- Hardcover: 200 pages
- Publisher: The MIT Press (May 22 1991)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0262240319
- ISBN-13: 978-0262240314
- Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 18.3 x 2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 544 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #278,353 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
"A Hegelian and a Lacanian Hitchcock has my vote! Looking Awry is a wonderful introduction to dialectical psychoanalysis; to a fresh approach to the subjectivities of mass culture; and to an extraordinary new voice we will hear often in the coming years."
—Fredric R. Jameson
Book Description
Slavoj ÂŽižek, a leading intellectual in the new social movements that are sweeping Eastern Europe, provides a virtuoso reading of Jacques Lacan. ÂŽižek inverts current pedagogical strategies to explain the difficult philosophical underpinnings of the French theoretician and practician who revolutionized our view of psychoanalysis. He approaches Lacan through the motifs and works of contemporary popular culture, from Hitchcock's Vertigo to Stephen King's Pet Sematary, from McCullough's An Indecent Obsession to Romero's Return of the Living Dead—a strategy of "looking awry" that recalls the exhilarating and vital experience of Lacan.
ÂŽižek discovers fundamental Lacanian categories—the triad Imaginary/Symbolic/Real, the object small a, the opposition of drive and desire, the split subject—at work in horror fiction, in detective thrillers, in romances, in the mass media's perception of ecological crisis, and, above all, in Alfred Hitchcock's films. The playfulness of ÂŽižek's text, however, is entirely different from that associated with the deconstructive approach made famous by Derrida. By clarifying what Lacan is saying as well as what he is not saying, ÂŽižek is uniquely able to distinguish Lacan from the poststructuralists who so often claim him.
ÂŽižek discovers fundamental Lacanian categories—the triad Imaginary/Symbolic/Real, the object small a, the opposition of drive and desire, the split subject—at work in horror fiction, in detective thrillers, in romances, in the mass media's perception of ecological crisis, and, above all, in Alfred Hitchcock's films. The playfulness of ÂŽižek's text, however, is entirely different from that associated with the deconstructive approach made famous by Derrida. By clarifying what Lacan is saying as well as what he is not saying, ÂŽižek is uniquely able to distinguish Lacan from the poststructuralists who so often claim him.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Perfect - if that's what you want.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture (Paperback)
That's what I wanted, at least: An illustration of the key Lacanian concepts. What Zizek'bokk gives you, in fact, is the key to reading Lacan. Lacan's seminar is an unreadable text - if that's your first/second/third etc. time. Lacan, you see, does not make conclusions. To illustrate that: As soon as you get the background - Lacan's non-sense makes perfect sense. Zizek give this background in a highly entertaining manner (his writing is a jewel - keeps you thinking "If only I could write like that!"). I am currently doing a PhD in literature, and I have to go through plenty of academic rubbish - dry and actually, useless critical books, that make use of Lacan, Foucault and others to get published and never be read. Zizec is a breath of fresh air. Please believe me - do not give up on Lacan, do not call him bad names, (like "idiotic nonsense, nobody ever understood him, they were all pretending to understand him because they were afraid to look stupid in the 60s") - before you read Zizec.
5.0 out of 5 stars
This book is great; those below who don't like it are clowns,
By Cilla (Antioch, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture (Paperback)
Jacques Lacan's theories are completely, utterly undecipherable. The only way to begin to understand the fundamentals of psychoanalytic theory is to read somebody else writing on Lacan. And thank God Zizek does that for us. To understand Lacan, I've always had to turn to film theory critism--Laura Mulvey--but none of that ever goes beyond theories of the gaze, neglecting to dispell the mystery around some of the most basic concepts of Lacan. Zizek rolls through these various terms and ideas, always providing an exemplification of the idea in popular culture, usually in Hitchcock or within Sci-Fi genres, and then a clear-to-understand definition. So if you're confused as to what desire, drive, lack, objet a, other, Other, the Real, or the Thing are in terms of Lacanian jargon, this might be your book.
1.0 out of 5 stars
Freud's a better introduction to Lacan,
By Cultural Production (Los Angeles, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture (Paperback)
Zizek's often great fun - and this book is no exception - but he's not where anyone would want to start his or her exposure to Lacan. For starters, Zizek assumes an a priori familiarity with at the very least the language of Lacanian theory. Yet anyone who's remotely proficient with Lacan will find this book a mess of rambling nonsense. Zizek's pop-culture analyses are entertaining and sometimes ingenius, but his application of Lacanian theory is loose, wild, and sometimes incomprehensible. He's one of the least rigorous Lacanians out there and should only be read by those who know enough about Lacan to recognize where and how Zizek goes wrong. With Zizek, even his errors are sometimes illuminating, but this book is sheer nonsense.
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