About the Author Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His books include Living in the End Times, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, In Defense of Lost Causes, four volumes of the Essential Žižek, and many more.Ernesto Laclau is Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Government, University of Essex, and Distinguished Professor for Humanities and Rhetorical Studies at Northwestern University. He is the author of, amongst other works, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (with Chantal Mouffe), New Reflections of the Revolution of Our Time, The Populist Reason, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality (with Judith Butler and Slavoj Zizek), and Emancipation(s).Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Frames of War, Precarious Life, The Psychic Life of Power, Excitable Speech, Bodies that Matter, Gender Trouble, and with Slavoj Žižek and Ernesto Laclau, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality.
P**.
Weird
Very strange book--courageous, but disappointing in many ways. Butler tries throughout to get the others to think of gays/lesbians as something more than examples of minorities--they refuse. Laclau's second essay is positively bitchy and contemptuous. Zizek presses the other two to be more active activists and take a more positive political stance--they do not do so, instead noting that he also does not do so. Laclau says he assumed Zizek had a sophisticated political sense when he entered the collaboration but must conclude that he was wrong--Zizek is politically stupid, and Butler is a ranting, raving dyke--or so Laclau implies by referring to her first essay as a "war machine" or something. (She of course does not lower herself by responding.) It's an intersting collaboration in many ways--what I got out of it mainly was a better understanding of hegemony, which seems to me an incredibly powerful concept. But it comes mainly, I gather, from Laclau's earlier work. Butler, I thought, asked some good questions about universality that are ignored throughout the rest of the volume, as are all her remarks about gender, which seem invisible to the others. She writes beautifully at times. Laclau's thinking is incisive and powerful. Zizek seems to flip-flop wantonly on Derrida, and they all bicker constantly about who is and who isn't interpreting Lacan's Real with adequate thoroughness. It's a strangely confused, confusing, and inconclusive book. (The attempt, at the end, to present the failure to conclude anything as a theoretical triumph is a bit hollow.) It shows the state of theory now, I guess--theory is seductive in its power and potential, but three theorists of the Left seem unable to talk to each other. My own view is that theory can underestimate the power of disciplinary barriers. "Theory" seems to me to be nothing if not a way for a rhetorician, an economist, and a psychoanalyst/film critic to talk to each other, but the forces against such collaboration are not to be so easily thwarted, unfortunately. The book is interesting but naive.
B**Y
Essential for understanding three important philosophers
I don't believe this work is for everyone, for one needs to have a pretty solid background of knowledge already, of the works and theoretics of Butler, Laclau and Zizek...they definitely write with a presumtion that one already knows what is being discussed. However, if you have read their works, or have a solid knowledge of these theoriticians, this book is excellent as a way to understand the similarities and differences between their theories. The book is set up as a debate. The first pages state questions which each of them ask the others and want themselves to deal with. The book is then set up with each writer giving an argument chapter (The order which remains throughout the book is Butler, Laclau, and Zizek), a rebuttal, and then a final summation.Not only does the book give insight into the differences between these philosophers, who in many ways are trying to deal with much the same questions, but the framework of the discussion forced them to also reiterate aspects of each of their theories in a short and distinct manner that gives the reader more understanding in the end, of their works in general.
P**I
worth the effort
Yes this is a difficult book, but it is an absolute must read for those who are follwing the theoretical developments of post-strucuralism on the progressive left. Of course there are no prescriptions for immediate action but read Butler's contributions in this book and she addresses that dilemma. Laclau is very good, and Zizek has nuggets, but his Hegelian/Lacanianism is showing signs of wear and doesn't offer the opportunities for further theoretical developments and even research projects that the projects of Butler and Laclau offer.
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