Living in the End Times--A Book Review.

AuthorBurke, Richard
PositionBook review

Living in the End Times Slavoj Zizek, Verso Books, 2010, ISBN-13: 978-1-84467-598-2, 416 pages, $ 29.95

Having been called the "Elvis of cultural theory" and "the most dangerous philosopher in the West," Slavoj Zizek has become increasingly important as a point of reference for the world left. In works such as In Defense of Lost Causes Zizek has challenged the ideological prohibition on thought of post-cold war capitalist society by daring to ask whether there were redeeming features of the communist movement which deserve to be repeated. Now in his most recent book Living in the End Times he argues that what many, even on the left, perceive as the approaching "end of the world" is in reality capitalism approaching its final crisis. The factors that Zizek sees as causing this end are the ecological crisis, the biogenetic revolution, economic crises, and increasing social divisions.

Zizek ironically structures his book around the stages of grief about impending death: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. He uses these as frames of reference for investigating cultural responses to the recent financial crisis. Like a terminally ill patient, capitalism is approaching its death, and those, especially in the developed world, who have supported and/or benefited from it must learn to accept that fact.

The first chapter, "Denial: the Liberal Utopia," analyzes what Zizek terms "the predominant modes of ideological obfuscation, from the latest Hollywood blockbusters up to false (displaced) apocalyptism." The capitalist world-system, which claims to reject utopianism, ends up imposing its own Utopia on the world in the form of free markets and electoral democracy. Zizek demonstrates that the belief in the system reproducing itself indefinitely is itself the most naive form of utopianism possible.

Chapter two deals with the stage of anger, analyzing violent reactions against the current world-system. Zizek argues that religious expressions are often the mask for what are really political concerns. In the post-cold war era these can take the form of violent religious fundamentalisms among the poor and dispossessed. The rejection of modernity is in reality a rejection of the capitalist world-system and the prevailing secular world-view of its more privileged classes.

He concludes that ultimately the left will have to find a way to connect with these expressions of anger, and guide them in a more revolutionary direction. Here Zizek reveals...

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