Zero Point
€13.90
Product Information
| ISBN | 9781350537842 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Slavoj Zizek |
| Publisher | |
| Format | Paperback |
| Number of pages | 192 |
| Weight (kg) | 0.148 |
| Publishing Date | 20/03/2025 |
| Price (excl. tax) | €13.11 |
| Tax | €0.79 |
| Price (incl. tax) | €13.90 |
| Availability | 12 units in external warehouse |
Product Description
The essays in Zero Point ask how we distinguish defeat from disaster, and how we confront despair without collapsing into it - questions never more pertinent than the current moment in the wake of electoral victories for authoritarian populists and unceasing news of violent atrocities.
The ''zero-point'' of the title is ground level, rock bottom, the place to which one retreats and where one regroups. Taken from Vladimir Lenin''s 1922 piece ''On Ascending a High Mountain, in which Lenin considers the complexities of how one ''retreats'' while keeping faith in the cause, the central simile of the climber offers a blueprint for resilience, flexibility, and the persistence of hope. This is the revolutionary as living out the Beckettian motto: ''Try again. Fail again. Fail better.'' In Žižek''s hands, this becomes the formula for confronting the antagonisms of existing world order. With a particular focus on the Middle East -the point at which all our tensions threaten to explode – Žižek argues nothing can be addressed meaningfully without such a confrontation.
The consequences of eschewing apolitical acts of solidarity and choosing to attempt to speak truth to power are reckoned with in the second half of Zero Point. In a unique piece assembled chronologically from unpublished writings, Žižek wrestles with the fallout from his controversial speech at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2023 - a speech which saw him interrupted, condemned and accused of anti-Semitism. The reader bears witness as Zizek processes the criticism, evolves his thinking and explores the full ethical, political and personal ramifications of the question: When is the right time to speak?