weaving of Heidegger's understanding of Being—its manner of reaching into the future to discern possibilites and returning to the past in order to draw upon existing structures and potentialities, all in order to enact the present—and discussions of Heidegger's understanding of tools and technology.
It may all be true, but to what end? As far as I can tell, the entire peculiar defense is predicated upon this loathsome outgrowth of postwar resentment being immanent with the possibility of ultimately providing a valuable service to this planet we all exist upon; and, outside of murderous aggression, what exactly would this have been? I cannot see how, if Heidegger managed to man up and steer the Nazi ship of state to a less capitalistic orgy of violence, it would have made him a more successful person. I cop to lacking an understanding of the finer points and theory that Žižek brings to the discussion, but it all seems to be in the service of saying that anything that would bring down Liberal-Capitalism possesses itself of a value, regardless of the body count. Not being a sociopath, such a position is not copacetic to my way of thinking—and, truth be told, I sensed that Žižek was just playing silly buggers. I wasn't really in the mood for the gabbling goofiness to continue, and so it was at this point that I moved on to something different. I will read him again, because there are those moments when he pops out a line that seems to ring very true and promises to lead somewhere important; and perhaps I need to better arm myself with the relevant theories and terms if I am to find out not only where it is he is going, but why he wishes to take one there.
Some of the early digressions on postmodernism, and its linkage with fundamentalism, showed promise—Žižek staking the claim that both share in the victory of knowing-to-be over belief. Postmodernism tears down the Master-Signifier, making the world Atonal—that is, lacking a centre for reference. An Atonal society is one in which all points-of-view have validity; the only sure virtue being the pursuit of happiness, personal gratification. Fundamentalists, on the other hand, pretend their Real obscene desires are an illness, when it is actually taken from their core beliefs. Such a state of affairs is one in which this modern evolution of nihilism leads to Transgression becoming the moral, with Žižek's favorite example being the acceptance of torture in the War on Terror. So, when personal gratification is deemed the only sure virtue in a society, what will happen to the latter's politics? They will become one predominantly of fear. This is a reasonable conclusion, I suppose, but, as with his earlier take on postmodernism and fundamentalism, there follows a slew of film titles mated with the psychiatric trope they represent, and then an exegesis of the Crichton and Shelley books. It is all very plausible when presented to a reader, such as myself, unfamiliar with most of these psychoanalytic terms; but even accepting its plausibility, when you actually process the non-stop flow, what have you learned? Several interesting analogies and discoveries, some catchy phrases, but not much that seems tangible or relevant.
It was a similar case with his subsequent chapter on Heidegger: Žižek proclaims that Heidegger worked a variation upon Hegel's writings on the state: how monarchy is the best realization of the ontological (the State) with the ontic (the Individual), because the State's totality will be hidden from the Individual, necessitating a Monarch to act as the Thing, the will of the people. With Hitler fulfilling the role of this Monarch, Žižek can state that Heidegger is great because of his Nazi involvement, not in spite of it. This involvement gave him insights apart from those forced upon whoever receives the embrace of Liberal-Capitalism. However, such insights were wasted because Heidegger was not up to the task, not the man for it, ie, improving Nazism. Without this guidance, Germanic fascism wasted violence in the service of what it despised—Liberal-Capitalism. It's greatest flaw was that it did not go far enough in its violent nihilism. There then follows a weaving of Heidegger's understanding of Being—its manner of reaching into the future to discern possibilites and returning to the past in order to draw upon existing structures and potentialities, all in order to enact the present—and discussions of Heidegger's understanding of tools and technology.
It may all be true, but to what end? As far as I can tell, the entire peculiar defense is predicated upon this loathsome outgrowth of postwar resentment being immanent with the possibility of ultimately providing a valuable service to this planet we all exist upon; and, outside of murderous aggression, what exactly would this have been? I cannot see how, if Heidegger managed to man up and steer the Nazi ship of state to a less capitalistic orgy of violence, it would have made him a more successful person. I cop to lacking an understanding of the finer points and theory that Žižek brings to the discussion, but it all seems to be in the service of saying that anything that would bring down Liberal-Capitalism possesses itself of a value, regardless of the body count. Not being a sociopath, such a position is not copacetic to my way of thinking—and, truth be told, I sensed that Žižek was just playing silly buggers. I wasn't really in the mood for the gabbling goofiness to continue, and so it was at this point that I moved on to something different. I will read him again, because there are those moments when he pops out a line that seems to ring very true and promises to lead somewhere important; and perhaps I need to better arm myself with the relevant theories and terms if I am to find out not only where it is he is going, but why he wishes to take one there.
November 11, 2013
“Ideology is strong exactly because it is no longer experienced as ideology… we feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.”
In Defense of Lost causes is a difficult and disparate book. Wait, strike that, it is a rolling expanse of intriguing philosophical situations.Žižek isn't playing a long game as much as gesticulating at a number of possibilities while distinguishing between the smooth and the striated. Such appears to be part and parcel for his oversized Ideas books. In Defense isn't an act of revisionism. Instead it is a backward glance. The book strains from History's burden at time at when "torture was normalized, presented as something acceptable." It is such and adjustment in ethics which prompts this tally of revolution's failures, perhaps to discern a footpath to avoid our present dread. Switching gears from Heidegger and the Nazis to Foucault and the Iranian Revolution, the author arrives at a rationale for how Stalinism saved the world. Without smiling, the case is made that Lenninst/Trotskyite either/or would've led to a dehumanized mechanistic Soviet reality. It was Stalin in the form of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the purges which restored a human element to the Soviet Union. If the Show Trials didn't require confessions and thus maintain a collective empathy/complicity of citizenship then fast forwarding to the Cuban Missile Crisis any negotiation with the Americans would've been impossible. That's quite a bite to chew upon. That said, it does engender thought and a generous begging of questions. The book ends with a nod to the concept of divine violence and its allowances. This is hardly convincing in an airtight manner but it does provoke.
In Defense of Lost causes is a difficult and disparate book. Wait, strike that, it is a rolling expanse of intriguing philosophical situations.Žižek isn't playing a long game as much as gesticulating at a number of possibilities while distinguishing between the smooth and the striated. Such appears to be part and parcel for his oversized Ideas books. In Defense isn't an act of revisionism. Instead it is a backward glance. The book strains from History's burden at time at when "torture was normalized, presented as something acceptable." It is such and adjustment in ethics which prompts this tally of revolution's failures, perhaps to discern a footpath to avoid our present dread. Switching gears from Heidegger and the Nazis to Foucault and the Iranian Revolution, the author arrives at a rationale for how Stalinism saved the world. Without smiling, the case is made that Lenninst/Trotskyite either/or would've led to a dehumanized mechanistic Soviet reality. It was Stalin in the form of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the purges which restored a human element to the Soviet Union. If the Show Trials didn't require confessions and thus maintain a collective empathy/complicity of citizenship then fast forwarding to the Cuban Missile Crisis any negotiation with the Americans would've been impossible. That's quite a bite to chew upon. That said, it does engender thought and a generous begging of questions. The book ends with a nod to the concept of divine violence and its allowances. This is hardly convincing in an airtight manner but it does provoke.
April 19, 2022
Prima le dolenti note. Se essere filosofi significa farsi capire con difficolta' o non farsi capire affatto, qui ne abbiamo un esempio notevole. A volte irritantemente contorto, il discorso di Zizek per lunghi tratti prende chine che non portano a nulla di molto significativo se non a paradossi che lasciano il tempo che trovano (o che servono a dar da pensare ai bacchettoni). Ma non tutto e' da buttare, anzi! Quando l'autore riesce a tenere a freno la voglia un po' infantile di stupire a tutti i costi il lettore, le idee originali emergono eccome. L'esame dello scenario socio-politico-intellettuale del secolo scorso e di quello del nuovo millennio e' per certi versi affascinante, cosi' come e' curioso l'utilizzo di strumenti interpretativi da altri disdegnati: televisione, cinema, musica, fumetti etc. Affascinante e inquietante come il binomio paura/terrore che sembra essere alla base di tutta la teorizzazione di Zizek (laddove e' il terrore che smuove sorprendentemente la situazione e sopprime la paura bloccante). Non si tratta di diversi gradi di intensita' dello stesso fenomeno, ma di sensazioni, atteggiamenti, azioni, ragionamenti totalmente differenti. Dal passato (Rivoluzione Francese, Soviet, Nazismo, Stalinismo) al presente/futuro (ecologismo, biogenetica, proprieta' intellettuale e/o dei mezzi di produzione) sembra essere il suddetto binomio a indirizzare gli eventi. La proposta (quasi) shock che sia un nuovo "terrore egualitario" a imporsi per governare al meglio le dinamiche sociali e' quindi naturale conseguenza del ragionamento e il cuore della brillante analisi.
October 30, 2008
Incredible amount of energy- intellectual, verbal, imaginative.
An inexhaustible amount of anecdotes, one liners, ribald jokes, historical parallels, ironic reversals by the gallon.
That's part of what Zizek is about as a writer and a thinker. He is capable of building up a certain kind of rhetoric and a progression of logic to the extent that you start to go along with him and then...WHAMMO! You realize that he just decided to deconstruct himself back to rejecting his premise outright. The whole point is, as far as I'm concerned, the keeping up of the Socratic tradition which is all about irony and deconstruction before there even was a term.
His conclusions are messianic and he makes no apologies for this. It's stated on the dust jacket. I'm totally cool with that, since I gotta admit I'm a little bit annoyed with the endless nay-saying about contemporary issues- how we can no longer do this, that or the other thing because it's no longer possible due to history etc. And I'm glad that Zizek's starting to tackle conclusions and solutions, rather than the marginalization of the decentered Socrates.
The thing is: I'm not sure if he's advocating anything which is more than theoretical posturing. I am not going to give it away for anyone who might be reading, but he definitely does create a sort of platform, if you will.
It's just that even though he described concrete, empirical steps to take to create revolutionary change the glorious and rather sad fact remains that since he is so far outside the system as it is, which is a completely noble and decent place to be, that the idea of "reinventing revolutionary terror" is just too damn wacky to really do much outside of the people who are already on board.
The thing is, though, what Zizek refers to on the same side of the dust jacket is that the reader is expected to pick up on the encoded clues within the text to help understand where he is going- so there's always a sort of rip cord one can pull, I guess.
Anyway nobody writes as well about these extremely abstract terms and concepts with as much clarity, directness, eloquence, humor and goshdarn entertainment value than he can. Nothing is set in stone when you're reading Zizek and he doesn't make things up.
I'd love to write more about this book, since my brain often had that freshly-scrubbed feeling it gets when you read something that really challenges you (anybody know what I mean?).....it's just that- alas- it was a library copy and I had to return it.
This is really powerful stuff, though. Very highly recommended, hopefully that came through in all my weird verbiage.
Did not finish
November 30, 2016I think the time has come to give up on 'In Defense of Lost Causes'. Having worked my way through Living in the End Times and Trouble in Paradise: From the End of History to the End of Capitalism, that's more than enough Žižek for the moment. Instead I will read less obscurantist books of theory and make do with smaller doses of Žižek, for example this Guardian piece in which he claims Donald Trump is really a centrist liberal.
As to why I read 120-odd pages then gave up on it for three years, I borrowed it from the local library and delved that far before it was due back. Then the library retired its copy so I couldn't borrow it again. I suspect this was because the cover was damaged, the hardback binding coming away from the pages. It looked an awful lot like someone had thrown the book forcefully at a wall. Not me, I hasten to add, as I would never do that. But anyone who has read one of Žižek's books can surely understand the impulse.
As to why I read 120-odd pages then gave up on it for three years, I borrowed it from the local library and delved that far before it was due back. Then the library retired its copy so I couldn't borrow it again. I suspect this was because the cover was damaged, the hardback binding coming away from the pages. It looked an awful lot like someone had thrown the book forcefully at a wall. Not me, I hasten to add, as I would never do that. But anyone who has read one of Žižek's books can surely understand the impulse.
October 3, 2009
'In Defense of Lost Causes' is Slavoj Zizek's longest and most sustained effort to develop the political consequences of his philosophical work. In a certain sense, this book is a companion volume to 'The Parallax View', and it summarizes and condenses most of Zizek's political writings from the past decade. Zizek offers detailed readings of the events of 20th century politics (from Heidegger's Nazi engagement to the revolutionary--or not--politics of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao), and examines contemporary phenomena (from Hollywood to the ecological crisis) with a view to developing a leftist political program adequate to the 20th century. This book is also Zizek's most sustained effort to respond to his many critics and interlocutors (Critchley, Badiou, Laclau, Stavrakakis, and others). This is probably Zizek's best "political" book, and the closest he has come to writing a manifesto of his political views.
September 1, 2019
A pop-philosopher-Marxist. Why should I be interested in such a man? He was definitely on my to-ignore-list. But then I saw him in the debate with Jordan Peterson and although his tics (like constantly rubbing his nose) were making me crazy he seemed like an intelligent and humorous guy. And then I read an interview with him that convinced me to give him a chance.
So, In Defense of Lost Causes, it was.
And how can I dislike a book that starts like this " ... we need 'weak thought', opposed to all fundamentalism... we should no longer aim at all-explaining systems and global emancipatory projects... If the reader feels a minimum of sympathy with these lines, she should stop reading and cast aside this volume."
In other words, Žižek is in favor of fundamentalism and all-explaining systems. Like Marxism. At least one might think so. But then even more of a Marxist he is a Hegelian. Which means always expect the unexpected. Think dialectically, negate and negate the negation.
And just to give an example of the Hegelian power of thinking he advises us that the goal is not to see to it that we do not throw out the baby with the dirty water, but on the contrary to throw out the baby before it spoils the crystalline water with its excretions.
This is funny, but is it also a metaphor that in any way really tells us what to do?
The true aim of the 'Defense of Lost cases' he says uncharacteristically unambiguously, "is not to defend Stalinist terror, and so on, as such, but to render problematic the all-too-easy liberal-democratic alternative." (p.6)
Before he really starts off he gives his readers the excellent advice to mistrust him. When he does not give a damn about his opponent he will say that there is a slight misunderstanding (and the context is, that this is the way Rhett Butler’s famous words are translated for the Japanese audience.)
The one writer Žižek reminds me of the most is Chesterton. (And it helped that he quotes him from time to time.) Chesterton had after all written 'A Defense of Nonsense'. And while Chesterton talks about Catholicism instead of Marxism his weapons are very much the same. Use paradox, provoke as much as possible, dazzle your opponent by your sheer brilliance. (As Paul Feyerabend once remarked the aim of the argument is not to convince but to embarrass the opponent). So we get lots of anecdotes, aphorisms (e.g. "Christian and Muslim fundamentalists are a disgrace to true fundamentalism - p. 332") and even more quotations. And they all seem so fitting. Remarkedly, he gets his wisdom from pop culture (mostly films) just as easily and without ironic distance as from Milton or Kant.
And to me at least his allusions (and sometimes) interpretations of films are the most accessible parts of the book. Again, expect the unexpected. It is Good-bye Lenin that is the good film, Life of Others the bad. And it is 300 (by Frank Miller) that is an example of a modern, leftist brilliant film. Because, and that is his twist, it is not a glorification of our Western heritage, the self-sacrifice of the brave Spartans for the ultimate sake of democracy. In Žižek’s view, and it seems to me he does have a point here, it was the Greeks who were the terrorist states that resisted the legitimate power of civilization (the Spartans played the role of the Taliban).
So Žižek defends fundamentalism and terror. Now, I can follow the argument of Robespierre. In the revolutionary logic, it was necessary to kill Louis XVI. Louis cannot be presumed innocent ("There is no trial to be held here. Louis is not a defendant. You are not judges... etc." (p. 416) But I doubt that this can be generalized. I think it is perverse to speak of Stalin’s humanism. Again, I follow the argument, but I do not believe in the conclusion (which seems to be, the alternative would have been worse.)
But the point where I definitely cannot follow him is his treatment of Nazism. In a context highly interesting about Riefenstahl and Schoenberg he suddenly tells us that "what makes Nazism repulsive is not the rhetoric of final solution as such, but the concrete twist it gives to it." What are we to make of this? The twist is that they were serious? They actually tried to kill all Jews, whereas Stalin’s letting tens of millions of people starve to death was not a crime against humanity but an unhappy, necessary accident? This kind of thinking, I consider repulsive.
Žižek’s view of fascism (or nazism) is almost comically old-fashioned leftist: "One can then say, crazy as it may sound, Ghandi was more violent than Hitler." (p. 475) Admitting, that something sounds crazy does not automatically make it less crazy. What is the argument? That all of Hitler’s actions were in reality reactions. "He acted to prevent the Communist threat of a real change. His targeting the Jews was ultimately an act of displacement in which he avoided the real enemy – the core capitalist social relations themselves." (Whereas Gandhi tried to interrupt the basic functioning of the colonial state.) This is not crazy but silly. It hurts to even type this kind of stuff. I really thought that no man alive would seriously think like this today.
The other thing that I had some problems with is that I just could not make out, what he is thinking positively. What for example is communism for him? The definition of his buddy Alain Badiou ("everyone is equal to everyone else within the multiplicity of diversity of social functions") he dismisses. And also the notion of the classical working class by Gerald Cohen (majority, wealth-producing, exploited, needy). Then he brings in people living in slums for some reason who are needy but do not satisfy the other three criteria and he says: "One should resist the easy temptation of elevating and idealizing the slum-dwellers into a new revolutionary class." (p. 424) (Notice the elevating and idealizing.) But why bring them in then?
To summarize: This is a very satisfying book in the sense of giving us many things to think about, sometimes very cryptic, very often amusing and funny. The letters between Castro and Khrustshov alone would have made reading this worthwhile to me. His views on torture, for example, I can share without reservation, also on pornography. No doubt, he is a brilliant man. What is fascinating to me is the question of how his mind works. To what extent is he really an anti-semite. Is he just pretending? Is he just provocative for the fun of it? I am not sure. Maybe I will read some other work by him. Maybe not.
So, In Defense of Lost Causes, it was.
And how can I dislike a book that starts like this " ... we need 'weak thought', opposed to all fundamentalism... we should no longer aim at all-explaining systems and global emancipatory projects... If the reader feels a minimum of sympathy with these lines, she should stop reading and cast aside this volume."
In other words, Žižek is in favor of fundamentalism and all-explaining systems. Like Marxism. At least one might think so. But then even more of a Marxist he is a Hegelian. Which means always expect the unexpected. Think dialectically, negate and negate the negation.
And just to give an example of the Hegelian power of thinking he advises us that the goal is not to see to it that we do not throw out the baby with the dirty water, but on the contrary to throw out the baby before it spoils the crystalline water with its excretions.
This is funny, but is it also a metaphor that in any way really tells us what to do?
The true aim of the 'Defense of Lost cases' he says uncharacteristically unambiguously, "is not to defend Stalinist terror, and so on, as such, but to render problematic the all-too-easy liberal-democratic alternative." (p.6)
Before he really starts off he gives his readers the excellent advice to mistrust him. When he does not give a damn about his opponent he will say that there is a slight misunderstanding (and the context is, that this is the way Rhett Butler’s famous words are translated for the Japanese audience.)
The one writer Žižek reminds me of the most is Chesterton. (And it helped that he quotes him from time to time.) Chesterton had after all written 'A Defense of Nonsense'. And while Chesterton talks about Catholicism instead of Marxism his weapons are very much the same. Use paradox, provoke as much as possible, dazzle your opponent by your sheer brilliance. (As Paul Feyerabend once remarked the aim of the argument is not to convince but to embarrass the opponent). So we get lots of anecdotes, aphorisms (e.g. "Christian and Muslim fundamentalists are a disgrace to true fundamentalism - p. 332") and even more quotations. And they all seem so fitting. Remarkedly, he gets his wisdom from pop culture (mostly films) just as easily and without ironic distance as from Milton or Kant.
And to me at least his allusions (and sometimes) interpretations of films are the most accessible parts of the book. Again, expect the unexpected. It is Good-bye Lenin that is the good film, Life of Others the bad. And it is 300 (by Frank Miller) that is an example of a modern, leftist brilliant film. Because, and that is his twist, it is not a glorification of our Western heritage, the self-sacrifice of the brave Spartans for the ultimate sake of democracy. In Žižek’s view, and it seems to me he does have a point here, it was the Greeks who were the terrorist states that resisted the legitimate power of civilization (the Spartans played the role of the Taliban).
So Žižek defends fundamentalism and terror. Now, I can follow the argument of Robespierre. In the revolutionary logic, it was necessary to kill Louis XVI. Louis cannot be presumed innocent ("There is no trial to be held here. Louis is not a defendant. You are not judges... etc." (p. 416) But I doubt that this can be generalized. I think it is perverse to speak of Stalin’s humanism. Again, I follow the argument, but I do not believe in the conclusion (which seems to be, the alternative would have been worse.)
But the point where I definitely cannot follow him is his treatment of Nazism. In a context highly interesting about Riefenstahl and Schoenberg he suddenly tells us that "what makes Nazism repulsive is not the rhetoric of final solution as such, but the concrete twist it gives to it." What are we to make of this? The twist is that they were serious? They actually tried to kill all Jews, whereas Stalin’s letting tens of millions of people starve to death was not a crime against humanity but an unhappy, necessary accident? This kind of thinking, I consider repulsive.
Žižek’s view of fascism (or nazism) is almost comically old-fashioned leftist: "One can then say, crazy as it may sound, Ghandi was more violent than Hitler." (p. 475) Admitting, that something sounds crazy does not automatically make it less crazy. What is the argument? That all of Hitler’s actions were in reality reactions. "He acted to prevent the Communist threat of a real change. His targeting the Jews was ultimately an act of displacement in which he avoided the real enemy – the core capitalist social relations themselves." (Whereas Gandhi tried to interrupt the basic functioning of the colonial state.) This is not crazy but silly. It hurts to even type this kind of stuff. I really thought that no man alive would seriously think like this today.
The other thing that I had some problems with is that I just could not make out, what he is thinking positively. What for example is communism for him? The definition of his buddy Alain Badiou ("everyone is equal to everyone else within the multiplicity of diversity of social functions") he dismisses. And also the notion of the classical working class by Gerald Cohen (majority, wealth-producing, exploited, needy). Then he brings in people living in slums for some reason who are needy but do not satisfy the other three criteria and he says: "One should resist the easy temptation of elevating and idealizing the slum-dwellers into a new revolutionary class." (p. 424) (Notice the elevating and idealizing.) But why bring them in then?
To summarize: This is a very satisfying book in the sense of giving us many things to think about, sometimes very cryptic, very often amusing and funny. The letters between Castro and Khrustshov alone would have made reading this worthwhile to me. His views on torture, for example, I can share without reservation, also on pornography. No doubt, he is a brilliant man. What is fascinating to me is the question of how his mind works. To what extent is he really an anti-semite. Is he just pretending? Is he just provocative for the fun of it? I am not sure. Maybe I will read some other work by him. Maybe not.
September 16, 2008
Having poorly thought out my vacation, I managed to be bookless just prior to taking off. I didn't have time to order a decent book through interlibrary loan. Decent meaning: a book of fiction that had seemed promising based on a review in The New Yorker, London Review, New Yorker Review. Something like that. Alas, I asked around and Oliver suggested Go Go Girls of the Apocalypse.
I should have gotten in. I bailed out at the last minutes, to weak to spent nearly 20 clams on a book I'd probably read once and regretted that I hadn't read something more substantive. I don't know. Maybe it was entertaining enough. All I know is, I ended up spending most of my vacation reading back issues of The New Yorker. Which was great.
I read the first few chapters of _In Defense of Lost Causes_ on the plane trip. It seemed promising, at first. But man, my favorite *cough* academic cokehead really needs a better editor. Not a proofreader, mind. I mean: an editor with some cahones, willing to tell him that he is losing the flippin' plot. Zizek's chapters are all over the place, more so than previous books.
He also lurvs his parentheses within parentheses with parentheses and dashed comments within dashed comments. You can always tells a Zizek fan by the fact that they tend (as I do sometimes) to think in endless loops of parenthetical commentary. It's entertaining to listen to, I can say that. To read? Not so much.
About the only thing worth it in this book -- since all of the ideas are rehashed stuff Zizek's already said -- is places where he takes on his critics. This, my friends, is most amusing. He is so annoyed -- so peeved! -- at the utter audacity of his critics who have, he worries, misinterpreted him horribly. And if he's right -- I wouldn't dare say since I haven't read his critics -- then the places where he catches them out on a contradiction are quite amusing. But again, it isn't the substance of what Zizek has to say that is interesting here. It's the extreme state of irritation he is so obviously in when he addresses critics. If I weren't too lazy, I'd trot out the part where he basically says something like, "The best I can say for my interlocutor's ability to demonstrate a point is that he nicely demonstrates illiteracy." Basically, Zizek declares: "The idiot can't even read what I write. I can't believe I have to address this. He is so wrong. He is not even wrong!"
Other than that? Well, I guess Zizek's take on Heidegger is a change of pace from the typical fare. Similarly his take on Foucault's change of heart after his encounter/engagement with the Iranian revolution is worth reading. Are arguments here impressive? I didn't think so; merely interesting. What Zizek misses is relevancy. As he moves beyond attempts to explain Lacan to students via references to popular culture, and tries to be a political/social theorist with something meaningful to say to the rest of us, Zizek reveals that, at least when it comes to books, he should stick to short essays written for periodicals.
I should have gotten in. I bailed out at the last minutes, to weak to spent nearly 20 clams on a book I'd probably read once and regretted that I hadn't read something more substantive. I don't know. Maybe it was entertaining enough. All I know is, I ended up spending most of my vacation reading back issues of The New Yorker. Which was great.
I read the first few chapters of _In Defense of Lost Causes_ on the plane trip. It seemed promising, at first. But man, my favorite *cough* academic cokehead really needs a better editor. Not a proofreader, mind. I mean: an editor with some cahones, willing to tell him that he is losing the flippin' plot. Zizek's chapters are all over the place, more so than previous books.
He also lurvs his parentheses within parentheses with parentheses and dashed comments within dashed comments. You can always tells a Zizek fan by the fact that they tend (as I do sometimes) to think in endless loops of parenthetical commentary. It's entertaining to listen to, I can say that. To read? Not so much.
About the only thing worth it in this book -- since all of the ideas are rehashed stuff Zizek's already said -- is places where he takes on his critics. This, my friends, is most amusing. He is so annoyed -- so peeved! -- at the utter audacity of his critics who have, he worries, misinterpreted him horribly. And if he's right -- I wouldn't dare say since I haven't read his critics -- then the places where he catches them out on a contradiction are quite amusing. But again, it isn't the substance of what Zizek has to say that is interesting here. It's the extreme state of irritation he is so obviously in when he addresses critics. If I weren't too lazy, I'd trot out the part where he basically says something like, "The best I can say for my interlocutor's ability to demonstrate a point is that he nicely demonstrates illiteracy." Basically, Zizek declares: "The idiot can't even read what I write. I can't believe I have to address this. He is so wrong. He is not even wrong!"
Other than that? Well, I guess Zizek's take on Heidegger is a change of pace from the typical fare. Similarly his take on Foucault's change of heart after his encounter/engagement with the Iranian revolution is worth reading. Are arguments here impressive? I didn't think so; merely interesting. What Zizek misses is relevancy. As he moves beyond attempts to explain Lacan to students via references to popular culture, and tries to be a political/social theorist with something meaningful to say to the rest of us, Zizek reveals that, at least when it comes to books, he should stick to short essays written for periodicals.
June 6, 2015
"Where, then, do we stand today? How can we break out of the crisis of determinate negation and enact a subtraction in its authentic violence?"
This book is dense: a cartwheeling cornucopia of topics saturated with philosophical and psychoanalytic references as if the reader was, at the very least, in possession of a BA in Philosophy (I only have a lowly, long-ago minor), and while I could link certain people/theories/historic events (e.g., Foucault, Barthes, Freud, Derrida, Hegel, Nietzsche, etc.), shouldering through this lengthy read was tough-going--my eyes glazed over entire sections and sometimes left me wondering who the author thought his audience was, and how nearly unapproachable the book can feel once one's knee-deep into it. But, as if in mythological quicksand, I couldn't escape. It is ultimately rewarding in the end, and one's IQ may actually go up a point or two.
Be brave, be strong, be Wikipedia-ready.
For philosophy majors: 5 stars
For the rest of us: 3 stars
This book is dense: a cartwheeling cornucopia of topics saturated with philosophical and psychoanalytic references as if the reader was, at the very least, in possession of a BA in Philosophy (I only have a lowly, long-ago minor), and while I could link certain people/theories/historic events (e.g., Foucault, Barthes, Freud, Derrida, Hegel, Nietzsche, etc.), shouldering through this lengthy read was tough-going--my eyes glazed over entire sections and sometimes left me wondering who the author thought his audience was, and how nearly unapproachable the book can feel once one's knee-deep into it. But, as if in mythological quicksand, I couldn't escape. It is ultimately rewarding in the end, and one's IQ may actually go up a point or two.
Be brave, be strong, be Wikipedia-ready.
For philosophy majors: 5 stars
For the rest of us: 3 stars
January 1, 2019
While Zizek's key weaknesses (a tendency to embark on page-long meanderings from one topic into analogous but wholly different spheres of thinking, cannibalization of earlier books/talks, the reliance on a few crutch anecdotes, etc) again make their appearance in the very political In Defense of Lost Causes, it is one of his better works by far. Seeking to comprehensively judge and learn from the history of communism/radical egalitarianism, Zizek gathers and connects texts from all throughout history and political spectra like a beardy katamari, if not laying bare hidden frontiers and tensions himself then at least mapping the ones others have demonstrated before. For this, he mostly relies on the work of Laclau, Badiou, Heidegger, Benjamin and Deleuze.
Going into it, the chapters on Stalin and Mao are an especially weird experience: echoing Badiou's assertion that Mao thinks "in an almost infinite way", the trenches in the battlefield of ethics and ideology moves away from the value of lives as the things to be preserved (one of the main points of critique against the structural violence inherent in capitalism) but rather towards the survival of the possibility of communism; Zizek’s assertion that Mao’s doctrine was no longer fundamentally Marxist is most definitely instructive in this regards. The big ultra-left question which these days is best formulated within the communalization discourse – namely, how can communism as a real movement that abolishes the state of things be established if the historic attempts are so indebted to capitalist criteria such as commodity production and the centring of production for growth over production for maintenance – peeks around the corner here again. Zizek’s discussion of ‘divine violence’ is supremely interesting and important in this regard, although one has to ask: his ultimate assessment of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution being that its extreme violence was a symptom of its failure to articulate the radically new, and it thus having been a failure, is this not a major strike against the self-legitimacy of divine violence? Or does he, like Badiou, see the GPCR (along with the Paris commune) as a necessary failure that furthered the science of revolution – the results of which would still indicate the clear failure of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine as a whole.
After the initial expanding bloom of tactics and strategies discussed, in part III Zizek starts whittling down the option tree until he finally, somewhat anticlimactically, arrives at the model of the dictatorship of the proletariat, Chavez-style. This is not to a state to be achieved through violent overthrow, but through patient hegemonic build-up of communist power; he simply juxtaposes this dictatorship to the parliamentary system controlled by the bourgeoisie – the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
As with much of what Zizek produces, the book could do with some editing – the frequent lacanian digressions often only serve as reinforcing analogies, but don’t support the frameworks on their own terms – but is nonetheless focussed, drawing strength from a logical narrative theory-arc. Recommended reading for whoever finds themselves getting complacent around their own revolutionary theories and formulas.
Going into it, the chapters on Stalin and Mao are an especially weird experience: echoing Badiou's assertion that Mao thinks "in an almost infinite way", the trenches in the battlefield of ethics and ideology moves away from the value of lives as the things to be preserved (one of the main points of critique against the structural violence inherent in capitalism) but rather towards the survival of the possibility of communism; Zizek’s assertion that Mao’s doctrine was no longer fundamentally Marxist is most definitely instructive in this regards. The big ultra-left question which these days is best formulated within the communalization discourse – namely, how can communism as a real movement that abolishes the state of things be established if the historic attempts are so indebted to capitalist criteria such as commodity production and the centring of production for growth over production for maintenance – peeks around the corner here again. Zizek’s discussion of ‘divine violence’ is supremely interesting and important in this regard, although one has to ask: his ultimate assessment of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution being that its extreme violence was a symptom of its failure to articulate the radically new, and it thus having been a failure, is this not a major strike against the self-legitimacy of divine violence? Or does he, like Badiou, see the GPCR (along with the Paris commune) as a necessary failure that furthered the science of revolution – the results of which would still indicate the clear failure of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine as a whole.
After the initial expanding bloom of tactics and strategies discussed, in part III Zizek starts whittling down the option tree until he finally, somewhat anticlimactically, arrives at the model of the dictatorship of the proletariat, Chavez-style. This is not to a state to be achieved through violent overthrow, but through patient hegemonic build-up of communist power; he simply juxtaposes this dictatorship to the parliamentary system controlled by the bourgeoisie – the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
As with much of what Zizek produces, the book could do with some editing – the frequent lacanian digressions often only serve as reinforcing analogies, but don’t support the frameworks on their own terms – but is nonetheless focussed, drawing strength from a logical narrative theory-arc. Recommended reading for whoever finds themselves getting complacent around their own revolutionary theories and formulas.
March 12, 2026
Say you want a revolution, well, you know, we all want to change the world.
And, of course, people generally don’t say that at all today. But is it possible to change the world without one? That’s the question underlying this book. We have taken some ideas today as being axiomatic. One is that any revolution that is based on violence will end up being repressive – and so, aren’t we better off with the devil we know, even if the devil we know really is the devil? We live in a time when authoritarianism is spreading across the world. If half of what is coming out of the United States at the moment is true, authoritarianism is the politest word for what we are witnessing. The world certainly needs changing. If we are to have a world where most of us are going to go on living, the ruling class can no longer be allowed to rule. So, what is to be done?
This book traces the history of different ways that socialism has become a lost cause. Not least in how the ‘left’ have moved away from being ‘grand unified theories’. This is presented in the book as the difference between the dialectics of Hegel and Marx – where history had a clear direction and a clear driving force propelling it in that direction – to ‘post-modernism’ or a kind of eclecticism based on relativism. So that for Hegel, history was the development of the self-consciousness of the spirit as it moved towards ever greater freedom and love. For Marx, the development of the productive forces that would inevitably lead to a proletarian revolution. The point of this revolution being that since the working class was not a class in the same sense as all previous classes, the revolution it would bring about would mean abolishing all classes, itself included, so that society would become an association of people. As such, the revolution was supposed to occur in the most highly developed capitalist countries, where the contradictions of capitalism between capitalist and worker were most intense. But this was not what happened. As Zizek points out, Lenin was hoping for a revolution in Germany as quickly as possible after the Russian revolution, which never occurred. Building socialism in one relatively underdeveloped country then became the new mission, even though this appeared to be in contradiction to what Marx envisaged. Mao moved further away from Marx’s idea of the revolution by proposing that peasants struggles or national liberation struggles could be the basis for a revolution in an even less developed country. Holding power in these countries became an end in itself and one where the promised withering away of the state or even the slogan of all power to the soviets never really got off the ground.
I’ve read so many of Zizek’s books now in quick succession, I can’t remember which idea is from which book, but in one of them he says that when a repressive regime is overthrown there is general jubilation. The problem is that, although the entire country is celebrating, they are not celebrating the same thing. The fall of the socialist governments in Eastern Europe is a case in point – where those who wanted ‘real socialism’ saw this as an opportunity to start again, where those who wanted to start their own businesses saw this as something different entirely, where the religious saw the collapse of the regime as a chance to bring about a society based on their moral convictions, and so on. So, the initial celebration simply could not last – since whatever replaced the old system could not hope to meet the dreams of all of those celebrating – since these hopes and dreams were mutually exclusive. How this didn’t descend into civil war is beyond me. In this book, he says that this is why most revolutions end up being two revolutions (like in the French revolution and the terror, or the two revolutions in Russia in 1917). In the first, the old regime is removed to much fanfare. In the second, those who want to bring about real change that will ensure the old regime cannot come back do so with ruthless efficiency. Here he quotes Robespierre about the terror – that too many people want a revolution without a revolution.
This isn’t merely a question of the fact that those who hold power will fight to the death to retain their power, but that power sustains itself not only through violence, but also by creating a hegemonic world that makes most people believe that the current organisation of society is just, natural and inevitable – even when it proves anything but. The task of the revolution, then, isn’t just to cease power, but also to create relations between people that do away with the apparent ‘naturalness’ of the previous ways of relating between people. That is, to create a new human nature.
The need for some way to impose these new relations between people becomes essential if the revolution isn’t to just go back to what there was before with new figureheads. Which is where people are likely to say that such ruthlessness immediately undermines the aims of the revolution, or as John Lennon would say, ‘but if you want money for people with minds that hate, all I can tell you is buddy you have to wait. You know it’s going to be alright...’ The problem is that I don’t know that it is going to be alright.
The problem with non-violent struggle is that it is very rarely met with non-violence in return – I’ve recently watched a peaceful protest in Sydney be attacked by the police where a grandmother had her back broken when the police charged the crowd they had entrapped so they could not escape. And we are currently watching how the gains of the civil rights movement in the US and the feminist movement internationally are being reversed daily, showing that each of these ‘revolutions’ were clearly unfinished. Worse, while we can complain about the horrors that come from violent revolutions, we seem to ignore the horrors of the current system’s use of violence in all of its guises. The US, for example, has the world’s largest prison population, composed almost entirely of people of Colour and minorities who are forced to work as slaves, despite, I’m nearly certain, there was a Civil War over this 160 years ago. According to the US census bureau, 11% of the population live in poverty (hardly unrelated to the first statistic). The US has done everything in its power across the last two administrations to allow an active genocide in Palestine to continue. Hillary Clinton in 2008 said that if the US elected her she would ‘totally obliterate’ Iran if it attacked Israel – not a million miles away from the current US adventure in the Middle East that looks likely to sink the world economy. The point being, that it is hard to claim violence is completely forbidden when seeking to change society when the current system imposes so much violence upon its own people and across the world.
That said, how do we ensure that whatever we replace the current system with isn’t worse than what we already have? As we race towards climate catastrophe, that question is becoming less relevant by the day. It is utterly clear that our current system is not only doing nothing to delay climate change, but rather we are going to drill baby, drill to rush it ever closer. As I constantly tell people, I’m a pessimist. I don’t see any revolutionary movement about to take power any time soon, violently or non-violently – and we don’t have a lot of time left – so, all of this is purely academic. But I do believe that whatever changes we need to make really do need to be revolutionary. The time for gradualism is long past.
What he doesn’t talk about here,( but oddly, something I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since reading the book) is the idea from Sartre that we need to become ever more responsible for everything that happens in our lives. You might think, particularly from listening to liberals in the US, that the only people responsible for the current situation are those who directly voted for Trump, or those who refused to vote at all. And superficially, this is true enough. If more people had voted, or not voted for Trump, he wouldn’t have come back to power. This leaves nearly half of the voting public potentially feeling rather smug with themselves – you know, that they voted against him and so aren’t responsible for re-electing a child rapist and megalomaniac. Except, responsibility doesn’t work like that. Everyone is responsible, whether you voted for or against him. When he sought to overturn the election result when he was defeated, not nearly enough was done to ensure he could never stand again. The violence you walk past is the violence you accept. And you are responsible for that. If the system is rigged, you are responsible for the system you participate in as if it is not rigged. That he could stack the Supreme Court, disallow Obama from appointing someone to it, is about to deny married women the vote in the upcoming elections – all of these are values too many in the American public appear to have turned their faces from. That big money can buy elections since the passing of the Citizens United ruling is yet another rigging of the system that has been allowed to stand. And if any country should be able to understand this, you’d think it would be the United States. The United States was born out of civil disobedience – you remember, the whole ‘no taxation without representation’ thing. If the system is stacked against you, you have a responsibility to not merely turn up to vote as if you lived in a democracy, but to unstack it.
At the moment, in Australia, what had been a fringe, right wing party of lunatics is currently polling in second place – going from something like 4% of the vote to nearly 25%. One Nation has long been seen as a kind of terrifying joke by much of the population, run by a woman called Pauline Hanson who, when first elected to parliament, said Australia was being swamped by Asians, and now says there are no good Muslims. The thing is that I doubt Australians are now supporting her for her racism – which is not to say that Australia isn’t a deeply racist country. Rather, when those saying they will vote for her are asked what they think needs to happen to the Australian political system, a sizable proportion say, ‘tear it all down’. It is not so much that they are voting for her, but rather voting against the current system that has, in ways too numerous to count, let them down, left them out, actively made their lives worse. And like Trump’s ‘draining the swamp’ – her promises will also remain unfulfilled and leave those who vote for her even worse off.
It is not clear to me what will happen next. The surge in support for the Greens in the UK offers some hope, but there has been no similar swing to any left wing parties in Australia or the US, which looks like going back to the Disappointacrats in November. This is true here, despite our Labor Party moving increasingly to the right – it was the first government in the world to back Trump’s illegal war on Iran.
Part of the reason why I’m so cynical is that I’ve been watching too much YouTube lately. I’ve noticed that I’ve seen virtually no images in the ‘real news’ of the impact of Iranian missiles on Israel. Not even what we used to be shown from previous wars of missiles exploding in the sky against the Iron Dome. Some of the images I have seen show Tel Aviv basically reduced to rubble, which have clearly been generated by AI. I honestly have no idea what to believe any longer – certainly I no longer believe my eyes. A couple of months ago I saw an interview with Yanis Varoufakis. A friend of his had sent him a link to a video saying that it was great to see him talking such sense, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, he clicked on the link and after watching it for two minutes, realised that it wasn’t him talking, but an AI generated video using his face and voice. He noticed because he was wearing the wrong shirt in the video. The bit that stuns me about this is that here is a man, watching a video of himself, and it took him two minutes to realise that the video wasn’t actually himself talking. And that his friend never realised it wasn’t him, in fact, the opposite, thought he was making particularly good sense. Did I mention I’m a pessimist? Perhaps I should end this with lyrics from another John Lennon song: How can I go forward when I don’t know which way I’m facing? How can I go forward when I don’t know which way to turn? How can I go forward when there’s something I’m not sure of? Oh no. Oh no.
And, of course, people generally don’t say that at all today. But is it possible to change the world without one? That’s the question underlying this book. We have taken some ideas today as being axiomatic. One is that any revolution that is based on violence will end up being repressive – and so, aren’t we better off with the devil we know, even if the devil we know really is the devil? We live in a time when authoritarianism is spreading across the world. If half of what is coming out of the United States at the moment is true, authoritarianism is the politest word for what we are witnessing. The world certainly needs changing. If we are to have a world where most of us are going to go on living, the ruling class can no longer be allowed to rule. So, what is to be done?
This book traces the history of different ways that socialism has become a lost cause. Not least in how the ‘left’ have moved away from being ‘grand unified theories’. This is presented in the book as the difference between the dialectics of Hegel and Marx – where history had a clear direction and a clear driving force propelling it in that direction – to ‘post-modernism’ or a kind of eclecticism based on relativism. So that for Hegel, history was the development of the self-consciousness of the spirit as it moved towards ever greater freedom and love. For Marx, the development of the productive forces that would inevitably lead to a proletarian revolution. The point of this revolution being that since the working class was not a class in the same sense as all previous classes, the revolution it would bring about would mean abolishing all classes, itself included, so that society would become an association of people. As such, the revolution was supposed to occur in the most highly developed capitalist countries, where the contradictions of capitalism between capitalist and worker were most intense. But this was not what happened. As Zizek points out, Lenin was hoping for a revolution in Germany as quickly as possible after the Russian revolution, which never occurred. Building socialism in one relatively underdeveloped country then became the new mission, even though this appeared to be in contradiction to what Marx envisaged. Mao moved further away from Marx’s idea of the revolution by proposing that peasants struggles or national liberation struggles could be the basis for a revolution in an even less developed country. Holding power in these countries became an end in itself and one where the promised withering away of the state or even the slogan of all power to the soviets never really got off the ground.
I’ve read so many of Zizek’s books now in quick succession, I can’t remember which idea is from which book, but in one of them he says that when a repressive regime is overthrown there is general jubilation. The problem is that, although the entire country is celebrating, they are not celebrating the same thing. The fall of the socialist governments in Eastern Europe is a case in point – where those who wanted ‘real socialism’ saw this as an opportunity to start again, where those who wanted to start their own businesses saw this as something different entirely, where the religious saw the collapse of the regime as a chance to bring about a society based on their moral convictions, and so on. So, the initial celebration simply could not last – since whatever replaced the old system could not hope to meet the dreams of all of those celebrating – since these hopes and dreams were mutually exclusive. How this didn’t descend into civil war is beyond me. In this book, he says that this is why most revolutions end up being two revolutions (like in the French revolution and the terror, or the two revolutions in Russia in 1917). In the first, the old regime is removed to much fanfare. In the second, those who want to bring about real change that will ensure the old regime cannot come back do so with ruthless efficiency. Here he quotes Robespierre about the terror – that too many people want a revolution without a revolution.
This isn’t merely a question of the fact that those who hold power will fight to the death to retain their power, but that power sustains itself not only through violence, but also by creating a hegemonic world that makes most people believe that the current organisation of society is just, natural and inevitable – even when it proves anything but. The task of the revolution, then, isn’t just to cease power, but also to create relations between people that do away with the apparent ‘naturalness’ of the previous ways of relating between people. That is, to create a new human nature.
The need for some way to impose these new relations between people becomes essential if the revolution isn’t to just go back to what there was before with new figureheads. Which is where people are likely to say that such ruthlessness immediately undermines the aims of the revolution, or as John Lennon would say, ‘but if you want money for people with minds that hate, all I can tell you is buddy you have to wait. You know it’s going to be alright...’ The problem is that I don’t know that it is going to be alright.
The problem with non-violent struggle is that it is very rarely met with non-violence in return – I’ve recently watched a peaceful protest in Sydney be attacked by the police where a grandmother had her back broken when the police charged the crowd they had entrapped so they could not escape. And we are currently watching how the gains of the civil rights movement in the US and the feminist movement internationally are being reversed daily, showing that each of these ‘revolutions’ were clearly unfinished. Worse, while we can complain about the horrors that come from violent revolutions, we seem to ignore the horrors of the current system’s use of violence in all of its guises. The US, for example, has the world’s largest prison population, composed almost entirely of people of Colour and minorities who are forced to work as slaves, despite, I’m nearly certain, there was a Civil War over this 160 years ago. According to the US census bureau, 11% of the population live in poverty (hardly unrelated to the first statistic). The US has done everything in its power across the last two administrations to allow an active genocide in Palestine to continue. Hillary Clinton in 2008 said that if the US elected her she would ‘totally obliterate’ Iran if it attacked Israel – not a million miles away from the current US adventure in the Middle East that looks likely to sink the world economy. The point being, that it is hard to claim violence is completely forbidden when seeking to change society when the current system imposes so much violence upon its own people and across the world.
That said, how do we ensure that whatever we replace the current system with isn’t worse than what we already have? As we race towards climate catastrophe, that question is becoming less relevant by the day. It is utterly clear that our current system is not only doing nothing to delay climate change, but rather we are going to drill baby, drill to rush it ever closer. As I constantly tell people, I’m a pessimist. I don’t see any revolutionary movement about to take power any time soon, violently or non-violently – and we don’t have a lot of time left – so, all of this is purely academic. But I do believe that whatever changes we need to make really do need to be revolutionary. The time for gradualism is long past.
What he doesn’t talk about here,( but oddly, something I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since reading the book) is the idea from Sartre that we need to become ever more responsible for everything that happens in our lives. You might think, particularly from listening to liberals in the US, that the only people responsible for the current situation are those who directly voted for Trump, or those who refused to vote at all. And superficially, this is true enough. If more people had voted, or not voted for Trump, he wouldn’t have come back to power. This leaves nearly half of the voting public potentially feeling rather smug with themselves – you know, that they voted against him and so aren’t responsible for re-electing a child rapist and megalomaniac. Except, responsibility doesn’t work like that. Everyone is responsible, whether you voted for or against him. When he sought to overturn the election result when he was defeated, not nearly enough was done to ensure he could never stand again. The violence you walk past is the violence you accept. And you are responsible for that. If the system is rigged, you are responsible for the system you participate in as if it is not rigged. That he could stack the Supreme Court, disallow Obama from appointing someone to it, is about to deny married women the vote in the upcoming elections – all of these are values too many in the American public appear to have turned their faces from. That big money can buy elections since the passing of the Citizens United ruling is yet another rigging of the system that has been allowed to stand. And if any country should be able to understand this, you’d think it would be the United States. The United States was born out of civil disobedience – you remember, the whole ‘no taxation without representation’ thing. If the system is stacked against you, you have a responsibility to not merely turn up to vote as if you lived in a democracy, but to unstack it.
At the moment, in Australia, what had been a fringe, right wing party of lunatics is currently polling in second place – going from something like 4% of the vote to nearly 25%. One Nation has long been seen as a kind of terrifying joke by much of the population, run by a woman called Pauline Hanson who, when first elected to parliament, said Australia was being swamped by Asians, and now says there are no good Muslims. The thing is that I doubt Australians are now supporting her for her racism – which is not to say that Australia isn’t a deeply racist country. Rather, when those saying they will vote for her are asked what they think needs to happen to the Australian political system, a sizable proportion say, ‘tear it all down’. It is not so much that they are voting for her, but rather voting against the current system that has, in ways too numerous to count, let them down, left them out, actively made their lives worse. And like Trump’s ‘draining the swamp’ – her promises will also remain unfulfilled and leave those who vote for her even worse off.
It is not clear to me what will happen next. The surge in support for the Greens in the UK offers some hope, but there has been no similar swing to any left wing parties in Australia or the US, which looks like going back to the Disappointacrats in November. This is true here, despite our Labor Party moving increasingly to the right – it was the first government in the world to back Trump’s illegal war on Iran.
Part of the reason why I’m so cynical is that I’ve been watching too much YouTube lately. I’ve noticed that I’ve seen virtually no images in the ‘real news’ of the impact of Iranian missiles on Israel. Not even what we used to be shown from previous wars of missiles exploding in the sky against the Iron Dome. Some of the images I have seen show Tel Aviv basically reduced to rubble, which have clearly been generated by AI. I honestly have no idea what to believe any longer – certainly I no longer believe my eyes. A couple of months ago I saw an interview with Yanis Varoufakis. A friend of his had sent him a link to a video saying that it was great to see him talking such sense, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, he clicked on the link and after watching it for two minutes, realised that it wasn’t him talking, but an AI generated video using his face and voice. He noticed because he was wearing the wrong shirt in the video. The bit that stuns me about this is that here is a man, watching a video of himself, and it took him two minutes to realise that the video wasn’t actually himself talking. And that his friend never realised it wasn’t him, in fact, the opposite, thought he was making particularly good sense. Did I mention I’m a pessimist? Perhaps I should end this with lyrics from another John Lennon song: How can I go forward when I don’t know which way I’m facing? How can I go forward when I don’t know which way to turn? How can I go forward when there’s something I’m not sure of? Oh no. Oh no.
July 24, 2011
Reading Žižek is a healthy way to maintain a healthy dose of humility: his brain is just too big, and his grasp and use of Lacan goes well beyond my simple understanding of this particular brand of psychoanalysis. This book is concurrently inspiring and provoking in the extreme, and frustrating.
It’s inspiration comes from his optimism – whereas so much of the Left is, in the current conjuncture, pessimistic (a point he returns to time and again in his critical assessment of a seeming acceptance of liberal capitalism as the best system we can hope for), Žižek’s analysis is that the tensions, antagonisms and contradictions of the present juncture reveal specific sites of struggle, suggest viable tactics, and hold hope for transformation. But, this change, he argues, will require a significant reconceptualisation of the politics of struggle and of our understanding of the dispossessed and excluded. The second tier of inspiration is drawn from his demand that we revisit political failures to find why they inspired so many, and why support for them seemed sound.
The provocation comes from his disaggregation of forms of violence, his celebration of ‘divine’ violence – Lenin’s Red Terror and Robespierre and the time of the Thermidor – versus system maintaining violence – Stalin’s purges, for instance.
The frustration stems from the detail of the debates with others who have critiques his work in the past – it is almost as if we need to read everything he has to keep up with the points being made (we don’t have to, but sometimes it feels that way).
The thing that I most appreciate about much of Žižek’s work, including this one, is the demand that we look at how contemporary political debates and action excludes the option of revolutionary transformation, and an assertion of the distinctiveness of class as a social division unable to be resolved by the inclusion-based-demands of liberal multi-culturalism. In this, he reasserts a classic Marxist argument that in liberating itself the proletariat must destroy itself.
The book, like most things by Žižek, is demanding and will require several visits. The key political tactics chapter is reiterated in a different extended form in ‘First as Tragedy, Then as Farce’ from 2009, and in other forms in places like the 'New Left Review', and reading it first might help make more sense of this.
It’s inspiration comes from his optimism – whereas so much of the Left is, in the current conjuncture, pessimistic (a point he returns to time and again in his critical assessment of a seeming acceptance of liberal capitalism as the best system we can hope for), Žižek’s analysis is that the tensions, antagonisms and contradictions of the present juncture reveal specific sites of struggle, suggest viable tactics, and hold hope for transformation. But, this change, he argues, will require a significant reconceptualisation of the politics of struggle and of our understanding of the dispossessed and excluded. The second tier of inspiration is drawn from his demand that we revisit political failures to find why they inspired so many, and why support for them seemed sound.
The provocation comes from his disaggregation of forms of violence, his celebration of ‘divine’ violence – Lenin’s Red Terror and Robespierre and the time of the Thermidor – versus system maintaining violence – Stalin’s purges, for instance.
The frustration stems from the detail of the debates with others who have critiques his work in the past – it is almost as if we need to read everything he has to keep up with the points being made (we don’t have to, but sometimes it feels that way).
The thing that I most appreciate about much of Žižek’s work, including this one, is the demand that we look at how contemporary political debates and action excludes the option of revolutionary transformation, and an assertion of the distinctiveness of class as a social division unable to be resolved by the inclusion-based-demands of liberal multi-culturalism. In this, he reasserts a classic Marxist argument that in liberating itself the proletariat must destroy itself.
The book, like most things by Žižek, is demanding and will require several visits. The key political tactics chapter is reiterated in a different extended form in ‘First as Tragedy, Then as Farce’ from 2009, and in other forms in places like the 'New Left Review', and reading it first might help make more sense of this.
February 27, 2025
Will truly go down as one of the great philosophical works for our time.
In Žižek’s career there are three broadly defined movements in my view:
1. Early Žižek was a point in time where he had a broadly sketched concept for what it was he wanted to study. Basically this: to use Marxist critique (Althusserian ideology criticism specifically) and Lacanian analysis to bring out of specific Hegel. He has no precise definition of how exactly to do this, and often found his diagnosis of contemporary society in primarily American films and used them to try his best to understand contemporary capitalism.
2. Following his 2000 book The Fragile Absolute, a work on Christianity, Žižek has engaged in a primarily Badiouian project. Alain Badiou’s philosophy has maintained a strong influence (both in response to it and using it) among contemporary continental philosophy. And the years since 2000 Zizek rose to a profound level of fame for a cultural theorist. He engaged often and deeply with religion just as Badiou did, finding in the abstract tradition of Plato through Paul an articulation of a subject deprived of its Aristotelian and metaphysical accretions. In Badiou’s philosophy the metaphysical Event is a primary movement in history and culture which arises in politics. Is there any other way to understand a post-9/11 world, where American exceptionalism was torn down by a plane and sent Americans into a murderous frenzy against Iraq? In Badiou there is a healthy sense of the symbolic and literary significance of politics, comparable to the politically Platonic theokratia which is to be cured through philosophy. Sahdam Hussein was not simply a rival political figure, he was an old-fashioned villain: the culmination of all which is ‘Non-American’, part of the Axis of Evil and a symbolic Other.
It is in this mode that Zizek wrote In Defense of Lost Causes. It is the culmination of his Badiou period, the book is dedicated to him and contains a wonderful chapter on his thought. But it also contains the seed of his rejection of Badiou. It is a book about the end of days, a philosophical phenomena which has animated much of Zizeks work, having written many books on it. This is right, as what to do while the world is about to end is the immediate subject matter of all philosophy written right now. The book is clearly derived from a reading of Badiou and an engagement with his work. As Badiou engages with the mythical Plato, Paul, or Sophocles to diagnose a mythical historical time defined in response to Events, Zizek does a similar thing. But he does so in response to the pantheon of mythical figures in the 20th century, for example Heidegger, Shostakovich, Stalin, Hitler, Foucault et cetera. But all of them are tied in response to the Revolutionary.
Lenin, Robespierre and Mao are the subject of in my view the most important chapter of this book on Revolutionary terror and transformation. Any Badiouian Event is really a Revolution expressed with great terror. But what scares liberal democracy most particularly about the above mythical revolutionaries is their transformative power. Following the Russian Revolution, the Russian people were changed internally and in their consciousness. This change is the Badiouian Event with the ideological element, i.e. an Event expressed by and through historical/political movement. It is the tireless pursuit of the Utopian better world which activates and catalyzes the revolutionary transformation in the people. This is the same thing which activates the political spirit of Christianity. But there is, of course, a problem shown in all three of these historical examples: what happens the day after? Terror, folly, violence, hysteria. This is a deeply rooted historical fact and leads Zizek to acknowledge the problematic fact of any revolutionary transformation: it must fail. Stated allegorically, Paul needed to be violently blinded on the road to Damascus.
In this there is the germination of Badiou’s overcoming. Trump’s election was a fundamental moment in Zizek’s development. He famously advocated for Americans to vote for Trump. In order to make a revolutionary consciousness return to the American people, we needed to support a radical Other; trigger a Badiouian Event. But, this did not work. It did not happen. Instead of a radical transformation of consciousness from liberal democracy we found a profound and corrosive decadence in Trump. In Trump there is a corrosive recoiling, not a radical movement forward. No Event was triggered. At roughly the same time, Zizek publicly announced his ending of his friendship with Alain Badiou citing non-specific ‘political disagreements’. I believe there is little coincidence. Trump was not an Event, as Trump even attempted to appear as.
In the time between the original publishing of the book in 2008 and the second edition in 2017, of course Trump has just been elected. While the full ramifications of Trump’s damage was yet to come to pass as in the Pandemic, Trump was clearly far from transformative. In the second edition is the first instance of the third Zizek, the Zizek that is here now. 3. Contains Zizek’s most mature philosophy, returning often to his film and cultural roots. But he also takes often refuge in the reflection on Pauline radicality and the analysis of political structures as in his second period. He has returned to Hegel in a full and complete form. And he has returned to the Event of Love. Love was a political subject he studied closely in his early work but one which is practically absent from his lengthy second Badiouian period. But he has returned to it. And, after his wonderful studies of Che Guevara and Rousseau (Living in the End Times) and Antigone he has seen love with a new revolutionary potential. He sees Love in its Hegelian completeness, leading to revolutionary transformation, and expressly denied its rightful place by Badiouian philosophy of the Event. Trump represents the repugnant recoiling from the revolutionary content of Love, and Zizek saw this.
Zizek is the story for our time, a prophet and articulation of the post-Trump world.
At the bottom of this violence and recoiling from any possible Event, there is always the transformative power of Love.
In Žižek’s career there are three broadly defined movements in my view:
1. Early Žižek was a point in time where he had a broadly sketched concept for what it was he wanted to study. Basically this: to use Marxist critique (Althusserian ideology criticism specifically) and Lacanian analysis to bring out of specific Hegel. He has no precise definition of how exactly to do this, and often found his diagnosis of contemporary society in primarily American films and used them to try his best to understand contemporary capitalism.
2. Following his 2000 book The Fragile Absolute, a work on Christianity, Žižek has engaged in a primarily Badiouian project. Alain Badiou’s philosophy has maintained a strong influence (both in response to it and using it) among contemporary continental philosophy. And the years since 2000 Zizek rose to a profound level of fame for a cultural theorist. He engaged often and deeply with religion just as Badiou did, finding in the abstract tradition of Plato through Paul an articulation of a subject deprived of its Aristotelian and metaphysical accretions. In Badiou’s philosophy the metaphysical Event is a primary movement in history and culture which arises in politics. Is there any other way to understand a post-9/11 world, where American exceptionalism was torn down by a plane and sent Americans into a murderous frenzy against Iraq? In Badiou there is a healthy sense of the symbolic and literary significance of politics, comparable to the politically Platonic theokratia which is to be cured through philosophy. Sahdam Hussein was not simply a rival political figure, he was an old-fashioned villain: the culmination of all which is ‘Non-American’, part of the Axis of Evil and a symbolic Other.
It is in this mode that Zizek wrote In Defense of Lost Causes. It is the culmination of his Badiou period, the book is dedicated to him and contains a wonderful chapter on his thought. But it also contains the seed of his rejection of Badiou. It is a book about the end of days, a philosophical phenomena which has animated much of Zizeks work, having written many books on it. This is right, as what to do while the world is about to end is the immediate subject matter of all philosophy written right now. The book is clearly derived from a reading of Badiou and an engagement with his work. As Badiou engages with the mythical Plato, Paul, or Sophocles to diagnose a mythical historical time defined in response to Events, Zizek does a similar thing. But he does so in response to the pantheon of mythical figures in the 20th century, for example Heidegger, Shostakovich, Stalin, Hitler, Foucault et cetera. But all of them are tied in response to the Revolutionary.
Lenin, Robespierre and Mao are the subject of in my view the most important chapter of this book on Revolutionary terror and transformation. Any Badiouian Event is really a Revolution expressed with great terror. But what scares liberal democracy most particularly about the above mythical revolutionaries is their transformative power. Following the Russian Revolution, the Russian people were changed internally and in their consciousness. This change is the Badiouian Event with the ideological element, i.e. an Event expressed by and through historical/political movement. It is the tireless pursuit of the Utopian better world which activates and catalyzes the revolutionary transformation in the people. This is the same thing which activates the political spirit of Christianity. But there is, of course, a problem shown in all three of these historical examples: what happens the day after? Terror, folly, violence, hysteria. This is a deeply rooted historical fact and leads Zizek to acknowledge the problematic fact of any revolutionary transformation: it must fail. Stated allegorically, Paul needed to be violently blinded on the road to Damascus.
In this there is the germination of Badiou’s overcoming. Trump’s election was a fundamental moment in Zizek’s development. He famously advocated for Americans to vote for Trump. In order to make a revolutionary consciousness return to the American people, we needed to support a radical Other; trigger a Badiouian Event. But, this did not work. It did not happen. Instead of a radical transformation of consciousness from liberal democracy we found a profound and corrosive decadence in Trump. In Trump there is a corrosive recoiling, not a radical movement forward. No Event was triggered. At roughly the same time, Zizek publicly announced his ending of his friendship with Alain Badiou citing non-specific ‘political disagreements’. I believe there is little coincidence. Trump was not an Event, as Trump even attempted to appear as.
In the time between the original publishing of the book in 2008 and the second edition in 2017, of course Trump has just been elected. While the full ramifications of Trump’s damage was yet to come to pass as in the Pandemic, Trump was clearly far from transformative. In the second edition is the first instance of the third Zizek, the Zizek that is here now. 3. Contains Zizek’s most mature philosophy, returning often to his film and cultural roots. But he also takes often refuge in the reflection on Pauline radicality and the analysis of political structures as in his second period. He has returned to Hegel in a full and complete form. And he has returned to the Event of Love. Love was a political subject he studied closely in his early work but one which is practically absent from his lengthy second Badiouian period. But he has returned to it. And, after his wonderful studies of Che Guevara and Rousseau (Living in the End Times) and Antigone he has seen love with a new revolutionary potential. He sees Love in its Hegelian completeness, leading to revolutionary transformation, and expressly denied its rightful place by Badiouian philosophy of the Event. Trump represents the repugnant recoiling from the revolutionary content of Love, and Zizek saw this.
Zizek is the story for our time, a prophet and articulation of the post-Trump world.
At the bottom of this violence and recoiling from any possible Event, there is always the transformative power of Love.
Read
April 7, 2018Žižek assumes the reader is already familiar with Lacan, Freud, Hegel, Heidegger and the like. His defences against his critics are peppered throughout the chapters, which came across as a bit odd and out of place at times. The intricacies of Lacanian or Hegelian theory can be daunting, but there are moments of clarity especially towards the end of the book, e.g. his proposed solutions moving forward - slum dwellers as the new proletariat. His take on global warming or the ecological crisis is refreshing, pointing towards the Lacanian (?) notion of the Already Lost.
It's still unfathomable his insistence on Freudian theory beyond the individual (as an extended metaphor? Conceptual framework?)
It's still unfathomable his insistence on Freudian theory beyond the individual (as an extended metaphor? Conceptual framework?)
September 10, 2025
PHEW.
dense at times, and maybe not really worth it to read, but it gets the cogs turning.
i’m still shocked at the fact that I found this in a random port jeff outdoor library and it perfectly (like perfectly) matches up with everything I have been reading over the last couple of months (Deleuze, Marx, Foucault, Nietzsche, Bataille, +). it’s just so weird cus i took the book thinking what a hoot it would be to finally read some zizek (and for free!)
nevertheless every time i saw postmodernism only referred to in quotes I laughed a little…
overall felt like i was reading a podcast transcription (everything is a blur, a hegelian blur) but it didn’t really go anywhere.
dense at times, and maybe not really worth it to read, but it gets the cogs turning.
i’m still shocked at the fact that I found this in a random port jeff outdoor library and it perfectly (like perfectly) matches up with everything I have been reading over the last couple of months (Deleuze, Marx, Foucault, Nietzsche, Bataille, +). it’s just so weird cus i took the book thinking what a hoot it would be to finally read some zizek (and for free!)
nevertheless every time i saw postmodernism only referred to in quotes I laughed a little…
overall felt like i was reading a podcast transcription (everything is a blur, a hegelian blur) but it didn’t really go anywhere.
August 18, 2008
As usual, I found it difficult to follow Zizek from one page to the next. It doesn't help that I'm not familiar with most of the pop cultural / obscure film examples that he relies on. At most, all that I get from him are a few isolated badass paragraphs which encapsulate interesting ideas, but I can never understand how they fit together to form a bigger picture.
May 12, 2010
I mark this as read in the sense that I read the first few chapters and then skimmed most of the rest and have no intention of going back to it. There was some thought provoking material, but on the whole it just made me realize that I don't care enough about "continental philosophy" to try to make sense of his arguments. Plotinus kicks Zizek's ass.
July 21, 2016
i didnt understand any of the words i looked at in the last 150 pages but i looked at em anyway. four stars for this insane drivel.
June 13, 2018
Abandoned almost immediately because the writing style was too much... Super wordy, unfocused from the first page.
June 1, 2021
His critique of Heidegger is awful.
His revindication of Stalin is incredible.
His revindication of Stalin is incredible.
June 10, 2022
Not as focused as zizeks best but some is quite good. I like the digressions on civility in practice and on stalinism as a corrective force
July 1, 2024
This book is alluded to as "both exhilarating and disorienting" by Steven Poole of The Guardian. This is deceivingly accurate, as Zizek often finds it difficult to string together the copious amount of thoughts that gush out of his brain. From chapter-long tirades about classical music and interventions to establish the parallelisms with psychoanalysis, this book is indeed undoubtedly eclectic but feels both confusing and overwhelming at times. Akin to a toxic relationship, it will make you question why you are reading it for chapters at a time only to win you back over during its moments of clear and sheer insight. Undoubtedly a victim of academia and publishers' requirement of "padding for numbers", Zizek is more digestible in interviews with a good moderator (I am privy to Alex O'Connor myself)
Overall, this book should be read by bonafide philosophy readers with a good understanding of Heidegger, Hegel, Deleuze and Badiou (amongst many others) that are able to keep up with the torrent of jargon that such an expansive theme requires. I cannot say it was an enjoyable read, but also cannot deny that this evaluation is born out of a perhaps lack of basal knowledge a priori, and that perhaps it does not deserve a reread in the future.
Read at your own peril.
Overall, this book should be read by bonafide philosophy readers with a good understanding of Heidegger, Hegel, Deleuze and Badiou (amongst many others) that are able to keep up with the torrent of jargon that such an expansive theme requires. I cannot say it was an enjoyable read, but also cannot deny that this evaluation is born out of a perhaps lack of basal knowledge a priori, and that perhaps it does not deserve a reread in the future.
Read at your own peril.
September 10, 2017
Typically Zizek. Entertaining, energetic, and provocative. Of course, Zizek makes excellent points about ideology, applying the dialectic to film criticism and even other philosophers (his section of Heidegger being particularly interesting). He deconstructs how these creations, modes of thought, and interpretations build up around us, creating narratives and myths, creating ideology.
Despite the depth of this book and Zizek's abilities as a thinker and critic, I would caution those going into this that, have they not read Freud, Lacan, Marx, Hegel, Bidou, and several other philosophers, a great portion of what Zizek is saying here will be lost. He does not take the time to explain or underline the thought he references, that is up to you to understand.
Certainly, this tome is one to be reread as one reads more, not only of what Zizek has read but of other works. Still, even with just a bit of understanding, you can come out knowing a bit more than before.
Suggestions for introductions to Zizek's mode of thought: Not this shit. Check out his "Perverts Guide" films.
Despite the depth of this book and Zizek's abilities as a thinker and critic, I would caution those going into this that, have they not read Freud, Lacan, Marx, Hegel, Bidou, and several other philosophers, a great portion of what Zizek is saying here will be lost. He does not take the time to explain or underline the thought he references, that is up to you to understand.
Certainly, this tome is one to be reread as one reads more, not only of what Zizek has read but of other works. Still, even with just a bit of understanding, you can come out knowing a bit more than before.
Suggestions for introductions to Zizek's mode of thought: Not this shit. Check out his "Perverts Guide" films.
July 12, 2022
I'm not fully sure how to review a book that I enjoyed(and understood) to such vastly different degrees. Parts one and two of this book are vastly superior to part three, except for the final dozen or so pages where Zizek actually nuts up and gives a cogent positive politics. The chapters on Torture, Terror and Stalinist Humanism alone are why I would recommend this book and it is clear that there is a lot for people with different interests to engage with. As a person with a background in Academic History novel reframings of the Jacobin Terror, Great Purge, and even Foucault's flirtations with the Iranian revolution are fascinating, the Lacanian stuff on art and the big other was interesting but outside my wheelhouse, and anything with Heidegger I struggled with. Buts that's what makes this book good, the disciplines it pulls from are too far-flung that most people can deeply respond to and maybe resonate with at least one part.
Its good, read it. But maybe read Sublime Object of Ideology first
Its good, read it. But maybe read Sublime Object of Ideology first
May 16, 2017
I have fake read many books in my life, be it infinite jest or Ulysses, but this book takes the cake. My prof recommended it to me so when I saw it at a bookstore I copped that ish. Idk man its really confounding and you should have a background in Hegelian or laconian philosophy. But I'm guessing the reader is a normal human being so you probably dont, not that it would help. He is the king of taking you down really interesting paths, paths that you believe you support, and then suddenly he will be defending the Nazi regime (qualified defense) and saying they didn't go far enough. I feel like I understood like 1/5 of the book which I am content with, but it is worth it solely for how Zizek writes and incorporates interesting pop culture analysis.
February 4, 2024
This was good, but certainly nowhere near Zizek's best. This book touches on a lot of his key ideas, but suffers from poor writing in many areas--resulting in a lousy amount of explanation before reaching a massive conclusion.
One criticism I don't quite get is how people complain about the readability of this book. This is probably one of the most readable Zizek books out there that deal somewhat-heavily with philosophy. (The only easier books of his is his deeply political books that don't touch on philosophy, that essentially everyone can read (e.g. A Left That Dares To Speak It's Name (certainly his easiest to word, and easily his worst), Pandemic! 2, Heaven in Disorder, and so on.))
One criticism I don't quite get is how people complain about the readability of this book. This is probably one of the most readable Zizek books out there that deal somewhat-heavily with philosophy. (The only easier books of his is his deeply political books that don't touch on philosophy, that essentially everyone can read (e.g. A Left That Dares To Speak It's Name (certainly his easiest to word, and easily his worst), Pandemic! 2, Heaven in Disorder, and so on.))
January 14, 2023
‘in the contemporary politics of the United Kingdom, as many a perspicuous commentator has observed, the Thatcher revolution was in itself chaotic, impulsive, marked by unpredictable contingencies, and it was only the “Third Way” Blairite government that was able to institutionalize it, to stabilize it into new institutional forms, or, to put it in Hegelese, to raise (what first appeared as) a contingency, a historical accident, into necessity.’
September 30, 2019
- Very dense and hard to read
- Comments are highly dependent on your understanding of what other philosophers have said.
- Some very nice criticisms of movies and pop culture events. Some great quotes.
- Some nice concepts and comparisons.
- But for someone like me - with little to no understanding of the famous philosophers this is too much.
- Comments are highly dependent on your understanding of what other philosophers have said.
- Some very nice criticisms of movies and pop culture events. Some great quotes.
- Some nice concepts and comparisons.
- But for someone like me - with little to no understanding of the famous philosophers this is too much.
December 22, 2019
This book didn't make a whole lot of sense to me (probably because I read it when I was still getting used to philosophy books), it really seemed like 100 pages of interesting thoughts, then 300 pages of rambling. If I were to reread it now, it would probably make more sense and seem less garbled.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 75 reviews