The Essential Žižek (Verso)

The Essential Žižek: The Complete Set
(The Sublime Object of Ideology, The Ticklish Subject,
The Fragile Absolute, The Plague of Fantasies: 4 books)

Library of Social Science presents this exciting set of books
—essential texts for understanding Žižek’s thought.

Verso is the largest independent, radical publishing house in the English speaking world. Their authors read like a “who’s who” in social theory, including Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Ernest Laclau, Terry Eagleton, Chantal Mouffe, Jacqueline Rose, Judith Butler, Benedict Anderson, Raymond Williams, Judith Butler, Edward Said, Frederic Jameson, David Harvey, Immanuel Wallerstein & Tariq Ali—to name just a few.

Verso exhibits through Library of Social Science's 2018 Promotional Package—usually presenting an entire table of books (N=25).

Slavoj Žižek

“A relentless iconoclast, a restless wordsmith, an inventive thinker.” – Bookforum

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, and senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His books include Living in the End Times, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, In Defense of Lost Causes, four volumes of the Essential Žižek, and many more.

The Essential Žižek

Verso is making four of Žižek's classic titles—that stand as the core of his ever-expanding life’s work—available as new editions. Each is beautifully repackaged, including new introductions from Žižek himself. Simply put, they are the essential texts for understanding Žižek’s thought and thus cornerstones of contemporary philosophy.

Descriptions of each title in the set are directly below.

Books in this Series
	The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For? Argues that the subversive core of the Christian legacy forms the foundation of a politics of universal emancipation. One of the signal features of our era is the re-emergence of the 'sacred' in its different guises, from New Age paganism to the emerging religious sensitivity within cultural and political theory. The wager of Zizek's The Fragile Absolute – published here with a new preface by the author – is that Christianity and Marxism can fight together against the contemporary onslought of vapid spiritualism. The revolutionary core of the Christian legacy is too precious to be left to the fundamentalists. For information on how to order this title from directly from Verso, click here.
	The Plague of Fantasies The relations between fantasy and ideology, and the deluge of digital phantasms surrounding us. Modern audiovisual media have spawned a 'plague of fantasies', electronically inspired phantasms that cloud the ability to reason and prevent a true understanding of a world increasingly dominated by abstractions—whether those of digital technology, or the speculative market. Into this arena, enters Žižek: equipped with an agile wit and the skills of a prodigious scholar, he confidently ranges among a dazzling array of cultural references—explicating Robert Schumann as deftly as he does John Carpenter—to demonstrate how the modern condition blinds us to the ideological basis of our lives. For information on how to order this title from directly from Verso, click here.
	The Sublime Object of Ideology Exploring the ideological fantasies of wholeness and exclusion which make up human society. The Sublime Object of Ideology, Slavoj Zizek's first book, is a provocative and original work looking at the question of human agency in a postmodern world. In a thrilling tour de force that made his name, he explores the ideological fantasies of wholeness and exclusion which make up human society. For information on how to order this title from directly from Verso, click here.
	The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology A specter is haunting Western thought, the specter of the Cartesian subject. A specter is haunting Western thought, the specter of the Cartesian subject. In this book Slavoj Žižek unearths a subversive core to this elusive specter, and finds within it the indispensable philosophical point of reference for any genuinely emancipatory project. For information on how to order this title from directly from Verso, click here.