- Hardcover: 300 pages
- Publisher: Verso Press USA (Jun 29 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1859847579
- ISBN-13: 978-1859847572
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 14.2 x 3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 513 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Book Description
In an unusual experiment, three theorists engage in a dialogue on central questions of contemporary philosophy and politics. Their essays, organized as separate contributions that respond to one another, range over the Hegelian legacy in contemporary critical theory, the theoretical dilemmas of multiculturalism, the universalism-versus-particularism debate, the strategies of the Left in a global economy, and the relative merits of post-structuralism and Lacanian psychoanalysis for a critical social theory.
About the Author
Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Subjects of Desire, Gender Trouble, Bodies that Matter, and The Psychic Life of Power. Ernesto Laclau is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Essex. He is the author of Emancipation(s), New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, The Making of Political Identities and, with Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Slavoj Zizek is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Studies in Ljubljana. His books include The Sublime Object of Ideology, Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lacan (But were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock), The Plague of Fantasies, and The Ticklish Subject.
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Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
worth the effort
Oct 4 2003
Format:Paperback
Yes this is a difficult book, but it is an absolute must read for those who are follwing the theoretical developments of post-strucuralism on the progressive left. Of course there are no prescriptions for immediate action but read Butler's contributions in this book and she addresses that dilemma. Laclau is very good, and Zizek has nuggets, but his Hegelian/Lacanianism is showing signs of wear and doesn't offer the opportunities for further theoretical developments and even research projects that the projects of Butler and Laclau offer.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Weird
July 11 2004
Format:Paperback
Very strange book--courageous, but disappointing in many ways. Butler tries throughout to get the others to think of gays/lesbians as something more than examples of minorities--they refuse. Laclau's second essay is positively bitchy and contemptuous. Zizek presses the other two to be more active activists and take a more positive political stance--they do not do so, instead noting that he also does not do so. Laclau says he assumed Zizek had a sophisticated political sense when he entered the collaboration but must conclude that he was wrong--Zizek is politically stupid, and Butler is a ranting, raving dyke--or so Laclau implies by referring to her first essay as a "war machine" or something. (She of course does not lower herself by responding.) It's an intersting collaboration in many ways--what I got out of it mainly was a better understanding of hegemony, which seems to me an incredibly powerful concept. But it comes mainly, I gather, from Laclau's earlier work. Butler, I thought, asked some good questions about universality that are ignored throughout the rest of the volume, as are all her remarks about gender, which seem invisible to the others. She writes beautifully at times. Laclau's thinking is incisive and powerful. Zizek seems to flip-flop wantonly on Derrida, and they all bicker constantly about who is and who isn't interpreting Lacan's Real with adequate thoroughness. It's a strangely confused, confusing, and inconclusive book. (The attempt, at the end, to present the failure to conclude anything as a theoretical triumph is a bit hollow.) It shows the state of theory now, I guess--theory is seductive in its power and potential, but three theorists of the Left seem unable to talk to each other. My own view is that theory can underestimate the power of disciplinary barriers. "Theory" seems to me to be nothing if not a way for a rhetorician, an economist, and a psychoanalyst/film critic to talk to each other, but the forces against such collaboration are not to be so easily thwarted, unfortunately. The book is interesting but naive.
better than most...
Mar 7 2003
Format:Paperback
This book represents an attempt by (the) three social thinkers of our time to bring their differing views of what is to done together by beginning with what it is that they have in common, namely: Marx (and Gramsci), Lacan, and Derrida. Although all three critique the above figures, they could not do what it is they do with them. This book provides a much needed companion to Laclau's (w/ Mouffe) "Hegemony and Socialist Strategy" and Zizek's "Ticklish Subject". It also helps towards Butler's "Gender Trouble" but I feel that her approach has matured a great deal from that mostly obscure book. Zizek and Laclau are on their game and their detailed responses back and forth really help in understanding what is at stake. I like Butler but it seems that she is out of her league and element. That being said, I think that there are nuggets of greatness in her writings, one just has to look extra hard to find them. My only criticism for Zizek is that sometimes his examples skew to the shallow side, but this negative is overcome with the remainder of his work.
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Most recent customer reviews
Difficult
A difficult book to read. It is composed of interrelated essays and brings poststructuralist analysis of the current political situation to the fore. Read more
Published on Jan 23 2002
Not my favorite book
I have many criticisms to make about this book, but I will limit myself to the following points. Although Zizek makes an effort to be understood, Laclau and Butler compete for... Read more
Published on Feb 22 2001
Essential for understanding three important philosophers
I don't believe this work is for everyone, for one needs to have a pretty solid background of knowledge already, of the works and theoretics of Butler, Laclau and Zizek... Read more
Published on Oct 29 2000 by Bryan Atinsky
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