The Essential Zizek: The Complete Set: The Sublime Object of Ideology / The Ticklish Subject / The Fragile Absolute / The Plague of Fantasi

"Zizek leaves no social or cultural phenomenon untheorized, and is master of the counterintuitive observation."--"The New Yorker" Slavoj Zizek, the maverick philosopher, author of over 30 books, acclaimed as the "Elvis of cultural theory," and today's most controversial public intellectual. His work traverses the fields of philosophy, psychoanalysis, theology, history and political theory, taking in film, popular culture, literature and jokes--all to provide acute analyses of the complexities of contemporary ideology as well as a serious and sophisticated philosophy. His recent films "The Pervert's Guide to the Cinema" and "Zizek " reveal a theorist at the peak of his powers and a skilled communicator. Now Verso is making these four classic titles, that stand as the core of his ever-expanding life's work, available as new editions. Each is beautifully re-packaged, including new introductions from Zizek himself. Simply put, they are the essential texts for understanding Zizek's thought and thus cornerstones of contemporary philosophy. "The Essential Zizek" is a set of all four of these classic works in beautiful new editions: "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. "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 Zizek unearths a subversive core to this elusive specter, and finds within it theindispensable philosophical point of reference for any genuinely emancipatory project. "The Plague of Fantasies": Zizek explores the relations between fantasy and ideology and the intensifying antagonism between the ever greater abstraction of our lives--whether through digitization or the market--and the deluge of pseudo-concrete images which surround us. "The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?": Zizek argues that the subversive core of the Christian legacy is much too precious to be left to the fundamentalists. He argues that the foundation of a politics of universal emancipation can be found in St Paul, finding an unlikely ally in the reinvention of a twenty-first century Marxism.