The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology

by Slavoj Žižek

Book Overview

Slavoj i ek, the maverick philosopher, author of over 30 books, acclaimed as the Elvis of cultural theory, and today s most controversial public intellectual. His work traverses the fields of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1859842917
• ISBN13: 9781859842911
• Release Date: June 2000
• Publisher: Verso
• Length: 409 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.0" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Good book in Kant and Hegel but dogmatic in psychoanalysis

Zizek's central argument in this book is that we have to rescue a "hard" conception of subject against the assault by democratic theorists, deconstructionists, and holistic New Agers. The subject is someone who does not give up on his desire; someone who is firm on his convictions -a blissful orthodox. This subjective hard core is compromised by following the dominant consensus on what a good society should be (Habermas), by giving one's own powers in the expectation of the Other to come (Derrida), or by becoming One with the Whole (New Age). In any case, we abandon the essential disruptive and political nature of us subjects. The first part of the book is a very enlightening reading of Kant, Heidegger and Hegel, which, in the case of Kant, Zizek reads him along the standard Lacanian version of Kant's moral law as compulsive obedience. He proceeds then to criticize the different strands of political ontology from the earlier students of Althusser (Badiou, Balibar, and Ranciere) to the deconstructionists (Laclau, Butler), and so on. Zizek is hypercritical of his interlocutors, except for psychoanalysis. If there is a Master for Zizek, it is Lacan. He treats the French psychiatrist like a god. For example, from Lacan's definition of "the Unconscious is the discourse of the Other", Zizek makes the most startling and dogmatic remarks of Deleuze and Foucault as philosophers of globalized perversion. Foucault and Deleuze's dismissal of the Other as "post-Oedipal" is a sign, for Zizek, of narcissistic postmodern subjectivity, so attuned to the "needs" of late capitalism. Zizek asks: "Is not Deleuze's critique of Oedipus psychoanalysis an exemplary case of the perverse rejection of hysteria?." For Zizek, Deleuze limits symbolic authority and therefore imbues himself in an ethics of drive, which unlike of desire, chooses not to fulfill itself consciously in a mourning-loss like the hysteric. It is the ethics of the schizophrenic, of pure enjoyment (which of course, it is the "ideal" schizophrenic, for the real clinical condition is very tragic). More interesting is Zizek's ironic defense of Christianity as the empty place for paternal authority to put things "in place." To pretend to believe in one God is for the sake of a socio-symbolic structure that keeps everything in the realm of appearance, and keeps us from a Monstrous Real. Like a good Hegelian, Zizek maintains the need for Universals by a proper Act which is absolutely singular and arbitrary. The "universal" nature of the world is only "visible" in a singular act of madness. In the subject who throws everything out-of-joint, the paradoxical structure of reality appears. Zizek is great at explaining dialectically the topics of the unconscious, desire, and law, but he does not the same for Lacanian psychoanalysis. He is a true believer and that takes away critical power.

Much better written than the last two books

If you had pretty much given up on Zizek after Metaseses of Enjoyment and Plague of Fantasies, both of which contain some embarassingly bad writing, you will be happy to rad this book. Routledge finally gave Zizek a new copyeditor, and what a difference she makes! ALthough Zizek's new concept of "the Act" smacks of Chrisitan mysticisim, the book is one of his stngest. It's otfen very insightful about academic trends and as entertaining as ever when it comes to film. he is one of the few theorists who manages to kep thinking, even if he repeats himself over and over again.

Check this Quote out on the Symbolic Institution:

Check this quote out from the book on the symbolic institution:) "The mysterious character of this moment can best be illustrated by a funny thing that happened during the last election campaign in Slovenia, when a member of the ruling political party was approached by an elderly lady from his local constituency, asking for help. She was convinced that the street number of her house (not the standard 13, but 23) was bringing her bad luck--the moment her house got this new number, due to some administrative reorganization, misfortunes started to afflict her (burglars broke in, a storm tore the roof off, neighbours began to annoy her), so she asked the candidate to be so kind as to arrange with the municipal authorities for the number to be changed. The candidate made a simple suggestion to the lady: why didn't she do it alone? Why didn't she simply repaint or replace the plate with the street number herself by, for example, adding another number or letter (say, 23A or 231 instead of 23)? The old lady answered: "Oh, I tried that a couple of weeks ago; I myself replaced the old plate with a new one with the number 23A, but it didn't work--my bad luck is still with me; you can't cheat it, it has to be done properly, by the relevant institution." The 'it' which cannot be duped in this way is the Lacanian big Other, the symbolic institution." :)

This book might be a really big deal...

Slovenian author Slavoj Zizek has been rearing his head for awhile, but this might be his big break-through. In "The Ticklish Subject", he is actually outlining an argument for the return of the Cartesian subject, the universal subject, whose presence he claims is "a spectre haunting Western academia...". He argues that the rejection of this cogito is what unites an astounding array of intellectual thinking just before the milennium. The book consists mainly of three parts, which can be categorized broadly as engagements with German idealism and anti-idealism, then French post-...political thought, then with Anglo-American modes of "cultural studies" and multiculturalism. Specifically, in this last part, he engages with Judith Butler in the most respectable critique of her work I've ever read. In short, I think the publication of this book could mark the first major break with postmodernism in its myriad forms. This feels like an "insider" critique-- there are no kind of typical reactions against postmodern jargon, inaccessability, etc. Zizek comes from a hardcore Lacanian viewpoint, but his major task in this book is to put forth an essentially political standpoint in the era of global capitalism. As always, Zizek is funny and anecdotal, drawing from pop culture enough to incite me to say he's "keepin it real". Good book, likley to become very important.