Conversations with Žižek

by Slavoj Žižek, Glyn Daly

In this new book, Slavoj Žižek and Glyn Daly engage in a series of entertaining conversations which illustrate the originality of Žižek 's thinking on psychoanalysis, philosophy, multiculturalism, popular/cyber culture, totalitarianism, ethics and politics.Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher who trained as a Lacanian. He is at the forefront of philosophical, political and cultural debate and is known for his theories, based largely on a Lacanian analysis, on a wide range of subjects, including globalization, cyberspace, film, music and opera. His work continues to provoke controversy and to transform the way we think about these and other issues of popular culture and politics. In conversation with Glyn Daly, Žižek elaborates on a range of topics which encompass the purpose of philosophy and psychoanalysis, the films of Stanley Kubrick, the notion of enjoyment, Marxism, de Sade, Nazism and much more.This book will provide readers with a unique glimpse at Žižek's humour and character, and is an ideal introduction to his work. At the same time it offers new material and fresh perspectives, which will be of interest to followers of his writings, appealing to the general reader as well as to undergraduates and graduates studying social theory, cultural studies and politics.

Genres: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Politics, Nonfiction, Theory

171 pages, Paperback

First published January 7, 2003

About the author

Slavoj 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."

Reviews

[Tjabo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gillade verkligen att läsa den här. Tycker Zizek funkar bäst i samtal med andra. Intressanta delar om Lacan (såklart, men en del kritisk reflektion kring/psykoanalysens vara och icke-vara, samt ny teknik/"cyberspace"), Hegel/Kant osv, om hans bakgrund i Slovenien och den svåra vägen genom akademin, politik efter seattle/globaliseringsrörelsen/911. etc. Även om det är tröttsamt med Zizeks behov av att agera provokatör och svinga mot Den liberala identitetsvänstern™, med platta skämt eller förbjudna ord, så har han ändå intressanta (politiska) invändningar mot den. Frågan är ju bara hur mycket makt man ska tillskriva, och hur mycket energi man ska lägga på, en rörelse man inte vill tillhöra.

"Let's be clear: every true encounter with your neighbour is a form of harassment" amen!

"Yes, many standard Marxist and psychoanalytic critiques of fascism acknowledge that totalitarianism relies on a certain perverse economy of enjoyment. But you cannot simply say that if you get simple direct satisfaction then you don’t need these perverse kinds of enjoyment. The problem with enjoyment is that it never functions directly; it always gets disturbed. In today’s permissive societies, for example, we have the opposite paradox. This is to say, officially, we get the permissive society, we are allowed to enjoy ourselves, or, rather, to have pleasure: we are allowed to organize our lives around how to get as much satisfaction as possible, to realize our ego and so on. But the fundamental result is what? The inherent, necessary result is that in order to truly enjoy life, we have to follow so many regulations and prohibitions: no sexual harassment, no smoking, no fat food, no alcohol, no eggs, no stressful situations, etc. The paradox is that if you posit pleasure directly as a goal, then you are obliged to submit to a number of conditions – for example, fitness regimes in order to remain sexually attractive – so your immediate pleasure is again ruined."

Zizek borde öppna upp ett kroppspositivt instagram-konto med enbart content runt snabbmat, kola och ~ideologi~.

[Martin Hare Michno · Rating 4 out of 5]

Almost as impressive as Žižek's thinking is Glyn Daly's ability to keep him focused on a single point. An insightful series of conversations that manages to clarify various arguments made by Žižek while remaining substantial.

[Christiaan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an excellent introduction into the work of Slavoj Zizek. It opens with a concise summary of the main topics in Zizek's work written by Glyn Daly who - in my view - succeeds in pinpointing some of the positions Zizek takes. Then the book proceeds with a thematically ordered interview: while Daly keeps Zizek from wandering off, Zizek himself gives one of his clearer accounts of his philosophy while still being entertaining.