Psychoanalysis is less merciful than Christianity. Where God the Father forgives our ignorance, psychoanalysis holds out no such hope. Ignorance is not a sufficient ground for forgiveness since it masks enjoyment; an enjoyment which erupts in those black holes in our symbolic universe that escape the Father's prohibition.
Today, with the disintegration of state socialism, we are witnessing this eruption of enjoymnet in the re-emergence of aggressive nationalism and racism. With the lid of repression lifted, the desires that have emerged are far from democratic. To explain this apparent paradox, says Slavoj Zizek, socialist critical thought must turn to psychoanalysis.
For They Know Not What They Do seeks to understand the status of enjoyment within ideological discourse, from Hegel through Lacan to these political and ideological deadlocks. The author's own enjoyment of "popular culture" makes this an engaging and lucid exposition, in which Hegel joins hands with Rossellini, Marx with Hitchcock, Lacan with Frankenstein, high theory with Hollywood melodrama.

- 396 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
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Topic
PhilosophySubtopic
Political PhilosophyTable of contents
- Cover Page
- Halftitle Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword to the Second Edition: Enjoyment within the Limits of Reason Alone
- Introduction: Destiny of a Joke
- Part I: E Pluribus Unum
- Part II: Dialectics and its Discontents
- Part III: Cum Grano Praxis
- Notes
- Index
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Yes, you can access For They Know Not What They Do by Slavoj Zizek,Slavoj Žižek in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Philosophy & Political Philosophy. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.