Slavoj Zizek is one of today's leading theorists, whose polemical works span topics from German idealism to Lacanian psychoanalysis, from Shakespeare to Beckett, and from Hitchcock to Lynch. Critical through and through of both post-modern ideological complacencies-e.g., the death of the subject and the return to ethics-and pre-modern ones-e.g., the re-enchantment of the world, the embrace of postcritique-Zizek doubles down on the virtues of the modern, on what it means to be modern, and to ask modern questions (about the subject, nature, and political economy) in the age of the Anthropocene. This volume takes up the challenges laid out by Zizek's iconoclastic thinking and its reverberations in an array of fields: philosophy, psychoanalysis, political theory, literary studies, and film studies, among others. Zizek's multi-disciplinary appeal attests to the provocation, if not scandal, of his politically incorrect thought. Understanding Zizek, Understanding Modernism makes the force and inventiveness of Zizek's writings accessible to a wide range of students and scholars invested in the open question of modernism and its legacies.

AcknowledgementsIntroduction: Understanding Zizek, Understanding ModernismJeffrey R. Di Leo (University of Houston, Victoria, USA) and Zahi Zalloua (Whitman College, US)Part I: Mapping Zizek1. Lacan and Zizek on the Cogito and the Modern: Galileo, or Hegel?, Ed Puth2. Zizek's Hegel, our Hegel, Agon Hamza3. Zizek and the (Chinese Dialectic of the) Revolution, Frank Ruda4. Being Sexed: Zizek's Modern Ontology, James Penney5. Nil Actum Credens, Si Quid Superesset Agendum: or, Slavoj, Can't You See I'm Burning? Zizek avec the Clusterfuck of 2020, Clint Burnham6. What's Wrong with Being Happy? Zizek's Critique of Happiness, Jeffrey R. Di LeoPart II. A Leftist Plea for Modernism 7. Zizek avec Montaigne, Zahi Zalloua8. Zizek and the Bartleby Paradox: I Would Prefer Not To?, Cindy Zeiher9. Hitchcock's Modernist Hauntology, Laurence Simmons10. Zizek's Redemptive Reading of Richard Wagner's Ambivalent Modernity, Erik Vogt11. Zizek's Critique of the Authoritarian Personality, Geoff Boucher12. What Is Worth Salvaging In Modernity: A Realist Perspective From Non-Philosophical Marxism to Zizek's Universalism, Katerina Kolozova13. Are We Human? Or, Posthumanism and the Subject of Modernity, Matthew FlisfederPart III: Glossary14. Enjoyment, Todd McGowan15. Ideology, Glyn Daly16. Universality, Ilan Kapoorr17. The Subject, Russell Sbriglia18. Symptom, David J. Gunkel19. Class, Matthew Bost20. Violence, Oxana Timofeeva 21. The Death Drive, Zahi ZallouaNotes on ContributorsIndex