
For They Know Not What They Do
Enjoyment as a Political Factor
Slavoj Zizek(Author)
Verso Books (Publisher)
Published on 17. October 2002
Book
Paperback/Softback
288 pages
978-1-85984-460-1 (ISBN)
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Description
With the disintegration of state socialism, we are witnessing this eruption of enjoymnet in the re-emergence of aggressive nationalism and racism. With the lid of repression lifted, the desires that have emerged are from from democratic. To explain this apparent paradox, says Slavoj Zizek, socialist critical thought must turn to psychoanalysis.
For They Know Not What They Do seeks to understand the status of enjoyment within ideological discourse, from Hegel through Lacan to these political and ideological deadlocks. The author's own enjoyment of "popular culture" makes this an engaging and lucid exposition, in which Hegel joins hands with Rossellini, Marx with Hitchcock, Lacan with Frankenstein, high theory with Hollywood melodrama.
For They Know Not What They Do seeks to understand the status of enjoyment within ideological discourse, from Hegel through Lacan to these political and ideological deadlocks. The author's own enjoyment of "popular culture" makes this an engaging and lucid exposition, in which Hegel joins hands with Rossellini, Marx with Hitchcock, Lacan with Frankenstein, high theory with Hollywood melodrama.
Reviews / Votes
... it will become one of the 'classics' of postmarxism. -- Lillian Zac * Marxism Today * Britons, take our advice, do not read this book; it may seriously infect your mind. And, above allo, keep it out of reach of your wives, your children and your servants. * Laibach * Slavoj Zizek, the Giant of Llubljana ... provides the best intellectual high since Anti-Oedipus. * Voice Literary Supplement * Zizek's recent spate of books ... has been widely and correctly regarded as an enormous contribution to contemporary thought ... He inflicts the most obscure theory upon us, in such a way that we are forced to enjoy it. -- Charles Shepardson * The Minnesota Review *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 236 mm
Width: 155 mm
Thickness: 28 mm
Weight
610 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-85984-460-1 (9781859844601)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
New editions

Book
01/2008
Verso Books
€24.00
Shipment within 3-4 weeks
Person
Slavoj Zizek is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, and a sen-ior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His books include Living in the End Times, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, Less Than Nothing, six volumes of the Essential Zizek, and many more.