Interrogating the Real

Slavoj Žižek is one of the world's leading contemporary cultural critics and a hugely prolific author. He is International Director at Birkbeck Institute for Humanities, University of London, UK, Visiting Professor at the New School for Social Research, New York, USA and Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Rex Butler is Associate Professor in Art History at the University of Queensland, Australia. His previous publications include Jean Baudrillard: The Defence of the Real (Sage, 1999). Scott Stephens is Researcher at the Centre for Theology and Politics, Brisbane, Australia.

• Preface, Slavoj Žižek \ 'The Thing Itself' Appears: Introducing the Work of SlavojŽižek, Rex Butler andScott Stephens \ Part One: Lacanian Orientations \ 1. The Societyfor Theoretical Psychoanalysis in Yugoslavia \ 2. Why Lacan is Hegelian \ 3. The Most Sublime of Hysterics: Hegel with Lacan \ 4. Connections of theFreudian Field to Philosophy and Popular Culture \ 5. Lacan between CulturalStudies and Cognitivism \ Part Two: Philosophy Traversed by Psychoanalysis \6. The Limits of the Semiotic Approach to Psychoanalysis \ 7. A Hair of theDog That Bit You \ 8. Hegel, Lacan, Deleuze: Three Strange Bedfellows \ 9. The Eclipse of Meaning:On Lacan and Deconstruction \ 10. The Parallax View \ Part Three: The Fantasy ofIdeology \ 11. Between Symbolic Fiction and Fantasmic Spectre: Towards aLacanian Theory of Ideology \ 12. Beyond Discourse Analysis \ 13. Re-visioning'Lacanian' Social Criticism: The Law and its Obscene Double \ 14. Why is WagnerWorth Saving? \ 15. The Real of Sexual Difference \ Glossary.

"The Giant of Ljubljana strikes again. In Interrogating the Real, the first volume of his collected writings. Slavoj Zizek proves that as a scholar he is as absurdly prolific as he is incorrigibly entertaining. Lauded by Terry Eagleton on the back cover of the book as "the most formidably brilliant exponent of psychoanalysis, indeed of cultural theory in general, to have emerged from Europe in some decades," Zizek is known for his fast and loose style and his penchant for fiddling with philosophy, psychoanalysis and cultural studies all in one fell swoop. Whether you love him or hate him, it is indisputable that Zizek has made quite a name for himself and has assumed the status of an academic rock star.Appropriately, then, Interrogating the Real stands as a sort of greatest hits album. The book is an assemblage of fifteen pieces, dating mainly from the 1980's and 1990's. Of varying length and form, the pieces range from transcriptions of interviews and lectures to reprinted journal articles or book chapters. Although most of the essays have already appeared elsewhere, some of them had not yet been translated into English or were only available in journals that are not readily accessible to most readers. It is thus useful tot have the pieces collected into one easy to access volume."Cristina Laurita, February 2007 , Janus Head, Summer/Fall Open issue 2006, 9.1.