Христо’s Reviews > Quantum History: A New Materialist Philosophy > Status Update

This is by far the worst editing and typesetting I have ever seen in a Zizek book.

I find the Variations might be more valuable than the main body.

It's almost like he's simply using this as a vessel to recruit political militants. Zizek's commented a lot that people tell him he never provides a way forward. In this book, he is certainly recruiting!

Zizek's fundamental misunderstanding of AI is evident in the way he handles it as a military asset. "Viruses" are not "implanted into the AI systems". This part of the book was already reading as pseudo-paranoid, now it's bordering on psychotic.

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 of the Other, in-envious) is a proper stance as opposed to a neurotic. Which is a deeply a-Lacanian moralizing suggestion.

It is at this point a collage of Zizek's ideological stances post-LTN, which is attempts to justify via theory. Unaware or impartial to self-contradiction, the book transforms into utopic propaganda.

There's an odd irony when Zizek mentions McGowan's preposterousness that Fascism is the natural reaction immanent to Capitalism. 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 herecy, to use Bourdieu's terms.

I can't say I'm a huge fan of the Heidegger Extravaganza in the book's second arc.