Indirectness

Reviews / Votes

In these desperate times, perhaps the greatest threat comes to our belief in the idea of truth. In Indirectness, Jela Krecic and Jure Simoniti come to the rescue. They have assembled a collection of essays that show exactly how the commitment to truth can be rediscovered and even strengthened-not by clinging to the old conceptions but by recognizing the centrality in indirection for arriving at truth. It's a game-changing work not to be missed if we are to escape the horrors of the post-truth world. -- Todd McGowan, The University of Vermont The unruly unity in the authors' different interpretations of the concept of indirectness represents a magnificent answer to the widespread demand to "simply say it as it is". They all digress and make use of art, politics, psychoanalysis, everyday psychopathology, and puns - and thereby collectively create a surprising and inspiring truth-event. -- Henrik Joker Bjerre, Aalborg University, Denmark Is philosophy the true enemy or the perfect accomplice of contemporary hegemonic ideology? Through the concept of indirectness, this collection attempts to separate critical from complicit philosophy. Indirectness - introduced as a new concept in this volume by Jela Krecic - can be seen as the shibboleth of our time (as Robert Pfaller puts it in his contribution). If we can recover the ability to be indirect - to take a detour through the other - we can save ourselves from the psychosis of a capitalist world that seeks to turn us into pure individuals and isolated identities.

The topic of directness is approached by the greatest living philosophers in this volume. From Mladen Dolar's careful analysis of the indirectness present in wordplay, punning and humour that reminds the subject of the social nature of subjectivity to Catherine Malabou's proposal for a new political subject of indirectness to Alenka Zupancic's provocation that truth is indirect, the contributions to this volume use indirectness to blow open everything you thought you knew about philosophy, psychoanalysis and reality. -- Alfie Bown, King's College London By ranging from punning to Christian atheism - using psychoanalysis, art, cinema and politics - "Indirectness" gives body to its philosophical impetus: the claim that reality is not complete but imbued with a negativity that fantasy tries to fill. -- Sean Sheehan * The Prisma *