Free PDF The Plague of Fantasies (The Essential Zizek)
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The Plague of Fantasies (The Essential Zizek)
Free PDF The Plague of Fantasies (The Essential Zizek)
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Review
“The most formidably brilliant exponent of psychoanalysis, indeed of cultural theory in general, to have emerged from Europe in some decades.”—Terry Eagleton“Unafraid of confrontation and with a near limitless grasp of pop symbolism.”—Times of London“Žižek unfolds in this text a theory of the workings of postmodern ideology that is often breathtaking in its scope and acuity.”—Postmodern Culture
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Review
Zizek is a thinker who regards nothing as outside his field: the result is deeply interesting and provocative.
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Product details
Series: The Essential Zizek
Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Verso; Second Edition edition (January 5, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1844673030
ISBN-13: 978-1844673032
Product Dimensions:
5.1 x 1 x 7.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.4 out of 5 stars
7 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#132,929 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Very good book. Zizek is such a good writer/thinker. This is like the 6th or 7th book ive read by him. I do not think this is his best work though. An amazing book on Zizek is "Slavoj Zizek: Live Theory" by Rex Butler. Butler's book is amazing and really teaches you a lot about Zizek... about what Zizek's system is, what he is trying to see (the unsayable). In Butler's book, he also mentions that Plague of Fantasies isn't Zizek's best book. Nevertheless, Zizek is an amazing writer, and even if this isn't his best book, it still gets 5 stars. I look forward to reading more Zizek.In this book (as always) Zizek offers amazing interpretations on the history of philosophy. Zizek really says some interesting stuff on Kant... it inspired me to get a better grasp on Kant (I'm currently reading Roger Scruton's "Kant", which is very good).The reader absolutely must have a good understanding of Lacan to read Zizek. If you don't have a decent grasp on Lacan, Zizek will just seem like mush. It would also be good to have a good background in philosophy to understand Zizek.
I like it!
its cool
"The Plague of Fantasies" is Zizek at his best: funny, irreverent, brilliant and sometimes just silly. Zizek is a master of critical theory: from Schelling and Hegel to Alain Badiou, he knows it all, and knows it in detail.In this book, Zizek discusses a number of ideas, all of which focus around one or another aspect of Lacanian theory. Make no mistake about it: Zizek is a Lacanian (he may even know Lacan better than Lacan did). He analyzes various aspects of popular culture and leftist politics. Unlike some of his other books, however, this narrative is fast-paced and moves right along. In terms of ideas, he is mostly a passer-on of those which he has derived from others: the violence of interpretation, for instance, in which the deforming of a text's meaning, though untrue to the author's aims, nonetheless produces a truth effect which justifies the deliberate (mis)intepretation, is borrowed from Paul de Man; or the problem of the desublimated Other, which goes something like this: let's say you're having sex with your partner and all of a sudden your mind wanders. What's happened? According to Zizek, borrowing from Lacan here, your partner has (hopefully temporarily) slipped out of the phantasmatic reference frame you've built around him or her, for Zizek insists that we are always viewing others within frames of fantasy, in one way or another.His discussion of the three types of shaven vagina in the book's intro is bold and fun; as is also his discussion of the semiotic differences between French, American and German toilets (perhaps a new explanation for the real [i.e. obscene] causes of the World Wars?)Zizek is at his best and most entertaining in his analyses of movies. In the book's Forward, his comments about John Carpenter's "They Live" is priceless (I'll forgive him his reference to "Spielberg's Star Wars Trilogy,"; after all, one can't get everything right); his discussion of the leading motif of Spielberg's films being about the absent father, or the father figure who has lapsed in his duties and must learn how to make up for his lapse by defending his neglected family against the traumatic impact of the Real of some monstrous force (i.e. Nazis, dinosaurs, aliens from outer space) is a great insight, although he oversteps his bounds when he says that these films are about nothing else. That is false, trust me. There are all kinds of wonderful mythological and cosmological updates and retrievals going on in Spielberg's films. (A dose of heretical Jungian theory here might have helped him out a bit).In any case, this book is a great place to begin if you are interested in reading Zizek. Though I don't always agree with him, he hardly ever fails to entertain me (except when he goes into long pedantic discussions about the function of the Ego in Fichte or Schelling's concept of the Absolute; I mean, come oooon!) In great books, it's the personality of the author that counts, and so one does not read Zizek so much for his ideas (since, let's face it, they're borrowed from just about everybody who's anybody in Critical Theory) as for the entertaining effect of his personality. He is a great raconteur (like Reagan) and tells great jokes (also like Reagan) but in other respects, he is entirely dissimilar from the former US president.As Zizek, I mean, Lacan, would have said, borrowing perhaps from Coca-cola: "Enjoy!"--John David Ebert, author of "The New Media Invasion" and "Dead Celebrities, Living Icons."
There are two subjects people shouldn't mention in a social dinner conversation: religion and sex (some may also add politics). People should withhold their potentially controversial opinions for a more suitable venue. But it is perfectly alright to talk about oneself, and that's what most people usually do. Slavoj Zizek talks and writes a lot about sex, about religion and about politics. He seems to have a view on everything, and is ready to spill it all, without restraint or taboo. But there is one subject he doesn't mention very often: himself. Apart from the biographical sketch at the beginning of each book (and this reedition of The Essential Zizek gets a revamped notice, complete with his stint as a presidential candidate in 1990), we know surprisingly little about Zizek as an individual. He seems to be a larger-than-life character, but he doesn't disclose much about himself.The Plague of Fantasies nonetheless contains some biographical elements. Military service is mentioned twice, and from this fact alone we can deduce that it must have been a life-changing experience. The Yugoslav army was divided along ethnic lines, and as many militaries, it was strongly homophobic. Zizek relates some episodes of everyday life in the barracks: obscene pranks revealing the disavowed homosexual libidinal economy underlying the homophobic ideology, or the sexual insults exchanged as common greetings among comrades. There the signifier acquires a life of its own: a soldier who confesses he would like fried eggs for dinner is submitted to an obscene ritual that has to do with a Serbo-Croat pun on "eggs on the eye"; and references to one's mother's or sister's sexual life are exchanged as friendly greetings among individuals otherwise sensitive to the extreme about family honor.Going through military service exposed the aspiring intellectual to the shock of the Real; but it wasn't an altogether negative or traumatic experience. As Zizek notes, "every intellectual knows the redeeming value of being temporarily subjected to military drill, to the requirements of a 'primitive' physical job, or to some similar externally regulated labour - the very awareness that the Other regulates the process in which I participate, sets my mind free to roam since I know I am not involved."There are also several references to Yugoslavia under communism, to the war in Bosnia, and to people's prejudices towards the Balkans. Surprisingly, the worst distortions seem to come from people close to the scene. Emir Kusturica's film Underground is criticized not for its overt bias towards the Serbs, but because of its 'depoliticized' aestheticist attitude that, according to Zizek, comes close to a neo-Fascist perspective. Peter Handke, the Austrian novelist and playwright, turned against Slovenia when the country became independent and since then directs attacks against that nation that would be labelled as racist and xenophobic in any other context.According to Zizek, 'Balkanism' functions in a similar way to Edward Said's 'Orientalism': the Balkans are the timeless space on to which the West projects its phantasmatic content. But Zizek is no Slovenian nationalist nor a nostalgic of the former Yugoslavia. To those who want to separate the 'baby' of healthy nationalism from the 'bathwater' of ethnic fanaticism, he replies that "in the matter of national identity, one should also endeavor to throw out the baby (the spiritual purity of the national identity) in order to reveal the phantasmatic support which structures the jouissance in the national Thing."But perhaps it is misleading to look for biographical elements or contextual references in Zizek's texts. An intellectual reveals himself not by exposing his inner self or relating his life story, but by stating his tastes and distastes and by acknowledging his debt to a pantheon of authors. Here Zizek's personal landscape is much clearer, and he doesn't try to deceive, impress or avoid the public's gaze. What he writes is what you get. Zizek practices the art of the self-portrait through close reading of philosophical texts, references to novel plots or music compositions, and movie commentary.To his core theoretical apparatus of Lacan, Hegel, and Marx, he adds a vast array of cultural references, spanning from high brow to low pop. The philosophers he revisits in the course of this particular book are, in historical order, Malebranche, Kant, Schelling, Kierkegaard, Adorno, Arendt, Althusser, Deleuze and Badiou. In movies, Alfred Hitchcock is his all-time favorite, but he also makes frequent references to Luis Bunuel, Sergei Eisenstein, Frank Capra, and more modern films like Robert Altman's MASH or David Lynch's Wild at Heart. Pop culture commentary includes the TV series Star Trek, Columbo and the X-files. In literature, references are made to Shakespeare's Hamlet, Kafka's Castle and James' Ambassadors. Astute critique of Robert Schumann's Humoresque and references to Mozart, Wagner, Bach, Beethoven and Berlioz also reveal the classical music lover. If a conversationalist's skills are judged based on the breadth of his culture and on the depth of his insights, then Zizek must be a much sought-after social guest - if only he could refrain from talking about sex, God, and politics.
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