In this new book, Marko Zlomislić argues that Slavoj Žižek's work does not contain any sort of radical emancipatory project, especially as it passes through the ideology of communism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. The evidence for the failure of communism is vast and includes the more than six hundred mass graves recently located in Žižek's homeland of Slovenia. Zlomislić demonstrates that the way out of the capitalist dilemma is not a repetition of communism but a return to the late medieval notion of haecceity or "individual thisness" that was rejected by modernity. Haecceity, or the indescribable and indefinite here and now of the person, shows that the late medieval Franciscans were already "postmodernists." It is no wonder that the totalitarianism of the modernist Hegel is embraced by thinkers such as Žižek, Badiou, Hardt, Negri, and Laclau and was already rejected by Leibnitz, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Levinas, Deleuze, and Derrida. This important book shows that Žižek's work must be rejected because it does not uphold the dignity, worth, and uniqueness of the person.
"Marko Zlomislić engages Žižek very forcefully in this work from a Fransciscan-Derridean point of view and from personal and family experience in the troubled Balkans, exposing especially Žižek's nostalgia for totalitarian dystopias."--Jean-Francois Methot, professor, faculty of Philosophy, Dominican University College
Marko Zlomislić is professor of philosophy at Conestoga College in Kitchener, Ontario. He is the author of Jacques Derrida's Aporetic Ethics (2004).(amazon) (accessible via scribd)
