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Slavoj Žižek

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In Defense of Lost Causes Kindle Edition

by Slavoj Zizek (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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The renowned philosophical sharpshooter looks for the kernel of truth in the fascist politics of the past—offering an adrenaline-fueled manifesto for universal values.

Is global emancipation a lost cause? Are universal values outdated relics of an earlier age? In fear of the horrors of totalitarianism, should we submit ourselves to a miserable third way of economic liberalism and government-as-administration?

In this combative major work, philosophical sharpshooter Slavoj Žižek takes on the reigning ideology with a plea that we should re-appropriate several “lost causes”—and look for the kernel of truth in the “totalitarian” politics of the past.

Examining Heidegger’s seduction by fascism and Foucault’s flirtation with the Iranian Revolution, he suggests that these were the “right steps in the wrong direction.” He argues that while the revolutionary terror of Robespierre, Mao, and the Bolsheviks ended in historic failure and monstrosity, this is not the whole story. There is, in fact, a redemptive moment that gets lost in the outright liberal-democratic rejection of revolutionary authoritarianism and the valorization of soft, consensual, decentralized politics.

Žižek claims that, particularly in light of the forthcoming ecological crisis, we should reinvent revolutionary terror and the dictatorship of the proletariat in the struggle for universal emancipation. We need to courageously accept the return to this Cause—even if we court the risk of a catastrophic disaster. In the words of Samuel Beckett: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

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539 pages
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English
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Verso
Publication date

October 19, 2009
File size

1896 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for Slavoj Žižek
“Žižek leaves no social or cultural phenomenon untheorized, and is master of the counterintuitive observation.”
—The New Yorker

“The giant of Ljubljana provides the best intellectual high science since Anti-Oedipus.”
—The Village Voice

“Žižek is a thinker who regards nothing as outside his field: the result is deeply interesting and provocative.”
—Guardian

“The most dangerous philosopher in the West.”
—Adam Kirsch, The New Republic

“Exhilarating, inspiring, thought-provoking.”
—David Schneider, Prospect

“Addictively eclectic . . . He contrives to leave the reader, as usual, both exhilarated and disoriented, standing in the middle of a scorched plain strewn with the rubble of smashed idols.”
—Steven Poole, The Guardian

“Outrageous, provocative and entertaining.”
—Terry Eagleton

“A monument to imaginative, risk-taking and rigorous scholarship.”
—Times Higher Education Supplement

“Žižek is one of the few living writers to combine theoretical rigor with compulsive readability.”
—Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Slavoj iek 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 iek, and many more.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B004GKMBIO
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Verso (October 19, 2009)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 19, 2009
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1896 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 539 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #834,193 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #220 in Radical Thought
- #448 in Modern Philosophy (Kindle Store)
- #666 in Fascism (Books)

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"The most dangerous philosopher in the West," (says Adam Kirsch of The New Republic) Slavoj Zizek 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 "First as Tragedy, Then as Farce;" "Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle;" "In Defense of Lost Causes;" "Living in the End Times;" and many more.

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4.2 out of 5

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scarecrow

No one said it would be easy

Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2008

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Mao said, the revolution is not a dinner party, and along the way horrible things may happen, Zizek here reclaims, or claims again(resurgence) the demise of thinking through the paradigm of change, it is not so much a matter of what has gone wrong but seeing one's mistakes, failing and going on- at it again, he likes Beckett's apt phrase, of Fail and fail again,we are human failure is part of what we do, nature somehow missed this, for now we may create ourselves out of existence with control over bio-political horizons, cloning,DNA research;software robotics;there is a chapter on this;UNBEHAGEN IN DER NATUR; but Zizek is getting good at writing, yes the entertainment factor is contained, he relies on sober analysis of the state of democracy and culture, exploitation,religion,hot spots the Right and the Left, the points of representation as the favelas, or the Zapatistas, Lulu in Brazil, the Left in Europe,Negri, Mao, Lenin, Critchley and Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, all become objects for contemplation on the objects of the state and transformations or lack thereof, the Cultural Revolution,(can collectives run the state?) all through the Lens of Lacan at times, or Hegel,certainly Marx; all well thought through; You come away with a real sense of knowing where things are within the globe, where greed resides,false hopes; "what should be done", and not done, the spectre of Walter Benjamin hovers here with the strain of Messianism, reclaiming the path to enlightenment and simple understanding, why revolutions failed is not so much the aim here as how to pick up the pieces once the Winter Palace was seized; perhaps Lenin believed in revolution but also that nothing happened in Soviet Russia; dual powere as well is great objects for discussion, as we find today, Zizek opts for a kind of nomadic resistence, create your own alternate spaces within capitalism, it is not going away, work within it, give concerts of political music in your friend's loft(don't publicize it) and invite your marxist friends(Freundshaft) with your stock broker friends as well;Deleuze as well makes an appearence herein, the "objects without a body",(OwaB)and(BwaO)sort of a Webern-ian mirror reversal on virtuality, the the spaces we like to inhabit, our comfort zones of contemplation and cognition;Zizek also follows quite well serious music, with a fascinating discussion on the "smoking gun" of Shostakovich, was he a committed socialist or not,with hundreds of thousands of dollars in production of the performances of his symphonies, I'd think the fundraising boards at USA orchestras should know. . . he is compared to Prokofiev,who was above all this dirty poltical stuff. . . great read . . .

34 people found this helpful

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RDRoman

Centralized Government Political Philosophy

Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2010

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This book provides a good overview of the political philosophy underlying current thinking and past theories of centralized government control. I think it does a pretty good job of explaining the what and why of centralized government control. I do not agree with the idea that this form of government is good but it may come about unless the general population takes a more responsible position and attitude in its attempt to placate the desires for individual as apposed to general welfare.

5 people found this helpful

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Yehezkel Dror

DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF

Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2010

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The Capacity to Govern: A Report to the Club of Rome ; Crazy States: A Counterconventional Strategic Problem

This book is divided against itself: parts of it are outstanding while other parts are esoteric and non-sense other than for members of a strange sect of what I call novo-Marxists.

Its basic theses that failures of the actual praxis of revolutions do not negate some of their values and that global capitalism should not be accepted as irreplaceable by better alternatives are well taken. The discussions of coping with biogenetics are fascinating. And many other insights make the book as a whole worth reading.

However, instead of focusing on main theses and working out coherent alternatives to global capitalism, or at least indicating ways to inventing such alternatives, the book gets lost in at least four labyrinths: (1) It devotes a lot of space to debates with other "sect members" on esoteric issues and responses to their criticism of the author's writings; (2) the book is one-dimensional in its assumptions on human psychology, relying i on some versions of Lacan and Lacanian reinterpretations of Freud, completely ignoring alternative and not less "scientific" schools of psychology; (3) it is captive to Marxian paradigms, making artificial efforts to fit important ideas into outdated language games, instead of bravely developing new paradigms; and (4) the authors pins his hopes on "trust in the people" without any non-anecdotal justification either in history or social sciences.

The fourth error is the most serious of all, undermining the main thrust of the book. The author relies on the new global excluded population of slum-dwellers as the new "good old Marxist...proletarian revolutionary subject " (page 425), where one should look for "signs of the new forms of social awareness that will emerge from the slum collectives: they will be the germs of the future." (page 426). This ignores the realities of slum populations as revealed in empirical studies, ignores radical differences between various groups of slum populations, and leaves out of account the near-certainty that if they should endanger a state or the global order, they will be easily and effectively "repressed" in one way or another.

The author demonstrates in this book ability to contribute to an urgently needed paradigmatic global revolution, but not as long as he is captive to phantasm. What is really needed is some kind of a "Global Leviathan" containing the danger of "the acts of a single socio-political agent [who] can really alter and even interrupt the global historical process [for the worse, up to global calamity] (page 421, my additions in brackets) and to take care of new forms of the "common" as rightly discussed by the author. But such a Global Leviathan can probably only take the form of an authoritative oligarchy of main powers, contrary to from the dreams of the authors.

To make a real contribution of at least some historic significance, the author needs a good dose of "subtraction" (to use a favorite term of the book) from the ideological traps in which this book is caught.

Professor Yehezkel Dror
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
msdror@mscc.huji.ac.il

48 people found this helpful

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David S. Deshon

A critique of contemporary Marxist thought.

Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2019

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Anyone who needs to know what is going on in this area of thought needs to know this source. It is not just a polemic.

2 people found this helpful

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SirJakeTheRandom

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2016

totes

like going home for an hour or two

Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2017

Is this what happens to your mind if you read all the time? Zizek fans can immerse themselves in SZ's stream of consciousness as he reads various books which for the most part seem to have no connection with one another or with this train of thought unless you are used to the neo - neocortextual rather than neo-marxist monologue. If you are familiar with Hegel and Lacan this is like going home for an hour or two. And so on...

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Igorot Baroy

Good

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 25, 2020

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Great book, courteous service.

Peter E. Caines

Terrific.

Reviewed in Canada on September 16, 2017

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Terrific.

Amazon Customer

Four Stars

Reviewed in Canada on June 9, 2017

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good

Kieran Duffy

Probative.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 17, 2013

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I haven't actually read it, but I assume that its intended target will be appreciative. Unduly appreciative in fact, they may be indebted to me for life for such an esteemed purchase.

Bibliofilo

Provokant und unterhaltsam

Reviewed in Germany on September 13, 2010

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Das Werk lässt sich in einem Wort zusammenfassen: Provokant.
Die teilweise ziemlich gewagten Thesen von Slavoj Zizek werden publikumswirksam vorgebracht und diskutiert, wobei Zizeks Grundthese darin besteht, dass in der westlichen industrialisierten Welt ein Paradigmenwechsel von Nöten wäre, in welchem gewisse kollektive Werte wieder gewonnen werden müssen um die Probleme der Gegenwart (u.a. Ökologie) bewältigen zu können.
Er analysiert und spielt mit den verschiedenen Ismen, welche in der jüngeren Geschichte derartige Paradigmenwechsel versucht haben, indem er allen (und wirklich allen) einen positive Seite abgewinnen kann. Samuel Beketts Satz über die Notwendigkeit des wiederholten Scheiterns (Fail again. Fail better) steht hierbei im Mittelpunkt. Dabei schreckt der Autor weder davor zurück, Heideggers Nationalsozialismus als "a right step in the wrong direction" darzustellen, noch kritisiert er Fouclaults Bewunderung für die Iranische Revolution. Sogar bestimmte Grundideen des Stalinismus werden geteilt.
Die zahlreichen und Querverweise auf die Thesen Lacans und Deleuze machen das Lesen manchmal etwas mühsam, andererseits werden im Buch aber auch höchst unterhaltsame Thesen mit anschaubaren Beispielen aus Literatur und Film geboten:höchst amüsant sind z.B. die ausführlich dargestellte These, Frankensteins Monster sei in Wirklichkeit nichts anderes als eine nicht besonders mutige Parabel über die französische Revolution oder die Überlegungen zu den Klischees in Hollywoodproduktionen, in welchen historische und literarische Vorlagen stets auf sexuelles Verhältnis reduziert werden. Ein weiteres Beispiel besteht im Bericht und der Analyse des schwierigen Verhältnisses von Shostakovich mit dem öffentlichen Geschmack in der Sowjetunion, welches sich direkt in seinem Werk widerspiegelt.
Zizek ist ein Querdenker, der mit provokanten Thesen versucht, einen neuen Radikalismus anzufachen, der - wie er meint - seit den Studentenprotesten auch aufgrund des Endes des Ostblocks immer mehr eingeschlummert ist.
Da Buch ist teilweise für einen Laien schwer lesbar und nicht immer leicht verständlich. Wer Konstanz und Durchhaltevermögen an den Tag legt, wird aber auch mit höchst unterhaltsamen Gedankengängen und überraschenden Überlegungen entschädiget.

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