Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?: 5 Interventions in the (Mis)Use of a Notion - Couverture souple

Zizek, Slavoj

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1844677133 ISBN 13 : 9781844677139

Editeur : Verso Books, 2011

Synopsis

Totalitarianism has always had a precise strategic function: to guarantee the liberal democratic hegemony by dismissing the Leftist critique of liberal democracy as the two-faced twin of Right-wing dictatorships. Instead of providing yet another systematic exposition of the history of this notion, Zizek looks at totalitarianism in a way that Wittgenstein would approve of - finding it a cobweb of family resemblances. He reveals the consensus view of totalitarianism, in which it is invariably defined in terms of four things: the holocaust as the ultimate, diabolical evil; the Stalinist gulag as the alleged truth of the socialist revolutionary project; the recent wave of ethnic and religious fundamentalisms to be fought through multiculturalist tolerance; and the deconstructionist idea that the ultimate root of totalitarianism is the ontological closure of thought. Zizek concludes that the devil lies not so much in the detail but in what enables the very designation totalitarian: the liberal-democratic consensus itself.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Slavoj Zizek is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Studies in Ljubljana. His books include The Sublime Object of Ideology, Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lacan (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock), The Plague of Fantasies and The Ticklish Subject.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Verso Books
• Date d'édition: 2011
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1844677133
• ISBN 13: 9781844677139
• Reliure: Broché
• Numéro d'édition: 2
• Nombre de pages: 288
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Terminal Video; n.pederzini@terminaldistribuzione.com; ; Via Bruno Buozzi, 24/26,; Granarolo dell'Emilia BO,; Italie