Absolute Recoil by Slavoj Zizek

Absolute Recoil by Slavoj Zizek

Philosophical materialism in all its forms - from scientific naturalism to Deleuzian New Materialism - has failed to meet the key theoretical and political challenges of the modern world. This is the burden of philosopher Slavoj Zizek's argument in this pathbreaking and eclectic new work. Recent history has seen developments such as quantum physics and Freudian psychoanalysis, not to speak of the failure of twentieth-century communism, shake our understanding of existence. In the process, the dominant tradition in Western philosophy lost its moorings. To bring materialism up to date, Zizek - himself a committed materialist and communist - proposes a radical revision of our intellectual heritage. He argues that dialectical materialism is the only true philosophical inheritor of what Hegel designated the "speculative" approach in thought. Absolute Recoil is a startling reformulation of the basis and possibilities of contemporary philosophy. While focusing on how to overcome the transcendental approach without regressing to naïve, pre-Kantian realism, Zizek offers a series of excursions into today's political, artistic, and ideological landscape, from Arnold Schoenberg's music to the films of Ernst Lubitsch.

Few thinkers illustrate the contradictions of contemporary capitalism better than Slavoj Zizek.. one of the world's best-known public intellectuals. -- John Gray * New York Review of Books *
A gifted speaker - tumultuous, emphatic, direct - and he writes as he speaks. -- Jonathan Rée * Guardian *
A serious attempt to reanimate or re-actualize Hegel. -- Robert Pippin, author of Hegel's Idealism, on Less Than Nothing
Like Socrates on steroids: Zizek is breathtakingly perceptive. -- Terry Eagleton

Slavoj Zizek 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 Less Than Nothing, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously, Living in the End Times, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, In Defense of Lost Causes, six volumes of the Essential Zizek, and many more.

SKU	GOR007258967
ISBN 13	9781781686829
ISBN 10	1781686823
Title	Absolute Recoil
Author	Slavoj Zizek
Condition	Very Good
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Verso Books
Year published	2014-10-01
Number of pages	448
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us