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Book Description
The title is just the first of many startling asides, observations and insights that fill this guide to Hollywood on the Lacanian psychoanalyst’s couch.
Zizek introduces the ideas of Jacques Lacan through the medium of American film, taking his examples from over 100 years of cinema, from Charlie Chaplin to The Matrix and referencing along the way such figures as Lenin and Hegel, Michel Foucault and Jesus Christ.
Enjoy Your Symptom! is a thrilling guide to cinema and psychoanalysis from a thinker who is perhaps the last standing giant of cultural theory in the twenty-first century.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
It may seem peculiar, even absurd, to set Chaplin under the sign of "death and sublimation": is not the universe of Chaplin's films, a universe bursting with nonsublime vitality, vulgarity even, the very opposite of a damp romantic obsession with death and sublimation? Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
the point?,
By "kortnay" (calgary) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out (Paperback)
"I cannot weigh in an estimation of the value of this book. Surely, it is not as profoundly useful or clear as Zizek's political and philosophical thriller, Ticklish Subject. Yet, the application of Zizek's critical arsenal to Hollywood without the baggage of Politics and History, makes room for exposition through, sad to say, a universal and more immediate medium." Here's a statement that completely misses not only the point but the importance of Zizek. Ofcourse, in an era of achedemics and 'intellectual'-types complacently spiteful to popular culture as the anti-shakespeare (christ?), this isn't surprising.
4.0 out of 5 stars
elevator music piped upwind,
By Alvaro Lewis "jwatson5" (Redwood City, CA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out (Paperback)
Clarity of language and argument one finds, some feel, rarely in current theoretical writing or in psychoanalytic writing. Here Zizek has structured his book so that nearly every idea gets two chances to impress the reader. I would agree with one of the reviews on this site of another of Zizek's books, that the author writes more clearly and persuasively about politics than about culture. However, this book presents a pleasing mixture (as most of Zizek's books do) of the cultural, political, philosophical, and Lacanian munch. Each chapter sets out to answer a question posed by the chapter heading (e.g., Why is Reality Always Multiple?). First Zizek approaches a solution or description of the problem as it appears in Hollywood films. These Zizek treats as texts or case studies. Whatever your opinion of the merits of psychoanalytic description for general use, the discussion of the films makes marvellously amusing reading. As demanding for this reader as the steep range of theoretical vocabulary employed is the ample library of films from which Zizek draws his examples. Many of which films I'd never seen. The second section of each chapter recasts the first approach through film in the language, theory and realm of analysis, theory and philosophy. I cannot weigh in an estimation of the value of this book. Surely, it is not as profoundly useful or clear as Zizek's political and philosophical thriller, Ticklish Subject. Yet, the application of Zizek's critical arsenal to Hollywood without the baggage of Politics and History, makes room for exposition through, sad to say, a universal and more immediate medium.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.8 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews) 27 of 34 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
very clear stuff,
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out (Paperback)
If you know anything about Hegel and Lacan, Zizek is actually a quite clear expositor of Lacan. Looking awry is particularly clear, lucid to the point of simplification in his account of Lacan, but what can you expect when your proof-test is Hitchcock and HOllywood movies. Most academic books consist of (dead author) and (contemporary theorist), and if the text at hand simply serves to validate the theory, why drag out heavy reading when Hitchcock will do? If the theory is correct, it encompasses both Shakespeare and anything oj simpson ever appeared in, so not to use both would only be a sign of stuffiness. Zizek has the virtue of being easy to read and not taking himself too seriously, and begins every chapter with a quote from Lenin or Stalin, as if Stalin was the last philosopher. It's not a parody, but if Kojeve (Lacan) is right, that every philosophy is just a repetition of one moment of the Hegelian spirit, then Zizek's jeu d'esprit is an honest accomodation to what's happening now.
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
elevator music piped upwind,
By Alvaro Lewis "jwatson5" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out (Paperback)
Clarity of language and argument one finds, some feel, rarely in current theoretical writing or in psychoanalytic writing. Here Zizek has structured his book so that nearly every idea gets two chances to impress the reader. I would agree with one of the reviews on this site of another of Zizek's books, that the author writes more clearly and persuasively about politics than about culture. However, this book presents a pleasing mixture (as most of Zizek's books do) of the cultural, political, philosophical, and Lacanian munch. Each chapter sets out to answer a question posed by the chapter heading (e.g., Why is Reality Always Multiple?). First Zizek approaches a solution or description of the problem as it appears in Hollywood films. These Zizek treats as texts or case studies. Whatever your opinion of the merits of psychoanalytic description for general use, the discussion of the films makes marvellously amusing reading. As demanding for this reader as the steep range of theoretical vocabulary employed is the ample library of films from which Zizek draws his examples. Many of which films I'd never seen. The second section of each chapter recasts the first approach through film in the language, theory and realm of analysis, theory and philosophy. I cannot weigh in an estimation of the value of this book. Surely, it is not as profoundly useful or clear as Zizek's political and philosophical thriller, Ticklish Subject. Yet, the application of Zizek's critical arsenal to Hollywood without the baggage of Politics and History, makes room for exposition through, sad to say, a universal and more immediate medium. 2 of 24 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
the point?,
By "kortnay" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out (Paperback)
"I cannot weigh in an estimation of the value of this book. Surely, it is not as profoundly useful or clear as Zizek's political and philosophical thriller, Ticklish Subject. Yet, the application of Zizek's critical arsenal to Hollywood without the baggage of Politics and History, makes room for exposition through, sad to say, a universal and more immediate medium." Here's a statement that completely misses not only the point but the importance of Zizek. Ofcourse, in an era of achedemics and 'intellectual'-types complacently spiteful to popular culture as the anti-shakespeare (christ?), this isn't surprising.
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