Žižek Studies: The Greatest Hits (So Far)

Žižek Studies: The Greatest Hits (So Far)
Table of Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Editors’ Introduction
	Why Žižek? And Why Online?
	In the Beginning …
	A Man with Qualities—Žižek the Public Intellectual
	Screening Thought
	The Greatest Hits—An Axe for the Frozen Sea Within Us
	References
Part I: Philosophy
	References
1 Žižek and the Real Hegel
	Metaphysical Games
	Critical Revisions and Perverse Remakes
	Will the Real Hegel Please Stand Up?
	Truth or Consequences
	Notes
	References
2 Žižek’s Kant, or The Crack in the Universal (Politicizing the Transcendental Turn)
	Introduction: Žižek as Hegelian or ‘NeoKantian’? Yes, Please!
	Žižek and the Subject of Kantian Apperception
	Žižek on the Sublime, and the Antinomies of Pure Reason
	Failure = Success: Žižek on the Transcendental Imagination
	Conclusion: From the Politicization of Ontology to Žižek’s Ontology of Politics
	… And a Final Remark on the (Political) Subject
	Notes
	References
3 Žižek’s Brand of Philosophical Excess and the Treason of the Intellectuals: Wagers of Sin, Ugly Ducklings, and Mythical Swans
	Introduction—Žižek’s Brand of Excess and Le Traison des Clercs
	Žižek’s Wagers of Sin … and the Puritanical Response
	Fifty Shades of Gray Transference—The Violent Visions of Žižek’s Critics
	The Real Excess of the Joker’s Success and the Search for Missing Rabbits
	There Once Was an Ugly Ideological Duckling—A Poster Boy for the Treason of the Intellectuals
	Conclusion—The Curious Case of the Academics Who Failed to Bark in the Night
	References
4 The Hegelian “Night of the World”: Žižek on Subjectivity, Negativity, and Universality
	The Hegelian Ticklish Subject
	Žižek’s Hegelian Criticism of Kantian Imagination
	“The Night of the World”
	“Tarrying with the Negative”
	Imagination or Understanding?
	II: Abstract Negativity and Concrete Universality
	From Abstract to Concrete Universality
	The ‘Night of the World’ and Revolutionary Violence
	Global Capitalism: ‘End of History’ or ‘History of Violence’?
	Notes
	References
Part II: Politics
	Reference
5 A Hermeneutic of Hope: Problematizing Žižek’s Apocalypticism
	Eschatology and Alterity
	Hope in the Face of Cultural Devastation
	Apocalyptic Žižek
	Fully Accomplished Loss
	Signs from the Future
	The End of Hope?
	Notes
	References
6 Barack Obama, the New Spirit of Capitalism and the Populist Resistance
	Populism and the Political
	The Bush Malaise and America’s Moral Crisis
	Reclaiming American Exceptionalism
	The New Spirit of Capitalism
	Obama and the New Commodity Logic
	The Populists Shrugged
	Conclusion
	Notes
	References
7 Capitalism’s Cynical Leviathan: Cynicism, Totalitarianism, and Hobbes in Modern Capitalist Regulation
	Totalitarianism, Cynicism, and Capitalism Management
	Laclau, Hegemony, and the Impossibility of Total Inscription
	Žižek, Cynicism, and Totalitarianism
	Hobbes and a Cynical Totalitarianism
	Hobbes, the Need for Totalitarianism and Capitalism Regulation
	Saving the Individual to Save the State and Organization
	Consent, Internalization and Dis-identification in Hobbes and Capitalism
	Cynicism, Responsibility, and Dis-identification
	Order, Dis-identification, and the Construction of the Cynical Totalitarian Subject
	Conclusion: Reinforcing Totalitarianism Through Cynicism
	References
8 The Joy of Inequality: The Libidinal Economy of Compassionate Consumerism
	Introduction: Psychosexual/Development
	The Oral Stage: Table for Two International
	The Anal Stage: Toilet Twinning
	The Phallic Stage: Sir Richard’s Condoms
	Conclusion: The Desire of the Other
	Acknowledgements
	Notes
	References
9 Žižek’s New Universe of Discourse: Politics and the Discourse of the Capitalist
	Towards a Formal Difference in Discourse Between Žižek and Lacan
	The Discourse of the Capitalist: Production and Consumption
		The Dynamics of Production
		The Dynamics of Consumption
	Consequences and Symptoms of the Decline of the Master and the Rise of the Universe of Capitalism
	Waste and the Discourse of Bio-Power
	The Decline of Symbolic Efficiency and the Discourse of Immaterial Labor
	The Discourse of Critical Theory
	Conclusion
	Appendix: A Brief Summary of Lacan’s Structuralist Theory of Discourse
	Notes
	References
Part III: Popular Culture
10 Enjoying the Cinema
	Notes
	References
11 Losing What We Never Had: Žižek and Lacan Rock On with Bryan Adams
	Those Were the Best Days of My Life
	Standing on Your Mamma’s Porch
	I Close My Eyes, and She Slips Away
	Long After the Thrill of Living Is Gone
	Tonight, Let’s Enjoy Life
	Conclusion: Hold on to Sixteen as Long as You Can …
	Notes
	References
12 Interpellating Django: The Functions of the Gaze in Tarantino’s Django Unchained
	Note
	References
13. You Only Die Thrice: Zombies Revisited in The Walking Dead
	The Zombie Sub-genre
	Grotesque Zombie Sublime
	Death ad nauseam
	Holocaust Shades
	Notes
	References
14 They Were Created by Man … and They Have a Plan: Subjective and Objective Violence in Battlestar Galactica and the War on Terror
	Repetition and Farce in the “War on Terror”
	Subjective and Objective Violence
	Subjective and Objective Violence in BSG, or, You Can’t Love a Skin-Job
	Fear and Racism in the Human Fleet
	The Background
	First as Tragedy …
	Conclusion: Should We Care About the Tyrant’s Bloody Robes?
	Notes
	References
Notes on Contributors
Index