Zizek: Beyond Foucault

In Slavoj Žižek and Michel Foucault, this book brings together two of the most prominent thinkers in contemporary critical theory. Starting from a critical assessment of the Foucauldian paradigm of discourse analysis, it explores the theoretical scope and political consequences of Žižek’s blend of Lacanian psychoanalysis, Hegelian philosophy and Marxist politics. The comparison between the two thinkers throws into relief the commonalities and irreconcilable differences of their respective approaches to critical theory. By unmasking reality as contingent symbolic fiction, the authors argue, Foucauldian criticism has only deconstructed the world in different ways; the point, however, is ‘to recognize the Real in what appears to be mere symbolic fiction’ (Žižek) and to change it.

Prologue * PART I: DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OR IDEOLOGY CRITIQUE? * Why Discourse? * Foucault´s Critical Historicism * The Positive Unconcious: in Search of the Matrix * Suspending Ontological Questions * Matrix Releaded: Žižek´s Ideology Critique * Locating Antagonism: the Return of Class Struggle * Beyond Anti-capitalism and Liberal Democracy *
PART II: ON POWER AND HOW TO ENJOY IT * ´Where There is Power ...´ * ´... There is Resistance´ * The Missing Subject Liberation Hurts: Žižek on Supergo, Masochism and Enacted Utopia * The Leninist Act * Commodity Fetishism: From Desire to Drive * Excursus: Žižek In and Out of Europe *
PART III: METASTASES OF THE REAL * Žižek Against Badiou: the Real Beyond the Event * ´There Is No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship´: the Formal Deadlock of Sexuality * Objet a, or the Ruse of Masculinity * Woman´s ´Not-all´ and the Paradox of Passive Aggression * The Zero-level of Femininity: the Real as Symbolic Failure * The Miracle of Love and the Real of Christianity * Epilogue: Maradona in Mexico * References * Index *