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[[Philosophical ]] [[materialism ]] in all its forms – from [[scientific ]] naturalism to Deleuzian New Materialism – has failed to meet the key [[theoretical ]] and [[political ]] challenges of the modern [[world]]. This is the burden of [[philosopher ]] Slavoj Žižek’s argument in this pathbreaking and eclectic new [[work]]. [[Recent ]] [[history ]] has seen developments such as quantum [[physics ]] and [[Freudian ]] [[psychoanalysis]], not to [[speak ]] of the failure of twentieth-century [[communism]], shake our [[understanding ]] of [[existence]].

In the [[process]], the dominant [[tradition ]] in Western [[philosophy ]] lost its moorings. To bring materialism up to date, Žižek – himself a committed [[materialist ]] and [[communist ]] – proposes a radical revision of our [[intellectual ]] heritage. He argues that [[dialectical ]] materialism is the only [[true ]] philosophical inheritor of what [[Hegel ]] designated the “speculative” approach in [[thought]].

Absolute Recoil is a startling reformulation of the basis and possibilities of contemporary philosophy. While focusing on how to overcome the [[transcendental ]] approach without regressing to naïve, pre-Kantian realism, Žižek offers a series of excursions into today’s political, artistic, and [[ideological ]] landscape, from Arnold Schoenberg’s [[music ]] to the [[films ]] of Ernst Lubitsch.