Quantum History: A New Materialist Philosophy

by Slavoj Žižek

Bloomsbury presents Quantum History by Slavoj Žižek, read by Joe Jameson.

A panoramic view of the cosmos must begin with the tension of a single political moment. In Quantum History , Slavoj Žižek brings together Hegelian dialectics, Lacan psychoanalysis and quantum mechanics to rethink history, reality and political possibility.

Taking up Lenin's challenge to radically reconsider materialism in the wake of each big scientific discovery, and rejecting the recent vogue for giving a vague spiritualist spin to wave mechanics, Žižek embraces the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics with characteristic erudition and verve. Drawing on the central themes of the holographic universe, non-commutativity and the collapse of superpositions, Žižek evolves a quantum-inspired ontology which reinvents the historical materialism of Hegel and Heidegger – and compels a brutal, often darkly funny, inquisition into the chances of radical emancipatory acts today.

Quantum History takes the listener from the absolute contradiction of the primordial void through quantum oscillations to our ordinary reality, weaving in Lacan and Deleuze, Rovelli and Schelling, opera, cinema, sex and war. Žižek is at his sharpest, saddest, most provocative best as he demonstrates that there is no way of extracting ourselves from the texture of history, no neutral position from which the workings of the world can be observed transparently – we must act from a contingent, complex and inscrutable political moment, in sadness and in doubt, but defiantly.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Science

456 pages, Hardcover

Published November 13, 2025

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

[Layna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the type of book I’d write if I had psychosis

[Charles Lincoln · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quantum history - Zizek

I love the opening with flatland. I read that as a senior in high school and then I revisited it as a freshman in college the following year and I thought it was an excellent analogy for the problems in mathematics, but I also thought it was a excellent analogy for the problems that existed with respect to politics as well so it’s an interesting combination of the political in the mathematical. And of course I think that’s what he is. The author is trying to do is extend the analogy into the quantum field as well.

It’s funny. I just finished zero point by the same author and he kind of ends this book with this reference to Gilbert Sullivan from the Mikado where he says I felt a little list of society of under school will never be missed and then will be missed. But he starts this book with the same thing not exactly the beginning, but in the beginning, generally speaking.

It’s interesting doing three of his books back to back because this is the second book that I read where he talks about this idea of the US government making $1 trillion coin and putting it in the bank where really the value is just symbolic and the symbolic order of things can drastically change things I mean it’s a good example. It’s just interesting how he almost use a zipper paid. I guess it’s maybe not verbatim the same but it’s basically the same idea. Granted I mean if an idea works it works, but it’s just interesting catching the rift of an author if you read several of the books back to back.

In addition to giving kind of a overview for perhaps the layman of how quantum mechanics works, which seems to be a perennial subject in our modern world, I think it’s interesting reading three of his books back to back to back that this one is particularly interesting because it shows effectively that he’s building off other ideas and he has this whole collected system like he’s even talking about the zero point in this book as well and for example, I think he’s suggesting that we need a erratically reconstruct our ideologies from a common denominator and I find that to be especially helpful and useful and understanding his entire world view.

I would say it’s interesting in western media. I don’t usually read analysis of the inner workings of the Chinese communist party that is to say not necessary like the secret working is just like what’s publicly known and he’s saying in this book that effectively there seems to be two parts to the Chinese communist party one that wants to support big corporate interests, which obviously has somewhat of an irony relating to the Chinese communist parties agenda, initially going back to the foundation of the communist and Mauze, Don, and then there is another faction of the Chinese communist party that wants to support the poor working class and give them more of a voice, but he says that really the more important thing is to think about what the nomenclature of the Chinese communist party at Self wants and of course they want to aggrandize power around themselves and they want to promote themselves whether this is true corporate interest or supporting the poor and he said of course, if we look at 20th century history of communist parties really what they always say that they’re doing is that they are supporting the poor regardless, whether they are not such as supporting corporate interests. So that’s kind of an interesting analysis of the Chinese communist party that I guess I wasn’t really privy too.

And another aspect of the Chinese communist party is that they’re trying to maintain traditional Kaam communist Chinese values which I think are separate from traditional Chinese values, but the premier of China seems to be calling back to Chinese tradition going back thousands of years to antiquity and how Chinese culture has been influenced by that I suppose that makes some level of sense that confusion ideals in the strict Mandarin system of examination has influenced Chinese society up to this day, but the thing is that they are worried that American value such as American or Trump’s mannerisms are going to influence Chinese politicians as they already are on the popular level in China and the Chinese communist party sees this as a bad thing.

He also talks about later in the book about how the rise of capitalism basically came about through two sources. The first source is the massive influx of gold from the American colonies, and the second source is from the massive influx of people who are no longer tied to the land through the privatization of public property, such as through the enclosure acts.

He has an interesting discussion of whether AI can think too.

Continent this book is a series of essays that he actually brings up together and even connects modern politics, which I sincerely enjoyed. But what was interesting was that he says that there’s kind of this free part analysis that he’s ultimately trying to do on the book that he brings it all together through quantum physics, Laconian cycle analysis and dialectics. And he says that they all sort of an example by each other.

I think it’s worth the mention just at the end but the thing that bothered me was the story about and butterfly from the movie 1993 were Jeremy Irons stars as a French diplomat and the early 1960s in China. It’s a deeply disturbing movie but I think it’s the type of stuff that you might expect from David Cronenberg as a director, but it is also fascinating from the philosophical perspective. I spoiled the movie, but I haven’t seen it either. I didn’t end up looking it up and reading about I don’t mind even after I read the description in this book.

[Христо · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did not finish all the Variations.

First and foremost, while Bloomsbury's occasional editorial blunders in say, "Disparities" were cute and accentuated the Zizekian concept, this volume's abhorrent lack of editing is a disgrace. I don't know whether the publisher's too lazy, arrogant, or simply incompetent; or whether they've put a draft to print, or if they simply don't give a rat's, but this is not acceptable.

That said, the book is, as expected, a rehash of post-LTN operations and concepts. While it is true, that Zizek's put more emphasis on his interpretation of, shall one say, Lacanian quantum mechanics, most of that is a dialogue with Rovelli that goes on much longer than necessary. There is also what appears to be a critique of Pippin's Hegel, although the digressions there make the entire assault unappealing. While the subtitle promises us a new materialism, we get nothing more than a retelling of the quantum understanding way back from "Indivisible Remainder".

There's an odd irony when Zizek mentions McGowan's preposterousness that Fascism is the natural reaction immanent to Capitalism (holy cow!). I almost believe Zizek is aware of it, when he later counter-suggests, in essence, to look for the solution in the decaying doxa rather than militantly working-in a heresy, to use Bourdieu's terms. That is to say, even though Zizek constantly (and entirely blindly) advocates for The Emancipatory Politics via the metonymy of Communism -- which is what McGowan would also like to use Lacan to do -- he is not at all consistent in either upholding the status-quo until its (teleological?) self-destruction a-la Evola in "Ride the Tiger", or rebelling against it in line with what Badiou might recommend with his militant evental fidelity. Zizek wants to be the subject-supposed-to-know, but it's exceedingly hard for him to at the same time combat Liberalism and repeat some of its core tenets.

I have a problem with the way Zizek twists his own earlier conclusions to prove subjective points. Categorizing "true fundamentalists" by way of "lack of envy" and exalting them as a positive against the "pseudo fundamentalist" envious Other, he makes the point that a pervert (a tool at the hand of the Other, in-envious) is a proper stance as opposed to a neurotic. Which is a deeply a-Lacanian moralizing suggestion. Why is that?: first, Lacan, and to that extent Zizek, has already condemned the stance of the pervert viz. the "bad dupe", as erring, mal-informed; second, the envious fundamentalist is a veiling of the non-dupe - who also errs. Zizek wants to exalt a content and unshakable "true believer" as opposed a lukewarm fan almost in a Messianic manner. (Notice how his critique of Buddhism as producing slaves of ideology is undermined by advocating a fundamentalist with lack of envy.) None of that is true to the Lacanian legacy: "I demand you reject what I'm offering you because it's not that."

Furthermore, a sign of Zizek's unfortunately aging style is attested by his fundamental misunderstanding of AI as evident in the way he handles it as a military asset. "Viruses" are not "implanted into the AI systems". That part of the book was already reading as pseudo-paranoid. Further down the line, it borders on psychosis.

In summation, this book is the worst of both words: his ontological work, and his political work. (The division is one he makes himself, in the film Zizek!) While for me he is at his worst in "Sex and the Failed Absolute" and in "Surplus Enjoyment" respectively, this book does not amount to more than an anthology of those bad precepts: covertly recruiting for a political movement you cannot articulate, while undermining your own edifice for the sake of recruitment. It is mid at best. It would definitely be off-putting for a newcomer, unless they're already predisposed to certain political ideologies, in which case they'd find a new Master in the face of Zizek -- something Lacan worked adamantly to prevent himself from becoming.

P.S. The one Variation on the Bhagavad Gita is, ironically, a subversion of most of the political messaging within this volume, and of his post-Trump activism in general. Yet still, it is a lovely essay on its own.

[Bob Dunton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ll give myself a few days before I begin again.