Book cover of Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture

Book description

Slavoj Žižek, a leading intellectual in the new social movements that are sweeping Eastern Europe, provides a virtuoso reading of Jacques Lacan. Žižek inverts current pedagogical strategies to explain the difficult philosophical underpinnings of the French theoretician and practician who revolutionized our view of psychoanalysis. He approaches Lacan through the…


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Why read it?

1 author picked Looking Awry as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This study was published during my student years, and I was instantly attracted to Žižek’s unorthodox approach and his idiosyncratic rhetoric. The idea that (Lacanian) theory and (Hegelian) philosophy only make sense insofar as one can explain it to two ‘idiots’ by using examples from ‘popular’ culture, and film in particular, struck a chord with me.

The way Žižek can discuss within only a few pages a Stephen King adaptation, a spaghetti western, and a Fritz Lang film has confused several of his critics, but it has been mind-blowing to me to the present day. Bold and thought-provoking as his…

From Peter's list on books in film studies.

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The High House by James Stoddard,

The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.

The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.

Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…

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