Absolute Recoil: Towards A New Foundation Of Dialectical Materialism

This is a very frustrating book. Not so much due to its difficulty (as already mentioned by others, it's probably easier than Less Than Nothing), but because it has effectively ruined my hopes of ever becoming a decent philosopher - much like, maybe, Hitchcock has ruined Zizek's own hopes of becoming a filmmaker.After having read both Less Than Nothing and this one (plus many of his other books), now I know I'm not up to the task of ever realizing my own dream (and Philosophy has always been my biggest inspiration in life). Whatever I do, Zizek is always infinitely ahead of me in both insight and knowledge.There is a fool among this book's reviewers who honestly believes to have a "supplement" for Zizek's Dialectical Materialism, but the poor bastard does not seem to know to what real extent (despite what he may think of himself) is Zizek a master of the "dialectical serpent", always ready to flex/bend its own muscles against its own structure, and successfully strike back (and with full force) its attacker.Resistance is indeed futile here. There are only bad critics of Zizek's work - and that even includes Adrian Johnston. Zizek seems to know everything there is to know by heart (and he always possess brilliant insights for everything he knows). I'm officially admiting defeat and leaving for the master the task of redefining what it means to be a philosophical materialist for the 21st century.Thanks for screwing with my lifelong dream, Slavoj. The more I have viciously studied you for the last 3 1/2 years, the more painfully clear it became to me that you are in a completely different level; an overall level of your own. Here, take your 5 stars.

This book is cathartic for anyone who has been following Zizek along. In order to understand it, one absolutely needs to have read most of the Hegelian corpus (at the very least - Phenomenology & Logic), preceded by Kant and the idealists, the late Schelling not to be missed, Lacan - some Ecrits and a few key seminars would be good, and previous Zizek's works, especially - Less Than Nothing (but Indivisible Remainder and Parallax View are highly recommended). Also Zizek Ontology by Adrian Johnston would be of great help. Basic familiarity with Heidegger is also good, as is that with Deleuze and Althusser, not to mention Benjamin.With these under the belt, reading Absolute Recoil is a breeze and extremely pleasurable. Without them, in the words of Lacan in Kant avec Sade: Those of my readers who are in this virgin relationship to the Critique (of Practical Reason) of not having read it - please put this article down and come back to it after having read it. I don't believe one would be able to understand much of what the author is saying without having been plugged into the stream of his thought over the years. If one has, however, another delightful journey awaits and it is not to be missed.

Fuchs, Christian. 2014. The Dialectic: Not just the Absolute Recoil, but the World’s Living Fire that Extinguishes and Kindles Itself. Reflections on Slavoj Žižek’s Version of Dialectical Philosophy in "Absolute Recoil: Towards a New Foundation of Dialectical Materialism". tripleC: Communciation, Capitalism & Critique 12 (2): 848-875.http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/640Slavoj Žižek shows in his book Absolute Recoil (and previous Hegelian works such as Less than Nothing) the importance of repeating Hegel’s dialectical philosophy in contemporary capitalism. Žižek contributes especially to a reconceptualisation of dialectical logic and based on it the dialectic of history. The reflections in this paper stress that the dialectic is only the absolute recoil, a sublation that posits its own presuppositions, by working as a living fire that extinguishes and kindles itself. I point out that a new foundation of dialectical materialism needs a proper Heraclitusian foundation. I discuss Žižek’s version of the dialectic that stresses the absolute recoil and the logic of retroactivity and point out its implications for the concept of history as well as Žižek’s own theoretical ambiguities that oscillate between postmodern relativism and mechanical materialism. I argue that Žižek’s version of the dialectic should be brought into a dialogue with the dialectical philosophies of the German Marxists Hans Heinz Holz and Herbert Hörz. Žižek’s achievement is that he helps keeping alive the fire of dialectical materialism in the 21st century. Such a dialectical fire is needed for a proper revolutionary theory.Hegel’s dialectical philosophy has in the course of the 20th century lost influence in Marxist theory. Too many theorists repeated the bourgeois and postmodern reflex to dismiss Hegel as having a deterministic, closed and totalitarian system of philosophy. The merit of Žižek’s recent work, including Absolute Recoil, is that he has massively strived to bring back Hegel to the attention of critical theory. Recent discussions about how to use Hegel’s Logic for reading Marx’s Capital and critically understanding capitalism (show how important Hegel’s dialectic remains in 21st century capitalism.In this paper, I reflect on Žižek’s version of Hegelian dialectics and ask the question what kind of Hegelian dialectic is most appropriate today. I first discuss Žižek’s logic of the dialectic as retroactivity (section 2). Section 3 moves from Žižek’s dialectical materialism to the discussion of his version of historical materialism. In section 4, I suggest amendments to Žižek’s dialectical logic. Sections 5 and 6 analyse the implications of Žižek’s historical dialectic, first in general (section 5) and second by asking how we should interpret Auschwitz and what the implications of Žižek’s historical-dialectical materialism are in this respect (section 6).

Zizek finally counted to 4 as an dialectician.

Great book. Unfortunately arrived slightly damaged. Not enough to send back but enough to notice.

Allegro good

Fuchs, Christian. 2014. The Dialectic: Not just the Absolute Recoil, but the World’s Living Fire that Extinguishes and Kindles Itself. Reflections on Slavoj Žižek’s Version of Dialectical Philosophy in "Absolute Recoil: Towards a New Foundation of Dialectical Materialism". tripleC: Communciation, Capitalism & Critique 12 (2): 848-875.http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/640Slavoj Žižek shows in his book Absolute Recoil (and previous Hegelian works such as Less than Nothing) the importance of repeating Hegel’s dialectical philosophy in contemporary capitalism. Žižek contributes especially to a reconceptualisation of dialectical logic and based on it the dialectic of history. The reflections in this paper stress that the dialectic is only the absolute recoil, a sublation that posits its own presuppositions, by working as a living fire that extinguishes and kindles itself. I point out that a new foundation of dialectical materialism needs a proper Heraclitusian foundation. I discuss Žižek’s version of the dialectic that stresses the absolute recoil and the logic of retroactivity and point out its implications for the concept of history as well as Žižek’s own theoretical ambiguities that oscillate between postmodern relativism and mechanical materialism. I argue that Žižek’s version of the dialectic should be brought into a dialogue with the dialectical philosophies of the German Marxists Hans Heinz Holz and Herbert Hörz. Žižek’s achievement is that he helps keeping alive the fire of dialectical materialism in the 21st century. Such a dialectical fire is needed for a proper revolutionary theory.Hegel’s dialectical philosophy has in the course of the 20th century lost influence in Marxist theory. Too many theorists repeated the bourgeois and postmodern reflex to dismiss Hegel as having a deterministic, closed and totalitarian system of philosophy. The merit of Žižek’s recent work, including Absolute Recoil, is that he has massively strived to bring back Hegel to the attention of critical theory. Recent discussions about how to use Hegel’s Logic for reading Marx’s Capital and critically understanding capitalism (show how important Hegel’s dialectic remains in 21st century capitalism.In this paper, I reflect on Žižek’s version of Hegelian dialectics and ask the question what kind of Hegelian dialectic is most appropriate today. I first discuss Žižek’s logic of the dialectic as retroactivity (section 2). Section 3 moves from Žižek’s dialectical materialism to the discussion of his version of historical materialism. In section 4, I suggest amendments to Žižek’s dialectical logic. Sections 5 and 6 analyse the implications of Žižek’s historical dialectic, first in general (section 5) and second by asking how we should interpret Auschwitz and what the implications of Žižek’s historical-dialectical materialism are in this respect (section 6).