The contributors bring to bear an unrivaled enthusiasm and theoretical sweep on the entire Hitchcock oeuvre, analyzing movies such as Rear Window and Psycho. Starting from the premise that 'everything has meaning, ' the authors examine the films' ostensible narrative content and formal procedures to discover a rich proliferation of hidden ideological and psychic mechanisms. But Hitchcock is also a bait to lure the reader into a serious Marxist and Lacanian exploration of the construction of meaning.

An extraordinary landmark in Hitchcock studies, this new edition features a...

What is the contemporary legacy of Gramsci's notion of Hegemony? How can universality be reformulated now that its spurious versions have been so thoroughly criticized? In this ground-breaking project, Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Žižek engage in a dialogue on central questions of contemporary philosophy and politics. Their essays, organized as separate contributions that respond to one another, range over the Hegelian legacy in contemporary critical theory, the theoretical dilemmas of multiculturalism, the universalism-versus-particularism debate, the strategies of the...

In some circles, a nod towards totalitarianism is enough to dismiss any critique of the status quo. Such is the insidiousness of the neo-liberal ideology, argues Slavoj Žižek. Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? turns a specious rhetorical strategy on its head to identify a network of family resemblances between totalitarianism and modern liberal democracy. Žižek argues that totalitarianism is invariably defined in terms of four things: the Holocaust as the ultimate, diabolical evil; the Stalinist gulag as the alleged truth of the socialist revolutionary project;...

The idea of a Lenin renaissance might well provoke an outburst of sarcastic laughter. Marx is OK, but Lenin? Doesn't he stand for the big catastrophe which left its mark on the entire twentieth-century?

Lenin, however, deserves wider consideration than this, and his writings of 1917 are testament to a formidable political figure. They reveal his ability to grasp the significance of an extraordinary moment in history. Everything is here, from Lenin-the-ingenious-revolutionary-strategist to Lenin-of-the-enacted-utopia. To use Kierkegaard's phrase, what we can glimpse in these writings is...

With the help of Marx, Engels, Sartre, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Lacan, Brecht and many more, eZiezek examines the hidden causes of violence, delving into the supposed 'divine violence' which propels suicide bombers and the unseen 'systemic' violence which lies behind outbursts, from Parisian suburbia to New Orleans."

Lacan reminds us that psychoanalysis is the only discourse in which you are allowed not to enjoy. Since for Lacan psychoanalysis itself is a procedure of reading, here, each chapter uses a passage from Lacan as a tool to interpret another text from philosophy, art or popular ideology.

States of Crisis and Post-Capitalist Scenarios engages with the crisis of our capitalist world, with a view to explaining its origins, unravelling its symptoms, and demystifying the anodyne corrective solutions so far proposed. At the same time, it endorses the necessity for utopian interventions aimed at drastically rethinking our social order. Organised around the themes of economy and politics, critical theory, and culture in order to offer an impressive range of thematic perspectives and critical angles, the book delves into the most pressing of today s quandaries by combining stringent...

With a new introduction by the author

In this deliciously polemical work, a giant of cultural theory immerses himself in the ideas of a giant of French thought. In his inimical style, Zizek links Deleuze's work with both Oedipus and Hegel, figures from whom the French philosopher distanced himself. Zizek turns some Deleuzian concepts around in order to explore the 'organs without bodies' in such films as Fight Club and the works of Hitchcock. Finally, he attacks what he sees as the 'radical chic' Deleuzians, arguing that such projects turn Deleuze into an ideologist of...