The feature which distinguishes the great works of materialist thought, from Lucretius De rerum natura through Capital to the writings of Lacan, is their unfinished character: again and again they tackle their chosen problem. Schelling s Weltalter drafts belong to this same series, with their repeated attempt at the formulation of the beginning of the world, of the passage from the pre-symbolic pulsation of the Real to the universe of logos. F.W.J. Schelling, the German idealist who for too long dwelled in the shadow of Kant and Hegel, was the first to formulate the post-idealist motifs of finitude, contingency and temporality. His unique work announces Marx's critique of speculative idealism, as well as the properly Freudian notion of drive, of a blind compulsion to repeat which can never be sublated in the ideal medium of language. The Indivisible Remainder begins with a detailed examination of the two works in which Schelling's speculative audacity reached its peak: his essay on human freedom and his drafts on the Ages of the World. After reconstituting their line of argumentation, Slavoj Zizek confronts Schelling with Hegel, and concludes by throwing a Schellingian light on some related matters: the consequences of the computerization of daily life for sexual experience; cynicism as today's predominant form of ideology; the epistemological deadlocks of quantum physics. Although the book is packed with examples from politics and popular culture the unmistakable token of Zizek s style from Speed and Groundhog Day to Forrest Gump, it signals a major shift towards a systematic concern with the basic questions of philosophy and the roots of the crisis of our late-capitalist universe, centred around the enigma of modern subjectivity.

好的笑话本身就是出色的哲学。在这本结构紧凑的笑话集中，齐泽克拿出他最擅长的语言装配形式，举重若轻地将读者引入他的哲学空间：他反复玩味着那些又猥琐又好笑的段子，分析它们背后的逻辑，用笑话的荒谬去对冲某些常识结构或理性情境。通过笑话，人们将了解到这些情境的可笑，它们不再必然合理，甚至是可以抛诸脑后的东西。“笑声，在这种意义上，就是革命。”

我们所能眼见的物理暴力往往是某种系统暴力的产物。这种系统暴力维持着我们身处其中的政治和经济体制。为此，人们看待暴力的方式本身就是被系统所塑造的。齐泽克诊断了人们认知并扭曲暴力现象的各种形式，试图颠覆自由资本主义-基督教意识形态主宰的那种认识暴力的图像，并以“神的暴力”超越主观暴力和系统暴力的合谋。齐泽克以一部小说的故事和一句带有智者风格的话结束了他对暴力的反思：在某个民主国家的选举中，70%的投票是弃权票；重新投票后更糟，有80%的票弃权。政府认定有反政府的阴谋，因此开始秘密逮捕和审讯，却一无所获。这导致政府将应对手段不断升级，直至宣布首都进入紧急状态、炮制阴谋……最终政府自己制造出恐怖分子。然而，首都却一直继续近乎正常地运作，民众以无法理解的和谐和非暴力的抵抗阻挡了政府每一波攻击。因此，“有时，什么都不做就是最暴力的行动。”