quizzicalcontent: May 2008

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The Elvis of Cultural Theory

In Defense of Lost Causes
Slavoj Zizek

Publication: May 2008
ISBN 978 1 84467 108 3 / 512 pages / $34.95 / £19.99

“The era of grand explanations is over; we should no longer aim at
all-explaining systems and global emancipatory projects. … If the
reader feels a minimum of sympathy with these lines, she should stop
reading and cast aside this volume. This book is unashamedly committed
to the ‘Messianic’ standpoint of the struggle for universal
emancipation.” Slavoj Zizek

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 Are universal values outdated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 the reactionary third way of economic
liberalism and government-as-administration?

In this combative major new work, philosophical sharpshooter Slavoj
Zizek takes on the reigning ideology with a plea that we should
re-appropriate several “lost causes,” and looks 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, Zizek 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.

Zizek claims that, particularly in the 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.”
SLAVOJ ZIZEK’S DEMANDS:
“1) Strict egalitarian justice (all people should pay the same price
in eventual renunciations, namely, one should impose the same
world-wide norms of per capita energy consumption, carbon dioxide
emissions, and so on; the developed nations should not be allowed to
poison the environment at the present rate, blaming the developing
Third World countries, from Brazil to China, for ruining our shared
environment with their rapid development).

2) Terror (ruthless punishment of all who violate the imposed
protective measures, inclusive of severe limitations on liberal
“freedoms,” technological control of prospective law-breakers).

3) Voluntarism (the only way to confront the threat of ecological
catastrophe is by means of large-scale collective decisions which run
counter to the “spontaneous” immanent logic of capitalist development).

4) And, last but not least, all this combined with trust in the people
(the wager that a large majority of the people supports these severe
measures, see them as its own, and is ready to participate in their
enforcement). One should not be afraid to assert, as a combination of
terror and trust in the people, the reactivation of one of the figures
of all egalitarian-revolutionary terrors, the “informer” who denounces
the culprits to the authorities. (Already in the case of the Enron
scandal, Time magazine was right to celebrate the insiders who
tipped-off the financial authorities as true public heroes.)”
(FROM PAGE 461 OF 'IN DEFENSE OF LOST CAUSES')
PRAISE FOR SLAVOJ ZIZEK:
“Zizek 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 since
'Anti-Oedipus'.” The Village Voice

“The Elvis of cultural theory.” Chronicle of Higher Education

“Unafraid of confrontation and with a near limitless grasp of pop
symbolism” The Times

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

“The most formidably brilliant exponent of psychoanalysis, indeed of
cultural theory in general, to have emerged in many decades.” Terry
Eagleton

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

Slavoj Zizek 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 other
books from Verso include The Sublime Object of Ideology, For They Know
Not What They Do, The Indivisible Remainder, The Ticklish Subject,
Welcome to the Desert of the Real and The Fragile Absolute. He has
also appeared in the films Žižek! and The Pervert’s Guide to the Cinema.
More information from the Verso website:
http://www.versobooks.com/books/tuvwxyz/xyz-titles/zizek_defense_lost_causes.shtml