Violence

Violence by Slavoj Zizek

Philosopher, cultural critic, and agent provocateur Slavoj Zizek constructs a fascinating new framework to look at the forces of violence in our world.

Using history, philosophy, books, movies, Lacanian psychiatry, and jokes, Slavoj Zizek examines the ways we perceive and misperceive violence. Drawing from his unique cultural vision, Zizek brings new light to the Paris riots of 2005; he questions the permissiveness of violence in philanthropy; in daring terms, he reflects on the powerful image and determination of contemporary terrorists.

Violence, Zizek states, takes three forms--subjective (crime, terror), objective (racism, hate-speech, discrimination), and systemic (the catastrophic effects of economic and political systems)--and often one form of violence blunts our ability to see the others, raising complicated questions.

Does the advent of capitalism and, indeed, civilization cause more violence than it prevents? Is there violence in the simple idea of the neighbour? And could the appropriate form of action against violence today simply be to contemplate, to think?

Beginning with these and other equally contemplative questions, Zizek discusses the inherent violence of globalization, capitalism, fundamentalism, and language, in a work that will confirm his standing as one of our most erudite and incendiary modern thinkers.

SLAVOJ ZIZEK is Eminent Scholar at Kyung Hee University, Seoul; Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University; and the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London. He is the author of more than fifty books, including The Sublime Object of Ideology, Less Than Nothing, Incontinence of the Void, and Sex and the Failed Absolute.