Conversations with Zizek (Conversations) (Paperback)

by Slavoj Zizek (Author), Glyn Daly (Author) "GLYN DALY You grew up in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, in postwar Yugoslavia..." (more)
Key Phrases: multiculturalist tolerance, symbolic fiction, death drive, Lacanian Real, Last Man, Frankfurt School (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"Slavoj Žižek has put the Soul back into philosophy." TLS

"Audacious and vertiginous, this book is everything one expects from him, a heady mix of psychoanalysis, politics, theology, philosophy, and cultural studies that will leave the reader both exhausted and exhilarated. For those wishing to gain a brief overview of his central thesis or his application of Lacan to cultural studies, this is an informal and opportune text, an excellent introduction to Žižek by Žižek." -Marcus Pound, Bristol University

"I am very impressed by how Žižek continues book after book to clarify, revise and deepen his thinking. This volume-ideal for the beginner, but with plenty to offer the practiced reader of Žižek as well- is a superb snapshot of where this most restless, iconoclastic and essential of contemporary theorists stands at the moment." – Henry Staten, University of Washington, Seattle.

"Glyn Daly succeeds here in punctuating the febrile forward rush of one of the most distinctive and influential voices of our time, making it curl a little more deliberately around questions many would want to ask Žižek responds with wily candour, offering up original and substantive theoretical speculation alongside bits of professional biography and new glosses on his favorite cultural examples. As invigorating and substantial a conversation as any one is likely to come upon. – Joan Copjec, author of Imagine There’s No Woman

Product Description
In this new book, Slavoj Žižek and Glyn Daly engage in a series of entertaining conversations which illustrate the originality of Žižek’s thinking on psychoanalysis, philosophy, multiculturalism, popular/cyber culture, totalitarianism, ethics and politics.

Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher who trained as a Lacanian. He is at the forefront of philosophical, political and cultural debate and is known for his theories, based largely on a Lacanian analysis, on a wide range of subjects, including globalization, cyberspace, film, music and opera. His work continues to provoke controversy and to transform the way we think about these and other issues of popular culture and politics. In conversation with Glyn Daly, Žižek elaborates on a range of topics which encompass the purpose of philosophy and psychoanalysis, the films of Stanley Kubrick, the notion of enjoyment, Marxism, de Sade, Nazism and much more.

This book will provide readers with a unique glimpse at Žižeks humour and character, and is an ideal introduction to his work. At the same time it offers new material and fresh perspectives, which will be of interest to followers of his writings, appealing to the general reader as well as to undergraduates and graduates studying social theory, cultural studies and politics.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 171 pages
• Publisher: Polity (January 7, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0745628974
• ISBN-13: 978-0745628974
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #818,151 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Most coherent text on Lacan and/or Zizek ever, April 16, 2005

By	Tristero (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews

Previous to reading this book I had read quite a few of Zizek's books, as well as some other secondary material on Lacan, and always seemed to miss the mark on some key conceptual understandings. They were always too technical, above my head, or hard to understand. In this book, by contrast, and probably in part because it's in an interview format, Zizek does an incredible job of succinctly explaining difficult Lacanian concepts in easy to understand terms. He also outlines his vision of politics and ethics, although if you want to see him defending his politics at his best, I reccomend Revolution at the Gates. The first part of the book also has the added bonus of giving alot of biographical information about Zizek, which, quite frankly, I couldn't care less about, but theory-heads might enjoy the story of his life. Daly also does a pretty good job explaining Zizek's interpretation of Lacan in the introduction - at least far better than most secondary material on Zizek. A great read if you want to get to understand Zizek and Lacan better but have had difficulty understanding his other books.

5.0 out of 5 stars a great introduction, September 12, 2004

By	a reader (New York) - See all my reviews

Anyone interested in learning about Zizek should read this book. It is lively and accessible, a perfect way to get acquainted with a daunting thinker who writes faster than most of us read.

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Easy Way, August 19, 2005

By	Maurice Ebileeni (maalot-tarshiha Israel) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

In order to familiarize yourself with the thoughts and strategies of any critic or philosopher without being exposed to the sufferings sustained in the painful job of reading extremely complex texts, you should always focus on the interviews made with the critic or the philosopher. You will get a much better grasp of highly complicated ideas suggested by philosophers such as Sartre, Foucault, and Said by reading through their published interviews. I mention those three authors for it has been claimed by some reviewers that they have turned the activity of giving an interview into an artform. Daly's interviews with Zizek does not spare us from Zizek's playful, and at times elusive, style when he goes down on Kinder chocolate, virtual reality, globalization, Hitchcock, Fight Club, etc... Zizek is as quick and as versatile as you may have imagined him to be from his previous books or lectures. Daly seems to know to press the right buttons in order to get Zizek off the ground. The chemistry in this book makes even Deleuze sound as a wild and attractive philosopher. However, you should beware Zizek's Lacan is quite different from the clinical readings of Lacan. It became quite clear already in 1989 in "the Sublime Object of Ideology" that Zizek preferred to focus on the underestimated Real in the Lacanian cognitive edifice. Daly explains in a very lucid way the importance of the Real to Zizek's Lacan, and he helps the reader to enter Zizek's streams of thought. This book helps any reader to understand Zizek's highly complex ideas in a very simple way. I would place this book among the other books of interviews made with the authors mentioned above, Sartre, Foucault, and Said. Daly and Zizek are preserving the artform.