Customer Reviews:
 Zizek perhaps not at his best July 7, 2008
N. A. Bakhshov
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
This book started extremely well: the promise of a sustained argument drawing in the usual references from film, popular culture and the history of philosophy. I looked forward to his engaging Hegelian inversions - how true he is to Hegel I cannot say much in the same way I am not convinced Badiou is faithful to Plato. Anyway, it started well, some nice touches on Michael Crichton films but then suddenly something quite odd happened: the book seemed to fall apart in my hands. It began with a mediocre reading of the abysmal film of `300', using a Zizekian cliche to invert mainstream reading but adding nothing new. And then Zizek seemed to go off topic and began meandering - in the way Derrida does, the drift and focus of argument shifted and suddenly the worst features of Zizekian thought came into play: alluding to Badiou to give philosophical weight to what is a pretty weak position, arguing against some feature or trend in Hollywood films - the truth is he covered many of the same points in the DVD `The Pervert's Guide To Cinema' and added nothing new here - moving between one topic and another, making comments along the way which don't seem to accumulate any force, nor through sheer juxtaposition open up new avenues of thought. It became so boring - something I would never think of Zizek. But it has to be said: once you enter the syntax of Zizek's thought and can negotiate his grammar and language you then look for something substantial being argued for. I couldn't find it. So my overall conclusion is not so good: early Zizek: excellent, genuinely fresh and challenging and occasionally innovative. Recent Zizek: repetitive, re-working old ideas without adding anything, self-referring in a way that is irritating - he often gives you the impression that his position, in parts, has been well established through some earlier discussion - but it hasn't. There is something lazy in this book - something of the obsessional turning out books but not really developing his thought.
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