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Zizek's Ontology: A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity (SPEP) | 
| Author: Adrian Johnston
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 82423
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 312
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 6 x 1
ISBN: 0810124564
Dewey Decimal Number: 199.4973
EAN: 9780810124561
ASIN: 0810124564
Publication Date: March 19, 2008
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Product Description
Slavoj Žižek is one of the most interesting and important philosophers working today, known chiefly for his theoretical explorations of popular culture and contemporary politics. This book focuses on the generally neglected and often overshadowed philosophical core of Žižek’s work—an essential component in any true appreciation of this unique thinker’s accomplishment. His central concern, Žižek has proclaimed, is to use psychoanalysis (especially the teachings of Jacques Lacan) to redeploy the insights of late-modern German philosophy, in particular, the thought of Kant, Schelling, and Hegel. By taking this avowal seriously, Adrian Johnston finally clarifies the philosophical project underlying Žižek’s efforts. His book charts the interlinked ontology and theory of subjectivity constructed by Žižek at the intersection of German idealism and Lacanian theory. Johnston also uses Žižek’s combination of philosophy and psychoanalysis to address two perennial philosophical problems: the relationship of mind and body, and the nature of human freedom. By bringing together the past two centuries of European philosophy, psychoanalytic metapsychology, and cutting-edge work in the natural sciences, Johnston develops a transcendental materialist theory of subjectivity—in short, an account of how more-than-material forms of subjectivity can emerge from a corporeal being. His work shows how an engagement with Žižek’s philosophy can produce compelling answers to today’s most vexing and urgent questions as inherited from the history of ideas.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Time is on my side August 10, 2008
I am loving this book. My head is swollen from so many parentheses, but it is convinced that they are worth the effort. Among the many rewards of reading this book is to see some of Badiou's ideas contrasted with Zizek's.
Ron Rice
 The Best Book on Zizek's Philosophy July 25, 2008
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
Adrian Johnston has bypassed most of the fireworks concerning Zizek's public image and penetrated right to the philosophical propositions and arguments that are being made.
The fundamental thesis of the book is none other than what Zizek says of his own work: to raise lacanian psychoanalysis to the rigor of German idealism. The book's structure reflects this thesis, starting with Zizek's reading of Kant (Kant, who in Zizek's eyes, started philosophy as such by creating the concept of the transcendental subject). Kant, according to Zizek, was the first philosopher to rigorously draw out the idea that we do not have absolute empirical access, not just to the world, but also to our own selves as a subjective consistency. This is the beginning of the concept of the barred subject - or that the subject as it understands itself is never completely coincident with what it understands. Contemporary psychoanalysis understands all antagonisms in terms of this fundamental antagonism, coming back from Descartes and Kant's view of subjectivity.
This then moves to Zizek's reading of Schelling whose main materialist point is this fundamental antagonism owes itself to the idea that substance itself is divided, and it is this internal division within being itself that generates appearance and subjectivity. This is Zizek's materialist reading of Schelling - which is to unite the grounded material and the ungrounded ideal subject in a primary division or antagonism immanent in being itself. Quoting him that: if the world was complete unto itself, it would not need to split into two (the ideal and the material). This leads us to Zizek's reading of Hegel: Substance as subject and subject as substance.
Zizek's reading of Hegel is the last philosophical step in this triad. Zizek uses Hegel to explain precisely how and why the subject emerges from being. The explanation he gives is that "subject is nothing but that name for this inner distance of substance towards itself." This genesis occurs from inconsistencies and failures of the way being interacts and comes to know itself through its failures.
[it is this section of the book that is most philosophically problematic Johnston actually recourses to evolutionary theory and complexity theory to explain how there would be evolutionary selection for consciousness given that as the complexity of a system increases, more loopholes and failures are possible - thus generating more gaps "in-themselves" which need to be dealt with. I feel Johnston & Zizek (& Deleuze and any nonbiological philosopher!) can't provide a real consistent explanation for how subject arises out of being. "Failure" is hardly an explanation for the genesis of the subject... - failure with regard to what, an already existing proto-subject?]
The conclusion the book brings home is the precise nature of freedom as that which is absolutely contingent and absolutely autonomous.
Basic Strengths of the Book:
The consistencies and inconsistencies in Zizek's philosophy are dealt with in very rigorous ways. For example: the exact determination of the concept of "the real" fluctuates in both Zizek and Lacan as both that which is either "posed" as the negative OF the symbolic (the symbolic produces the real by its very failure), or the real as "presupposed" (the real is something anterior to the symbolic, not produced purely from it, but in from something else in relation to it).
Also, the breadth of knowledge Johnston exhibits is truly magnificent. Not only does he have an incredible mastery of philosophical and psychological concepts, but he also is able to express them in clear ways and relevant ways. He is able to sweep through most of Zizek's Oeuvre perceiving those aspects of his philosophical system that are crucial to the thesis and tying them all together very clearly.
Critique:
The writing style is somewhat like Zizek's (this probably comes from having read all of his books and not being able to shake some of the influence), and this becomes slightly annoying at times, leaving you feeling he is merely repeating Zizek rather than coming up with something new. But this feeling is momentary, and for the most part the work that Johnston has done is quite obvious and massively impressive.
Another issue I had is that Johnston doesn't notice the way other philosophers have tried to do the same thing as Zizek. Though the book is obviously about Zizek, many contemporary philosophers embark on the same project, not the least of which is Zizek's "enemy" Deleuze. Zizek himself says: I'm trying to do what Deleuze forgot to do, to take Hegel from behind.
For instance, it becomes clear that philosophically, Deleuze and Zizek drive home the same fundamental thesis: difference is metaphysically primary. By comparing alternate conceptions of the subject this would shed more light on Zizek's project and possible alternatives to it.
I also think the account of the genesis of the subject is inadequate, and so long as the "material" being of the world is considered isomorphic with the subject (i.e. it is inherently "split"), you cannot actually account for the concrete genesis of the subject as it actually occurred, but rather can only come up with a vague and general (and teleological) a priori argument about conditions of possibility for subjectivity (i.e. that being is inherently split!).
Also, it is questionable whether the explanations Zizek gives are actually due to the causes he ascribes them to (inherent tensions in being and the subject). Johnston also provides no alternative conceptions of this, which would shed light on the particular context Zizek uses for his own explanations.
Conclusion:
As it stands, the book is the best characterization of the project Zizek embarked on, while relating it to a historical background that Zizek merely assumes his readership is familiar with. Undoubtedly, the readings will be controversial, but Johnston provides a well crafted defense of Lacanian metapsychology, attempting to truly understand what Zizek is saying before running into a hasty critique. I consider it crucial to anyone interested in the philosophical edifice of Zizek's argumentation.
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