The Sublime Object of Ideology

Description

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 Cinema and 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 Sublime Object of Ideology: Slavoj Zizek's first book is a provocative and original work looking at the question of human agency in a postmodern world. In a thrilling tour de force that made his name, he explores the ideological fantasies of wholeness and exclusion which make up human society.

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 sen-ior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His books include Living in the End Times, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, Less Than Nothing, six volumes of the Essential Zizek, and many more.

The Elvis of cultural theory. * Chronicle of Higher Education * The giant of Ljubljana provides the best intellectual high since Anti-Oedipus. * The Village Voice * The most formidably brilliant exponent of psychoanalysis, indeed of cultural theory in general, to have emerged in many decades. -- Terry Eagleton 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. * Guardian * Zizek is one of the few living writers to combine theoretical rigor with compulsive readability. * Publishers Weekly * Zizek leaves no social or cultural phenomenon untheorized, and is master of the counterintuitive observation * New Yorker *