Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left by Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, Slavoj Zizek ISBN: 1-85984-278-X Publisher: Verso Pub. Date: July, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.4 (5 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Weird
Comment: Very strange book--courageous, but disappointing in many ways. Butler tries throughout to get the others to think of gays/lesbians as something more than examples of minorities--they refuse. Laclau's second essay is positively bitchy and contemptuous. Zizek presses the other two to be more active activists and take a more positive political stance--they do not do so, instead noting that he also does not do so. Laclau says he assumed Zizek had a sophisticated political sense when he entered the collaboration but must conclude that he was wrong--Zizek is politically stupid, and Butler is a ranting, raving dyke--or so Laclau implies by referring to her first essay as a "war machine" or something. (She of course does not lower herself by responding.) It's an intersting collaboration in many ways--what I got out of it mainly was a better understanding of hegemony, which seems to me an incredibly powerful concept. But it comes mainly, I gather, from Laclau's earlier work. Butler, I thought, asked some good questions about universality that are ignored throughout the rest of the volume, as are all her remarks about gender, which seem invisible to the others. She writes beautifully at times. Laclau's thinking is incisive and powerful. Zizek seems to flip-flop wantonly on Derrida, and they all bicker constantly about who is and who isn't interpreting Lacan's Real with adequate thoroughness. It's a strangely confused, confusing, and inconclusive book. (The attempt, at the end, to present the failure to conclude anything as a theoretical triumph is a bit hollow.) It shows the state of theory now, I guess--theory is seductive in its power and potential, but three theorists of the Left seem unable to talk to each other. My own view is that theory can underestimate the power of disciplinary barriers. "Theory" seems to me to be nothing if not a way for a rhetorician, an economist, and a psychoanalyst/film critic to talk to each other, but the forces against such collaboration are not to be so easily thwarted, unfortunately. The book is interesting but naive.
Rating: 5
Summary: better than most...
Comment: This book represents an attempt by (the) three social thinkers of our time to bring their differing views of what is to done together by beginning with what it is that they have in common, namely: Marx (and Gramsci), Lacan, and Derrida. Although all three critique the above figures, they could not do what it is they do with them. This book provides a much needed companion to Laclau's (w/ Mouffe) "Hegemony and Socialist Strategy" and Zizek's "Ticklish Subject". It also helps towards Butler's "Gender Trouble" but I feel that her approach has matured a great deal from that mostly obscure book. Zizek and Laclau are on their game and their detailed responses back and forth really help in understanding what is at stake. I like Butler but it seems that she is out of her league and element. That being said, I think that there are nuggets of greatness in her writings, one just has to look extra hard to find them. My only criticism for Zizek is that sometimes his examples skew to the shallow side, but this negative is overcome with the remainder of his work.
Rating: 3
Summary: Difficult
Comment: A difficult book to read. It is composed of interrelated essays and brings poststructuralist analysis of the current political situation to the fore. Very good for scholars dealing with the desection of the postmodern but offers little advice to those struggling for a better life.
 |
Title: Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics by Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe ISBN: 1859843301 Publisher: Verso Pub. Date: June, 2001 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
 |
Title: The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection by Judith P. Butler ISBN: 0804728127 Publisher: Stanford University Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1997 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
 |
Title: The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology by Slavoj Zizek ISBN: 1859842917 Publisher: Verso Pub. Date: June, 2000 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
 |
Title: The Sublime Object of Ideology (Phronesis (Paperback)) by Slavoj Zizek ISBN: 0860919714 Publisher: Verso Pub. Date: 01 December, 1989 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
 |
Title: Organs Without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences by Slavoj Zizek ISBN: 0415969212 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: 01 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
