There is a new quality of idiocy today. While the old idiot derived knowledge from isolation, the new idiot refuses all understanding of the world. A figure of systematic incompetence, the new idiot is impacting global culture and politics alike, giving rise to surprising, often absurd competences. Yesterday's "fake news" or "post-truths" can be read today as evidence of an ongoing transformation of self-politics in which the idiotic impulse is redefining our experience of the world. Despite talk of global awareness, the isolated self of the many is all the more effective. It brings about a culture of happy singletons strolling towards a black hole that has become their substitute for society.
Zoran Terzic's wide-ranging essay takes up the figure of the idiot and follows its numerous appearances throughout intellectual history in an examination of the "art of the idiotic" that both reflects and transcends the freneticism of the present.
Reviews / Votes
"Arriving in translation from German, Zoran Terzic's Idiocracy: Thinking and Acting in the Age of the Idiot [. . .] identifies 'a new quality of idiocy today' that derives, not from mere ignorance, but from a deliberate refusal to understand things." * Insider Higher Ed *
Language
Place of publication
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 21 cm
Width: 13.5 cm
Thickness: 16 mm
Weight
ISBN-13
978-3-0358-0367-9 (9783035803679)
Schweitzer Classification
Author
Zoran Terzic geboren 1969 in Banja Luka, studierte Soziologie, Jazz-Piano und Kommunikationsdesign in Nu¨rnberg und
Wuppertal sowie Bildende Kunst in New York und widmete sich danach dem Schreiben. Promotion zum Dr. phil. 2006.
Er lebt seit 2001 in Berlin.
Translation
7
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10
?
(Zoran Terzic)
13
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20
Zero Expression
(Zoran Terzic)
21
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32
Tour d'idiot-A History of the Peculiar Person
(Zoran Terzic)
33
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50
The Two Realms of the Idiot
(Zoran Terzic)
51
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60
The Crudest Pattern
(Zoran Terzic)
61
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76
The Idiotic Real
(Zoran Terzic)
81
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88
The Zeroed Society
(Zoran Terzic)
89
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102
Political Idiocy
(Zoran Terzic)
103
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110
The Will to Absurdity
(Zoran Terzic)
111
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126
Dialectic of Incompetence
(Zoran Terzic)
127
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134
The Frenetic Subject
(Zoran Terzic)
135
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150
Wendy's World
(Zoran Terzic)
151
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160
Phenomenology of the Many
(Zoran Terzic)
161
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171
Idiopractice
(Zoran Terzic)
172
Acknowledgments
173
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191
Literature
