Zizek at B&N tonight

sarahana — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:14:31 +0000

If you’re in the mood to judge, Slavoj Zizek can be cut and diced in a million ways, like why the hell would he get his hands dirty in corporate advertising while waving a big, red, bleeding Communist flag, though I actually find this mingling of boundaries pretty sweet. And though you may or may not agree with the stuff that comes out of the mouth of this vociferous modern-day philosopher from Slovenia, he sure as hell is fascinating, and in that arena he’s got very little competition, especially from his peers. In short, the world is a better place when a man with a brain on fire decides to devote a documentary to the theme, The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema.

Continue reading about the event after the jump.

Zizek will be at the Union Square Barnes & Noble tonight, at 7 PM, all blood and flesh, with philospher Steven Lukes, launching the “Big ideas / Small books” series from Picador, who also published one of the most poignant & hilarious books on modern-day state of affairs, Eduardo Galeano’s Upside Down, which is not as useful a book as, say, books by Edward Said, but it’s kind of a socialist, elitist dark humor at its best. And really, that stuff is pretty great. The book Zizek’s promoting is his newest, Violence, from the Big Ideas / Small Books series, which I suppose is similar in idea to Penguine’s “Great Ideas” collection, which comes in editions of beautifully designed small books–except these are revolutionary ideas from the past that shaped our world (like Marx’s The Communist Manifesto, George Orwell’s Why I Write, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, Charles Darwin’s On Natural Selection and so on), whereas Picador’s seems to be new material by present authors. I can’t wait to get a copy of Violence. Read the excerpt.

Hooves on the Turf » barnes and noble

Zizek at B&N tonight