The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology (Essential Zizek) (The Essential Zizek)

At the heart of this monster-sized tome, Zizek takes on 2 colleagues from the European Graduate School - Alain Badiou and Judith Butler. Up for discussion is Badiou's famous thesis of 'being and event' and Judith's Butler's ideas about sexualisation.The author comes well armed with the writings of Hegel, Lacan, Freud and Marx. Hegel is the supreme, Godlike figure who is approached with great caution and reverence, revered by Zizek as the greatest philosopher of all time. Marx has obvious links to Hegel, and whilst Freud and Lacan are obviously linked through the discipline of psychoanalysis, a lot of their work that Zizek picks up on in this book can be traced back to Hegel.Zizek is able to successfully challenge both Badiou and Butler in the context of these great thinkers, with reference to such tried and tested ideas as death drive, transcendental imagination and negation of negation. Both Badiou and Butler seem to pale in comparison with the strength of Zizek's arguments and Butler in particular emerges as someone who, according to Zizek, doesn't fully understand the Lacan text she is criticizing.Other philosophers who feature in the book include Kant, who is treated with a critical respect. It is he who is shown as the 'mother', as it were of the concept of transcendental imagination, even if Hegel was the 'midwife' who bought it fully into the world. Heidegger comes across as a rather bumbling figure, whose philosophy was stopped in its tracks when confronted with this same concept.Most of the text is fairly hard to read, but there is some lighter material about halfway through and towards the end, involving a discussion of the contemporary political situation - including a damning critique of multiculturalism and the 'Risk' society. It is at these times when Zizek departs from safe theoretical ground when us mere mortals will perhaps feel that we can offer some critical responses.The denouement of the book presents a strong advocation of 'The Act', be it in terms of political revolution or true sexual passion. This seems to be a similar phenemena to death drive and perhaps Neitzsche's 'will to power'. In his discussion of the latter, Zizek comes out in sympathy with the infamous Mary Kay Letourneau, who was convicted for raping one of her 12 year old students in 1997. In the end Zizek presents us with 2 choices - either to indulge in our instinctive love of 'jouissance' (as a 'Ticklish Subject'), or to renounce this very kernel of our being by 'traversing the fantasy'.The book will take a long time to read but is really worth the while, even if it is clear that the last 40 pages or so still need a lot of editing ie. errors which cannot simply be attributed to discoveries of ontological inconsistency. Did nobody bother to read the book thoroughly to the end?