Zizek
A Critical Introduction
Key Contemporary Thinkers
1. Edition March 2003
208 Pages, Softcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
Zizek is hailed as the most significant interdisciplinary
thinker of modern times. His work is a powerful, often explosive
combination of Lacanian psychoanalysis and philosophy which tests
key psychoanalytical concepts against the ideas of major European
thinkers, especially Hegel. It has ignited enthusiasm and
stimulated new approaches across a vast range of disciplines, and
seems to be attracting an ever-growing readership. In part, this is
because Zizek himself has a panoramic range of interests
encompassing film studies, literature, cyber culture, ethics,
theology and, above all, politics. It is also because he is a
highly entertaining writer, having a flair for anecdote, a smutty
sense of humour and the knack of capturing complex ideas in
concrete form.
Sarah Kay's book provides a lucid and comprehensive
introduction to Zizek's work. His writings to date
are presented and evaluated here for the first time, together with
an outline of their development and explanations of his key
premises, themes and terms. This book will be essential reading for
students of cultural studies, literary studies, philosophy and
social and political theory.
Chapter 1: Introduction: thinking, writing and reading about the
real.
Chapter 2: Dialectic and the real: Lacan, Hegel, and the alchemy
of après-coup.
Chapter 3: 'Reality' and the real: culture as
anamorphosis:.
Chapter 4: The real of sexual difference: imagining, thinking,
being.
Chapter 5: Ethics and the real: the ungodly virtues of
psychoanalysis.
Chapter 6: Politics, or, the art of the impossible.
Glossary of Zizekian terms.
Notes.
Bibliography.
Index
her elucidation of the influence of German idealism on Zizek's
thinking is by far the best of any of the introductions under
consideration."
Sean Homer, Gramma
