F. Vighi & H. Feldner 
Zizek 
Beyond Foucault

This book brings together two of the most influential thinkers in critical theory. By unmasking reality as contingent symbolic fiction, the authors argue, Foucauldian criticism has only deconstructed the world in different ways; the point, however, is ‘to recognize the Real in what appears to be mere symbolic fiction’ (Žižek) and to change it.

Table of Content

Prologue PART I: DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OR IDEOLOGY CRITIQUE? Why Discourse? Foucault’s Critical Historicism The Positive Unconcious : in Search of the Matrix Suspending Ontological Questions Matrix Releaded: Žižek’s Ideology Critique Locating Antagonism: the Return of Class Struggle Beyond Anti-capitalism and Liberal Democracy PART II: ON POWER AND HOW TO ENJOY IT ‘Where There is Power …’ ‘… There is Resistance’ The Missing Subject Liberation Hurts: Žižek on Supergo, Masochism and Enacted Utopia The Leninist Act Commodity Fetishism: From Desire to Drive Excursus : Žižek In and Out of Europe PART III: METASTASES OF THE REAL Žižek Against Badiou: the Real Beyond the Event ‘There Is No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship’: the Formal Deadlock of Sexuality Objet a , or the Ruse of Masculinity Woman’s ‘Not-all’ and the Paradox of Passive Aggression The Zero-level of Femininity: the Real as Symbolic Failure The Miracle of Love and the Real of Christianity Epilogue: Maradona in Mexico References Index

About the author

Fabio Vighi is Lecturer in Italian Studies at Cardiff University, author of
Le ragioni dell’altro: la formazione intellettuale di Pier Paolo Pasolini (2001) and Traumatic Encounters (2006), and co-editor of Did Somebody Say Ideology? On Slavoj Žižek and Consequences (2007).

Heiko Feldner is Lecturer in Modern German History at Cardiff University, author of
Das Erfahrnis der Ordnung (1999) and co-editor of Writing History: Theory and Practice (2003) and Did Somebody Say Ideology? On Slavoj Žižek and Consequences (2007).