To define 'progress' is to lay claim to the future. Seminal thinker Slavoj Zizek turns essayist to interrogate the competing visions which form the horizons of human possibility and ask: Can things, which have never seemed worse, get better? What would a better world be? And how, when we are constantly besieged by doomers, degrowthers and disorienting relativisms can we make any headway at all in the face of unprecedented ecological, social and political crises?
In thirteen iconoclastic essays, Slavoj Zizek disrupts the death-grip that neoliberalists, Trumpian populists, toxic self-improvement industries and accelerationists alike have established on the idea of progress. Anatomizing what is lost when opponents of the future are allowed to define it, Zizek ruthlessly exposes what different visions of progress exclude or sacrifice and the dynamics of desire, denial and disavowal at work in Hollywood blockbusters, Buddhist economics, decolonization movements and other engines of vision. In a whirlwind tour that takes in everything from gentrification to the theory of relativity, Lacan to Lenin, Putin to Mary Poppins and Marine Le Pen to the end of the world, these essays never stop asking hard questions of imagined futures.
Nor does Zizek shrink from the hardest question of all: How do we free ourselves from the hypocritical, guilt-ridden dreaming in which we're enmeshed, and begin to build a better world?

If we want to be true atheists, do we have to begin with a religious edifice and undermine it from within?

Slavoj Zizek has long been a commentator on, and critic of, Christian theology. His preoccupation with Badiou's concept of 'the event' alongside the Pauline thought of the New Testament has led to a decidedly theological turn in his thinking. Drawing on traditions and subjects as broad as Buddhist thought, dialectical materialism, political subjectivity, quantum physics, AI and chatbots, this book articulates Zizek's idea of a religious life for the first time.

Christian Atheism is a unique insight into Zizek's theological project and the first book-length exploration of his religious thinking. In his own words, to become a true dialectical materialist, one should go through the Christian experience. Crucial to his whole conception of 'experience' is not some kind of spiritual revelation but rather the logic of materialistic thought. This affirmation of Christian theology whilst simultaneously deconstructing it is a familiar Zizekian move, but one that holds deep-seated political, philosophical and, in the end, personal import for him. Here is Zizek's most extensive treatment of theology and religion to date.

The Sublime Object of Ideology Slavoj Žižek'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.

Zizek's most urgent and accessible book yet asks us all to imagine that catastrophe is a foregone conclusion--so that we can actually save the world.

We hear all the time that we're moments from doomsday. Around us, crises interlock and escalate, threatening our collective survival: Russia's invasion of Ukraine, with its rising risk of nuclear warfare, is taking place against a backdrop of global warming, ecological breakdown, and widespread social and economic unrest. Protestors and politicians repeatedly call for action, but still we continue to drift towards disaster. We need to do something. But what if the only way for us to prevent catastrophe is to assume that it has already happened-to accept that we're already five minutes past zero hour?

Too Late to Awaken sees Slavoj Zizek forge a vital new space for a radical emancipatory politics that could avert our course to self-destruction. He illuminates why the liberal Left has so far failed to offer this alternative, and exposes the insidious propagandism of the fascist Right, which has appropriated and manipulated once-progressive ideas. Pithy, urgent, gutting and witty Zizek's diagnosis reveals our current geopolitical nightmare in a startling new light, and shows how, in order to change our future, we must first focus on changing the past.

Contemporary life is defined by excess. There must always be more, there is never enough. We need a surplus to what we need to be able to truly enjoy what we have. Slavoj Zizek's guide to surplus (and why it's enjoyable) begins by arguing that what is surplus to our needs is by its very nature unsubstantial and unnecessary. But, perversely, without this surplus, we wouldn't be able to enjoy, what is substantial and necessary. Indeed, without the surplus we wouldn't be able to identify what was the perfect amount.

Is there any escape from the vicious cycle of surplus enjoyment or are we forever doomed to simply want more? Engaging with everything from The Joker film to pop songs and Thomas Aquinas to the history of pandemics, Zizek argues that recognising the society of enjoyment we live in for what it is can provide an explanation for the political impasses in which we find ourselves today. And if we begin, even a little bit, to recognise that the nuggets of 'enjoyment' we find in excess are as flimsy and futile, might we find a way out?

We are all afraid that new dangers pose a threat to our hard-won freedoms, so what deserves attention is precisely the notion of freedom.

The concept of freedom is deceptively simple. We think we understand it, but the moment we try and define it we encounter contradictions. In this new philosophical exploration, Slavoj Zizek argues that the experience of true, radical freedom is transient and fragile. Countering the idea of libertarian individualism, Zizek draws on philosophers Hegel, Kierkegaard and Heidegger, as well as the work of Kandinsky and Agatha Christie to examine the many facets of freedom and what we can learn from each of them.

Today, with the latest advances in digital control, our social activity can be controlled and regulated to such a degree that the liberal notion of a free individual becomes obsolete and even meaningless. How will we be obliged to reinvent (or limit) the contours of our freedom?

Tracing its connection to everything from capitalism and war to the state and environmental breakdown, Zizek takes us on an illuminating and entertaining journey that shows how a deeper understanding of freedom can offer hope in dark times.

There should no longer be any doubt: global capitalism is fast approaching its terminal crisis. Slavoj Zizek has identified the 4 horsemen of this coming apocalypse: the worldwide ecological crisis; imbalances within the economic system; the biogenetic revolution; and exploding social divisions and ruptures. But if the end of capitalism seems to many like the end of the world, how is it possible for Western society to face up to the end times?

In a major new analysis of our global situation, Zizek argues that our collective responses to economic Armageddon correspond to the stages of grief: ideological denial, explosions of anger and attempts at bargaining, followed by depression and withdrawal.

After passing through this zero-point, we can begin to perceive the crisis as a chance for a new beginning. Slavoj Zizek shows the cultural and political forms of these stages of ideological avoidance and political protest, from New Age obscurantism to violent religious fundamentalism. Concluding with a compelling argument for the return of a Marxian critique of political economy, Zizek also divines the wellsprings of a potentially communist culture--from literary utopias like Kafka's community of mice to the collective of freak outcasts in the TV series Heroes.

Billions of dollars were hastily poured into the global banking system in a frantic attempt at financial stabilization. So why has it not been possible to bring the same forces to bear in addressing world poverty and environmental crisis?

In this take-no-prisoners analysis, Slavoj Zizek frames the moral failures of the modern world in terms of the epoch-making events of the first decade of this century. What he finds is the old one-two punch of history: the jab of tragedy, the right hook of farce. In the attacks of 9/11 and the global credit crunch, liberalism dies twice: as a political doctrine and as an economic theory. The election of Donald Trump only confirms the bankruptcy of a liberal order on its last legs.

First as Tragedy, Then as Farce is a call for the Left to reinvent itself in the light of our desperate historical situation. The time for liberal, moralistic blackmail is over.

Philosopher, cultural critic, and agent provocateur Slavoj Zizek constructs a fascinating new framework to look at the forces of violence in our world.

Using history, philosophy, books, movies, Lacanian psychiatry, and jokes, Slavoj Zizek examines the ways we perceive and misperceive violence. Drawing from his unique cultural vision, Zizek brings new light to the Paris riots of 2005; he questions the permissiveness of violence in philanthropy; in daring terms, he reflects on the powerful image and determination of contemporary terrorists.

Violence, Zizek states, takes three forms--subjective (crime, terror), objective (racism, hate-speech, discrimination), and systemic (the catastrophic effects of economic and political systems)--and often one form of violence blunts our ability to see the others, raising complicated questions.

Does the advent of capitalism and, indeed, civilization cause more violence than it prevents? Is there violence in the simple idea of the neighbour? And could the appropriate form of action against violence today simply be to contemplate, to think?

Beginning with these and other equally contemplative questions, Zizek discusses the inherent violence of globalization, capitalism, fundamentalism, and language, in a work that will confirm his standing as one of our most erudite and incendiary modern thinkers.

The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology 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.

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.--Ludwig Wittgenstein

The good news is that this book offers an entertaining but enlightening compilation of Zizekisms. Unlike any other book by Slavoj Zizek, this compact arrangement of jokes culled from his writings provides an index to certain philosophical, political, and sexual themes that preoccupy him. Zizek's Jokes contains the set-ups and punch lines--as well as the offenses and insults--that Zizek is famous for, all in less than 200 pages.

So what's the bad news? There is no bad news. There's just the inimitable Slavoj Zizek, disguised as an impossibly erudite, politically incorrect uncle, beginning a sentence, There is an old Jewish joke, loved by Derrida... For Zizek, jokes are amusing stories that offer a shortcut to philosophical insight. He illustrates the logic of the Hegelian triad, for example, with three variations of the Not tonight, dear, I have a headache classic: first the wife claims a migraine; then the husband does; then the wife exclaims, Darling, I have a terrible migraine, so let's have some sex to refresh me A punch line about a beer bottle provides a Lacanian lesson about one signifier. And a truly obscene version of the famous aristocrats joke has the family offering a short course in Hegelian thought rather than a display of unspeakables.

Zizek's Jokes contains every joke cited, paraphrased, or narrated in Zizek's work in English (including some in unpublished manuscripts), including different versions of the same joke that make different points in different contexts. The larger point being that comedy is central to Zizek's seriousness.

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 Zizek'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 - Zizek 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, Zizek 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?

Philosophical materialism in all its forms - from scientific naturalism to Deleuzian New Materialism - has failed to meet the key theoretical and political challenges of the modern world. This is the burden of philosopher Slavoj Zizek's argument in this pathbreaking and eclectic new work. Recent history has seen developments such as quantum physics and Freudian psychoanalysis, not to speak of the failure of twentieth-century communism, shake our understanding of existence.

In the process, the dominant tradition in Western philosophy lost its moorings. To bring materialism up to date, Zizek - himself a committed materialist and communist - proposes a radical revision of our intellectual heritage. He argues that dialectical materialism is the only true philosophical inheritor of what Hegel designated the speculative approach in thought.

Absolute Recoil is a startling reformulation of the basis and possibilities of contemporary philosophy. While focusing on how to overcome the transcendental approach without regressing to naïve, pre-Kantian realism, Zizek offers a series of excursions into today's political, artistic, and ideological landscape, from Arnold Schoenberg's music to the films of Ernst Lubitsch.

Is global emancipation a lost cause? Are universal values outdated relics of an earlier age? In fear of the horrors of totalitarianism, should we submit ourselves to a miserable third way of economic liberalism and government-as-administration?

In this combative major work, philosophical sharpshooter Slavoj Zizek takes on the reigning ideology with a plea that we should re-appropriate several lost causes--and look for the kernel of truth in the totalitarian politics of the past.

Examining Heidegger's seduction by fascism and Foucault's flirtation with the Iranian Revolution, he suggests that these were the right steps in the wrong direction. He argues that while the revolutionary terror of Robespierre, Mao, and the Bolsheviks ended in historic failure and monstrosity, this is not the whole story. There is, in fact, a redemptive moment that gets lost in the outright liberal-democratic rejection of revolutionary authoritarianism and the valorization of soft, consensual, decentralized politics.

Zizek claims that, particularly in light of the forthcoming ecological crisis, we should reinvent revolutionary terror and the dictatorship of the proletariat in the struggle for universal emancipation. We need to courageously accept the return to this Cause--even if we court the risk of a catastrophic disaster. In the words of Samuel Beckett: Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

As we emerge (though perhaps only temporarily) from the pandemic, other crises move center stage: outrageous inequality, climate disaster, desperate refugees, mounting tensions of a new cold war. The abiding motif of our time is relentless chaos.

Acknowledging the possibilities for new beginnings at such moments, Mao Zedong famously proclaimed There is great disorder under heaven; the situation is excellent. The contemporary relevance of Mao's observation depends on whether today's catastrophes can be a catalyst for progress or have passed over into something terrible and irretrievable. Perhaps the disorder is no longer under, but in heaven itself.

Characteristically rich in paradoxes and reversals that entertain as well as illuminate, Slavoj Zizek's new book treats with equal analytical depth the lessons of Rammstein and Corbyn, Morales and Orwell, Lenin and Christ. It excavates universal truths from local political sites across Palestine and Chile, France and Kurdistan, and beyond.

Heaven In Disorder looks with fervid dispassion at the fracturing of the Left, the empty promises of liberal democracy, and the tepid compromises offered by the powerful. From the ashes of these failures, Zizek asserts the need for international solidarity, economic transformation, and--above all--an urgent, wartime communism.

Slavoj Zizek gives us a reading of a philosophical giant that changes our way of thinking about the new posthuman era.

No ordinary study of Hegel, this work investigates what he might have had to say about the idea of the 'wired brain' - what happens when a direct link between our mental processes and a digital machine emerges. Zizek explores the phenomenon of a wired brain effect, and what might happen when we can share our thoughts directly with others. He hones in on the key question of how it shapes our experience and status as 'free' individuals and asks what it means to be human when a machine can read our minds.

With characteristic verve and enjoyment of the unexpected, Zizek connects Hegel to the world we live in now, shows why he is much more fun than anyone gives him credit for, and why the 21st century might just be Hegelian.

In an extraordinary exchange of letters, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, imprisoned for taking part in Pussy Riot's anti-Putin performance, and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek discuss artistic subversion, political activism, and the future of democracy via the ideas of Hegel, Deleuze, Nietzsche, and even Laurie Anderson.

Two radicals, one in a Russian forced labor camp, the other writing to her from far outside its walls, show passionately - across linguistic and generational divides - that there is still a common cause worth fighting for. Touching, erudite, and worldly, their correspondence unfolds with poetic urgency.

In association with Philosophie Magazine.

The wager of Žižek'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.