English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

It is a general known that Žižek is writing books faster than we could read them. Less Than Nothing is the most extensive book so far Žižek written, and it may be the largest book that has ever been written on Hegel. It is twice as big as Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and similar in size to Hegel’s Science of Logic. The first sentence of Robert Pippin’s review of Less Than Nothing is “It takes some courage to give a book this size the title Less than Nothing”. It is obvious that Žižek’s book is serious, all encompassing, well-structured and coherent intellectual effort. By giving multiple examples from jokes, films and digressions Žižek has developed his Hegelo-Lacanianism with practical political implications of contemporary thinking. His expectation is to open a new materialist interpretation through reading Hegel. Žižek employs an unusual structure in Less Than Nothing. As he puts it, “It was said (in the old days before smoking become stigmatized) that the second and the third most pleasurable things in the world were the drink before and the cigarette after. Accordingly, apart from the Hegelian Thing, Less Than Nothing also deals with a series of befores (Plato, Christianity, Fichte) and afters (Badiou, Heidegger, quantum physics)” (5-6). Part I, “The drink before” is devoted to Plato’s Parmenides, Christianity, the death of God, and Fichte; Part II, The thing-in-itself: Hegel, and Part III, The thing-in-itself: Lacan; Part IV, “The cigarette after” is devoted to Heidegger, Levinas, Badiou and the ontology of quantum physics. The central body of the book is split in accordance with the axiom ‘one divided into two’. Accordingly, Part I of the book is split into a part on Hegel and part on Lacan. It is repetition of Hegel. Here, Žižek has deployed four-step approach in each case. Regarding Hegel, he raises the question, “in what sense can one still be a Hegelian today”. Then he moves to basic formulation of the dialectical process following Hegel’s thesis that the “Absolute as not only Substance, but also Subject”. Žižek’s forth consideration is some limitations of Hegel. Regarding Lacan, he formulates the idea, “Lacan’s theory as a repetition of Hegel”. Here, he uncovers Lacan’s references to Hegel, and he represents it as “Lacan as a reader of Hegel”. Žižek emphasizes the concept, “suture” as the key aspect of signifying

Slavoj Žižek, Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism