This book is an odd creature to say the least. A great but under-appreciated text of German idealism is re-published in a new translation, along with an interpretive essay that evaluates it from the standpoint of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Personally, I found Schelling's portrait of the world as moving continuously towards full consciousness of itself to be utterly fascinating. I'm still not sure what to make of Zizek's essay - I have always been utterly baffled by Lacan - but if you're into that kind of thing, you might enjoy it.

If you've never seen Slavoj Zizek speak in person, you should make every effort to do so. With his intense but cuddly East Block labor leader persona, he is certainly the most charismatic orator on the academic Left today.

I mention this because in _The Abyss of Freedom_, Zizek's lively spoken style comes through far better than in a book like _The Ticklish Subject_, a solid piece of thinking stifled by its heavy academic structure.

At first, Zizek's reading of Schelling's essay promises to be a bit one-sided. As usual, he has a heavy Lacanian axe to grind, and beats to death his view that the concept of a pre-existent reality is somewhat naive, and that the difference between reality and appearance _is itself_ posited by the fantasizing of the human subject. (Personally, I regard this move as little more than standard Idealist trickery.)

But once you finish Zizek's introductory essay and read Judith Norman's fine translation of Schelling's _Weltater_, you will be surprised to find that Zizek has been an illuminating guide. He makes Schelling "newsworthy" for contemporary philosophy in a way that all the vague pro-Schelling propaganda by Heideggerians never does.

I would also add that many of Zizek's digressions in his essay are brilliant enough to deserve book-length treatments in their own right. See above all his brief tirade on "the inherent stupidity of proverbs"-- framed as a set of entertaining throwaway remarks, Zizek's commentary on proverbs actually contains the germ of a shockingly novel philosophy of language.

There are moments when Zizek's obvious Lacanian agenda frustrates me, but in the end I always want to say "Thank God for the existence of Slavoj Zizek." He's waking us out of _some_ sort of slumber, I'm sure.

My review concerns the text of Schelling's Ages of the World. I am not terribly interested in Zizek and I started his essay, but quickly was bored.

This essay by Schelling is simply tremendous. Schelling is one of the most underrated of modern philosophers. Try reading this with Schelling's essay "Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom and Related Matters" (1809).

Schelling's vision is one of a world which finds its being completely in God. It is a kind of pantheism that attempts to escape the strict determinism and fatalism of Spinozism. Freedom is not a property of the will, but it is the essence of divine being as such. A beautiful work of insightful philosophical analysis and intriguing biblical exegesis.

Okay, I know Zizek is a Lacanian, but I was hoping that he'd get beyond his neo-Freudianism in this book--considering that its billed as an intersection between Marx and Christianity. Indeed, the topic is very intriguing and Zizek's fundamental thesis--that Christianity should be saved and joined with Marxism--is compelling. I especially liked his treatment of "agape"...
The problem, however, is that Zizek's Lacanianism blinds him to the history of Marxist criticism. He mentions Adorno and Horkheimer at several points, but it is evident that he has not read Lukacs or Debord. This fact is obvious in his chapter entitled "The Spectre of Capitalism" where he writes, as if he has some profound insight, "this reduction of heavenly chimeras to brutal economic reality generates a spectrality of its own". if he had read Lukacs--who preceded Adorno and Horkheimer--he would realize that he's speaking about the concept "reification" which even A & H understood, having read "History and Class Consciousness". And Debord's concept of spectacular society rounds out Lukacs' take on "reification" and basically nullifies Zizek's next chapter. aside from reiterating Lukacs and Debord in his own convoluted language (and appearing to sound original), Zizek also rips of Deleuze and Guattari at numerous points without giving credit. Funny thing this, since D & G would have had nothing but derision for Zizek's Lacanianiasm--psycho-analytic criticism, grounded in Freud, is nothing but Statist and pro-Capitalist since it reinforces the Oedipal triangle. You would think that even Zizek would notice this fact.

Aside from these theoretical problems, "The Fragile Absolute" is still a very compelling read. One has to wonder, however, why Zizek thinks the merging of Marxism and Christianity is some kind of "new" strategy; wasn't this the fundamental thesis of Liberation Theology in the 1960s?

A self-described "fighting atheist," though not a very conventional one, and an avowed Marxist, though not a very typical or orthodox one, Žižek writes rooted deeply within Lacanian psychoanalysis in order to produce some of the most intriguing, bewildering, and relevant philosophy concerned with post-modern conundrums such as relativism, agency, and subjecthood.

Žižek in this work embraces the shared Marxist and Christian messianic visions of history as an alternative to both the post-modern, New Age-Gnostic moral sludge dominating PC culture and the excesses of capital. The true heart of the work-and its most convincing parts as well-occur mid-way through in Žižek 's treatment of Pauline agape vs. the Law/Sin dialectic as it relates to modern human rights. More or less, this is a desperate attempt to revive Marxism as an alternative to Liberalism. Good Luck.

Žižek writes in a frenetic, gregarious style that is endearing but not necessarily rigorous. His penchant for citing movies, novels and popular culture besides the likes of Schelling, Lacan, Hegel and Heidegger lightens the atmosphere, but the problem is that many things that he says, many conclusions he arrives at from overly generalized instances of cultural practice are just blatantly false. Also, it can be annoying when he rambles on for five pages about a movie you've never seen, thus, making any attempt to understand his point tedious. [Recommendation: definitely make sure you've watched Hitchcock's VERTIGO before reading this book].

For me, Žižek is one of the authors with whom I part ways with on the big questions but with whom I often side with on the smaller questions. His acuity in the realm of cultural interpretation and his applications of Lacanian psychoanalysis to politics are both haunting and memorable long after you've finished the books. Re-reading this book, I came across this passage in footnote #12 that sent shivers down my spine with it's accuracy.

Zizek at his all time high (takes Lacan with him)!

Bozovic presents a nice reading of Lacan that, though less full-on the Zizek, provides good insights into the place of the body in early modern philosophy. Although the chapters on Malebranche are good, the final section on Bentham's panopticon is superb. I have yet to read the authors introduction to Bentham's writings on the panopticon but this book suggests that the rest of his work is worth a look.

The collection is very interesting, in that one gets a sense of Zizek's theoretical perspective and methodological tendencies across a range of texts. It also forces one to reconsider Lacan's work. Unfortunately, the book itself is riddled with typographical errors. The publisher should be thoroughly embarrassed by this.

Slavoj Zizek, one of the greatest minds of the late 20th century, is well repersented in this excellent collection of essays. His points of view on everything (women, philosophy, and culture) come through loud and clear. The integration of psychoanalytic, marxist, poststructural, and postmodern critiques is refreshing and his treatment of Lacan through examples from pop culture is particuraly wonderful as it aids those that are new to the subject matter (great teaching tool!). A must read for anyone that wants to get a closer look at the spectre of today's somewhat frightening culture.

In his preface and his original contributions to the selections in this reader, Zizek offers a clearer statement of his position [and of his interpretation of the later writings of Lacan] than in any of his other books. His voice is one which one must engage in dialogue if one is to both appropriate Marxism, psychoanalytic theory and post-structuralism and then move beyond them. He acknowledges post-structualism's accent on contingencies and the limitations of human conceptualization and theorizing while also accenting the irreplaceable roles that imagination, fantasy and idology play in our psycic and social lives. He accents the need to critique ideology and to work through our fantasies so that one can non-reductively acknowledge the uniqueness of ourselves and what we encounter and the ejoyments present in such encounters. He writes so that one can see in the antagonisms present in current forms of neo-capitalism, sexism and racism the grounds for hoping for worthwhile accomplishments in seeking to lessen the domination and oppression they are causing. This reader provides an excellent beginning point for thinkers who want to join cultural and psychoanalytic analyses in a project of social action, and who along the way want to enjoy Zizek's marvelous use of film and literature to exemplify his theoretical points. A must reading for serious students of the current social and cultural world.

Let me preface this review by saying that I am very familiar with Zizek and generally like his work. The Sublime Object of Ideology is a wonderful book as is his recent essay on September 11th. His tendency to quick and sloppy (though often brilliant) arguments is both elucidating and annoying. And for those who read enough of him, you'll notice he tends to recycle shamelessly whole passages from his works (read, for example, his essay on The Matrix side-by-side with the September 11th essay).

In this lecture on Lost Highway, Zizek reaches an all-time low. His argument is wild and often unclear (though incredibly entertaining) and filled with more pop culture than analysis. His central thesis - that you can't read Lynch as some sort of postmodern metaphysical flow - is right on the money, but darned if Zizek can present an alternate way to read him.

What's most unforgivable about this work, however, is that he's continuously jumbling Lost Highway's plot. He mixes up characters, screws up dialogue, and rearranges the order of narrative events. Despite the mess, he still makes some keen and evocative points, but nothing to excuse his sloppiness.

Interviews with Zizek reveal him as an anxiety-ridden, very lazy man, who is not above lying to his students to get out of working with them. (He's admitted to filling in office-hour signup sheets with imaginary names in big lecture classes so as not to have to meet with students). I won't discount his genius as a thinker and entertainer, but this terrible piece on Lynch is only emblematic of his thinking in general. Zizek fans and Lynch fans alike, stay away from it!

This is my first exposure to the work of Slavoj Zizek, but it probably will not be my last. Undeniably studied, Zizek is able to write with an unusual fusion of irreverent pop-cultural wit and stuffy intellectual jargon. That makes this breezy (43 page) study easy to read and profoundly deep at the same time. But don't mistake "profoundly deep" for "profoundly revealing" or "profoundly correct", as it is none of the above.

A self-proclaimed Lacanian, Zizek makes a case for an anti-Fruedian, anti-Jungian psychoanalytic interpretation of what is perhaps David Lynch's most obscure feature film since Eraserhead. As published on Amazon.com and elsewhere, I prefer a Jungian interpretation of Lost Highway, and for good reason: it fits extremely well. To deny this is to deny the evidence of one's own eyes.

All the same, Zizek's intellect is beyond dispute, and his reading of Lost Highway should be of great interest to film theorists and serious David Lynch fans alike.

When I first saw "Lost Highway," I almost immediately dismissed it as far too unhinged and complex to analyize. It was at turns fascinating and familiar, then frustrating and detached. I was simply amazed at the ability of Lynch to create a narrative that seemed so disjointed, and yet oddly and strangely complete.

Slavoj Zizek however, has no trouble distilling the tale to what he believes are its basic elements. He views the tale through the lens of Jacques Lacan, (A Freudian revisionist.) He exhaustively discusses the implications of Fred's impotence and (possible) fantasy of violence and escape, and the construction of a fantasy that includes a virile version of himself, and a disjointededly evil "Father" figure in Mr. Eddy. He boils the tale down to the implications of such contructions and their inherent and necessary failure, because the very fears that call them into play tear them apart. (As seen by the re-introduction of dark haired Renee and Fred's Physical form in the second half of the film.)

He also addresses other aspects of the work, first, as the title suggests, he discusses this work as a film that addresses both a "known" reality, (the convoluted plot) and an ineffable, yet unconsciously addressable sort of hyper reality (the "Real" meaning behind the work.) He does this by exploring many themes, reducing them often to cliche's drawn from popular culture. He looks at Renee/Alice's role as femme fatale in a "neo-noir" setting, the issues of male construction of phallic fantasy and sexual objectivism, the role of ultimate evil and impossible beauty in the Lynch catalogue, and he finally hails Lost Highway as an example of what movies can become in the future, a sort of hypertexed jungle of possibilities and superimposed realities, where the viewer can control (or believe they can control,) the outcome of the film.

He really helped me appreciate the forces at play (whether they are intentionally placed there by the author or no,) in a film that I already thoroughly enjoyed. He lets me explore the aspects of this film that "Spoke" to me on a level that I could not previously express, and yet somehow I understood.

Finally, a word on the craft aspect of this book. This is less a paperback book than it is a pamphlet or portfolio. Nonetheless, the 40 pages of essay are meaty enough for several readings, and the issues covered will have you watching Lost Highway about eight more times, and getting more and more out of it as you pick up on moments in the plot that help you expound on Zizek's ideas. It is well worth the price, and easily accessable to the reader that has no knowledge of Freud or Lacan. Zizek is an outstanding writer. He does not insult his reader in an attempt to dumb his subject down, nor does he fill his prose with lengthy words that leave one scrambling for the dictionary.

I have many criticisms to make about this book, but I will limit myself to the following points. Although Zizek makes an effort to be understood, Laclau and Butler compete for showing who is more obscure and pedantic. In spite all the apparent erudition of the authors, or rather because of it, the issue of hegemony is not well-focused. Certainly Gramsci was quite concerned about providing a philosophical dimension to his social reflection, but Laclau, Butler and, to a lesser extend Zizek, bury the social reflection under tons of excessive philosophical references. The lack of sociological dimension is particularly noticeable regarding Laclau's discussion of contigency. The blending of Kant, Hegel, Lacan, Saussure, to mention the main characters, is simply theoretical over-killing. It will take an article to show how shaky the theoretical connetion between hegemony and universalism is. It is my impression that Gramsci would not recognize his work in this academic potpourri. I bought the book, read carefully from cover to cover, and I strongly dislike it.

A difficult book to read. It is composed of interrelated essays and brings poststructuralist analysis of the current political situation to the fore. Very good for scholars dealing with the desection of the postmodern but offers little advice to those struggling for a better life.

This book represents an attempt by (the) three social thinkers of our time to bring their differing views of what is to done together by beginning with what it is that they have in common, namely: Marx (and Gramsci), Lacan, and Derrida. Although all three critique the above figures, they could not do what it is they do with them. This book provides a much needed companion to Laclau's (w/ Mouffe) "Hegemony and Socialist Strategy" and Zizek's "Ticklish Subject". It also helps towards Butler's "Gender Trouble" but I feel that her approach has matured a great deal from that mostly obscure book. Zizek and Laclau are on their game and their detailed responses back and forth really help in understanding what is at stake. I like Butler but it seems that she is out of her league and element. That being said, I think that there are nuggets of greatness in her writings, one just has to look extra hard to find them. My only criticism for Zizek is that sometimes his examples skew to the shallow side, but this negative is overcome with the remainder of his work.

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO ONLY READ THE FIRST SEVEN WORDS OF THE BOOK TITLE,AS I DID, IN NO WAY IS THIS BOOK RELATED TO THE MOVIE "THE MATRIX ".

In my opinion,Zizek is the most profound cultural analyst writing today, and this short collection of several contemplative essays on 9/11 succeeds in truly saying something new and important about the scope of the events that transpired. Zizek's writing style is famous for achieving a mixture between abstruse, Lacanian psycho-analysis and popular culture. This makes him perhaps one of the most difficult but most enjoyable reads out there in the cultural criticism market. Certainly, this stands out from the the sentimental fluff and proganda rubbish that flies off the shelves. Zizek challenges us to think outside the canard of 'fundamentalism' vs. American hegemony and capitalism.

~~~I truly enjoyed this book, which provides great insight while analyzing the current situation of the States. Not "with us or against us," as Bush constantly stated,but we are against them, since both military leaders in the US and Bin Laden's terrorists are following the same logic. What happend in September 11 had happened in third world countries everywhere, but we Americans watched them as virtual reality until this has become real in our territory. Nothing can justify what happened in~~ September 11, just as nothing could~~ justify what happened in third world countries, which had appeared as spectatles until that point. It's stupid to exchange one terror against another, because this will entail endless circle of violence. What one must do is to be awake from this rosy dream, to realize the existence of the desert of the real, and resist "them", who have been making such terrible spectacles happen everywhere,Mid-East, Africa, Asia, but not simly in the US, which has~~ become part of the desert of reel.~

This book is impossible, complicated, and confusing. Good luck to anyone who tries to figure it out. Zizek careens through film history, haphazardly - and sometimes carefully - appropriating examples in order to make various 'post-modern' and Lacanian points. It almost seems like parody, but ... it's not.

Clarity of language and argument one finds, some feel, rarely in current theoretical writing or in psychoanalytic writing. Here Zizek has structured his book so that nearly every idea gets two chances to impress the reader. I would agree with one of the reviews on this site of another of Zizek's books, that the author writes more clearly and persuasively about politics than about culture. However, this book presents a pleasing mixture (as most of Zizek's books do) of the cultural, political, philosophical, and Lacanian munch.

Each chapter sets out to answer a question posed by the chapter heading (e.g., Why is Reality Always Multiple?). First Zizek approaches a solution or description of the problem as it appears in Hollywood films. These Zizek treats as texts or case studies. Whatever your opinion of the merits of psychoanalytic description for general use, the discussion of the films makes marvellously amusing reading. As demanding for this reader as the steep range of theoretical vocabulary employed is the ample library of films from which Zizek draws his examples. Many of which films I'd never seen. The second section of each chapter recasts the first approach through film in the language, theory and realm of analysis, theory and philosophy.

I cannot weigh in an estimation of the value of this book. Surely, it is not as profoundly useful or clear as Zizek's political and philosophical thriller, Ticklish Subject. Yet, the application of Zizek's critical arsenal to Hollywood without the baggage of Politics and History, makes room for exposition through, sad to say, a universal and more immediate medium.

If you know anything about Hegel and Lacan, Zizek is actually a quite clear expositor of Lacan. Looking awry is particularly clear, lucid to the point of simplification in his account of Lacan, but what can you expect when your proof-test is Hitchcock and HOllywood movies. Most academic books consist of (dead author) and (contemporary theorist), and if the text at hand simply serves to validate the theory, why drag out heavy reading when Hitchcock will do? If the theory is correct, it encompasses both Shakespeare and anything oj simpson ever appeared in, so not to use both would only be a sign of stuffiness. Zizek has the virtue of being easy to read and not taking himself too seriously, and begins every chapter with a quote from Lenin or Stalin, as if Stalin was the last philosopher. It's not a parody, but if Kojeve (Lacan) is right, that every philosophy is just a repetition of one moment of the Hegelian spirit, then Zizek's jeu d'esprit is an honest accomodation to what's happening now.

Zizek's often great fun - and this book is no exception - but he's not where anyone would want to start his or her exposure to Lacan. For starters, Zizek assumes an a priori familiarity with at the very least the language of Lacanian theory. Yet anyone who's remotely proficient with Lacan will find this book a mess of rambling nonsense. Zizek's pop-culture analyses are entertaining and sometimes ingenius, but his application of Lacanian theory is loose, wild, and sometimes incomprehensible. He's one of the least rigorous Lacanians out there and should only be read by those who know enough about Lacan to recognize where and how Zizek goes wrong. With Zizek, even his errors are sometimes illuminating, but this book is sheer nonsense.

This book is very interesting but I think it would have been better to call it "An Introduction to Popular Culture trhough Jaques Lacan". This would be a proper title because Zizek dedicates more space to tell us what some products of popular culture are about (i.e. Stephen King's novel "Pet Sematary"; Robert Sheckley's short story "The Store of the Worlds") than to explain, or even outline, the theories of Jaques Lacan. This in itself is not a critique, I just want to say that the title can be misleading. You will not find here an explanation or an introduction to Lacan, but rather a Lacanian reading or interpretation of some products of popular culture (novels, short stories and films.) If you are looking for an easy or brief rendering of Lacan, this book will not be of much help. Moreover, I would say that the readers who will profit the most are those who are already familiar with, or at least know something about, Lacanian thought. This said, I think that Zizek's Lacanian reading of popular works is very good in some cases, and somewhat poor in others. For example, he recalls the novel "Pet Sematary" but he explains almost nothing about it. The good cases, however, make it worth the effort to read the book (Zizek's writing is complicated, but so is Lacan's), and even if you do not agree with some of his points, they are still useful to encourage thought and discussion. If you are interested in the study of popular culture, the interpretation of film and literature, or in the application of Lacanian theory to social analysis, this book will certainly be of use.

Jacques Lacan's theories are completely, utterly undecipherable. The only way to begin to understand the fundamentals of psychoanalytic theory is to read somebody else writing on Lacan. And thank God Zizek does that for us. To understand Lacan, I've always had to turn to film theory critism--Laura Mulvey--but none of that ever goes beyond theories of the gaze, neglecting to dispell the mystery around some of the most basic concepts of Lacan. Zizek rolls through these various terms and ideas, always providing an exemplification of the idea in popular culture, usually in Hitchcock or within Sci-Fi genres, and then a clear-to-understand definition. So if you're confused as to what desire, drive, lack, objet a, other, Other, the Real, or the Thing are in terms of Lacanian jargon, this might be your book.

Zizek argues in this book along with Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling) that there should be a "teleological suspension of the ethical category" in favor of the religious. In Kierkegaard's book he says that Abraham is asked by God to suspend the ethical in order to kill his son Isaac. Of course God stops the killing before it takes place, but first he wants to test whether Abraham is willing to suspend the ethical in order to give primacy of place to the religious. Zizek uses this paradigm to argue that Leninists had the right to suspend the ethical in order to put their religious fervor to the test by slaughtering liberal Mensheviks, and millions of others, after the October revolution. This is a strange book played out with fantastic verve and bizarre humor. One isn't sure how seriously Zizek takes his "belief" in Leninism. This is one of the worst books on an ethical basis I've ever read, but aesthetically it's one of the best efforts in contemporary theory -- fun to read, whacky "beyond belief," and filled with a real fun for sentence making. The sentencing of the Marxists, both their own in terms of Solzhenitsyn and others, as well as the sentence that the liberal west has laid on them in order to lay them down to rest, is replayed as if it was a trauma that needs to be relived. The result is a species of madness: a great book with a seemingly bizarre ethical message: kill all liberals to prove your religious fervor for a secular religion that is widely discredited for asking for such mass murder. God never asks Abraham to go through on his killing of his son. Zizek appears to condone the killing of millions by communists in the twentieth century through using Kierkegaard's paradigm for understanding Abraham and Isaac. Zizek has a lot of fun with this comparison. I suffered, and I think most Christians would suffer because the comparison seems so grotesque and so completely out of control, but Marxists will delight in this religious rationale for their peculiarly bloody heritage.

I disagree with the reader from Montreal: Belief itself may fail on all accounts, but nevertheless persists and insists. If anything this book enacts -- in Zizek's Helegian fashion -- the very concept under discussion. For that reason Zizek's dialectic is joyous, tumultuous and, yes, RAMBLING. But the subtle reader will notice that the transition from one random topic to the next is always tied together later, when ex nihilo a Master-Signifier emerges to order the text in a consistant fashion.

Furthermore I reccomend any of Zizek's rambling, ill defined arguements or pedantry. Buyer beware, but not of this book!

I have recently began reading Zizek after picking up this short essay that he wrote for Routledge's Thinking in Action Series. His idiosyncratic writing style has its quirks which I could imagine some people despising, but I enjoyed it myself. He has an incredible talent for looking abstruse concepts and philosophical debates in a fresh perspective that definitely could be described as 'thinking outside of the box'. He writes with a ad hoc mixture of pop culture, hitchcock, philosophy, theology, doxology, and Lacanian psychology. And his message is a powerful one--reaffirming the human and the real against what he terms 'the digital heresy'. By the end of his essay, he has you wanting to believe once again--or maybe just to admit to yourself that you've believed all along.