The Metastases of Enjoyment: On Women and Causality (Radical Thinkers)

A disturbing and radical examination of the status of women and the role of violence in contemporary culture and politics.

The experience of the Yugoslav war and the rise of "irrational" violence in contemporary societies provides the theoretical and political context of this book, which uses Lacanian psychoanalysis as the basis for a renewal of the Marxist theory of ideology. The author's analysis leads into a study of the figure of woman in modern art and ideology, including studies of The Crying Game and the films of David Lynch, and the links between violence and power/gender relations.

Customer Reviews:

There is no Better Way to Conceal a Crime than to Confess it Right Away

By Etienne ROLLAND-PIEGUE - April 14, 2012

Who said that woman doesn't exist? Before becoming one of Lacan's favorite aphorisms--along with "there is no sexual relationship"--, this denial of woman's existence was pronounced by a minor Austrian philosopher in the beginning of the twentieth century. Born in Vienna in 1880, Otto Weininger died young: he committed suicide at the age of 23, not before publishing his maiden work, Sex and Character, in 1903. This essay, and the dramatic death of its author, had an impact on Viennese circles around that date: Ludwig Wittgenstein held the book in high esteem, and it may have inspired other Viennese luminaries.

But the truth of the matter is that Sex and Character was a misogynistic and antisemitic tract. For Weininger, woman was entirely dominated by sexuality: "Woman is only and thoroughly sexual, since her sexuality extends to her entire body and is in certain places, to put it in physical terms, only more dense than in others." Woman lives only for sex: "The idea of... read more

Impressive: intellectual fireworks

By Edward G. Nilges "Author, 'Build Your Own .Ne... - November 29, 2007

Zizek writes in the tradition of Adorno, because he takes the Continental philosophical tradition seriously, and, he understands it. I don't pretend to understand this book in full, but, reading it is not as anhedonic as my first encounter with Adorno in the 1980s, when I forced myself to attend to Adorno as a form of therapy-in-recovery.

That's because Zizek is much more chukka chukka hip about popular culture and uses it, along with the canon, to make his points, whereas Adorno would refer to far more obscure literary texts.

But both write in the shadow of what Arthur Koestler called a god that failed (Communism). Zizek writes as another Moloch, another god, fails, and that's globalized capitalism where the condition of entry is self-objectification narrated as freedom to choose.

Freedom to choose...what? Zizek writes from the standpoint of the idle fellow temporarily stranded in a small city on business back when there were movie theaters showing... read more

Intense yet Palatable

By Cynthia Liang "Cynthialia" - November 8, 2007

This book is complied of 6 short essays by Zizek. Here we have postmod writing; however, not as difficult as Derrida.

Zizek goes through a genealogy of psychoanalysis & film featuring Freud, Deleuze, Lacan, Hegel, Habermas & Frankfurt School, Derrida, Weininger and Lynch. He proceeds to discuss courtly love and anti-feminisms of Weininger.

His marxist inclinations do not come out as strongly as I thought he would.

His logic and analysis are not too difficult to follow but definitely require several re-reads.

The essays are well structured one after the other. I think this is a cohesive compilation. I have yet to read The Ticklish Subject but I have high expectations for it.

I find his essay on courtly love well-written - not surprising in thoughts but the writing is pleasurable to read. He's a feminist to an extent.