The Plague of Fantasies
Modern audiovisual media have spawned a 'plague of fantasies', electronically inspired phantasms that cloud the ability to reason and prevent a true understanding of a world increasingly dominated by abstractions—whether those of digital technology or the speculative market.
Into this arena, enters Žižek: equipped with an agile wit and the skills of a prodigious scholar, he confidently ranges among a dazzling array of cultural references—explicating Robert Schumann as deftly as he does John Carpenter—to demonstrate how the modern condition blinds us to the ideological basis of our lives.
Paperback, 320 pages
ISBN: 9781844673032
January 2009
$24.95 / £12.99
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Part of the The Essential Žižek series
Reviews
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“The most formidably brilliant exponent of psychoanalysis, indeed of cultural theory in general, to have emerged from Europe in some decades.”
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“Unafraid of confrontation and with a near limitless grasp of pop symbolism.”
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“Žižek unfolds in this text a theory of the workings of postmodern ideology that is often breathtaking in its scope and acuity.”
Blog
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Žižek Featured in The Onion —We Fill in the Blanks
The Onion Weekender recently featured our in-house champion of castration anxiety:
The answers are here. We interns scoured our Žižek backlist to uncover his hints for YOU.
Discussions
Begin a discussion about this book-
How does theology enlist the service of historical materialism? What is this service?
I have a quote from Zizek I’m having a little trouble with. Its this one: Today, when the historical materialist analysis is receding, practiced
as it were under cover, rarely called by its proper name, while the
theological dimension is given a new lease on life in the guise of the
“postsecular” Messianic turn of deconstruction, the time has come
to reverse Walter Benjamin’s first thesis on the philosophy of history:
“The puppet called ‘theology’ is to win all the time. It can easily be
a match for anyone if it enlists the service of historical materialism,
which today, as we know, is wizened and has to keep out of sight.” The trouble I’m having is with “if it enlists the service of historical materialism,” That is to say I dont understand in what way this service is enlisted, or for that matter, what it is. Can anyone help me?
Other books by Slavoj Žižek
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Contingency, Hegemony, Universality
by Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, et al. -
Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?
by Slavoj Žižek -
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lacan (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock)
Edited by Slavoj Žižek
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First As Tragedy, Then As Farce
by Slavoj Žižek -
For They Know Not What They Do
by Slavoj Žižek -
The Fragile Absolute
by Slavoj Žižek
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The Idea of Communism
Edited by Costas Douzinas and Slavoj Žižek -
The Idea of Communism 2
Edited by Slavoj Žižek -
In Defense of Lost Causes
by Slavoj Žižek
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The Indivisible Remainder
by Slavoj Žižek -
Iraq
by Slavoj Žižek -
Lacan
Edited by Slavoj Žižek
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Less Than Nothing
by Slavoj Žižek -
Living in the End Times
by Slavoj Žižek -
Mapping Ideology
Edited by Slavoj Žižek
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The Metastases of Enjoyment
by Slavoj Žižek -
Revolution at the Gates
by V. I. Lenin -
The Sublime Object of Ideology
by Slavoj Žižek
