Sex and the Failed Absolute provides nothing short of a new definition of dialectical materialism. Radical new readings of Kant and Hegel sit side by side with lively commentaries on film, politics and culture. And in forging this new materialism, Žižek doesn't shy away from taking on and analysising important recent philosophies such as the work of Alain Badiou, Robert Brandom, Quentin Meillassoux and everything from popular scientist and quantum mechanics to sexual difference and analytic philosophy.
This is Slavoj Žižek at his interrogative and energising best and represents his most rigorous articulation to date of his philosophical system.

Slavoj Zizek, dubbed by the
the giant of Ljubljana, is back with a new edition of his seriously entertaining book on film, psychoanalysis (and life). His inimitable blend of philosophical and social theory, Lacanian analysis, and outrageous humor are made to show how Hollywood movies can explain psychoanalysis-and vice versa using films such as
and
.

"A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes."--Ludwig Wittgenstein
The good news is that this book offers an entertaining but enlightening compilation of Zizekisms. Unlike any other book by Slavoj Zizek, this compact arrangement of jokes culled from his writings provides an index to certain philosophical, political, and sexual themes that preoccupy him.
contains the set-ups and punch lines--as well as the offenses and insults--that Zizek is famous for, all in less than 200 pages.
So what's the bad news? There is no bad news. There's just the inimitable Slavoj Zizek, disguised as an impossibly erudite, politically incorrect uncle, beginning a sentence, "There is an old Jewish joke, loved by Derrida..." For Zizek, jokes are amusing stories that offer a shortcut to philosophical insight. He illustrates the logic of the Hegelian triad, for example, with three variations of the "Not tonight, dear, I have a headache" classic: first the wife claims a migraine; then the husband does; then the wife exclaims, "Darling, I have a terrible migraine, so let's have some sex to refresh me!" A punch line about a beer bottle provides a Lacanian lesson about one signifier. And a "truly obscene" version of the famous "aristocrats" joke has the family offering a short course in Hegelian thought rather than a display of unspeakables.
contains every joke cited, paraphrased, or narrated in Zizek's work in English (including some in unpublished manuscripts), including different versions of the same joke that make different points in different contexts. The larger point being that comedy is central to Zizek's seriousness.

For the last two centuries, Western philosophy has developed in the shadow of Hegel, an influence each new thinker struggles to escape. As a consequence, Hegel’s absolute idealism has become the bogeyman of philosophy, obscuring the fact that he is the defining philosopher of the historical transition to modernity, a period with which our own times share startling similarities.
Today, as global capitalism comes apart at the seams, we are entering a new period of transition. In Less Than Nothing, the product of a career-long focus on the part of its author, Slavoj Žižek argues it is imperative we not simply return to Hegel but that we repeat and exceed his triumphs, overcoming his limitations by being even more Hegelian than the master himself. Such an approach not only enables Žižek to diagnose our present condition, but also to engage in a critical dialogue with key strands of contemporary thought—Heidegger, Badiou, speculative realism, quantum physics, and cognitive sciences. Modernity will begin and end with Hegel.

The very successful first volume followed the 2009 conference called in response to Alain Badiou’s “communist hypothesis,” where an all-star cast of radical intellectuals put the idea of communism back on the map. This volume brings together papers from the subsequent 2011 New York conference organized by Verso and continues this critical discussion, highlighting the continuing philosophical and political importance of the communist idea, and discussing how to take these essential ideas forward in a world of financial and social turmoil.

Slavoj Žižek gives us a reading of a philosophical giant that changes our way of thinking about our new posthuman era.

No ordinary study of Hegel, Hegel in a Wired Brain investigates what he might have had to say about the idea of the 'wired brain' – what happens when a direct link between our mental processes and a digital machine emerges. Žižek explores the phenomenon of a wired brain effect, and what might happen when we can share our thoughts directly with others. He hones in on the key question of how it shapes our experience and status as 'free' individuals and asks what it means to be human when a machine can read our minds.

With characteristic verve and enjoyment of the unexpected, Žižek connects Hegel to the world we live in now, shows why he is much more fun than anyone gives him credit for, and why the 21st century might just be Hegelian.

What do sex doll sales, locust swarms and a wired-brain pig have to do with the coronavirus pandemic? Everything—according to that “Giant of Lubliana,” the inimitable Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek.In this exhilarating sequel to his acclaimed Pandemic!: COVID-19 Shakes the World, Žižek delves into some of the more surprising dimensions of lockdowns, quarantines, and social distancing—and the increasingly unruly opposition to them by “response fatigued” publics around the world.Žižek examines the ripple effects on the food supply of harvest failures caused by labor shortages and the hyper-exploitation of the global class of care workers, without whose labor daily life would be impossible. Through such examples he pinpoints the inability of contemporary capitalism to safeguard effectively the public in times of crisis.Writing with characteristic daring and zeal, Žižek ranges across critical theory, pop-culture, and psychoanalysis to reveal the troubling dynamics of knowledge and power emerging in these viral times.

Slavoj Žižek has long been a commentator on, and critic of, Christian theology. His preoccupation with Badiou's concept of 'the event' alongside the Pauline thought of the New Testament has led to a decidedly theological turn in his thinking. Drawing on traditions and subjects as broad as Buddhist thought, dialectical materialism, political subjectivity, quantum physics, AI and chatbots, this book articulates Žižek's idea of a religious life for the first time.
Christian Atheism is a unique insight into Žižek's theological project and the first book-length exploration of his religious thinking. In his own words, "to become a true dialectical materialist, one should go through the Christian experience." Crucial to his whole conception of 'experience' is not some kind of spiritual revelation but rather the logic of materialistic thought. This affirmation of Christian theology whilst simultaneously deconstructing it is a familiar Žižekian move, but one that holds deep-seated political, philosophical and, in the end, personal import for him.

Come interpretare oggi il funzionamento della politica, se le tradizionali categorie di analisi sociale sono ormai inadeguate? Zizek non elabora alcuna teoria universale, ma, attraverso Lacan, propone di individuare nel godimento la "cosa stessa" indefinibile e denegata, l'elemento chiave del nostro essere soggetti politici. Questo testo si configura come un "esercizio di soggettività", un tentativo di spiegare come ci collochiamo in una realtà della quale siamo inevitabilmente parte costituente e nella quale siamo già da sempre coinvolti. Zizek, con uno stile fatto di accostamenti sorprendenti e continui spostamenti, ci trascina in un'esperienza di pensiero assolutamente originale: un'occasione per "fare i conti" con i fantasmi del godimento che strutturano il nostro sguardo sul mondo.

Contemporary life is defined by excess. There must always be more, there is never enough. We need a surplus to what we need to be able to truly enjoy what we have. Slavoj Žižek's guide to surplus (and why it's enjoyable) begins by arguing that what is surplus to our needs is by its very nature unsubstantial and unnecessary. But, perversely, without this surplus, we wouldn't be able to enjoy, what is substantial and necessary. Indeed, without the surplus we wouldn't be able to identify what was the perfect amount.
Is there any escape from the vicious cycle of surplus enjoyment or are we forever doomed to simply want more? Engaging with everything from The Joker film to pop songs and Thomas Aquinas to the history of pandemics, Žižek argues that recognising the society of enjoyment we live in for what it is can provide an explanation for the political impasses in which we find ourselves today. And if we begin, even a little bit, to recognise that the nuggets of 'enjoyment' we find in excess are as flimsy and futile, might we find a way out?

Description
The essays in Zero Point ask how we distinguish defeat from disaster, and how we confront despair without collapsing into it - questions never more pertinent than the current moment in the wake of electoral victories for authoritarian populists and unceasing news of violent atrocities.
The 'zero-point' of the title is ground level, rock bottom, the place to which one retreats and where one regroups. Taken from Vladimir Lenin's 1922 piece 'On Ascending a High Mountain, in which Lenin considers the complexities of how one 'retreats' while keeping faith in the cause, the central simile of the climber offers a blueprint for resilience, flexibility, and the persistence of hope. This is the revolutionary as living out the Beckettian motto: 'Try again. Fail again. Fail better.' In Žižek's hands, this becomes the formula for confronting the antagonisms of existing world order. With a particular focus on the Middle East -the point at which all our tensions threaten to explode – Žižek argues nothing can be addressed meaningfully without such a confrontation.
The consequences of eschewing apolitical acts of solidarity and choosing to attempt to speak truth to power are reckoned with in the second half of Zero Point. In a unique piece assembled chronologically from unpublished writings, Žižek wrestles with the fallout from his controversial speech at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2023 - a speech which saw him interrupted, condemned and accused of anti-Semitism. The reader bears witness as Zizek processes the criticism, evolves his thinking and explores the full ethical, political and personal ramifications of the question: When is the right time to speak?

A panoramic view of the cosmos must begin with the tension of a single political moment. In Quantum History, Slavoj Žižek brings together Hegelian dialectics, Lacan psychoanalysis and quantum mechanics to rethink history, reality and political possibility.
Taking up Lenin's challenge to radically reconsider materialism in the wake of each big scientific discovery, and rejecting the recent vogue for giving a vague spiritualist spin to wave mechanics, Žižek embraces the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics with characteristic erudition and verve. Drawing on the central themes of the holographic universe, non-commutativity and the collapse of superpositions, Žižek evolves a quantum-inspired ontology which reinvents the historical materialism of Hegel and Heidegger – and compels a brutal, often darkly funny, inquisition into the chances of radical emancipatory acts today.
Quantum History takes the reader from the absolute contradiction of the primordial void through quantum oscillations to our ordinary reality, weaving in Lacan and Deleuze, Rovelli and Schelling, opera, cinema, sex and war. Žižek is at his sharpest, saddest, most provocative best as he demonstrates that there is no way of extracting ourselves from the texture of history, no neutral position from which the workings of the world can be observed transparently – we must act from a contingent, complex and inscrutable political moment, in sadness and in doubt, but defiantly.

In a characteristically explosive barrage, Ljubljana’s most famous philosopher takes a passionate stance on the war in Ukraine, surveys the latest Hollywood blockbusters, and delivers detonations into a range of contemporary issues, from sexual politics in India to the prospects for a new Cold War. Ever attentive to moments where the bizarre and the epic join forces, among the questions Žižek considers here are: Is the giant orgy, planned to take place in Ukraine in the event of a Russian nuclear attack, really all that morbid? And what should society do, whether on the big screen or the battlefield, in preparation for the end of the world?
Agree with him or not, Žižek rarely fails to provoke in a productive fashion. By examining matters through a lens that is bold and original, and often joyfully outlandish, Žižek helps us to better grasp a world in which, increasingly, the dominant motif is one of madness.

To define 'progress' is to lay claim to the future. Seminal thinker Slavoj Žižek turns essayist to interrogate the competing visions which form the horizons of human possibility and ask: Can things, which have never seemed worse, get better? What would a better world be? And how, when we are constantly besieged by doomers, degrowthers and disorienting relativisms can we make any headway at all in the face of unprecedented ecological, social and political crises?
In thirteen iconoclastic essays, Slavoj Žižek disrupts the death-grip that neoliberalists, Trumpian populists, toxic self-improvement industries and accelerationists alike have established on the idea of progress. Anatomizing what is lost when opponents of the future are allowed to define it, Žižek ruthlessly exposes what different visions of progress exclude or sacrifice and the dynamics of desire, denial and disavowal at work in Hollywood blockbusters, Buddhist economics, decolonization movements and other engines of vision. In a whirlwind tour that takes in everything from gentrification to the theory of relativity, Lacan to Lenin, Putin to Mary Poppins and Marine Le Pen to the end of the world, these essays never stop asking hard questions of imagined futures.
Nor does Žižek shrink from the hardest question of all: How do we free ourselves from the hypocritical, guilt-ridden dreaming in which we're enmeshed, and begin to build a better world?