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 ieks guide to surplus (and why its 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 wouldnt be able to enjoy what is substantial and necessary. Indeed, without the surplus we wouldnt 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, iek 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?
Arvustused
[ iek] could never be as dull a writer. He is a great caller of things stupid, which is a skill too little practised in a world dedicated to avoiding offence. But he also has genuine enthusiasms that constantly surprise the reader, such as a brilliant few pages on Shostakovich and, later, on the film Joker iek is at heart really a close reader and a seriously inventive one. * The Spectator * Surplus-Enjoyment is the author at his most supple, addressing urgent current concerns and the need for a global solidarity that cannot be divorced from egalitarianism. ... Zizek is a pick-me-up for fatigued brains, a true radical and an authentic left-wing conservative who wants to prevent the social disintegration that threatens our civic life. * The Prisma: The Multicultural Newspaper *
Muu info
A compelling guide to Lacan's idea of 'Surplus enjoyment' through philosophy, pop culture, history and more.
| Ouverture: Living In A Topsy-Turvy World |
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1 | (18) |
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From Catastrophe to Apocalypse... and Back--An Unexpected Lustgewinn--2 + a-- "Good luck, Mr Hegel!" |
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1 Where Is The Rift? Marx, Capitalism, And Ecology |
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19 | (82) |
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Neoconservative Communism--Hegel in the Critique of Political Economy--Actual Life versus Substanceless Subjectivity--Eco-proletarians and the Limits of Valorization--No capitalism (and no way out of it) without science--Is abstract labor universal?--Workers or Worker?-- Fiction and/in Reality--The Emancipatory Potential of Capitalist Madness--Ecology with Alienation--Last Exit for Communism |
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2 A Non-Binary Difference? Psychoanalysis, Politics And Philosophy |
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101 | (86) |
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Critique of Critique--"They are both worse!"--A Critique of Lacanian Ideology--A (Malevolent) Political Neutrality of the Analyst--Limits of Historicization--Formulas of Sexuation--Vagaries of Truth--Trans versus Cis--Sexual difference is not binary--From Special to General Theory of Queerness--Why there is no true love without betrayal--Kmc te gleda through Lubitsch's looking class |
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3 Surplus-Enjoyment, Or, Why Do We Enjoy Our Oppression |
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187 | (74) |
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Vikings, Solaris, Katla: the big Other and its Vicissitudes--The Birth of the Superego out of the Breakage of the Law--From Authority to Permissiveness and back--No Freedom Without Impossibility--Repression, Oppression, Depression--So what is Surplus-Enjoyment?-- Enjoying Alienation--Martin Luther as a film noir Figure--A Desire Not to Have a Mother |
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FINALE: SUBJECTIVE DESTITUTION AS A POLITICAL CATEGORY |
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261 | (84) |
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The Two Ends of Philosophy--Man as a katastrophe-- "We must live till we die"--From Being-Towards-Death to Undeadness--Revolutionary Self-Destitution -- versus Religious Fundamentalism--"Les non-dupes errent"--Lambs to the Slaughter--The Two Faces of Anachronism-Destructive Nihilism--The Return of Vanishing Mediators |
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| Notes |
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345 | (24) |
| Index |
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369 | |
Slavoj iek is a Hegelian philosopher, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, and a Communist. He is International Director at the Birkbeck Institute for Humanities, University of London, UK, Visiting Professor at the New York University, USA, and Senior Researcher at the Department of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.
