Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?: 5 Interventions in the (Mis)Use of a Notion
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Book Overview
In some circles, a nod towards totalitarianism is enough to dismiss any critique of the status quo. Such is the insidiousness of the neo-liberal ideology, argues Slavoj Žižek. Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? turns a specious rhetorical strategy on its head to identify a network of family resemblances between totalitarianism and modern liberal democracy. Žižek argues that totalitarianism is invariably defined in terms of four things: the Holocaust as the ultimate, diabolical evil; the Stalinist gulag as the alleged truth of the socialist revolutionary project; ethnic and religious fundamentalisms, which are to be fought through multiculturalist tolerance; and the deconstructionist idea that the ultimate root of totalitarianism is the ontological closure of thought. Žižek concludes that the devil lies not so much in the detail but in what enables the very designation totalitarian: the liberal-democratic consensus itself.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:1844677133
ISBN13:9781844677139
Release Date:August 2011
Publisher:Verso
Length:288 Pages
Weight:0.05 lbs.
Dimensions:0.9" x 5.1" x 7.7"
Customer Reviews
2 ratings
interesting
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 18 years ago
this is wonderful.i read it in one week.persuade readers to go on and on.
An intensely searching evaluation and analysis
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 22 years ago
Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?: Five Interventions in the (Mis)use of a Notion is an intensely searching evaluation and analysis of precisely what totalitarianism is, and how the term has been misused -- particularly in twentieth century political science and philosophical discussions. Individual chapter sections address diverse, unusual, and controversial topics such as "The radical ambiguity of Stalinism"; "A plea for material creationism"; and "The Pope versus the Dalai Lama". Deviously written by Slavoj Zizek (Senior Researcher, Institute for Social Studies, Ljublijana) to unweave conundrums about the cross-purpose classification of totalitarian power and governance, Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? is a complex, thought-provoking philosophical accounting and a highly recommended addition to academic Political Science and Philosophy Studies departmental reference collections and reading lists.
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