9781844671083-frontcover

In Defense of Lost Causes

by Slavoj Žižek

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Acclaimed, adrenalin-fueled manifesto for universal values by 'the most dangerous philosopher in the West.'

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 Are universal values outdated relics of an earlier age?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 a miserable third way of economic liberalism and government-as-administration?

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

Hardback, 504 pages

ISBN: 9781844671083

April 2008

$34.95 / £19.99

Reviews

  • Zizek leaves no social or cultural phenomenon untheorized, and is a master of the counterintuitive observation.

    – New Yorker

  • The giant of Ljubljana provides the best intellectual high science since Anti-Oedipus.

    – The Village Voice

  • 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

Discussions

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  • Did Zizek read Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472)?

    When Zizek says that there remain only two teories that still show and practice the engaged notion of the real: marxism and psicoanalisis, I started to wonder if he had read Alberti. I consider that this humanist from the Renaissance developped a theory that practices and engages a notion of the real in many of his books including De re aedificatoria. So if Zizek read him, I would like to know why he doesn´t consider his theory as so. 

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