Synopses & Reviews
Slavoj Zizek, 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 philosophy, psychoanalysis, theology, history and political theory, taking in film, popular culture, literature and jokes'"all to provide acute analyses of the complexities of contemporary ideology as well as a serious and sophisticated philosophy. His recent films
The Pervert's Guide to the Cinemaand
Zizek!reveal a theorist at the peak of his powers and a skilled communicator. Now Verso is making his classic titles, each of which stand as a core of his ever-expanding life's work, available as new editions. Each is beautifully re-packaged, including new introductions from Zizek himself. Simply put, they are the essential texts for understanding Zizek's thought and thus cornerstones of contemporary philosophy.
The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?: Zizek argues that the subversive core of the Christian legacy is much too precious to be left to the fundamentalists. He argues that the foundation of a politics of universal emancipation can be found in St Paul, finding an unlikely ally in the reinvention of a twenty-first century Marxism.
Review
"Righteously to battle the tsunami of postmodern spiritual mush, Zizek attempts a reconciliation between Marxism and Christianity, eccentrically (against Nietzsche) trying to recuperate St Paul for the radical Christian." Guardian
Review
"Zizek leaves no social or cultural phenomenon untheorized, and is master of the counterintuitive observation." The New Yorker
Review
"This is a subtle argument ... Zizek applies it with a broad brush to both contemporary society and popular culture." Boston Book Review
Synopsis
Argues that the subversive core of the Christian legacy forms the foundation of a politics of universal emancipation.
Synopsis
One of the signal features of our era is the re-emergence of the 'sacred' in all its different guises, from New Age paganism to the emerging religious sensitivity within cultural and political theory.
The wager of Zizek's The Fragile Absolute – published here with a new preface by the author – is that Christianity and Marxism can fight together against the contemporary onslought of vapid spiritualism. The revolutionary core of the Christian legacy is too precious to be left to the fundamentalists.
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 First as Tragedy, Then as Farce; Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle; In Defence of Lost Causes; Welcome to the Desert of the Real, Living in the End Times, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lacan But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock; and more.