Slavoj Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor

Kelsey Wood (University of Arkansas at Little Rock)

Ed. by Gerhard P. Knapp, University of Utah
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.07: French Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kate Averis (University of Western Australia), Hugo Azerad (University of Cambridge), Patrick ffrench (King's College London), Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Akane Kawakami (Birkbeck, University of London), Siobhán McIlvanney (King's College London), Sinan Richards (King's College London), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Domains

Cultural Studies
Psychoanalysis

Dates

First circulation or publication 1991

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Commentary / criticism

Resources

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Slavoj Zizek is a psychoanalyst and a dialectical materialist philosopher, the author of more than twenty books in English, and perhaps today's most important and innovative thinker. Zizek's fusion of psychoanalytic theory and dialectics has been at the eye of a storm of cultural, political, and philosophical controversy for nearly two decades, primarily because he rejects postmodernism and reinvigorates the philosophical transcendentalism and political universalism of the Enlightenment. Zizek's

For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor

(1991), is the sequel to his first book in English, the remarkably successful

The Sublime Object of Ideology

(1989).

Zizek is best known for developing the philosophical implications of the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan in

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2475 words

Citation: Wood, Kelsey. "For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 July 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=23508, accessed 21 November 2024.]