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Cherry Apple

Amazing!

Avaliado no Reino Unido em 3 de fevereiro de 2022

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Fantastic book of this genius philosofer! Some parts a bit harder to understand but I couldn't stop reading!

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Ian Shine

Wide-ranging look at the way Covid is changing the world

Avaliado no Reino Unido em 27 de maio de 2021

Covid-19 has highlighted changes that were already bubbling away under the surface of "normal" pre-pandemic society. So says Slavoj Zizek.
These changes are mainly climate change, Black Lives Matter and a political shift towards a bigger role for the state.
Everything is interlinked, according to Zizek. Abuse of our environment may have helped lead to Covid. More black people died from Covid because of the kind of jobs they have and accommodation they live in - this high death rate echoes what happened with George Floyd. Meanwhile, the widespread state intervention promoted by economic shutdowns and furlough schemes were being talked about pre-Covid, with calls for universal basic income and so on.
Zizek flies through 14 short chapters in which he highlights how Covid has changed the world, then gives us two larger chapters in which he outlines his theories behind why things have happened as they have during Covid.
His insights into populist leaders and the "masks of obscenity" they wear (to conceal their lack of substance) are some of the best analysis I have read on this political trend.
His use of Lacanian psychoanalysis to show how the desire to return to "normal" is a kind of psychosis is also eye-opening. Covid has changed the world, and we need to use it as an opportunity to not go back to the problems that were already brewing before (climate change, racism, widening wealth gaps and an expanding precariat). Wanting to go back to exactly the way things were before is madness, and shows an inability to learn from one of the biggest events to have hit civilisation in the past 100 years.

3 pessoas acharam isso útil

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I Read, Therefore I Blog

Interesting time capsule of the COVID-19 pandemic and its societal implications

Avaliado no Reino Unido em 22 de dezembro de 2021

The philosopher, cultural critic and sociologist Slavoj Žižek is International Director for Humanities at Birkbeck College. This brave sequel, written during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic uncertainty in 2020 and published in January 2021, tries to make sense of what’s happening and what it means for the future. It’s a time capsule whose assumptions aren’t always correct but are nonetheless useful for future historians analysing this period.

The best way of reading this book is to think of it as a time capsule documenting a particular set of circumstances and Žižek’s thoughts about what is going on and what it potentially means for the future. As such you need to keep in mind that he was writing this at the end of June 2020 before both the development of the vaccine and roll out of the vaccine programmes worldwide and before the US Presidential election (albeit after Biden was chosen as the Democrat nominee).

Žižek is writing the book because he argues that the pandemic has brought about a capitalist crisis, bringing the economic and social conflicts that have been simmering since, essentially, the 2007/2008 financial crash and turned into a conflict of global visions of society and humanity’s collective stance on the value of human life.

He does make some interesting points. For example, he’s right in saying that the pandemic has accentuated existing class divisions, hitting hardest those at the bottom of the ladder and leading to more exploitation. However, since the vaccine rollout this has been superseded by anecdotal evidence of people in low paying jobs walking off the job because the dearth of workers is driving up wages, which is in turn hitting the hospitality industry in particular. I would be interested in seeing what Žižek’s thoughts are on this and whether he thinks it’s sustainable or a seismic change (e.g. I have seen comparisons to the changes to feudalism following the Black Death in the 14th century) or a momentary flash-in-the-pan along the lines of economic and financial reform after the 07/08 crash.

I was interested in his thoughts on the rise of radical protest, such as Black Lives Matter and the monument toppling movements in both the UK and US and how they need to be more radical. He also makes an interesting point about the democratic protests in Belarus and how the questions about what happens after you’ve toppled a dictator can stymy moves to topple him/her.

I was less interested in the sections considering Elon Musk’s brain implant stunts because it’s so far away from being implemented that it felt like science fiction rather than something current to the pandemic. I was also less interested in a chapter where Žižek uses dream theory and psychoanalysis on the impact on mental health, mainly because it’s quite academic and esoteric and I didn’t quite follow it.

Academic interludes aside this is a very readable book - Žižek uses a range of popular cultural references to make his points, which makes it easy to follow and the chapters are for the most part quite small and almost chatty (albeit in a philosophical way).

Given where we currently are with the pandemic and the rise of the omicron variant at the time of writing this review, I found this a weirdly comforting read because it shows how far we’ve come, where the concerns still remain, where we’ve moved forward and where we have more hope. I don’t know if Žižek plans to write more but I would be interested in reading them and I certainly think that these will be useful books for future scholars looking back on these times and trying to assess them.

1 pessoa achou isso útil

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A book you'll either love or hate...

Avaliado no Reino Unido em 24 de março de 2021

If you think this book will offer potential solutions and a rather encouraging philosophy about the world post-pandemic, then think again!
This is a rather depressing read for it looks at the ripple effect of the pandemic and lockdowns and asks the question of what society is, as a whole, going to do to work its way out of the situation we still find ourselves in. At least by the end of reading this, I think that’s what the intentions are – but I can’t be totally sure…
For me personally, I gained nothing new from this book and felt rather flat after reading it. Though I know there’s no fairy tale ending to this, it would have made for better reading to propose something more positive along the lines of philosophy.
Difficult to navigate through and rather slapdash in places, this may well be food for thought for some readers, but unfortunately, this just doesn’t do it for me.

3 pessoas acharam isso útil

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Red on Black

Slajov Zizek - The Pandemic and a "response -fatigued" public

Avaliado no Reino Unido em 28 de março de 2021

To my great surprise, I actually enjoyed this book by the "Elvis of Marxism' the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek. He is one of the more interesting writers of the left these days, with something to say. While in his larger books the constant reference to some of the more impenetrable thoughts of Hegel, Derrida and Lacan can grate. Here he is at his most straight forward and populist. I recall previously reviewing his magnum opus "Living in End times" and enjoying certain parts of key chapters but also skipping over huge blocks of texts. To be fair to him however he is a sharp cultural critic and constantly delves into film, TV and to bring out the wider dimensions of society.

This little book "Pandemic 2 Chronicles of a time lost" follows his earlier volume released in May 2020. If you are looking for an epistemological history of the virus or anything resembling data analysis don't bother. This is not Zizek's style or intention. Equally, if you are looking for a book centred on the mishandling of Pandemic move on.

Zizek uses Covid 19 as a theme to go off wandering and "riffing" into a number of areas where inevitably Michel Foucault and the cavalry of post-structuralism are enlisted. Some chapters will irritate those on the right but also greatly annoy the left. The section "Why destroying monuments is not radical enough" sees him taking on cancel culture and its urge to cleanse past works and events of all traces of racism and sexism. He compares it to the Catholic Churches index and notes if taken to an extreme we would effectively cancel "quite literally all the great philosophers and writers disaster". He also does a little stick poking at Greta Thunberg and Bernie Sanders "as nowhere to be seen or heard during the pandemic"

Finally "Sex in the age of social distancing" is hilarious although I am not certain this is the intent. Here Zizek chronicles the surge in sales for sex dolls and a number of other acts that should I detail them in this review would not pass the Amazon censor.

Pandemic 2 is Zizek at his more populist and accessible but even then some passages would need Sherlock Holmes to work out their meaning. For a "world drowning in madness" Zizek is the ideal tour guide. As for his critique of the inability of contemporary capitalism to safeguard the public in times of crisis, it has some very effective moments.

1 pessoa achou isso útil

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Covid-19 as manifest dream text

Avaliado no Reino Unido em 22 de março de 2021

As with other Zizek books this one is small, brief and exploding with ideas critiquing the modern late-capitalist reality we inhabit. The main part of this book is about the virus - the way it has changed things but in other respects has only intensified processes that were underway anyway with regard to creating sharper class boundaries. He examines the phenomenon whereby in a world where a huge amount of information is available on viruses and the relevant medicine is available, people rather went in search of information that suited their inclinations to not really get to know about the virus, but instead confabulate any kind of story except what was actually happening. He analyses this in terms of Freudian, or more strictly Lacanian dream analysis. Many other developments are examined from the international to the more intimate aspects of connection under lockdown, as ever turning the more superficial observations and opinions on their head. There is an appendix that examines the Trump phenomena as the Emperor who openly declares he is not wearing any clothes but is none the less nasty an emperor for it.

Zizek is for serious people who are pretty sure that the whole mess of the modern world is plunging headlong into climate catastrophe while most people around them simply don't want to know or just hope that those in charge will make sure it will all turn out well in the end. He interprets the determination of society at large not to know the truth about Covid as being a manifestation of the same mechanism that determines people not to know about Climate Change, increasing inequality and the rest of our modern ills. As such he makes for a good companion.

1 pessoa achou isso útil

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Pandemic 2

Avaliado no Reino Unido em 18 de maio de 2021

Clever, but in the kind of way where he needs a talk show or podcast. His books sit too far above the average enthusiast and too much in to the intellectuals desires, but it's too shaky as an academic read to really hit that top end. I do really like the content and I agree, but I didn't in all honesty find it the most educational, or at a scratch, entertaining read. It preaches to the already converted; the Reddit loving consiracy theorists that enjoy understanding communism and capitalism and discussing it outside of an academic context. If this is you, then it will likely validate your own thoughts and opinions.

The referencing is poor and it quotes wikipedia far too much. It's modern, in the sense that it touches on pop culture more so than traditional psychoanalysts do, but what I don't like is that the opinion pieces aren't labelled as such, and so we get that blurry line between fact and opinion and given enough of the wrong eyes, the line will become even more skewed.

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@iGlinavos

I love to hate Zizek

Avaliado no Reino Unido em 1 de maio de 2021

This book, like everything else from Zizek is a pleasure to read. It is also painfully annoying. Real insight is mixed with banality and grandiose eliptical language which sounds very fancy while saying very little. The way to enjoy this is to ignore the identity and fame of the author. If anyone else had written this, perhaps though you would not even pick it up. Perhaps what annoys me here is that I have myself written a couple of books using the same format, language and aims, but no one read mine. I am not Zizek. Anyhow, let us return to the main insights of the book. These rest in the undestanding of the pandemic as a linked phenomenon with a lot of the pathology of the modern era, ranging from environmental degradation to political debasement. It is interesting to see the modern worker as an evolutionary jump in Marxist thinking (now workers-from-home bring their own means of production). It is also great to read the final passages on how the brutality and indignity of Trump served to amplify his executive power. This book is not a fundamental of philosophy but it is a fun contemporary read with some real insight. Enjoy.

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We're All Doomed

Avaliado no Reino Unido em 6 de maio de 2021

A confession, before reading this book i'd never heard of Slavoj Zizek ,I'm no academic,but I'd read great reviews of his first Pandemic book and was keen ,as a general reader,what all the fuss was about.
I found a lot of it food for thought but also that it seemed to be asking questions rather than giving solutions. Zizek doesn't appear to be massively positive about post-pandemic society,or life in general and the whole thing is quite depressing . It's not a bad book,far from it, but if like me the thought that things will get better after the world,hopefully,has pulled through the pandemic,well drop that thought sunshine because there's a whole load of trouble heading our way.
Very clever stuff,loads of great insight and I'm sure he's right in what he says in his jumble of ideas,just that right now at least the suggestion of ways there might be some light at the end of the tunnel would have been greatly appreciated as well as telling us why we're all doomed.

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Makes the Reader think. A bit rambling

Avaliado no Reino Unido em 6 de abril de 2021

This is a fairly short soft backed book with 191 pages. The book has physically smaller sized pages than a usual book. Very much pocket sized. As such the read doesn’t take that long. Good typeface. If I am honest this isn’t my sort of book. If honest again lots I simply did not understand such as the Chapter called “what movie is playing out in real life ?” Others were for me equally confusing. The author is Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek. We are told that Slavoj is an important thinker of left wing socialist politicians. This comes across well in the writing. The chapters are short and can be read over a cup of tea. There are not that many answers. The questions this book pose invite us the reader to think for themselves. The author speaks of society as being transparent which it probably is. A few pages are a bit out of date already those that discuss former US President Trump.
Overall some may well enjoy this book but for me I would rather have a clear goal.

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5 estrelas		49%
4 estrelas		32%
3 estrelas		11%
2 estrelas		6%
1 estrela		3%

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