Sex and the Failed Absolute

In the most rigorous articulation of his philosophical system to date, Slavoj Zizek provides nothing short of a new definition of dialectical materialism. In forging this new materialism, Zizek critiques and challenges not only the work of Alain Badiou, Robert Brandom, Joan Copjec, Quentin Meillassoux, and Julia Kristeva (to name but a few), but everything from popular science and quantum mechanics to sexual difference and analytic philosophy. Alongside striking images of the Möbius strip, the cross-cap, and the Klein bottle, Zizek brings alive the Hegelian triad of being-essence-notion. Radical new readings of Hegel, and Kant, sit side by side with characteristically lively commentaries on film, politics, and culture. Here is Zizek at his interrogative best.

Slavoj Zizek

INTRODUCTION: THE UNORIENTABLE SURFACE OF DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM THEOREM I: THE PARALLAX OF ONTOLOGY Modalities of the Absolute-Reality and Its Transcendental Supplement - Varieties of the Transcendental in Western Marxism - The Margin of Radical Uncertainty COROLLARY 1: INTELLECTUAL INTUITION AND INTELLECTUS ARCHETYPUS: REFLEXIVITY IN KANT AND HEGEL Intellectual Intuition from Kant to Hegel-From Intellectus Ectypus to Intellectus Archetypus SCHOLIUM 1.1: BUDDHA, KANT, HUSSERL SCHOLIUM 1.2: HEGEL'S PARALLAX SCHOLIUM 1.3: THE "DEATH OF TRUTH" THEOREM II: SEX AS OUR BRUSH WITH THE ABSOLUTE Antinomies of Pure Sexuation-Sexual Parallax and Knowledge-The Sexed Subject - Plants, Animals, Humans, Posthumans COROLLARY 2: SINUOSITIES OF SEXUALIZED TIME Days of the Living Dead - Cracks in Circular Time SCHOLIUM 2.1: SCHEMATISM IN KANT, HEGEL. AND SEX SCHOLIUM 2.2: MARX, BRECHT, AND SEXUAL CONTRACTS SCHOLIUM 2.3: THE HEGELIAN REPETITION SCHOLIUM 2.4: SEVEN DEADLY SINS THEOREM III: THE THREE UNORIENTABLES Möbius Strip, or, the Convolutions of Concrete Universality-The "Inner Eight"-(((Suture Redoubled)))-Cross-Capping Class Struggle-From Cross-Cap to Klein Bottle-A Snout in Plato's Cave COROLLARY 3: THE RETARDED GOD OF QUANTUM ONTOLOGY The Implications of Quantum Gravity-The Two Vacuums: From Less than Nothing to Nothing - Is the Collapse of a Quantum Wave Like a Throw of Dice? SCHOLIUM 3.1: THE ETHICAL MOEBIUS STRIP SCHOLIUM 3.2: THE DARK TOWER OF SUTURE SCHOLIUM 3.3: SUTURE AND HEGEMONY SCHOLIUM 3.4: THE WORLD WITH(OUT) A SNOUT SCHOLIUM 3.5: TOWARDS A QUANTUM PLATONISM THEOREM IV: THE PERSISTENCE OF ABSTRACTION Madness, Sex, War- How to Do Words with Things-The Inhuman View - The All-Too-Close In-Itself COROLLARY 4: IBI RHODUS IBI SALTUS! The Protestant Freedom-Jumping Here and Jumping There-Four Ethical Gestures SCHOLIUM 4.1: LANGUAGE, LALANGUE SCHOLIUM 4.2 - PROKOFIEV'S TRAVELS SCHOLIUM 4.3: BECKETT AS THE WRITER OF ABSTRACTION