Zizek and Politics: A Critical Introduction

This book provides students and experts alike with a new kind of introduction to Slavoj Zizek's political theory. Going beyond recounting Zizek's positions on ideology, capitalism, Leninism, Stalinism, fascism, and related matters, it offers readers an argumentative reconstruction of Zizek's ideas which places his prolific output in critical dialogue with political philosophy, critical theory, and the history of ideas.But this reconstruction is also a cautionary tale. It argues that Zizek, since 1995, has turned away from the Lacanian and Hegelian insights that made his first works so ground-breaking. Instead, Zizek and Politics examines how he has come to embrace a much more bleak, neo-Hobbesian position whose political implications are profoundly ambivalent.Key Features*Surveys all of Zizek's works from 1989 to 2008, focusing on the way his ideas concerning politics have developed*Includes concise reconstructions of Zizek's key political and philosophical ideas including ideology, the subject, the symptom, the ideological fantasy and the superego*Brings Zizek's ideas into dialogue with other key political thinkers and traditions*Situates Zizek's ideas in terms of contemporary political debates about the nature of justice, democracy, law and violence*Makes a new argument about Zizek's politics, moving debates concerning his work on to new terrain and putting the manifold criticisms of Zizek's work on a new footing

Author: Matthew Sharpe,Geoff M. Boucher
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Published: 03/14/2010
Pages: 264
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9780748638048

About the Author

Matthew Sharpe lectures in philosophy and psychoanalytic studies at Deakin University. He has published Slavoj Zizek: A Little Piece of the Real and is co-editor of Traversing the Fantasy: Critical Essays on Slavok Zizek (Ashgate 2005). He has also co-written on Australian politics in The Times Will Suit Them-Postmodern Conservatism in Australia (Allen & Unwin 2008) and is the author of articles on Zizek, Strauss, Marcuse, Derrida, Castoriadis, Camus, Lacan, Kant, Foucault and Schmitt.

Geoff Boucher lectures in literary studies and psychoanalytic studies at Deakin University. He has published articles on Zizek in Telos and is co-editor of Traversing the Fantasy: Critical Essays on Slavok Zizek (Ashgate 2005). He has also written The Charmed Circle of Ideology (Re-Press 2008) on the post-Marxism of Butler, Zizek, Laclau and Mouffe, and co-written on Australian politics in The Times Will Suit Them-Postmodern Conservatism in Australia (Allen & Unwin 2008).