Sensitive subject -- Absence center of political ontology

Author: Slavoj ?i?ek
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-01-01
Features: Since Descartes proposed the "ghost of the subject" with "I think," all academic forces have joined the sacred alliance aimed at driving away this ghost: from modern obscurantism and postmodern structuralism, to Habermasian communicative theorists and Heideggerian defenders of the thought of existence, to cognitive scientists and deep ecologists, and even to critical (post)Marxists and feminists. This book attempts to reaffirm Descartes' subject, discussing subjectivity from three main areas: the German Idealist tradition; post-Althusserian politics; and the "deconstructivist" transformation from the (capitalized) subject to diverse subject positions and the likelihood of subjectivation. The book raises the challenging question of how to reconstruct a left-wing anti-capitalist political project in an era of global capitalism and its ideological complement, namely cultural pluralism in liberal democracy. Using psychoanalytic theory as a weapon, the book reaffirms Descartes' concept of the subject.