Synopses & Reviews
Have you ever felt totaled? In this book, Colin Cremin tackles the overbearing truth that capitalism encompasses the totality of our social relations, having woven itself deeply into the fabric of what it means to be human. He shows how the capitalist system totalizes everything in its path, as evidenced in industrialized warfare, modern surveillance, commodification, and political control. With ever deepening social crises and ecological catastrophes this system threatens civilization as we know it. But among the wreckage of capitalism, Cremin argues, we can still find functioning parts, machines to be salvaged. To do so, it is imperative that we be able to both imagine and realize a future other than the apocalypticism forewarned by scientists, prescribed by economists, accommodated by politicians, and made into spectacle by the entertainment industry.
Totalled maps the deteriorating socio-economic, political, and ecological conditions in which we live. Yet Cremin asks how a utopian possibility discernable in the power of human creation can be realized even though as a society we are bound up materially, ideologically, libidinally—totally—to the capitalist machine of destruction. Totalled concludes with a politically and economically grounded set of propositions on how we might begin to imagine such a possibility.
Review
"Fierce brilliance ... scintillating." Steven Poole
Review
Žižek is to today what Jacques Derrida was to the 80s: the thinker of choice for Europe’s young intellectual vanguard.Such passion, in a man whose work forms a shaky, cartoon rope-bridge between the minutiae of popular culture and the big abstract problems of existence, is invigorating, entertaining and expanding enquiring minds around the world. --Helen Brown
Review
The most dangerous philosopher in the West. --Adam Kirsch
Review
Fierce brilliance ... scintillating. --Iain Finlayson
Review
Fierce brilliance … scintillating. --Steven Poole
Review
"Cremin's book is a compass allowing us to orient ourselves in our obscure and confused times."
Review
“An intriguing and original exercise in Lacanian and materialist political theory,
Totalled is also a significant contribution to the great collective project of understanding, analyzing and working to overcome contemporary forms of exploitation, inequality and oppression.”
Synopsis
The underlying premise of the book is a simple one: the global capitalist system is approaching an apocalyptic zero-point. Its four riders of the apocalypse are the ecological crisis, the consequences of the biogenetic revolution, the imbalances within the system itself (problems with intellectual property, the forthcoming struggle for raw materials, food and water), and the explosions of social divisions and exclusions.
Society's first reaction is ideological denial, then explosions of anger at the injustices of the new world order, attempts at bargaining, and when this fails, depression and withdrawal set in. Finally, after passing through this zero-point we no longer perceive it as a threat, but as the chance for a new beginning. or, as Mao Zedong might have put it, "There is great disorder under heaven, the situation is excellent."
Žižek traces out in detail these five stances, makes a plea for a return to the Marxian critique of political economy, and sniffs out the first signs of a budding communist culture in all its diverse forms in utopias that range from Kafka's community of mice to the collective of freak outcasts in the TV series Heroes.
Synopsis
Zizek analyzes the end of the world at the hands of the "four riders of the apocalypse."
Synopsis
There should no longer be any doubt: global capitalism is fast approaching its terminal crisis. Slavoj Zizek has identified the four horsemen of this coming apocalypse: the worldwide ecological crisis; imbalances within the economic system; the biogenetic revolution; and exploding social divisions and ruptures. But, he asks, if the end of capitalism seems to many like the end of the world, how is it possible for Western society to face up to the end times?
In a major new analysis of our global situation, Zizek argues that our collective responses to economic Armageddon correspond to the stages of grief: ideological denial, explosions of anger and attempts at bargaining, followed by depression and withdrawal. For this edition, Zizek has written a long afterword that leaves almost no subject untouched, from WikiLeaks to the nature of the Chinese Communist Party.
Synopsis
Our 24/7 lives are saturated with round-the-clock fear. Scare-tactic headlines fill our homes and our public spaces. If it's not the war on terror, it's the new war on the middle class. Crisis is the new black, as terrorist after health scare after crime report dictate the daily discourse. We Have Nothing to Lose but our Fear delivers a counter blow to this rampant culture of fear fuelled by the likes of CNN, FOX NEWS or the Daily Mail.
Jeffries explores contemporary and historical manifestations of this controlling force in a series of conversations with well known artists, journalists and activists. Their discussions go beyond just scrutinizing what constitutes rational versus irrational fear, or identifying ways in which human fears are manipulated by political players. They reveal how fear antagonizes and changes our subjectivity and crucially, how the political use of fear has been resisted in different times and places, by different people across the globe.
Synopsis
Our modern lives are saturated with fear. If it’s not the war on terror, it’s the war on the middle class. The war on drugs. The war on war. Crisis dictates the daily discourse of our news feeds, and scare-tactic headlines fill our homes and public spaces.
Nothing to Lose But Our Fear delivers a long-overdue counter-blow to this rampant culture of fear fueled by increasingly alarmist news outlets.
Fiona Jeffries explores contemporary and historical manifestations of this phenomenon through a series of conversations with eminent artists, journalists, and activists, such as Marcus Rediker, Silvia Federici, and David Harvey. Their discussions go beyond scrutinizing what constitutes rational versus irrational fear and identifying how politicians and reporters manipulate human fears. They go further, to reveal how that fear antagonizes our subjectivity and how different people across the globe have resisted the political use of fear throughout history.
About the Author
Slavoj Žižek 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 Žižek, and many more.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction by Fiona Jeffries
Part I: Historicizing
1: Marcus Rediker: The Theater and Counter-Theater of Fear
2: Silvia Federici: Remembering Resistance: From the Witch-Hunts to Alter-Globalization
Part II: Theorizing
3: David Harvey: Indignant Cities
4: Nandita Sharma: Terror and Mercy at the Border
5: John Holloway: We Are the Fragility of the System
Part III: Practicing
6: Lydia Cacho: Dangerous Journalism
7: Sandra Moran: Feminist Indignation
8: Gustavo Esteva: Political Courage and the Strange Persistence of Hope
9: Wendy Mendez: Remembering the Disappeared, Revealing Hidden Histories of Resistance
Index