In Defense of Lost Causes

By Slavoj Žižek

The renowned philosophical sharpshooter looks for the kernel of truth in the fascist politics of the past—offering an adrenaline-fueled manifesto for universal values.

Is global emancipation a lost cause? Are universal values outdated relics of an earlier age? In fear of the horrors of totalitarianism, should we submit ourselves to a miserable third way of economic liberalism and government-as-administration?

In this combative major work, philosophical sharpshooter Slavoj Žižek takes on the reigning ideology with a plea that we should re-appropriate several “lost causes”—and look for the kernel of truth in the “totalitarian” politics of the past.

Examining Heidegger’s seduction by fascism and Foucault’s flirtation with the Iranian Revolution, he suggests that these were the “right steps in the wrong direction.” He argues that while the revolutionary terror of Robespierre, Mao, and the Bolsheviks ended in historic failure and monstrosity, this is not the whole story. There is, in fact, a redemptive moment that gets lost in the outright liberal-democratic rejection of revolutionary authoritarianism and the valorization of soft, consensual, decentralized politics.

Žižek claims that, particularly in light of the forthcoming ecological crisis, we should reinvent revolutionary terror and the dictatorship of the proletariat in the struggle for universal emancipation. We need to courageously accept the return to this Cause—even if we court the risk of a catastrophic disaster. In the words of Samuel Beckett: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 19, 2009
• ISBN: 9781844674909

Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek (Liubliana, 1949) estudió Filosofía en la Universidad de Liubliana y Psicoanálisis en la Universidad de París, y es filósofo, sociólogo, psicoanalista lacaniano, teórico cultural y activista político.  Es director internacional del Instituto Birkbeck para las Humanidades de la Universidad de Londres, investigador en el Instituto de Sociología de la Universidad de Liubliana y profesor en la European Graduate School. Es uno de los ensayistas más prestigiosos y leídos de la actualidad, autor de más de cuarenta libros de filosofía, cine, psicoanálisis, materialismo dialéctico y crítica de la ideología. En Anagrama ha publicado Mis chistes, mi filosofía, La nueva lucha de clases, Problemas en el paraíso, El coraje de la desesperanza, La vigencia de «El manifiesto comunista», Pandemia; Como un ladrón en pleno día y Incontinencia del vacío.

Reviews for In Defense of Lost Causes

[mrclarinet_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of the chunkier works Zizek has produced, but well worth the effort of reading it. A intense political exploration that stands against most of the values we hold so dear today via Kafka, Spielberg, Mel Gibson, Agamben, Laclau and Mouffe, Badiou, Lenin, Hitler, Heidegger and Deep Impact. Always thought provoking, always interesting, always alarming.

[hadriantheblind · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Well. This is definitely something.

Zizek is one of the more baffling modern philosophers I've read. It's tough to follow his mental gymnastics. I find myself agreeing totally with him, and then blanching at what he says next. Some of his topics are utterly bizarre - an attempted defense of STALINISM? Seriously? I can't imagine the double-think possible there, if I didn't read it with my own eyes.

Zizek is hardly coherent. But he is confounding and challenging, and damn if he isn't interesting, though.

[jonfaith · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

“Ideology is strong exactly because it is no longer experienced as ideology… we feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.”

In Defense of Lost causes is a difficult and disparate book. Wait, strike that, it is a rolling expanse of intriguing philosophical situations.Žižek isn't playing a long game as much as gesticulating at a number of possibilities while distinguishing between the smooth and the striated. Such appears to be part and parcel for his oversized Ideas books. In Defense isn't an act of revisionism. Instead it is a backward glance. The book strains from History's burden at time at when "torture was normalized, presented as something acceptable." It is such and adjustment in ethics which prompts this tally of revolution's failures, perhaps to discern a footpath to avoid our present dread. Switching gears from Heidegger and the Nazis to Foucault and the Iranian Revolution, the author arrives at a rationale for how Stalinism saved the world. Without smiling, the case is made that Lenninst/Trotskyite either/or would've led to a dehumanized mechanistic Soviet reality. It was Stalin in the form of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the purges which restored a human element to the Soviet Union. If the Show Trials didn't require confessions and thus maintain a collective empathy/complicity of citizenship then fast forwarding to the Cuban Missile Crisis any negotiation with the Americans would've been impossible. That's quite a bite to chew upon. That said, it does engender thought and a generous begging of questions. The book ends with a nod to the concept of divine violence and its allowances. This is hardly convincing in an airtight manner but it does provoke.