- Editorial:
- BLOOMSBURY U.K
- Materia
- Science/social sciences
- ISBN:
- 978-1-350-53784-2
ZERO POINT
ZIZEJ, SLAVOJ
The essays in Zero Point ask how we distinguish defeat from disaster, and how we confront despair without collapsing into it - questions never more pertinent than the current moment in the wake of electoral victories for authoritarian populists and unceasing news of violent atrocities. The 'zero-point' of the title is ground level, rock bottom, the place to which one retreats and where one regroups. Taken from Vladimir Lenin's 1922 piece 'On Ascending a High Mountain, in which Lenin considers the complexities of how one 'retreats' while keeping faith in the cause, the central simile of the climber offers a blueprint for resilience, flexibility, and the persistence of hope.
This is the revolutionary as living out the Beckettian motto: 'Try again. Fail again. Fail better.' In iek's hands, this becomes the formula for confronting the antagonisms of existing world order.
With a particular focus on the Middle East -the point at which all our tensions threaten to explode iek argues nothing can be addressed meaningfully without such a confrontation. The consequences of eschewing apolitical acts of solidarity and choosing to attempt to speak truth to power are reckoned with in the second half of Zero Point. In a unique piece assembled chronologically from unpublished writings, iek wrestles with the fallout from his controversial speech at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2023 - a speech which saw him interrupted, condemned and accused of anti-Semitism.
The reader bears witness as Zizek processes the criticism, evolves his thinking and explores the full ethical, political and personal ramifications of the question: When is the right time to speak?
