This book provides students and experts alike with a new kind of introduction to Slavoj Žižek's political theory. Going beyond recounting Žižek's positions on ideology, capitalism, Leninism, Stalinism, fascism, and related matters, it offers readers an argumentative reconstruction of Žižek's ideas which places his prolific output in critical dialogue with political philosophy, critical theory, and the history of ideas.But this reconstruction is also a cautionary tale. It argues that Žižek, since 1995, has turned away from the Lacanian and Hegelian insights that made his first works so ground-breaking. Instead, Žižek and Politics examines how he has come to embrace a much more bleak, neo-Hobbesian position whose political implications are profoundly ambivalent.Key Features*Surveys all of Žižek's works from 1989 to 2008, focusing on the way his ideas concerning politics have developed*Includes concise reconstructions of Žižek's key political and philosophical ideas including ideology, the subject, the symptom, the ideological fantasy and the superego*Brings Žižek's ideas into dialogue with other key political thinkers and traditions*Situates Žižek's ideas in terms of contemporary political debates about the nature of justice, democracy, law and violence*Makes a new argument about Žižek's politics, moving debates concerning his work on to new terrain and putting the manifold criticisms of Žižek's work on a new footing
