Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj (Professor Zizek, European Graduate School)

Mladen Dolar

Žižek

Stockholm Inst Of Transition Staff

Alenka Zupancic

One of our most daring intellectuals offers a Lacanian interpretation of religion, finding that early Christianity was the first revolutionary collective. Slavoj Zizek has been called "an academic rock star" and "the wild man of theory"; his writing mixes astonishing erudition and references to pop culture in order to dissect current intellectual pieties. In The Puppet and the Dwarf he offers a close reading of today's religious constellation from the viewpoint of Lacanian psychoanalysis. He critically confronts both predominant versions of today's spirituality--New Age gnosticism and deconstructionist-Levinasian Judaism--and then tries to redeem the "materialist" kernel of Christianity. His reading of Christianity is explicitly political, discerning in the Pauline community of believers the first version of a revolutionary collective. Since today even advocates of Enlightenment like Jurgen Habermas acknowledge that a religious vision is needed to ground our ethical and political stance in a "postsecular" age, this book--with a stance that is clearly materialist and at the same time indebted to the core of the Christian legacy--is certain to stir controversy.

The Perverse Core of Christianity

The Puppet and the Dwarf

The voice was not a major philosophical topic until the 1960s, when Derrida and Lacan separately proposed it as a central theoretical concern. Here, Dolar goes beyond Derrida's idea of "phonocentrism" and revives and develops Lacan's claim that the voiceis one of the paramount embodiments of the psychoanalytic object. He proposes that, apart from the uses of the voice as a vehicle of meaning and as a source of aesthetic admiration, there is a third level of understanding: the voice as an object that canbe seen as the lever of thought. He investigates the object voice on a number of different levels--linguistics, metaphysics, ethics (the voice of conscience), the paradoxical relation between the voice and the body, the politics of the voice--and finallyscrutinizes the uses of the voice in Freud and Kafka. With this foundational work, Dolar gives us a philosophically grounded theory of the voice as a Lacanian object-cause.--From publisher description.

A Voice and Nothing More

Renata Salecl

Miran Bozovic

Stojan Pelko

Was Sie immer schon über Lacan wissen wollten und Hitchcock nie zu fragen wagten.

Operas are about the meaning of love and life, and also very much about the meaning of death. Opera as a form, however, might even be dead itself. The last great operas are said to be those written around 1900. But, the psychoanalytic critic and philosopher Slavoj Zizek is quick to point out, 1900 is also the year in which Freud 'invents' psychoanalysis. Can this be a coincidence? Opera's Second Death is a passionate exploration of opera---the genre, its masterpieces, and the nature of death. Using a dazzling array of tools, Slavoj Zizek and coauthor Mladen Dolar explore the strange compulsions that overpower characters in Mozart and Wagner, as well as our own desires to die and to go to the opera. Mozart's understanding of psychoanalysis and Wagner's sense of humor are but two of the many surprises in Zizek and Dolar's operatic tour de force. Opera's Second Death is an extended aria on a subject that is far from dead [Publisher description].

Opera's Second Death

Mirt Komel

Mirko Melt

Medsočje

Sahibinin Sesi

Die Stimme ist eines der flüchtigsten Dinge überhaupt und erweist sich doch als eines der komplexesten Phänomene. Dem slowenischen Philosophen und Kulturtheoretiker Mladen Dolar gelingt es, die vielfältigen Aspekte dieses Phänomens in einer einheitlichen Theorie zu bündeln, die systematische mit historischen Darstellungen verknüpft. Dabei eröffnet sich ein Feld, das kaum einen Aspekt der modernen Theorie unberücksichtigt lässt: die Linguistik, Physik und Metaphysik, die Ethik, Politik und Ästhetik der Stimme und nicht zuletzt die besonderen Stimmen bei Freud und bei Kafka kommen zu Wort.

Eine Theorie der Stimme

His Master's Voice

"The contributions collected in this book examine Lubitsch's best Hollywood pictures from the 1930s and '40s--Trouble in paradise, Design for living, Ninotchka, To be or not to be, and Cluny Brown--to demonstrate that comedy, at its best, is not merely a matter of providing comic relief."--Page 4 of cover.

A Collection of Ten Philosophical Discussions on Ernst Lubitsch's Film Comedy

Lubitsch Can't Wait

A new, philosophically grounded theory of the voice—the voice as the lever of thought, as one of the paramount embodiments of the psychoanalytic object. Plutarch tells the story of a man who plucked a nightingale and finding but little to eat exclaimed: "You are just a voice and nothing more." Plucking the feathers of meaning that cover the voice, dismantling the body from which the voice seems to emanate, resisting the Sirens' song of fascination with the voice, concentrating on "the voice and nothing more": this is the difficult task that philosopher Mladen Dolar relentlessly pursues in this seminal work. The voice did not figure as a major philosophical topic until the 1960s, when Derrida and Lacan separately proposed it as a central theoretical concern. In A Voice and Nothing More Dolar goes beyond Derrida's idea of "phonocentrism" and revives and develops Lacan's claim that the voice is one of the paramount embodiments of the psychoanalytic object (objet a). Dolar proposes that, apart from the two commonly understood uses of the voice as a vehicle of meaning and as a source of aesthetic admiration, there is a third level of understanding: the voice as an object that can be seen as the lever of thought. He investigates the object voice on a number of different levels—the linguistics of the voice, the metaphysics of the voice, the ethics of the voice (with the voice of conscience), the paradoxical relation between the voice and the body, the politics of the voice—and he scrutinizes the uses of the voice in Freud and Kafka. With this foundational work, Dolar gives us a philosophically grounded theory of the voice as a Lacanian object-cause.

Slavoj Zizek

Opera's Second Death is a passionate exploration of opera - the genre, its masterpieces, and the nature of death. Using a dazzling array of tools, Slavoj Zizek and coauthor Mladen Dolar explore the strange compulsions that overpower characters in Mozart and Wagner, as well as our own desires to die and to go to the opera.

Mladen Dolar

Books

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