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Materialism without Materialism: Slavoj Žižek and the Disappearance of Matter

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Slavoj Žižek and Dialectical Materialism
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Abstract

Slavoj Žižek’s two most recent major philosophical works, Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism (2012) and Absolute Recoil: Towards a New Foundation of Dialectical Materialism (2014), both strive, as their subtitles indicate, to reinvent for the twenty-first century the Marxist tradition of “dialectical materialism.” Although this philosophical label is closely associated with such names as, first and foremost, Friedrich Engels and V. I. Lenin, Žižek seeks to develop a permutation that deviates markedly from the classical Engelsian and Soviet versions. As is to be expected, he pursues this via his characteristic blend of German idealism and psychoanalysis, utilizing the work of G. W. F. Hegel and Jacques Lacan in order to creatively update dialectical materialism.

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Agon Hamza Frank Ruda

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© 2016 Adrian Johnston

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Johnston, A. (2016). Materialism without Materialism: Slavoj Žižek and the Disappearance of Matter. In: Hamza, A., Ruda, F. (eds) Slavoj Žižek and Dialectical Materialism. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137538611_2

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