Overview

Challenging the widely-held assumption that Slavoj Zizek's work is far more germane to film and cultural studies than to literary studies, this volume demonstrates the importance of Zizek to literary criticism and theory. The contributors show how Zizek's practice of reading theory and literature through one another allows him to critique, complicate, and advance the understanding of Lacanian psychoanalysis and German Idealism, thereby urging a rethinking of historicity and universality. His methodology has implications for analyzing literature across historical periods, nationalities, and genres and can enrich theoretical frameworks ranging from aesthetics, semiotics, and psychoanalysis to feminism, historicism, postcolonialism, and ecocriticism. The contributors also offer Zizekian interpretations of a wide variety of texts, including Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Samuel Beckett's Not I, and William Burroughs's Nova Trilogy. The collection includes an essay by Zizek on subjectivity in Shakespeare and Beckett. Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Literature but Were Afraid to Ask Zizek affirms Zizek's value to literary studies while offering a rigorous model of Zizekian criticism. Contributors. Shawn Alfrey, Daniel Beaumont, Geoff Boucher, Andrew Hageman, Jamil Khader, Anna Kornbluh, Todd McGowan, Paul Megna, Russell Sbriglia, Louis-Paul Willis, Slavoj Zizek

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9780822363033

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Reviews

A truly delightful collection of essays, bursting with fresh and genuinely interesting ideas. From the first to the last essay i ek proves to be an unfailing source of inspiration. Rather than taking literature as the object of study, the essays following i ek in this approach take it as the object with the help of which they think about various important topics and concepts. The result is a most powerful and compelling read. --Alenka Zupan i, author of Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan

This superb collection of essays is testimony not only to the fact that Slavoj Zizek is the most profoundly original critical theorist of our time, but also to the enormously productive influence he has had on a new generation of literary critics. Beyond the sterile opposition between the so-called 'new historicism' and old 'high theory,' Zizek's thinking opens up new possibilities of theoretically informed reading, not only for the letter, but more importantly, we might say, for its Joycean 'litter,' the real. -- Kenneth Reinhard, coauthor of * The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology * A truly delightful collection of essays, bursting with fresh and genuinely interesting ideas. From the first to the last essay Zizek proves to be an unfailing source of inspiration. Rather than taking literature as the object of study, the essays-following Zizek in this approach-take it as the object with the help of which they think about various important topics and concepts. The result is a most powerful and compelling read. -- Alenka Zupancic, author of * Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan *

A truly delightful collection of essays, bursting with fresh and genuinely interesting ideas. From the first to the last essay Zizek proves to be an unfailing source of inspiration. Rather than taking literature as the object of study, the essays-following Zizek in this approach-take it as the object with the help of which they think about various important topics and concepts. The result is a most powerful and compelling read. -- Alenka Zupancic, author of Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan This superb collection of essays is testimony not only to the fact that Slavoj Zizek is the most profoundly original critical theorist of our time, but also to the enormously productive influence he has had on a new generation of literary critics. Beyond the sterile opposition between the so-called 'new historicism' and old 'high theory,' Zizek's thinking opens up new possibilities of theoretically informed reading, not only for the letter, but more importantly, we might say, for its Joycean 'litter,' the real. -- Kenneth Reinhard, coauthor of The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology

Author Information

Russell Sbriglia is Assistant Professor of English at Seton Hall University.

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