Against Progress

Slavoj Žižek (Birkbeck Institute for Humanities, University of London, UK)

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English

Bloomsbury
01 October 2024

Film theory & criticism; Philosophy; Social & political philosophy; Psychological theory & schools of thought

Series: Žižek's Essays

To define 'progress' is to lay claim to the future. Seminal thinker Slavoj Žižek turns essayist to interrogate the competing visions which form the horizons of human possibility and ask: Can things, which have never seemed worse, get better? What would a better world be? And how, when we are constantly besieged by doomers, degrowthers and disorienting relativisms

can we make any headway at all in the face of unprecedented ecological, social and political crises? In thirteen iconoclastic essays, Slavoj Žižek disrupts the death-grip that neoliberalists, Trumpian populists, toxic self-improvement industries and accelerationists alike have established on the idea of progress. Anatomizing what is lost when opponents of the future are allowed to define it, Žižek ruthlessly exposes what different visions of progress exclude or sacrifice and the dynamics of desire, denial and disavowal at work in Hollywood blockbusters, Buddhist economics, decolonization movements and other engines of vision.

In a whirlwind tour that takes in everything from gentrification to the theory of relativity, Lacan to Lenin, Putin to Mary Poppins and Marine Le Pen to the end of the world, these essays never stop asking hard questions of imagined futures. Nor does

Žižek shrink from the hardest question of all: How do we free ourselves from the hypocritical, guilt-ridden dreaming in which we’re enmeshed, and begin to build a better world?

By: Slavoj Žižek (Birkbeck Institute for Humanities University of London UK)
Imprint: Bloomsbury
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 196mm, Width: 128mm, Spine: 8mm
Weight: 157g
ISBN: 9781350515857
ISBN 10: 135051585X
Series: Žižek's Essays
Pages: 192
Publication Date: 01 October 2024
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Editor's Note 1. Against Progress 2. Gentrification 3. Deepfake 4. Absolute Variant 5. The Limits of Democracy 6. A Leftist Plea for Law and Order 7. Why Nuclear War is Inevitable 8. When is the Right Time to Speak? 8. The End of the World

Slavoj Žižek is a Hegelian philosopher, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, and a Communist. He is International Director at the Birkbeck Institute for Humanities, University of London, UK, Visiting Professor at the New York University, USA, and Senior Researcher at the Department of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.