Sexo e o Absoluto Falhado

by Slavoj Žižek, Pedro Elói Duarte (Translator)

Na mais rigorosa articulação do seu sistema filosófico, Slavoj Zizek oferece nesta obra nada menos do que uma nova definição de materialismo dialético.

Ao forjar esse novo materialismo, Zizek critica e desafia não apenas o trabalho de Alain Badiou, Robert Brandom, Joan Copjec, Quentin Meillassoux e Julia Kristeva (para citar apenas alguns), mas também uma pletora de temas, desde a ciência popular e a mecânica quântica até à diferença sexual e a filosofia analítica. Novas leituras radicais de Hegel e Kant surgem a par de animados comentários sobre cinema, política e cultura.

Aqui está Zizek no seu melhor.

Genres: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Nonfiction, Theory, Sexuality, Politics

499 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2019

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

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

In which ontological incompleteness becomes the byword for postmillennial dialectical materialism, which is the academic pleonasm for COMMUNISM (+Lacan to the nth).

It is "better" than previous Zizeks because it contains more historical developments: quantum physics, internets, posthuman Vorlust, und so weiter und so weiter. While the quantum domain receives my respectful indifference, I admit I was not a bit thrilled at the prospect of forays into topology, thinking that it'd been done and done already and I get it I get it--BUT (every dialectician's favorite part) Zizek anticipates and dispatches this very scruple early on:

So what about the “Hegelian” reproach that we rely on a “lower” (figural) model to explain a “higher” (conceptual) process? The answer here is that what, at the “lower” level of the figural model (say, the reversal that characterizes the Möbius strip), cannot but appear a paradox, an exception, is, at the “higher” level of conceptual thinking the very basic feature of the process: conceptual thinking is a matter of self-referential twists and inward- turns which, at the level of the figural, of what Hegel called “representation” (Vorstellung), cannot but appear as a perplexing paradox.

We could not invent Zizek if we did not have him. Yes yes yes, there is more to Hegel and Lacan than can fit in Zizek's idiosyncratic/pedagogic whittling, but there is still more (a qualitative quantity) to Zizek than all his detractors' misreadings combined. Repetition + difference.

I lack the rigor to seduce you with more "more" here because I discharged my obsessive cathexis month after month with an other. Now it's time to move on... BUT we know the inevitable anticipated-overshot return will be an exquisite short coming. So--see you, either in Hell or in goodreads reviews.

[Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

Das ist mir schwer gefallen. Von hinten gelesen wirken die Einlassungen Zizeks über Wagner, Prokofjew, Beckett und andere wie Aspekte seines Habitus als "Pop- Philosoph". Auch der Sinn der vielen Film- Interpretationen oder der Ausführungen darüber, wie er - der Philosoph - dieses oder jenes inszeniert hätte, hat sich mir bis zum Schluss nicht wirklich erschlossen. Mag sein, dass hier mein Unverständnis dem gegenüber, was "uns der Autor sagen wollte", bündig zum Ausdruck kommt.
Aber was wollte der Autor sagen? Vom Ende abgesehen tritt Zizek hier selbstbewusst als einer der wichtigsten Philosophen unserer Zeit auf und versucht sich an dem ganz sicher lange überfälligen Unternehmen, die Erkenntnisse der Quantenphysik in den erkenntnistheoretischen Diskurs der Philosophie einzubringen. Dabei setzt er sich mit Kant, Hegel und Marx auseinander, verwendet und kritisiert gleichzeitig Lacan, Badiou, Derrida und andere Franzosen. Zunächst geht es ihm um den Fortschrittsbegriff und mithin um den Sinn von Geschichte, die ihm beide zu Recht als "nicht orientierbar" erscheinen. Gegen Marx und "die Marxisten" wird eingewendet, dass sie "Natur" und "Subjektivität" bloß als Produkte gesellschaftlicher Arbeit auffassen, womit die grundsätzliche Freiheit des Subjekts nicht erklärt werden könne. Als "Ensemble gesellschaftlicher Verhältnisse" wäre die individuelle Subjektivität in ihrem Gewordensein eher Resultat als Agens der "Umstände", was auch das existentialistische "Geworfensein in die Existenz" (Heidegger) betrifft. Dagegen versucht Zizek mit einer Teilrehabilitierung Kants die Entscheidungsfreiheit wie -notwendigkeit jenseits des "Dings an sich" zu verteidigen. Allerdings kritisiert er mit Hegel die grundsätzliche Eigenschaftslosigkeit des Dings an sich, von dem wir nach Kant nichts wissen können und dass ihm nur denklogisch als das große Gegenüber erscheint, das Subjekt- Objekt- Beziehungen legitimiert. Von daher ist "Wahrheit" möglich, wenn sie auch subjektiv, durch meine Sinne vermittelt und damit letztlich vom Bewusstsein (nicht als Bewusstsein) konstruiert erscheint. Vollkommen klar, dass darauf eine Auseinandersetzung Zizeks mit dem "Dekonstruktivismus" der Derrida- Schule erfolgen muss, denn gegen deren Geschichtsrelativismus wendet er ein, "dass es da draußen Tatsachen gibt, die einer objektiven, uneigennützigen Betrachtung zugänglich sind, und dass es zwischen Meinungen und Fakten zu unterscheiden gilt." (S. 127)
Wie kann Zizek das begründen, ohne in einen vorkritischen Realismus zurück zu fallen? Hier bringt er Hegel ins Spiel und deutet dessen Zu-sich-selbst-Kommen des objektiven Geistes in den Tätigkeiten der Menschen als radikales Immer-schon-in-der Welt-Sein der Menschen, die eben nicht - wie bei Kant - den Objekten der Realität gegenüber stehen, sondern denen die Objekte immer schon als "Beziehung zu ihnen" gegeben sei. Insofern ist die Subjektivität objektdefiniert (und umgekehrt). Prägnant gegen Sartre gewendet bedeute dies: "Es gibt kein Anderes [...]" (S.147) "Wirklichkeit" entsteht also in mir durch mich, erschöpft sich darin aber nicht. "In ebendiesem Sinne geht ein Gegenstand aus seiner eigenen Unmöglichkeit hervor." (S.146) Es sei dahin gestellt, ob die folgenden Auseinandersetzungen mit Religion und diversen Gottesbeweisen für die letztlich quantenphysikalische Begründung dieser Entstehung von Etwas aus dem Nichts notwendig sind, konsequent ist aber der Hinweis auf moderne evangelische Theologie, der zu folge sich "Gott" als das "Alles" erst in sich zurück ziehen musste, um so dem "Nichts" Raum zu geben, in das hinein er dass "Etwas" schaffen konnte. Freilich bleibt hier die Frage nach der Qualität des "Alles" ungelöst. Zizek verwirft diese Lösung und postuliert stattdessen, "alles, was erscheint, erscheint letztlich aus dem Nichts (oder, um es im Sinne der Quantenphysik auszudrücken: Alle Entitäten gehen aus den Quantenschwankungen der Leere hervor)." (S. 170).
Mithin, und darauf kommt Zizek am Beispiel der Sexualität immer wieder zu sprechen, haben wir es nicht mit einer "Realität" an sich oder für uns zu tun, sondern entscheidend sei der "Riss" in der Realität, durch den etwas erscheint. Hegels Dialektik müsse also verändert werden, da es weder einfache Synthesen noch eine "orientierte" Höherentwicklung durch die Negation der Negation gebe. Allerdings gelte es Antinomien aufzulösen, was z.B. meint, dass "Mann" und "Frau" keine naturgegebenen Gegenpole, aber auch keine sozialen Konstrukte (im Sinne von gender) seien. "Sexualität" sei ein "Feld" der vielen Möglichkeiten, die sich selbst fremd und unerkennbar bleiben, solange sie kein Gegenüber aus sich heraus gestellt haben. Mit Sartre gelingt also die Selbsterkenntnis nur im Anderen, auch wenn ich von dem letztlich nichts wissen kann. Also sind Mann und Frau nicht Ausgangs-, sondern Endpunkte der gesellschaftlichen Konstruktion von "Sexualität" und das eigentlich "Andere", in dem sie sich als solche erkennen, sei die "Transgeschlechtlichkeit". Oder, um es anders zu sagen: "Klassenkampf" (hier analog zum "Geschlechterkampf" im Sinne von #metoo und diversen anderen feministischen Bewegungen) entsteht nicht als Kampf zweier gegebener Klassen (Bourgeoisie und Proletariat), sondern der dem Kapitalismus (der Geschlechtlichkeit) inhärente Antagonismus schafft notwendig die ihn sichtbar machenden Klassenpole, die dann miteinander in Auseinandersetzungen geraten. Das ist denn auch ein überzeugender Seitenhieb auf die Missverständnisse der Feminismus- und Genderdebatte, in der ein Kampf zwischen Gegebenheiten angenommen und "Schuldige" gesucht werden, wo es keine gibt. Zizek weist zu Recht darauf hin, dass es in diesen Debatten immer um Sexualität und nie um Liebe geht und dass ihr inhärentes Harmonie- und Gleichheitsideal uneinlösbar ist. In der "Liebe" fände der Menschenrechts- und Gleichheitsdiskurs seinen unauflösbaren Rest, denn wer liebe wolle geliebt und nicht gleich behandelt werden, tue aus Liebe Dinge, die (außerhalb des Kontextes, den "Liebe" vorgibt) nur als Unterwerfung oder was auch immer gelten oder gedeutet werden könnten. Nun ja, vielleicht markiert dieser Diskurs das Ende des im 19. Jahrhundert entwickelten "Konzepts" von der "Liebe", die sich u.U. wirklich in den bloß wechselseitigen und womöglich streng auf gleichmäßigen Lustgewinn gerichteten Gebrauch der Geschlechtsorgane reduzieren wird? Was für eine kapitalistisch- bürgerliche "Denke" im Sinne der Investitionslogik von Kapital, der Menschen aufsitzen, die sich als "links" begreifen!
Sei's drum. An die Stelle der üblichen Dialektik der Gegensätze treten bei Zizek "die Windungen der konkreten Allgemeinheit" (S. 269), die er mithilfe von Analogien zum Möbius- Band, der Kreuzhaube und der Kleinschen Flasche erläutert. Was ich davon verstanden habe, ist, dass wir die Vorstellung eines "Innen" und eines "Außen" zugunsten der unaufhebbaren Verschränkung und des dauernden Übergangs der einen in die andere Perspektive/ den anderen Zustand korrigieren müssen. "Es gibt keine Zwei, es gibt nur das Eine und seinen Rest bzw. Überschuss, das Kennzeichen seiner Unmöglichkeit - kurz: Die Differenz besteht nicht zwischen dem Einen und dem anderen Einen, sondern es gibt nur das Eine und seine Differenz." (S.301) Ein bisschen provokativ erläutert: Es gibt nur Männliches und seine Differenz, das Weibliche, was - ganz klar - kein Werturteil darstellt, da das Weibliche ebenfalls für sich besteht. Wie Zizek darauf kommt? Am Beispiel des antiken Paradoxons von der Schildkröte, die in dem Moment, da wir sie im Lauf erreichen, ein Stück vorwärts rückt, weshalb Achilleus sie logisch gesehen nie erreichen könnte, was aber offensichtlich nicht so ist, erklärt er: "Denn wenn wir das Ende der Teilungen erreicht haben, begegnen wir nicht einfach den letzten, simplen Bestandteilen der Realität, wir gelangen auch an den (für unseren Alltagsverstand absurden) Punkt, an dem etwas nicht mehr in zwei Teile, zwei weitere "Etwasse" geteilt wird, sondern in etwas und nichts." (S.343)
Weil er der Fassungskraft des "Alltagsverstands" seiner Leser/innen misstraut, bringt der Autor nun die eingangs kritisierte unendliche Reihe von Beispielen aus der Politik, der Kunst usw., wobei viele einzelne brillante Überlegungen bzw. Anmerkungen auftauchen, die hierher zu stellen den Rahmen so einer Rezension absolut sprengen würde. Ohnehin komme ich hier kaum weiter, denn ich gebe zu, vom "Quantenplatonismus" erst einmal nicht viel verstanden zu haben, obwohl er mir am Beispiel von Kieslowskis Meisterwerk "Der Zufall" erläutert wird. Ich verstehe, was Zufall ist, ich weiß, dass der Wellenabbruch im Quantenkontinuum so ein "Zufall" ist, warum man das aber in Platons Höhlengleichnis einbauen muss, erschließt sich mir dennoch nicht. Deswegen meine ich, es hätte Zizeks Buch gut getan, hätte er sich stringent auf das konzentriert, was er an philosophischen Folgerungen aus dem Nachdenken über das Absolute, das Nichts, die Zeit und den Raum aus quantenphysikalischer Perspektive ziehen kann. Allenfalls würde ich hier anmerken, dass der Philosoph, der das traditionelle Schema Philosophie- Naturwissenschaft (gefasst als Physik) um die Psychologie (Psychoanalyse) erweitert, es versäumt, Erkenntnisse der Genetik und der modernen Biologie in seine Überlegungen einzubringen. Eine evolutionsbiologisch orientierte Betrachtung der Herausbildung von Rezeptoren und Sinnesorganen und also deren schrittweise sich verändernde "Konstruktionsleistung" resp. "Filterung" von Umwelteinflüssen, die dann als "wirklich" (weil für den Organismus bedeutsam) wahrgenommen werden, hätte seinem Modell mehr Dynamik und womöglich mehr Plausibilität verschafft. Denke ich.
Stattdessen geht es Zizek darum, die Berührungspunkte möglichst aller wichtigen Systeme der Philosophiegeschichte (jedenfalls der antiken, der wesentlich deutschen Aufklärungsphilosophie und der psychoanalytisch orientierten französischen Gegenwartsphilosophie) mit den neuen Erkenntnissen aufzuzeigen und das an unsere "moderne Perspektive" des psychoanalytisch geschulten Blicks zu binden. "Wirklichkeit" wird so aus der physikalisch- analytischen in die menschlich- bewusstseinsmäßige Ebene überführt bzw. beide werden mit Hilfe der Lacanschen Denkfigur vom "großen (wiewohl leeren) Anderen" ineinander verschränkt. Wenn der "große Andere" als "Öffentlichkeit" gefasst wird, verstehe ich, von welchen Abhängigkeiten die Rede ist: "Unglücklicherweise hat die heutige Linke schon im Voraus fürchterliche Angst vor jedem radikalen Akt - selbst wenn sie an der Macht ist, fragt sie sich ständig besorgt: "Wie wird die Welt reagieren, wenn wir das tun? [...] Letzten Endes bedeutet diese Furcht: "Werden unsere Feinde wütend sein und reagieren?" Wenn man in der Politik handeln will, muss man diese Furcht überwinden und das Risiko eingehen; man muss den Schritt ins Unbekannte wagen." (S.393) Wohl wahr. Was das mit Platons Höhlengleichnis zu tun hat, verstehe ich, aber wo ist die Quantenphysik? Ich habe keine Idee... Das ist auf den letzten 200 Seiten so geblieben, wobei einzelne Beispiele/ Interpretationen - wie oben gesagt - viele brillante Einsichten bereit halten. Mithin habe ich viel gelernt, durchaus meine Problemsicht auf "Wirklichkeit" verändert, aber den Gesamtzusammenhang dennoch nicht verstanden. Das will ich dem Buch nicht vorwerfen, denn es wird mein Ungenügen sein. Der Punkt Abzug entsteht einfach, weil ich dennoch nicht glaube, dass die philosophisch- abstrakten und die literarisch- künstlerischen und konkreten politischen, ethischen usw. Überlegungen einander wirklich gegenseitig erhellen. Man hat gegen Ende immer das Gefühl, dass da noch etwas ist, was der Autor unbedingt immer schon mal los werden wollte, egal, ob es gerade passt, oder nicht, womit das Buch ein wenig so daher kommt, wie man es vom öffentlichen Auftreten seines Autors her kennt. Zizek erscheint immer wie ein leicht zerstreuter Professor, der gern vom Hundertsten ins Tausendste gelangt. Der philosophische Anstoß, moderne Physik philosophisch endlich ernst zu nehmen, bleibt jedoch unbestreitbar wichtig und macht die Qualität des Buches aus. Philosophisch geschulten Lesern würde ich es also empfehlen (und wäre für Hilfestellungen beim Verständnis dankbar); philosophisch interessierten Lesern empfehle ich es auch, meine aber, dass es "unseren" Laienhorizont etwas übersteigt. Zweitlektüre ändert das vielleicht...

[Kyrill · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Zizek said he's writing a book where he'll really lay out his system I took it how I take it when in a talk he says "Now I will really get to the point". But no, this is exactly what it says on the tin. The book lays out like never before the highlights of Zizek's thought. I finally think I understand concepts that I had half suspected were devoid of any true utility or coherence. After a potted history of modern philosophy through its engagement with Kant's transcendental project, including a brief response to the main contemporary approaches to this question, Zizek moves to an account of Lacan's formulae of sexuation. This is the clearest explanation of this concept I've read. This is used to show what remains unanswered in every current account of subjectivity and what it could mean to nonetheless give such an account. It's also good to read Zizek fully explain his criticisms of LGBTQ+ as a concept as less mature expressions of his thought here have led to quite justified charges of misunderstanding and even bigotry.

There are few stories/pop culture references in this book and Zizek doesn't even switch topic mid sentence. I'm on Team Brandom but this book forces the Lacanian readings of Hegel to be taken seriously. Finally, this book offers some catharsis: Zizek must have enjoyed writing this knowing that he is in effect getting revenge on all the people making wild attacks on his competence as a philosopher.

[Yağız Ay · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is Zizek doing the best he does. Not film reviews, bur hardline abstract speculation a la Hegel. It is a clear articulation of his thought so far, the concept of 'failure' nicely captures the dynamics between Hegelian negativity and Lacanian lack; as usual, great insights into German philosophy, Beckett, Sade etc. At times, it is too dragging a read for non-professionals - so, I gave it three stars. The axis of the book turns around Kant and Hegel, so the basic knowledge of German idealism would be a good requisite. However, the faithful vanguards of 'dialectical materialism' will no doubt enjoy this in an obscene manner.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

zizek writes the same book everytime, and everytime it’s great

[Phil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deleted

[Bücherangelegenheiten · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ein Buch von Slavoj Žižek zu lesen ist meist eine Herausforderung und Spaß zugleich. Einerseits ist es wahnsinnig schwierig Žižeks Gedanken zu folgen, mit all seinen Sprüngen und Verweisen, andererseits ist das aber auch die spaßige Seite daran. Wie Žižek selbst sagt, schreibt er eigentlich immer das gleiche Buch, so ist es auch mit diesem. „Sex und das verfehlte Absolute“ ist eine über 500-seitige Abhandlung über eine kreative Zusammenführung von Hegels Dialektik, Lacans Psychoanalyse und Marx’ dialektischem Materialismus.

Sexualität ist nicht das Natürliche des Menschen, sondern das, was ihn von der Natur trennt. Genau hier sieht Žižek unseren Berührungspunkt mit dem Absoluten. Žižek versucht anhand Hegel, Lacan und Marx die Realität als Produkt eines konstitutiven Scheiterns und einer Unvollständigkeit darzustellen. Žižeks Abhandlung geht auch in diesem Buch über das rein Philosophische hinaus, so befasst er sich auch mit Geschlechtsidentitäten, LGBTQ+, der MeToo-Bewegung, dem Feminismus und dem Kapitalismus.

Der Aufbau des Buches gestaltet sich wie folgt: Es gibt vier Teile, jeder beginnt mit einem Theorem, danach folgt eine Schlussfolgerung und zu jedem Theorem noch einige Zusätze. Typisch für Žižek, werden die hoch komplexen Zusammenhänge, die er herstellt, durch Witze und Filmzitate veranschaulicht, sodass wir die Berührungsangst vor den hochkomplexen Theorien Lacans und Hegels verlieren und motiviert werden, selbst zu denken. Verdeutlicht wird das noch mal anhand der Sprache, die Žižek verwendet. Der Duktus schwankt zwischen theoretischer/akademischer Sprache bis hin zur Alltagssprache. Damit wird auch auf sprachlicher Ebene vermittelt, dass die Lesenden mitmachen und mitdenken sollen.

Was man Žižek vorwerfen kann, aber nicht nur in diesem Buch, ist sein Umgang mit Quellen. Teilweise wurden einige Stellen einfach von Wikipedia kopiert, zudem werden einige Zitate nicht belegt, vermutlich geht Žižek einfach davon aus, dass die Leser:innen wissen, wo das Zitat bei Hegel steht. Dadurch wird das Buch nicht weniger lesenswert, es sollte aber nicht unerwähnt bleiben.

„Sex und das verfehlte Absolute“ ist so etwas wie eine komprimierte Version der Arbeit Žižeks der letzten Jahre. Wer sich auf dieses Buch einlässt und Žižek in den Kaninchenbau seiner Gedanken folgen will, sollte sich auf eine holprige und schwierige Reise einstellen, die aber durch geistige Höhenflüge belohnt wird.

Eine Frage, die noch im Raum steht ist, brauche ich ein abgeschlossenes Philosophiestudium, um das Buch lesen zu können? In vielen Hinsichten wäre das natürlich von Vorteil, aber ich bin der festen Überzeugung, dass es in diesem Fall auch ohne geht.

Eine klare Leseempfehlung!
Note: 1

[Христо · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read about half the book, and skimmed the rest. Zizek claims he strives to systematize his project (a claim silently evident in most his "magnum opi") but, as usual, fails; if anything, the book is alienating with its more vocal discussion of topics of sexuality - literal and jargon, - which, to his credit, are one of the primordial repressions of the human subject. Toying with the repression doesn't work quite as well as the academic style of, say, "Absolute Recoil".

I'd only recommend it to more involved Zizek readers, though it's also a fairly easy skip. He's produced better books.

[leren_lezen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Imagine that you move though the world with a headspace like Žižek. Your thoughts are a crazy whirlwind of Hegel, Marx, Lacan, Freud, communism, film theory, ideology, and you spew out at least two books per year. It is a bit of a crazy and intense book, and Žižek has written better things imho - such as his introduction to Lacan - yet this being his main work on sexuality, I felt urged to pay attention to it. I must say I have not read all 500 pages in detail, but I did browse through and have read the chapters that seemed to be of interest.

The main argument of the book seems to be that we should not consider sexuality in terms of union, communication, a connection with the divine etc., but rather as the space where the necessity of failure, mediation and antagonism come forth, as this is what is constitutive of human sexuality (p. 3). This argument is in line with Zupancic' and Copjec' psychoanalytic interpretation of sex as the gap that constitutes ontology. As Zizek states: "Freud's implicit hypothesis (explicated by Lacan) is that, in human beings, the name of this 'deficiency' is sexuality. Sexuality is not the natural base of civilised life but the very elementary gesture of 'civilising' the life of a human animal" (p. 61).

He follows with a Freudian interpretation of what is sexual: "[...] a certain activity or process is 'sexualised' when its goal is exempted from the domain of the possible and becomes impossible-to-achieve, so that satisfaction is not brought by reaching it but by the very process of repeatedly failing to achieve it" (p. 61). Something furthermore only becomes sexual through a detour: a sexual scene without fantasy, such as shown in Lanthimos' films (my example, not Zizek), simply becomes unpleasant and non-sexual. So, "[...] the act of copulation is a rather vulgar set of stupid repetitive movements'; viewed through the mist of fantasies, it is the summit of intense pleasures" (p. 131).

His critique of why we constantly analyse sex in cognitive/explanatory terms, whilst sex is a fundamental failure, is however very good: "[...] the grain of the predominant attitude today which either reduces sexuality to a particular problem of functional satisfaction (can the man get a full erection? can the woman relax enough to get a full orgasm?) or—again in a reductionist way—treats it as an expression of deeper emotional/existential problems (sex between a couple is not satisfactory because they live alienated lives, are caught up in consumerist perfectionism, harbor repressed emotional traumas, etc)" (p. 130). The failure of sex is fundamental, so none of these explanatory mechanisms will ever be adequately able to capture it (which is why contemporary culture likes to (over)analyse everything in terms of sex, and is so interested in finding solutions to the questions of the how and why of sexuality).

Quite cute - and unexpected coming from Zizek - was the following idea: "In the same way, in eroticism, new “potentialities” of sexual pleasure are what a good lover brings out from you, s/he sees them in you while you were unaware of them. They are not a pure In-itself which was already there before it was discovered; they are an In-itself which is generated through a relationship with the other (lover)" (p. 358). Here he refers to Lacan's Platonic/Kantian understanding of "what is in you, that is more than you" (basically the objet a).

Zizek is not really at his best on this terrain of sexuality, yet is was still fun to browse through this book.

[Yupa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poco sesso e troppo Assoluto

Più che un libro, una specie di blob che nelle sue oltre seicento pagine ingoia parecchie cose mescolandole in maniera non sempre chiara, anzi.
Ammetto che le mie nozioni di filosofia sono dilettantesche o poco più, quindi gran parte dei ragionamenti mica li ho seguiti, però ho spesso avuto l'impressione, che tipicamente mi dà molta filosofia hegeliana e post-hegeliana (a cui l'autore del resto si rifà esplicitamente), quella di pensatori che smettono di ragionare restando fermi sulle cose e partono per la tangente con associazioni ardite, metafore scambiate per discorsi concreti e via dicendo, un regno in cui non si capisce più se stia ancora venendo detto qualcosa di sensato o si stia invece facendo mera pirotecnica verbale.
E poi mi incuriosirebbe l'opinione di qualcuno che conosce la materia sulle tante pagine in cui il libro (stra?)parla di meccanica quantistica, tanto per sapere se non stia dicendo corbellerie, come spesso càpita quando i filosofi (certi filosofi, ok, mica tutti) si mettono a discettare delle ultime novità scientifiche.
Poi, comunque, il libro delude anche un po', visto che di sesso non si parla molto, al massimo di differenze uomo-donna, ma il resto è tutto un profondersi su Hegel e l'Assoluto.

[Joonas Suomalainen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like much of Žižek's work, this is to a large extent a collection of Žižek's previous work. I'm OK with that at this point, as with the rest of his shortcomings. To paraphrase Žižek himself, I know very well that Žižek is a lazy, (at least) self-plagiarizing, logically dubious and fragmentary writer, yet nonetheless I keep buying his books. Having said that, the book does tie in his points very nicely with the theme of unorientables, which he manages to follow throughout the book, and much of the book is entertaining and thought-provoking. I liked the actual content of the book.

I can't, however, in good conscience give this book more than two stars. Why? Poor sourcing and the editing. More precisely, the fact that there doesn't seem to have been an editor at all, as the book is riddled with typos, misspellings, missing words, wrong words, and the letters "u", "i", and "o" are used interchangeably throughout the book. Žižek also "shamelessly" (as mentioned several times in the notes) relies on Wikipedia and other online summaries as a source for philosophical ideas, film plots, etc.

Give the man an editor and a research assistant. Please.

[Jaakko · Rating 3 out of 5]

En ihan pysyny perässä

[Martin Hare Michno · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sex and the Failed Absolute might as well be titled The Absolute Failure of Sex, for there is no sex without its failure. Even so, in either title, the words Sex and Absolute are intercepted by another - Failure. The concept of failure takes a central role in Žižek's ontology. The basic premise of this book is to ask the reader:

What if reality itself was constituted by a failure to realise itself? What if reality is fundamentally incomplete? And, moreover, what if it is this failure of realisation which makes reality possible?

Shuffling through the entire spectrum of German Idealism, Žižek makes a pretty remarkable claim about the nature of reality. While Kant theorised a reality which existed beyond our reach, an Absolute "thing-in-itself", Žižek posits that reality itself is incomplete. In effect, he transposes the Kantian gap between language and the "thing-itself" to the very thing-itself.

What if we are unable to experience reality in its completeness because reality itself is ontologically incomplete? What if there's a gap within the structure of reality itself?

It's a strange thought, but Žižek is convincing. What is most fascinating about his ontological incompleteness is how it offers serious answers to the perceived inconsistencies within quantum physics. Ontological incompleteness could be a turning point in the history of science.

But what of Sex? The title brings to mind the Lacanian formula: il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel. Such an expression, which suggests there's no relation between the sexes, points towards a gap, an impossibility, a constitutive failure in the relationship of sexes. For Žižek (following Copjec), female and male are by no means two particular subspecies of sexed humans, but rather two clashing Universals. The Lacanian formula offers a powerful critique to Butlerian theories of sex.

[Benji · Rating 3 out of 5]

'What, for Hegel, is the elementary move of philosophy with regard to abstraction? To abandon the common-sense empiricist notion of abstraction as a step away from the wealth of concrete empirical reality with its irreducible multiplicity of features: life is green, concepts are grey, they dissect, mortify, concrete reality. (This common-sense notion even has its pseudo-dialectical version, according to which such 'abstraction' is a feature of mere Understanding, while 'dialectics' recuperates the wealth of reality.)

Philosophical thought proper begins when we become aware of how such a process of 'abstaction' is inherent to reality itself: the tension between empirical reality and its 'abstract' notional determinations is immanent to reality, it is a feature of 'things themselves.' Therein resides the anti-nominalist accent of philosophical thinking - say, the basic insight of Marx's 'critique of political economy' is that the abstraction of the value of a commodity is its 'objective' constituent. It is life without theory which is grey, just a flat, stupid reality - it is only theory which makes it 'green', truly alive, bringing out the complex underlying network of mediations and tensions which make it move. Such an approach provides a different accent in the reading of Hegel: the properly Hegelian reconciliation is not a peaceful state in which all tensions are sublated or mediated but a reconciliation with the irreducible excess of negativity itself.'

[Salvador Ramírez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aquí una reseña que escribí del libro para Intervención y Coyuntura. Revista de crítica política.

https://intervencionycoyuntura.org/el...

De acuerdo con Slavoj Žižek, este libro pretende ser lo más sistemático a sus planteamientos filosóficos y políticos que jamás haya escrito –lo cual es toda una tarea, dado lo prolífico que es en sus textos y analizando una gran variedad de temas. Sin embargo, para ello, escogió una manera peculiar de organización: se compone de 4 teoremas o tesis filosóficas, cada una acompañada de corolarios, para explicar sus consecuencias, y de escolios (notas críticas), para explicar cada tesis con casos particulares. Una estructura que de acuerdo con Mácha (2020) corresponde a un esquema medieval de exposición. Además de que se encuentra escrito con su conocido estilo en forma de ensayos que no estructuran un argumento lineal, que salva mediante una buena introducción que describe cómo se hila cada teorema con sus corolarios y escolios.

Esta reseña, entonces, resume sucintamente los cuatro teoremas que expone, resaltando algunas de las implicaciones políticas más importantes que cada uno tiene, que a mi parecer es de lo más valioso que deriva de los planteamientos de Žižek. Adicionalmente, se realizar una crítica a algunos señalamientos de otros trabajos que se han posicionado sobre el trabajo del filósofo esloveno.
Ahora bien, los argumentos de Žižek están fundados en su reformulación del materialismo dialectico, que difiere de la versión promovida por el estalinismo en el siglo pasado, para lo cual recurre a su triada clásica: Hegel (principalmente), Lacan y Marx. Su planteamiento de materialismo dialéctico está basado en la idea de un vacío o falla constitutiva en las cosas, en la realidad, que son una condición para su auto reproducción. Esto lo deja claro al señalar que: “la primera premisa de este libro es que el materialismo dialectico es un espacio igualmente intrincado, y que esta circunvolución, este movimiento circular autocontenido de repliegue sobre sí mismo, es lo que distingue al verdadero materialismo dialéctico de otras formas de materialismo seudodialéctico que se limitan a reivindicar la naturaleza de la realidad como eterno enfrentamiento de opuestos” (p. 15).

A partir de ello, sostiene cuatro teoremas. El Teorema I, puede resumirse como “el fracaso de toda ontología, un fracaso que refleja el carácter fallido de la realidad” (p. 22). Žižek utiliza la tesis de Kant que establece que no es posible conocer la cosa en sí, pero le da un giro hegeliano, estableciendo que esta brecha entre el fenómeno y el noúmeno es en realidad constitutiva de la realidad. Ontologiza la brecha en la realidad misma. En “el nivel más simple, la realidad no es lo que es, sino lo que no logra ser y su facticidad está atravesada por una imposibilidad” (p.48).
Con esto, Žižek reposiciona políticamente a Hegel y su “idealismo”, para señalar que para transformar la realidad, es necesario primero cambiar la forma en que la percibimos y el cómo nos relacionamos con ella. Un idealismo que busca la reconciliación con los antagonismos. Esto es fundamental para las intervenciones políticas que realiza, pues como claramente establece, las actitudes hacia la ontología están relacionadas con posturas políticas reales: el neokantianismo, esta relacionado con el reformismo socialdemócrata, el materialismo dialectico está relacionado con el estalinismo, la ontología del ser social de Lukács se relaciona con una reforma humanista del socialismo existente, la dialéctica negativa con la derrota política en los países desarrollados, etc. (p. 75).

En este sentido, la falla del sujeto se fundamenta en la propia falla de la realidad. Esto, en lugar de reconciliarnos con la derrota, “abre nuevas perspectivas de acción radical basadas en la duplicidad de la falta” (p. 76).

Una consecuencia política practica es referente a las fakenews. Estas son parte de la realidad y hay que tomarlas en cuenta en la política. No existen noticias plenamente objetivas, sin fallas y sin subjetividades involucradas: “…la verdad universal y la parcialidad no se excluyen mutuamente: se involucran en la lucha por la emancipación, no en quienes intentan mantener una indiferencia «objetiva»…el antisemitismo (pero también cualquier otra forma de racismo) es absolutamente erróneo, aunque se apoye en «verdades» parciales (datos exactos). No sólo hay datos verdaderos y datos falsos, también hay puntos de vista subjetivos verdaderos y falsos, pues forman parte de la realidad social” (p. 120).

El Teorema II, trata sobre la relación entre la ontología y la sexualidad, o en palabras de Žižek, “la sexualidad como nuestro contacto privilegiado con lo absoluto” (p. 22), lo cual se encuentra basado en la idea de Lacan de que “no hay relación sexual”. Mácha (2020) lo resumen muy bien: “...las fórmulas de la sexuación de Lacan pueden ser análogas a las antinomias Kant, que, de acuerdo con el Teorema I, pasan del terreno epistemológico al de la ontología. Estas fórmulas caracterizan dos imposibilidades principales: lo femenino y lo masculino. Al afirmar que el todo requiere una excepción o el no-todo es una parte del todo sin una excepción. Estas imposibilidades son experimentadas como lo sublime en el mundo fenomenal, que Žižek conecta con el principio del placer y la pulsión de muerte de Freud. Esta diferencia no persiste entre dos entidades positivas, lo masculino y lo femenino, pero marca una división en el género. El genero universal es dividido en una categoría particular (masculino) y un resto, el objeto a lacaniano, que es constitutivo de esta división (lo femenino).”

Este segundo teorema tiene consecuencias políticas, al establecer la universalidad concreta (con su categoría particular y su excesivo), que define como “una universalidad que se incluye así misma entre sus especies, bajo la apariencia de un momento singular que carece de contenido particular; en otras palabras, precisamente quienes carecen de un lugar apropiado dentro del todo social (como la plebe) representan la dimensión universal de la sociedad que las genera. Por esta razón, la plebe no puede ser abolida sin transformar radicalmente el conjunto del edificio social…” (p.237). En otras palabras, una política que avance en la universalidad requiere revolucionar a la sociedad entera: eliminar la miseria del proletariado implica abolir las relaciones sociales de producción del capitalismo, como deriva el marxismo.

El Teorema III utiliza tres topografías no orientables (la cinta de Moebius, el cross-cap y la botella de Klein), y los liga con ser esencia y noción (de Hegel) o coincidencia de opuestos, objeto a y universal (p. 23). La cinta de Moebius en su uso dialectico es el más conocido, los opuestos coinciden, las diferentes caras de la cinta que en realidad son la misma (ej. la cantidad se convierte en cualidad).

El cross-cap introduce un corte en la continuidad y ese corte permite que la relación entre los dos opuestos adopte la forma de reflexión. Un ejemplo concreto de ello es la lucha de clase que “no puede reducirse a un conflicto entre agentes particulares con la realidad social: no es una diferencia entre agentes positivos (que pueden describirse mediante un análisis social detallado) sino el antagonismo, la lucha que constituye a estos agentes” (p. 272). Por ello menciona, que “la lucha de clases no es un enfrentamiento entre dos grupos sociales que puedan clasificarse objetivamente, sino una división que, de forma diagonal, atraviesa todo el espacio social” (p. 271).

Por su parte, la botella de Klein, permite mostrar cómo aparece la subjetividad, el circulo de la reflexividad alcanza el absoluto, la causa pasa a ser efecto de sus efectos (p. 23). “En este punto advertimos con claridad la diferencia entre la cinta de Moebius y la botella de Klein. En la Cinta de Moebius, pasamos de una cara a otra de la cinta, o de un término a su opuesto, mientras en la botella de Klein pasamos del agujero en el cuerpo circular a la sustancia de este propio cuerpo, esto es, el vació regresa como el propio cuerpo que rodea. Sólo así llegamos a la subjetividad. ¿por qué? El sujeto es pura diferencia, y emerge como tal cuando esta diferencia ya no se reduce a una diferencia entre las partes de algún contenido substancial” (p. 298).

La consecuencia de esto es que las tensiones antagonistas no son reducibles a la diversificación y multiplicación clasificatoria, son constitutivas de lo sexual (p. 282). Por ello, las políticas emancipatorias, universalistas, tienen que fijarse en los antagonismos, no en la inclusión liberal. Al respecto Žižek señala que “la multiplicidad funciona como la negación del antagonismo asociado a la noción de la modernidad como tal: la falsedad de la multiplicidad reside en el hecho de liberar la noción de modernidad del antagonismo, de la forma en que pertenece al sistema capitalista, relegando este aspecto a una de sus subespecies históricas” (p. 283).

Aquí vale hablar del Corolario 3, Teorema III, que es sin duda de los más polémico, que adelanta los “rudimentos de un platonismo cuántico”. Žižek utiliza los trabajos de Carlo Rovelli (2015) sobre física cuántica y los lleva al terreno de la ontología. Habla de que la física cuántica establece ondas, probabilidades y la realidad física implica el colapso de una de estas probabilidades. Entonces, la realidad es fallida en sí misma al haber colapsado en una de todas las probabilidades al mismo tiempo. (p. 306-307). También habla del concepto Menos que Nada (MQN), utilizando la física cuántica, en el que menciona que el surgimiento del vacío requiere algo que sea “menos que nada”, que exista en el espacio simbólico, no en la realidad, “un objeto que ha de ser añadido al estado de las cosas para llegar a la nada” (p. 326).

Esto de igual forma tiene implicaciones políticas actuales en cuanto a las crisis que enfrenta la humanidad y nos colocan frente el apocalipsis, como el cambio climático o la aniquilación por una guerra nuclear. Sobre este último, la posición que considera adecuada que no se trata de salvar el mundo actual, sino “la realidad que podría haber sido de no haber frustrado los antagonismos que han originado la amenaza nuclear” (p 368). La elección, como sostiene Alenka Zupančič, es en realidad entre perderlo todo y crear lo que estamos a punto de perderlo, solo esto podría salvarnos: “construyamos primero esta totalidad (unidad, comunidad, libertad) que estamos a punto de perder por la bomba”. (p. 368). Ante la desesperanza, entonces, es el momento de justo de cambiar todo.
El Teorema IV, resumen los anteriores y establece que las abstracciones son parte de la realidad, son parte de su funcionamiento constitutivo. Como ejemplo emblemático, el valor de las mercancías en el capitalismo es una abstracción que gobierna al mundo. De igual forma hace una crítica importante a Latour, a la Ontología Orientada a Objetos (OOO) y a Butler. En buena medida hay una crítica a las nuevas ontologías, las cuales rechaza – aunque establece desde un inicio del libro (p. 27) que el verdadero enemigo es el arte del no pensamiento”, las frases de “sabiduría” que tratan de ser profundas, fascinarnos y despolitizarnos. Por ello, trata de establecer un dialogo importante con la teoría de los ensamblajes con la filosofía hegeliana, para establecer que no existe ensamblajes sin el sujeto, pues aún a la descripción más inhumana de la realidad se le debe de incluir.
Las implicaciones políticas de esto son más que evidentes. Con ello Žižek actualiza la importancia de Hegel, de su idealismo y la abstracción, así como la centralidad del sujeto en la política. En contraste con los objetos, como pretenden realizar la OOO.

Además, de desarrollar en contraposición el “¡Aquí esta Rodas, salta aquí!” (Hic Rhodus, hic saltus), usado para retar a los que alardean, por “¡Rodas está allí, salta allí!” (Ibi Rhodus, ibi saltus). Por lo cual menciona que el lema debe de ser: “actúa de tal modo que tu actividad no dependa de una figura del “gran otro” como garantía de ontológica. Incluso la orientación más “materialista” a menudo se basa en un gran otro que supuestamente registra y legitima nuestros actos” (p. 24, 428-429). En otras palabras, resalta la idea de que muchos intelectuales de izquierda hacen su carrera considerando que afuera existe la verdadera revolución– al cuál nunca acuden realmente, pues no existe tal sitio. Que existe un sitio (un gran otro) con consistencia que le garantice permanecer inmutable en el otro. Por lo cual, menciona que la solución es actuar en donde estamos, pues no hay otro lugar a donde saltar.

Algunas consideraciones críticas a las críticas
Se han hecho algunas críticas a este texto, algunas de las cuales valen en sí un comentario. La primera, es sobre la “pereza” académica del texto (Mácha, 2020). Esta crítica es similar a la de McManus (2021) señala que, a pesar de tratar de ser el mayor esfuerzo de Žižek para lograr un marco básico ontológico de todo su trabajo, queda a deber. Señala que otros trabajos de Žižek son más rigurosos, como Menos que nada (2015). Una segunda crítica, que es recurrente con la primera, es el uso de bromas vulgares o referencias a Stalin (Machá, 2020).

Es cierto, el texto tiene textos copiados de Wikipedia, en lugar de recurrir a las fuentes primarias, afirmaciones sin respaldo o con problemas de citas entre otras, lo cual en términos académicos no es correcto. Sin embargo, esto no reduce la calidad de sus argumentos. Una crítica de forma, no de fondo. De igual manera, la segunda crítica muchas veces parece ser más una reacción a prejuicios propios que a posiciones de Žižek. Se acerca mucho más a la idea de la corrección política, que ha criticado Žižek (2010).

Noys (2015) ya ha respondido a estas críticas hace tiempo, mencionando que el uso de inexactitudes, chistes de mal gusto, ser ofensivos o la repetición, es parte de su método de creación de argumentos e intervención política. Sus excesos son realizados con conocimiento de causa. Por ello, Žižek debe de ser leído tomando en cuenta que sus argumentos envuelven tres discursos abstractos a la vez: el psicoanalítico, el hegeliano y marxista. Además, este tipo de recursos, junto con el uso de la cultura popular, es lo que han atraído gran atención pública a sus planteamientos. Del mismo modo, que el papel de intelectual de Žižek no es el que busque estar dentro del establecimiento académico, sacrifica dicho prestigio, para lograr una mayor diseminación de sus ideas (Bar-El & Baert, 2021).

Sobre el uso de la física cuántica, Mácha (2020) apunta que ha recurrido a un solo trabajo de este campo, cuando existen más interpretaciones. Esta crítica puede sostenerse en sí misma, aunque con su debido cuidado, pues Žižek adelanta que es un rudimento, un primer estudio, por lo que implica que debe de ser tomado como tal. Una aproximación no final, lo cual abre un campo amplio de reflexión y desarrollo de diferentes perspectivas.

Otra crítica es sobre la búsqueda de universalidad que plantea Žižek, y que Deane-Freeman (2021) contrapone con otras visiones que señala la realidad como completa. Esta crítica implica tanto una posición ontológica, como una posición política, pues la contrapone a una visión donde la humanidad tiende a ser contigua con la naturaleza, en equilibrio con ella, lo que implica una posición contra la idea del progreso (de la modernidad). De igual manera, lo señala de tener una posición de imperialismo intelectual, de recurrir a la estructura edípica (freudiana) que no da cuenta de la pluralidad de la vida humana. Al respecto, Žižek ha criticado la posición romántica de la naturaleza y conservadora como ingenua. Si bien, esto no se encuentra desarrollado dentro de este libro se puede derivar del Teorema I, la realidad es fallida y no existe un equilibro natural. Para ser más exactos, Žižek plantea que la humanidad no debe de actuar con modestia en relación con la naturaleza, debe de actuar como ser universal, con toda su capacidad transformadora de la realidad para poderse enfrentar a los grandes desafíos ambientales actuales, como el cambio climático (Žižek, 2022a y 2002b).

Finalmente, McManus (2020) señala un alejamiento de la importancia del trabajo (que resaltaría Marx y Engels), con esta reformulación del materialismo dialectico, llevando a Žižek lo más a centrarse en cuestiones filosóficas que económicas. Así como en la falta de una visión robusta de una sociedad futura o un análisis de los movimientos socialistas actuales. Lo cual hace difícil conectar con versiones más acabadas de análisis marxista de la economía. Una crítica que tiende a regresar lo dicho por Marx y Engels a los idealistas: “Los filósofos se han limitado a interpretar el mundo de distintos modos; de lo que se trata es de transformarlo” (Marx & Engels, 2014, p. 502).
Aquí, también parece que se contraponen posiciones ontológicas y políticas. No niega la necesidad de acción, más bien resalta la necesidad de abstracción como un paso anterior. Por lo que Žižek (2004) suele mencionar que en otoño de 1914 ante el colapso de la Segunda Internacional y el inicio de la primera guerra mundial, Lenin se retiró a leer la lógica de Hegel, lo cuál le permitió plantear una posición radical que lo llevaría a comandar la revolución rusa de 1917.

Referencias
Bar-El, E., & Baert, P. (2021). ‘The Fool’ Revisited: The Making of Žižek as Sacrificial Public Intellectual. Cultural Sociology, 15(4), 539–557. https://doi.org/10.1177/1749975521100...
Deane-Freeman, Timothy. (2021). Marx & Philosophy. Consultado el 12 de junio de 2022 en: https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/revi...
Mácha, J. (2020). Review of Slavoj Žižek, "Sex and the Failed Absolute.", Philosophy in Review, 40(2), 88–90. https://doi.org/10.7202/1069834ar
McManus, Matt. (2021). “Review of Slavoj Zizek’s Sex and the Failed Absolute.” Historical Materialism, June 2021 Consultado el 12 de junio de 2022, en: https://www.historicalmaterialism.org...
Noys, Benjamin. (2015). Zizek Reading machine. En Hamza, A. (2015). Repeating Žižek. Durham: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822375470...
Rovelli, Carlo. (2015). La realidad no es lo que parece. Barcelona: Tusquets.
Žižek, Slavoj. (2004). Repetir a Lenin. Madrid: Akal.
Žižek, Slavoj. (2010). En defensa de la intolerancia. Madrid: Diario Público.
Žižek, Slavoj. (2015). Menos que nada. Hegel y la sombra del materialismo dialéctico. Madrid: Akal.
Žižek, Slavoj. (2017). Porque no saben lo que hacen. El sinthome ideológico. Madrid: Akal.
Žižek, Slavoj. (2022a). The stupidity

[Reilly Pryma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Revision: 3/5
Yes, *another* book *falls* in my standings. While I appreciate the wild ride Žižek took us for, I think in the end it is indeed like a rollercoaster: thrilling, but getting nowhere and with little practical justification. I think Žižek's narrative/framework getting the most stale, banal, bland, etc. with the cultural analysis should've been ringing alarm bells in how one could actually apply it to reality, especially with his "gappy ontology" that, while coherent, doesn't justify its place in/by using anyone's everyday experience. When we do try to bring it into the political-cultural arena, we get boring and vague takes like this: "one should insist on ethical universalism, one should also unconditionally insist on how every authentic ethical position by definition paradoxically combines universalism with taking sides in the ongoing struggle. Today, more than ever, one should emphasize that a true ethical position combines the assertion of universalism with a militant, divisive position of one engaged in a struggle: true universalists are not those who preach global tolerance of differences and all-encompassing unity, but those who engage in a passionate fight for the assertion of the Truth that engages them." (404-405) How exactly are those two things ("tolerance" and "fight") differentiated, based on what we have been told? Uh...
Žižek follows this with a tedious analysis of four films, which provide conclusions that are either blindingly obvious or lacking in ultimate foundation, so much so that I forgot to mention it in my review despite having read it that same day.
I think the problem lies, at base, with his conception of the Symbolic order/language/the Human as, at basis, an engine of abstraction. Sure, this makes sense in our modern Western setting where analysis is the order of the day, but I believe that this is actually the aberration, not the essence of what the Human is, something that lingers in our everyday practice in the site of a *whole* World that I found so difficult relating Žižek to.
Still, had fun with it.
So, yeah.

Overall, 4.9/5
This book was a fantastic read. While some of my peers have criticized Žižek's supposedly unclear and difficult-to-understand, I found him generally clear, although some of his statements are of such complexity that they take a few passes to fully grasp the concept, i.e. to put it into words one can fully grasp themselves (I would highly recommend annotating this book, or at least doing so for the Theorems and the Corollaries). He included many examples from our modern political, scientific, and cultural landscape, fully leveraging the advantage his placement in history gives him. I am frankly unsure how to proceed from here, so I'll try doing a broad overview of the ideas and move to more specific sections.
To begin, this work is truly a synthesis of the terms Žižek often ascribes to himself, those being "Lacanian" and "Hegelian". Of course, this will be a major red flag to most people familiar with the reputations of either of these figures. While the direct writings of both of these figures are often obscure (I have far much more direct contact with Lacan than Hegel, and I will say he is so cryptic and lacking in proper brids-eye overview that it is much, much better to approach him through secondary sources), Žižek does well to meld their core ideas in a more approachable and generalized, systematic way than the quagmires of minutiae both thinkers can get involved in. Of course, this comes with a cost: there have been many accusations that Žižek is not "true" to the ideas of these other two, mainly Hegel. I have not read much Hegel (something I hope to rectify by summer's end), so I cannot make a statement as to how faithfully Žižek lives up to his self-given title of "Hegelian," but there have been eminent scholars such as Robert Pippin who have criticized Žižek on this front. I will say that, regardless of such accuracies, Žižek's own framework is coherent regardless.
So what is this framework? The central thesis of the book is that the inconsistencies and gaps ("cut") of human subjectivity elucidated powerfully in the domain of sexuality and language by Lacan (at least in a general sense), but going back to Kant, are a foundational feature of reality itself - this is where Žižek claims his Hegelianism lies. It is a bit more complex than this, as this can potentially come off as a form of solipsism (the claim that no reality exists outside our heads), and involves layers of totality and void and, of course, lack/inconsistency (ranging from Democritus's "den" to Lacan's "objet a" and "sinthome", the central term being most often invoked), but on the whole that is the gist. And, on the whole, I find this rather convincing, as it typically fits a birds-eye view of reality and particularly for another reason I will elaborate on shortly. This is the "failed Absolute". However, I think it is in the "sex" aspect that the book falls just short of perfection. Žižek places human sexuality at the place of privilege for human contact with this incomplete (failed) totality. He does a decent job drawing a parallel, most pointedly by comparing Kant's antinomies of pure reason with Lacan's formulation of sexuality. However, I think he fails, or rather never thinks to try, to convince why sexuality is THE place of contact with this absolute totality-with-a-gap, why it is SEX specifically that gets onto the front cover and not, say, negativity (in a Hegelian sense) or art or something. The only justification I can think of is sexuality's relation to the death drive, which Žižek does an ok job elaborating on (and prompting my revision of my review of Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle) in how it serves as a "less than nothing" of the human world, a dreadful, undead circular motion that is built on by the sexuality complex and its attached gap of "objet a", though an overall survey of the death drive concept, especially in relation to his formulation of the Klein bottle as representative of/analogous to human subjectivity, would be helpful in clarifying this. But aside from that, why are not the practices of philosophy, poetry, and mysticism (a triad invoked on page 439 of my edition, at the tail end of the book) which Žižek claims address the gap involve in human language which other practices (praxis, "lalangue"/pleasure principle, and science) try to paper over, candidates for our brush with the Absolute? This is not so much of an issue, honestly, because sexuality takes a backseat in the second half of the book and is really only the focus for about a quarter of it (the second section heralded by Theorem 2), but it still irked me.
But now to get down to the individual elements. To begin, EASILY the HIGHLIGHT of this book was Corollary 3: the Retarded God of Quantum Ontology. Regardless of what you think of the potentially distasteful name, this section was an absolute powerhouse, where the rubber really hit the road for Žižek's philosophy, at least in my view. This is because Žižek directly connects his image of the Klein bottle (which is a 4D version of the Möbius Strip (a circular strip that twists on itself, such that going around in a straight line ends you up on the opposite side), in which a "snout" passes through the dome via the fourth dimension, allowing one to get "inside" the shape via a hole in its middle, a sort of Plato's Cave with nothing outside) to quantum physics, and, in perhaps the most brilliant move of the whole book, grounds his concept of "less than nothing" in the Higgs Field, a quantum field that gives mass to particles that actually costs energy to be "off", hence rendering a "true" vacuum lacking in the Higgs field actually costing something, making the Higgs field a something that is cheaper than nothing; hence, less than nothing. It was far more interesting than it may sound when I put it. You just had to be there, I guess. Whatever the case, Žižek fully leverages his placement in the third decade of the 21st Century to bring his idealist-materialism to life (he continuously insists he is a "true materialist", though I think in his hands materialism takes on a certain element of idealism, to a positive effect, that is) and ground the subjectivity of our very universe in the existentially confounding phenomenon (and that term is apt) of wave collapse in quantum mechanics (when the wave function, an abstract equation of probabilities of a particle being at any number of spaces, "collapses" into a single point upon observation of that particle). It is, for lack of a better term, awesome.
On the obverse to this is the previous corollary, Corollary 2: Sinuosities of Sexual Time, which is the only full-on disappointment of the book. Žižek sets himself up well to discuss the placement of Lacan's Big Other (a virtual field in which symbolic exchange resides, thus acting as a sort of source of expectation for the individual) in a digital world where, perhaps, there is a REAL big Other in the form of the grand algorithm... and then simply doesn't answer the question! Instead, he spends the rest of the chapter on a banal examination of a couple of sci-fi movies, wasting pages summarizing plots and playing around with time instead of fulfilling his Lacanian promise. I think this is where the other big issue of the book (aside from not fully justifying sexuality's central placement) comes in, that being of the Scholia, something I haven't mentioned yet simply because they don't really matter. Aside from maybe Scholia 3.4 (The World With(out) a Snout), 3.5 (Towards a Quantum Platonism), 4.1 (Language, Lalangue), and 4.3 (Beckett as the Writer of Abstraction), the Scholia are quite inconsequential and are often the sites of Žižek's most disconnected and sometimes banal readings of various cultural artifacts. The point is that Žižek sometimes gets carried away by doing cultural commentary that he loses sight of the big picture of this book, leading to bland takes that feel like a waste of time that could've been dedicated to fleshing out other aspects of his central claims (e.g. the aforementioned death drive).
But all this aside, the book really was fun, and prompted some serious re-examinations of previous opinions, hence my revisions of my reviews for Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Marx's Inferno (both in more polemical directions). I think Žižek offers a powerful synthesis of some heavy-hitting ideas while being far more clear than his inspirations were in their writing.
So, yeah.

[Arianne X · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sacred Sex

The Sexual Absolute

I must disagree with the lovable and adorable Zizek about, you guessed it, sex. Zizek sees sexual passion as deadly in that in its excess it poses a threat to a stable relationship. Basically, Zizek tells us that “…the description of the intense sexual act as the experience of the highest and most intense unity of Being is simply wrong.” By this, Zizek means that sex is the enabling path to the Absolute for human beings but that it ultimately fails in its reach for the Absolute. Too fail, to fail in the best way, is to Zizek, the most authentic and enduring human quality; “…failure is the key to identity”. For Zizek, sex centers around an unachievable sublimity for which mere desire and pleasure can never substitute. This is where I disagree with Zizek. Sex is not an “…experience of failure.” Sex is not a form of “destructive negativity” on a par with madness and war. Sex should not celebrated as merely the means of touching the Absolute, but as the means of creating the Absolute, even for only a ‘climactic’ moment, not just perchance to fail before it. Zizek further tells us that “…sexuality is the very terrain where humans detach themselves from nature” whereas I contend the antithesis, sexuality provides the most natural foundation for human life.

Sacred Sex

I see the act of sexual union as numinous and sacred. It is the sacred act of connection, communication and commitment between lovers and partners (of an any sex) preserving dignity and continuity. It should not be reduced to, and thus dismissed as, a mere physical act of gratification. It is of course this, but also much more. Sacred sexual union makes possible the relationship of two with the promotion of acceptance and cooperation yielding oneness - the breaking down of the otherness of the other; not rejection and confrontation which doubles back on itself resulting in the loneliness of each one even when there is more than one person involved. Thus, there should be no limitation to the free expression of human sexuality, free of fixed socially imposed identities. In sexual union, each partner becomes a self-positing person asserting a new sacredness in the world. The high point of course is in the jouissance of mutual and shared orgasm and the satisfaction of desire. For sexualized finite beings, mutual sexual pleasure is a sign of love. Orgasm is the great achievement of evolution in the advance to the creation of the Absolute, but it is also the grand stuff of revolution. Revolution against all those who tell us, philosophically or theologically, that sex is anything less than liberation from the inhibition in the approach to transcendence (love itself); that it is mere animal passion and gratification – the standard view of many people polluted by Christian dogma. Sexual union is the point where the subjective transcendent explodes into the real world of the objective. This is how and where the divided subjectivity of the partners finally combine without opposition, not as a mere coincidence of opposites, but dialectically to form a new unity or synthesis, where thought and reality become one in and between the sexual partners. The brute physical acts of passion and desire enter the domain of human meaning and overcome deadlock. There is no tension between sexual passion and transcendence, sex is the real rout to transcendence and overcoming the repression and alienation in life whereas ideology, such as religious dogma, seeks to insert alienation and repression as obstacles to the summit of dialectical sexual unity between partners. However, Zizek tells us that the space of sexuality together is to be found in antagonism whereas I find in it the overcoming and in the dialectical transcendence that just is sacred sex.

More Religious Contortions and Distortions

Christianity further pollutes transcendence by converting it to authority and asserting the power of shame over all desire and all things sexual, and the power of guilt over all things pleasurable, replacing each with the mysterious dogma of a pernicious and visceral cult. Transcendent fulfillment of the Absolute is achieved in the world, not beyond it - in a new impossible-real sexualized ontology filled with desire and free of gaps. The gap between raw desire and the object of desire is overcome with fantasy that provides the coordinates upon which pleasure is mapped for both parties to the union. Well it may be true that our knowledge of reality cannot be direct, our passion can be direct and real. This is why the path to the Absolute and transcendence itself is an act passion, not an act of intellect. Christianity would have us step out of, or ‘rise above’ sexuality and in doing so created a new unnatural universality. For Christianity, each sexual experience is singular, it is asexuality that is universal allowing for oneness to be achieved. Of course in Zizekian terms, the universal is not the container that holds the particular singulars rather, we can view this as an antagonism providing the necessary setup for the dialectical collision between singularly and universality.

I do like the manner Zizek in which points out the contradictory position of the Catholic Church on sex. The Church presents sex as a mere physical act of procreation with no higher dimension, but in doing so it reduces sex for humans to exactly that of the animal kingdom where it is used only for procreation and cannot be a manifestation of love. That is, the Church’s view on sex as vulgar biological activity, enslavement to animal nature or desire, does not elevate humans above the raw physical animal level, it equates humans to the raw animal physical level. In other words, according to the Catholic Church, humans should use sex in the same manner as animals and they deem this to be the path to higher spirituality - laughable. What the Christians deem as the disgusting reality of flesh, I think of as the celebration of the human form in whatever shape presented. Under these circumstances, it is easy to see why the beauty of the human body and sex, when polluted with and distorted by ideology, fails in its reach for the Absolute. But for Zizek, the eroticism is found in this very tension. To me, this tension is not needed for eroticism and only provides distraction from the sacred sexual experience. Too much reason, with its fragmented antonymies, destroys the unifying oneness of passion. Zizek inserts too much intellect into the passion. Religion inserts too much willful ignorance into existence.

A note on LGBQT+

LGBQT+, Zizek tells us that the + is that which eludes classification. Therefore, the + stands for an excess of reality beyond classification. I must ask, is this based on empirical observation or is it an a priori claim to a transcendental dimension of a new universality? Or does the + simply signify difference? Or is the + an identification of no identity and the rightful refusal to accept an overly simplistic name label of any kind? As such, Zizek characterizes sexual difference as M+ (man as the regularity and + as the accretion of all other sub-types or variants including women), I do not agree. How about M/F+, or even F/M+, with M/F or F/M designating ‘traditional’ sexual order and the + standing for excess of sexuality or that which is outside of the so called ‘traditional’ sexual order but still worthy of legitimate inclusion in order to have a complete sexual order? With this, the + symbol stands for the universality of being human. Thus, M/F+ = LGBQT+ which is simply a new humane human normativity to replace the elementary, binary, traditional and thus incomplete traditional M/F signifier and also bring to an end the endless accretion of letters where the most valuable designator, the +, is reduced to what looks like a placeholder for a lack of imagination at the end of a long parade of signifiers. The + is thus the universal incorporator beyond the traditional bifurcation that gets it all started. Zizek at one point does express the stages of the progression as (+, M+, M/F+), this is from a general principle to specific kind, but could this progression instead be expressed as (LGBTQ+, M/F+, M+, +), from the specific kind to a general all-inclusive principle? In truth, + applies to all of us.

Beware of Deep Waters:

For Zizek, much of what is most important in philosophy took place in the fifty-year period from 1781 (publication of Kant’s first Critique) to 1831 (Hegel’s death). Much of the analysis employed by Zizek turns on the transition in thinking from Kant to Hegel to examine contemporary problems in philosophy. As such, more than a passing knowledge of Kant and Hegel on the part of the reader is assumed. It is a deep dive into, and rollicking ride through, Kantian epistemology and Hegelian dialectics.

[Billie Pritchett · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know what to say about this book. It's not completely incoherent.

If you've read one Zizek book, you've read them all. He weaves film, history, and current events with psychoanalysis, philosophy, and Marxism. The writing makes for some interesting, rather unique perspectives.

One of his views is that events in the present have a way of reshaping our understanding of the past. For instance, it's discovered that some politician has been committing a series of heinous crimes for years and gotten away with it, and then his previous behavior, when viewed again, looks to show signs of this. It is not just that we think that the evidence was there all along but that it was in fact there all along. The same can go for economic downturns, ecological crises, take your pick.

Another of his views is that fantasy and imagination are in a sense just as real as what we take to be real. For instance, right not the United States faces a potential inflation problem with the several trillion dollars printed to alleviate the economic downturn in the face of the viral pandemic. Technically the dollar is inflated because the money was generated from nothing, but what it would take for the value of the dollar to drop to next to nothing is for people to recognize the problem, that all of this money can be printed very easily by the Federal Reserve whenever there's a crisis. Some people like to say "perception is reality," which isn't entirely true, and yet it is true that certain social facts about the world are true only in virtue of perception.

To take another example of fantasy and imagination being real, consider how we perceive our loved one. We see in someone we love some imaginary qualities that they do not have, but by virtue of believing these qualities, it makes our love for them stronger. Seemingly paradoxical aspects of human nature like that are what Zizek is interested in.

So what's the book about? I have no idea. It really is an assemblage, sprinkled with some insights but a bit frustrating with how it goes on and tries to be about everything.

If you really want to investigate Zizek's perspectives, I'd recommend searching him on YouTube or searching his name in podcast listings and listening to an interview with him. He is a colorful character, often brilliant, but often a little knowingly batty.

[Orvath · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entiendo que el autor quiso ampliar el pensamiento aristotélico de gozo pensándose a si mismo, para abarcar múltiples esferas ónticas, que incluyen la corporal y la social. Para ello hace un análisis de diferentes eras y pensamientos, abarcando a Hegel, Kant, Schelling y Fichte como parte del movimiento idealista alemán que rompió con el horizonte de la subjetividad absoluta. Así, en el Teorema I plantea el destino de la ontología en nuestra época y un rechazo de las ontologías modernas: las ontologías deleuzianas de multitudes y ensamblajes, la lógica de Badiou sobre los mundos que emergen de la multiplicidad del ser y las ontologías del nuevo materialismo. En el Teorema II abarca la formulación de Lacán de que la sexualidad la entiende como una fuerza de negatividad que perturba todo el edificio ontológico. El autor resume el «Teorema III», como la parte más extensa del libro, que articula los contornos de un espacio intrincado con sus tres formas principales: la cinta de Moebius, el cross-cap y la botella de Klein, una tríada que refleja la tríada de Hegel: ser, esencia, noción. La cinta de Moebius provee el pasaje continuo de un concepto hacia un opuesto (el ser se convierte en la nada, la cantidad en cualidad, etcétera). El cross-cap introduce un corte en esta continuidad, y este corte permite que la relación entre los dos opuestos adopte la forma de la reflexión: con el cross-cap , la diferencia pura entra en escena, la diferencia entre esencia y apariencia, una cosa y sus propiedades, la causa y sus efectos, etcétera. Con la botella de Klein, aparece la subjetividad: en ella, el círculo de la reflexividad alcanza el absoluto, la causa pasa a ser un efecto de sus efectos, etcétera. Finalmente en el Teorema IV alude a la persistencia de la abstracción y sus 3 figuras negativas: el exceso de la locura como fundamento de la razón humana, el exceso de pasión sexual mortal, el exceso de guerras.
Estos 4 teoremas sirven para formar la pregunta ontológica básica de la grieta que se ha formado en el orden positivo del ser y de la forma en que esa grieta es completada por la dimensión trascendental. Y plantea una pregunta sobre si la ética del ser humano lleva implícito que éste es muy propenso a transgredirla, de ahí emerge la experiencia sexual como experiencia del fracaso, y que el ser humano devenga en un sujeto inhumano.

[João Reis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Filosofia para hipsters. Nem sequer entretém...
Žižek regurgita uma mistura de Hegel, Kant, Marx, materialismo dialético em geral, e, pasme-se, Freud e Lacan para nos apresentar uma salgalhada cuja única conclusão decente é, creio, que o capitalismo está na base de muitos problemas (se bem que isso é tudo menos uma novidade...). A nível intelectual é paupérrimo, mas, bem, é filosofia para a populaça do século XXI, e não seria um «filósofo pop» com ideias de alto gabarito...
Já agora, uma nota para as referências a outras obras, tantos livros quanto filmes. É notório que Žižek não leu nem viu a maioria dos livros e filmes que menciona, e nem sequer o disfarça. Aliás, o sistema de citações denota-o sem qualquer dúvida, e seria motivo para uma rotunda rejeição fosse isto um trabalho académico. Mas é melhor debitar alarvidades nas redes sociais, pois claro...

[Christian Andersen Mølby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meget interessante passager, særligt i analyser af film og teater. Fortolkningen af Arrival skal genlæses i forlængelse af filmen. Meget hård at læse, og med lange afsnit, der er fuldstændigt uforståelige uden at have læst formel filosofi og have indgående kendskab til kontinentalfilosofi, Hegel og Kant.

Er generelt skeptisk over for filosofiens indblanding i kvantefysik, men argumentationen i bogen er overbevisende, så længe kvantefysikken er så ukendt. Potentielt interessant om ti, tyve år om det viser sig, at fortolkningen her i bogen er pure opspind eller reel. Jeg hælder til det første.

For mig fremstår koblingen til det kønnede univers også som en omgang vrøvl/filosofisk hokuspokus og jeg mistænker lidt dets prominente plads som en undskyldning for at putte “sex” i titlen som blikfang. Det er mange bedre titler til bogen.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely one of Zizek’s top books. He does a great job of explaining Hegelian and Lacanian concepts. There’s some repeat from his other works, but they are welcomed and help the reader to understand these complex concepts, particularly Hegel’s substance as subject and the move away from Kant’s dualism of phenomena (appearances) and noumena (things in-themselves). The substance is divided for Hegel, and so is the subject - that's where he locates the dialectic. Zizek even notes that Hegel's move away from Kant's Understanding (dualism) lines up with the feminine non-all in Lacan's formulation of sexuation. I also enjoyed his take down of posthumanism, which can't account for the unconscious. If you liked this book - check out Zupancic's What IS Sex?

[valixt · Rating 4 out of 5]

".. this book may appear to some readers somehow stuck halfway: while it tries to break out of the transcendental vicious cycle, its result is ultimately a negative one, i.e., it fails to deliver a new positive-realist vision of the universe - all it provides is a kind of empty space between the two (transcendental space and reality)" - Slavoj Žižek

[Arun · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The function of ideology is not only to kill hope - to obfuscate the possibilities of radical change - but also to sustain illusory (but structurally necessary) hopes."

Overall my understanding of Hegel/Marx/Freud(à la Lacan) triad has inched forward an epsilon of understanding. This book also has an amazing index.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m sorry - this book is definitely a theoretical feat, however, Zizek has clearly reached the stage in his career where he no longer has an editor… it brings the book down greatly. But I love his stuff with unorientables - how interesting! I’m always using the mobius band to explain things now.

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unlike most of his recent output, this is a lot more than just a collection of recent lectures. Indeed this sprawling volume features some of the best of his work on Sex, Classical Music, and Protestant Theology. Is it focused? No, but is it much more focused than usual? Absolutely.

[Patricia Castro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lo mejor que he leído de Zizek en años. Es el libro más conciso que ha escrito sobre materialismo dialéctico, visión de paralaje, idealismo alemán...

[Diogo (Amaral) · Rating 5 out of 5]

best book

[Morgan Vermont · Rating 5 out of 5]

A dense read, but I think if you're going to read one Zizek book it should be this.

[Roberto Yoed · Rating 2 out of 5]

Typical anti-stalinist Slavoj.

Man, I loved when he was more controversial and politically engaging.

I suppose time sooner or later takes its toll.