The parallax view - Slavoj Žižek

The Parallax View is Slavoj Žižek's most
substantial theoretical work to appear in many years; Žižek himself
describes it as his magnum opus. Parallax can be defined as the apparent
displacement of an object, caused by a change in observational position.
Žižek is interested in the "parallax gap" separating two points between
which no synthesis or mediation is possible, linked by an "impossible short circuit"
of levels that can never meet. From this consideration of parallax, Žižek
begins a rehabilitation of dialectical materialism.

Modes of
parallax can be seen in different domains of today's theory, from the wave-particle
duality in quantum physics to the parallax of the unconscious in Freudian
psychoanalysis between interpretations of the formation of the unconscious and
theories of drives. In The Parallax View, Žižek, with
his usual astonishing erudition, focuses on three main modes of parallax: the
ontological difference, the ultimate parallax that conditions our very access to
reality; the scientific parallax, the irreducible gap between the phenomenal
experience of reality and its scientific explanation, which reaches its apogee in
today's brain sciences (according to which "nobody is home" in the skull, just
stacks of brain meat -- a condition Žižek calls "the unbearable lightness
of being no one"); and the political parallax, the social antagonism that allows for
no common ground. Between his discussions of these three modes, Žižek
offers interludes that deal with more specific topics -- including an ethical act in
a novel by Henry James and anti-anti-Semitism.

The
Parallax View not only expands Žižek's Lacanian-Hegelian
approach to new domains (notably cognitive brain sciences) but also provides the
systematic exposition of the conceptual framework that underlies his entire work.
Philosophical and theological analysis, detailed readings of literature, cinema, and
music coexist with lively anecdotes and obscene jokes.