Essential Zizek

[bgmnts]

Thinking about getting into actually reading some Zizek but his bibliography is like Stephen King's so who knows what is essential Zizek reading. Say, up to five books for now.

[sevendaughters]

The only one I have read start to finish is The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic, which is a co-write back-and-forth with English trad theologian John Milbank. It hits upon a strangeness where Zizek posits that modern Christians seem to want to have a materialist effect on things whilst atheists like him are actually more traditonally spiritual. It's two brainy guys talking about the effects of Jesus and Christianity in this world and I haven't sold it well at all!

[Video Game Fan 2000]

They Know Not What They Do is his most essential work but maybe not an easy place to start. But the foreword is a banger and maybe his best defense, which of course begins by slagging off other people and questioning the relevance of his own most widely read work.

Sublime Object of Ideology, Tarrying with the Negative, Enjoy Your Symptom, Metastasis of Enjoyment all those early 90s books are way better than anything he's published since 2000 except maybe Parallax View. Even if some of them express views of sex and gender that will potentially make a reader in 2022 want to kick weetabix against the wall. Post-2000 others in the Llubljana school are far more interesting than he is. Do not buy his massive book on Hegel or any book of his about current affairs.

In a vain effort to defend the relevance of Lacanian theory beyond academic writing on cinema, I'd say anyone who plans to buy five book by Zizek should instead buy three by him and one each by Zupancic and Dolar. Or use some of the time earmarked for reading Zizek to listen to lectures about Lacan and Hegel.