The New Zizek
by sensuscommunist
I love the fact that every time I hear the words, “the NEW Zizek,” they refer to a different book. One could be referring to a book that he published a year ago, yet he has published four more since. That is the situation with In Defense of Lost Causes which was described to me as the new Zizek a couple of days ago. (If you are curious, he has published, since then, Violence, The Monstrosity of Christ, and First as Tragedy and Again as Farce.)
I, however, truly do have the newest of the new Zizek’s: Mythology, Madness and Laughter: Subjectivity in German Idealism (Continuum, 2009) coauthored with Markus Gabriel (Der Mensch im Mythos and others), a rising star in the German-reading world, who is just making his Anglo debut.
I actually finished the book three days after this blog post went up, but I have been too busy reading (inordinate amounts of Heidegger) and writing (horrible amounts on Heidegger) to review the book. Of course, now it isn’t as new–Zizek’s next book Living in the End Times can already be pre-ordered on Amazon.com.
Mythology, Madness and Laughter (MML) should be divided into two sections: Markus Gabriel’s manifesto which is the first half, and Zizek’s two essays–on Hegel and Fichte–which fill the second half.
Of these two halves, Gabriel’s is–perhaps–more interesting. Gabriel’s essay is effectively a plea to reappropriate the concept of myth today. This argument is bolstered by a reading of German Idealism which stresses mythological understandings of the world. In other words, all monisms must fail, because there is always that irreconcilable gap of which every lacanian/hegelian/heideggerian/adornian knows (while each calls it something different) this is Gabriel’s point: mythos names the gap and lends a structure.
The important thing one must remember is that this structure can’t be rigid. As Hegel might put it: the gap closes in death when Erfahrung (experience) ceases.
Zizek’s essay on Fichte is interesting, but I only say this out of self-interest. Basically he reads Fichte as a Lacanian, something I have argued for elsewhere on this site.
Overall a good book. Markus Gabriel looks like an interesting thinker and I am excited to see what else lies in store for us.
[...] book Skeptizismus und Idealismus in der Antike, mainly because his part of his collaboration with Zizek was interesting enough to deserve more investigation. Over the next few months I hope to make my [...]