Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION: IS HEGEL DEAD — OR ARE WE DEAD (IN THE EYES OF HEGEL)? When the Kraken Wakes A Report from the Trenches of Dialectical Materialism I THE DISPARITY OF TRUTH: SUBJECT, OBJECT, AND THE REST 1. FROM HUMAN TO POSTHUMAN AND BACK TO INHUMAN: THE PERSISTENCE OF ONTOLOGICAL DIFFERENCE Aspects of Disparity Against the Univocity of Being Posthuman, Transhuman, Inhuman Hyperobjects in the Age of Anthropocene Biology or Quantum Physics? 2. OBJECTS, OBJECTS AND THE SUBJECT Re-enchanting Nature? No, Thanks! A Detour: Ideology in Pluriverse On a Subject Which Is Not an Object Resistance, Stasis, Repetition Speculative Judgment The Subject’s Epigenesis 3. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, WHICH SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS? AGAINST THE RENORMALIZATION OF HEGEL In Defense of Hegel’s Madness The Immediacy of Mediation The Stick in Itself, for Us, for Itself Action and Responsibility Recollection, Forgiveness, Reconciliation Healing the Wound Self-consciousness = Freedom = Reason Reflexivity of the Unconscious II THE DISPARITY OF BEAUTY: THE UGLY, THE ABJECT, AND THE MINIMAL DIFFERENCE 4. ART AFTER HEGEL, HEGEL AFTER THE END OF ART With Hegel Against Hegel The Ugly Gaze From the Sublime to the Monstrous Hegel’s Path towards the Nonfigurative Between Auschwitz and Telenovelas 5. VERSIONS OF ABJECT: UGLY, CREEPY, DISGUSTING Varieties of Disavowal Traversing Abjection “MOOR EEFFOC” From Abjective to Creepy Mamatschi! Eisler’s Sinthoms 6. WHEN NOTHING CHANGES: TWO SCENES OF SUBJECTIVE DESTITUTION The Lesson of Psychoanalysis Music as a Sign of Love A Failed Betrayal Scene from a Happy Life III THE DISPARITY OF THE GOOD: TOWARDS A MATERIALIST NEGATIVE THEOLOGY 7. TRIBULATIONS OF A WOMAN-HYENA: AUTHORITY, COSTUME, AND FRIENDSHIP Why Heidegger Should Not Be Criminalized The Birth of Fascism out of the Spirit of Beauty Don Carlos between Auhthority and Friendship Stalin as Anti-Master Schiller versus Hegel The Self-Debased Authority 8. IS GOD DEAD, UNCONSCIOUS, EVIL, IMPOTENT, STUPID OR JUST COUNTERFACTUAL? On Divine Inexistence Counterfactuals Retroactivity, Omnipotence, and Impotence The Twelfth Camel as One of the Names of God A Truth That Arises out of a Lie The Divine Death-Drive The Deposed God 9. JECT OR SCEND? FROM THE TRAUMATIZED SUBJECT TO SUBJECT AS TRAUMA The Parallax of Drive and Desire Immortality as Death in Life The Troubles with Finitude Materialism or Agnosticism? A Comical Conclusion CONCLUSION: THE COURAGE OF HOPELESSNESS The Millenarian “Exhalation of Stale Gas” Divine Violence The Points of the Impossible Index

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A provocative account of what the concept of disparity might really mean from one of the world's most famous contemporary thinkers.

About the Author

Slavoj Žižek is one of the world's leading contemporary cultural critics and a hugely prolific author. He is Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, UK, and Visiting Professor at the New School for Social Research, New York, USA.

Reviews

A book of profound philosophical investigation.
*David Marx Book Reviews*