Disparities

Book Description

The concept of disparity has long been a topic of obsession and argument for philosophers but Slavoj Žižek would argue that what disparity and negativity could mean, might mean and should mean for us and our lives has never been more hotly debated.

Disparities explores contemporary ‘negative’ philosophies from Catherine Malabou’s plasticity, Julia Kristeva’s abjection and Robert Pippin’s self-consciousness to the God of negative theology, new realisms and post-humanism and draws a radical line under them. Instead of establishing a dialogue with these other ideas of disparity, Slavoj Žižek wants to establish a definite departure, a totally different idea of disparity based on an imaginative dialectical materialism. This notion of rupturing what has gone before is based on a provocative reading of how philosophers can, if they’re honest, engage with each other. Slavoj Žižek borrows Alain Badiou’s notion that a true idea is the one that divides. Radically departing from previous formulations of negativity and disparity, Žižek employs a new kind of negativity: namely positing that when a philosopher deals with another philosopher, his or her stance is never one of dialogue, but one of division, of drawing a line that separates truth from falsity.

INTRODUCTION: IS HEGEL DEAD - OR ARE WE DEAD (IN THE EYES OF HEGEL)?
When the Kraken Wakes
A Report from the Trenches of Dialectical Materialism

I THE DISPARITY OF TRUTH: SUBJECT, OBJECT, AND THE REST
1. FROM HUMAN TO POSTHUMAN AND BACK TO INHUMAN: THE PERSISTENCE OF ONTOLOGICAL DIFFERENCE
Aspects of Disparity
Against the Univocity of Being
Posthuman, Transhuman, Inhuman
Hyperobjects in the Age of Anthropocene
Biology or Quantum Physics?

2. OBJECTS, OBJECTS AND THE SUBJECT
Re-enchanting Nature? No, Thanks!
A Detour: Ideology in Pluriverse
On a Subject Which Is Not an Object
Resistance, Stasis, Repetition
Speculative Judgment
The Subject's Epigenesis

3. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, WHICH SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS? AGAINST THE RENORMALIZATION OF HEGEL
In Defense of Hegel's Madness
The Immediacy of Mediation
The Stick in Itself, for Us, for Itself
Action and Responsibility
Recollection, Forgiveness, Reconciliation
Healing the Wound
Self-consciousness = Freedom = Reason
Reflexivity of the Unconscious

II THE DISPARITY OF BEAUTY: THE UGLY, THE ABJECT, AND THE MINIMAL DIFFERENCE
4. ART AFTER HEGEL, HEGEL AFTER THE END OF ART
With Hegel Against Hegel
The Ugly Gaze
From the Sublime to the Monstrous
Hegel's Path towards the Nonfigurative
Between Auschwitz and Telenovelas

5. VERSIONS OF ABJECT: UGLY, CREEPY, DISGUSTING
Varieties of Disavowal
Traversing Abjection
“MOOR EEFFOC”
From Abjective to Creepy
Mamatschi!
Eisler's Sinthoms

6. WHEN NOTHING CHANGES: TWO SCENES OF SUBJECTIVE DESTITUTION
The Lesson of Psychoanalysis
Music as a Sign of Love
A Failed Betrayal
Scene from a Happy Life

III THE DISPARITY OF THE GOOD: TOWARDS A MATERIALIST NEGATIVE THEOLOGY
7. TRIBULATIONS OF A WOMAN-HYENA: AUTHORITY, COSTUME, AND FRIENDSHIP
Why Heidegger Should Not Be Criminalized
The Birth of Fascism out of the Spirit of Beauty
Don Carlos between Auhthority and Friendship
Stalin as Anti-Master
Schiller versus Hegel
The Self-Debased Authority

8. IS GOD DEAD, UNCONSCIOUS, EVIL, IMPOTENT, STUPID OR JUST COUNTERFACTUAL?
On Divine Inexistence
Counterfactuals
Retroactivity, Omnipotence, and Impotence
The Twelfth Camel as One of the Names of God
A Truth That Arises out of a Lie
The Divine Death-Drive
The Deposed God

9. JECT OR SCEND? FROM THE TRAUMATIZED SUBJECT TO SUBJECT AS TRAUMA
The Parallax of Drive and Desire
Immortality as Death in Life
The Troubles with Finitude
Materialism or Agnosticism?
A Comical Conclusion

CONCLUSION: THE COURAGE OF HOPELESSNESS
The Millenarian “Exhalation of Stale Gas”
Divine Violence
The Points of the Impossible

Index