The Year of Dreaming Dangerously

by Slavoj Zizek, Michel Eltchaninoff (Introduction)

Overview

Call it the year of dreaming dangerously: 2011 caught the world off guard with a series of shattering events. While protesters in New York, Cairo, London, and Athens took to the streets in pursuit of emancipation, obscure destructive fantasies inspired the world’s racist populists in places as far apart as Hungary and Arizona, achieving a horrific consummation in the actions of mass murderer Anders Breivik.

The subterranean work of dissatisfaction continues. Rage is building, and a new wave of revolts and disturbances will follow. Why? Because the events of 2011 augur a new political reality. These are limited, distorted—sometimes even perverted—fragments of a utopian future lying dormant in the present.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781781680421
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	10/09/2012
Pages:	142
Sales rank:	1,119,777
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His books include Living in the End Times, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, In Defense of Lost Causes, four volumes of the Essential Žižek, and many more.

Editorial Reviews

Renegade philosopher and cultural critic Zizek (Living in the End Times) again attempts to goad us from our comfortable political positions and rethink the philosophical and social meaning of 2011’s major protest movements—including the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street. Drawing heavily on Marx and Hegel, Zizek probes the nature of these movements as they seek to fight the system of antagonistic capitalism without contributing to its enhanced functioning. For example, those involved in Occupy Wall Street, he observes, are “reacting to a system in the process of gradually destroying itself” as they wake “from a dream that has turned into a nightmare.” Similarly, despite the democratic elections forced by the Arab Spring, such protest movements have not flourished, and the cultural landscape is eerily bleak for the moment. Zizek argues that subterranean dissatisfaction still exists. We should view such movements as “limited, distorted (sometimes even perverted) fragments of a utopian future” whose greater potential flickers in and out of dormancy. Zizek’s staccato prose is often maddening as it jumps quickly from idea to idea, often repetitiously, without offering us a pause to ponder, but he’s as provocative as ever, forcing us to confront contentious matters head-on without flinching. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Such passion, in a man whose work forms a bridge between the minutiae of popular culture and the big abstract problems of existence, is invigorating, entertaining and expanding inquiring minds around the world.”—Daily Telegraph

“A great provocateur and an immensely suggestive and even dashing writer ... Žižek writes with passion and an aphoristic energy that is spellbinding.”—Los Angeles Times

“The thinker of choice for Europe’s young intellectual vanguard.”—Sean O’Hagan, Observer

“Žižek’s ingenious handling of culture, films, philosophy, intellectual history, personal stories, daily politics, combined with a politically incorrect wit (especially in his lectures) is truly enjoyable. This at times overwhelming combination of ideas remains unmatched in the contemporary intellectual scene.”—Christian Lotz, Marx and Philosophy Review of Books

“[Žižek highlights] exciting trends in class-organization, political consciousness, cooperation, and struggle ... [and] frames various victories as ‘signs from the future’ so the necessity of inner subjective engagement with social struggle becomes clear.”—Book News

“His ability to fuse together Martin Heidegger’s ‘fundamental ontology,’ Francis Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ and Naomi Klein’s ‘shock doctrine’ in order to undermine our liberal and tolerant democratic structures is a practice few intellectuals are capable of.”—Al Jazeera

From the Publisher

Such passion, in a man whose work forms a bridge between the minutiae of popular culture and the big abstract problems of existence, is invigorating, entertaining and expanding inquiring minds around the world.

Daily Telegraph

A great provocateur and an immensely suggestive and even dashing writer ... Žižek writes with passion and an aphoristic energy that is spellbinding.

Los Angeles Times

The thinker of choice for Europe’s young intellectual vanguard.”— Sean O’Hagan

Observer