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Title: The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology by Slavoj Zizek ISBN: 1-85984-291-7 Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: June, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (6 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Good book in Kant and Hegel but dogmatic in psychoanalysis
Comment: I just finished the book and I thought the first part as very enlightening in his reading of Kant, Heidegger and Hegel, which in the case of Kant is the standard Lacanian reading on Moral Law. Zizek is critical about everything and his dialectical twists are delicious but psychoanalysis remains untouched and from this absolute premise -"the Unconscious is the discourse of the Other" he makes the most startling and dogmatic remarks of Deleuze and Foucault as philosophers of globalized perversion -that is their dismissal of the Big Other as post-Oedipal and therefore gurus of postmodern narcissistic subjectivity in late capitalism- to an ironic defense of Christianity as the empty place for paternal authority to put things "in place" fictitiously for the sake of socio-symbolic structure that keeps everything in the realm of appearance -appearance as Substance- and keeps us from the Monstrous Real. In the first case, Zizek argues: "Is not Deleuze's critique of Oedipus psychoanalysis an exemplary case of the perverse rejection of hysteria?" by limiting the symbolic authority and therefore imbues himself in an ethics of drive, which unlike of desire, chooses not to fulfill itself consciously in a mourning-loss like the hysteric. That, for Zizek, on his premises is the core of postmodern subjectivity. Like a good Hegelian, Zizek maintains -very nicely- the Unbehangen of the Universals by the act proper which is absolutely singular and arbitrary, but I don't think he understands the Nietzscheanism of Deleuze which transcends the will to Nothingness of the superego concerning the empty Law. For Zizek, that is the only way and ends paradoxically by stating that even if the Law will be always there, do not compromise your desire for anything, which can be read as either a new kind of empty Law or the Act that trascends subjetivity itself which I think it is exactly what Deleuze wants and not the same-old clises on the Anti-Oedipus and Mille Plateaux of fluiding subjectivities. I remember that for Deleuze the problem is not psychoanalysis itself but the familialist reduction of it into a daddy-mommy-me theater, instead of concentrating in extra-familial realities as societal delirium where schizophrenia can be explained. Zizek is great at explaining and dialectizing the topics of the unconscious, desire, law, etc but he does not dialectize its psychanalysis and doesn't even consider the difference as a positive affirmation beyond dialectic negation which Deleuze proved as a new form of thought in Difference and Repetition, Nietzche and Philosophy and Bergsonism. If he criticizes the radical clises Deleuzians, or New Agers, or whatever he should start by criticizing also the worldwide sects of Lacanians that "speak in tongues" and create "perversely" an esoteric "knowldege of the Other" (Trust me, personal experience!!!). Great book on the interpretation of Kant and Hegel but too dogmatic on psychoanalysis.
Rating: 5
Summary: dodgy review!!
Comment: If you've never before read Zizek and feel less than confident in your grasp of the last two or three cenuries worth of philosophy (from Kant onwards really), you may want to hold off. I never took a philosophy course in my life and I used to know little if anything about structuralism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, etc., so my first attempt to read "The Ticklish Subject" was ultimately a failure. Heidegger? Hegel? Lacan? Badiou?! Yikes! I decided to brush up... er... for the first time. Whatever. Anyhow, it was about a year ago that I tried and failed to read Zizek. Since then I've gained an (admittedly) rudimentary knowledge of all Zizek's prerequisites.
For the philosophy layman: I think it's helpful to have read a few things before reading "The Ticklish Subject." Specifically, Alain Badiou's "Ethics," Judith Butler's "The Psychic Life of Power," Louis Althusser's "Lenin and Philosophy," Immanuel Kant's "Critique of Practical Reason," and anything by or about Heidegger, Hegel, Foucault, Marx and especially Jacques Lacan. All right, it's more than a few things. It's like... nine. Which sounds ridiculous but...
If you're interested in Zizek, this book is worth brushing up for. It's a fun read and, armed with (at least) rudimentary knowledge of the aforementioned thinkers, I think you'll appreciate his point of view. It's insightful, quirky and sometimes a little controversial and, yes, he definitely operates within the Lacanian framework. In the end, I think the point is to reimagine the Cartesian subject as he, she or it (the thing) which acts rather than he, she or it (the thing) which thinks. No, that's too simplistic. Ack. I should probably go back and read it again.
Anyway, "The Ticklish Subject" may or may not appeal to you, especially if you are already philosophically inclined. Hopefully it won't leave you feeling ambivalent. For my own part, I feel anything but.
Rating: 2
Summary: Dodgy Bloke!!
Comment: Zizek has always been dodgy on racism and liberal multiculturalism as he seems to fall in line behind a lot of European continental theorists - from Sartre on - who have tried to describe little Others from the 'Third World' or even Outside/In the First as fundamentally constructed through absence. Read Sartre's 'anti-semite and jew' to get the point.
There is indeed a problem when race-thinking is mobilised by the racialised to resist racism. Ideas of purity and original community - much like those of fascism - can be allowed to develop despite the fact that all appeals to "race" are not analytically equivalent. Zizek's not into "race" or racism as such though. He sees contemporary interest in the subject as a symptom of a diminished political Left.
In this book he's dodgy on Butler too. Zizek claims that as long as resistance to power is a direct response to the power structure it presumes to subvert, then it will necessarily fail. He then contends that the "true" act of resistance is one that will disturb the 'phantasmic core' of the symbolic order and therefore it will be an "authentic act".
So... we start from an impossible position to reach a possible. At the end of the day there are more 'real' examples of resistance, framed by a big Other/dominant power structure/hegemon that have, while coming out in response to that power, actually envisioned and/or travelled above and beyond it than there are of re-constituted Cartesian subjects upsetting the structure at it's core. In fact the core is often upset by the subversive over-statements of pre-substantiated resistance. The added advantage is that you don't have to reify dodgy discources on "race" and anti-semitism to realise this.
As for disturbing the core, what about doing away with "race" and "sex" altogether in place of a civic community well aware of the effects that these ideas have had on people? Zizek always leaves me ambivalent. The Lacanism is tedious and the reference to films John Woo especially is annoying. He needs to be more serious, or at least approaching funny, but not somewhere imbetween.
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Title: The Sublime Object of Ideology by Slavoj Zizek ISBN: 0860919714 Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: February, 1997 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left by Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, Slavoj Zizek ISBN: 185984278X Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: July, 2000 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: The Plague of Fantasies (Wo Es War) by Slavoj Zizek ISBN: 1859841937 Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: November, 1997 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For? by Slavoj Zizek ISBN: 1859843263 Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: October, 2001 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment As a Political Factor by Slavoj Zizek ISBN: 185984460X Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: 07 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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