Zizek: A Critical Introduction / Edition 1

by Sarah Kay

Overview

Žižek 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 Žižek 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 Žižek’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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780745622088
Publisher:	Polity Press
Publication date:	04/29/2003
Series:	Key Contemporary Thinkers
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.04(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.64(d)

About the Author

Professor of French and Occitan Literature, Department of French, University of Cambridge

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements.

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 Žižekian terms.

Notes.

Bibliography.

Index

Editorial Reviews

"Kay's introduction is a much more thorough and rigorous study, and 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

From the Publisher